Here are some highlights from the panel for Super at WonderCon 2011:

Movie is starring: Rainn Wilson, Kevin Bacon, Ellen Paige, and Nathan Fillion.

Director is James Gunn.

-Rainn: “We have no footage to show you.  This is a very very low rent affair.”  “Picture some really awesome footage, that’s really in your face, and subversive and weird, and people getting hit in the face with a pipe wrench, and now there’s an explosion or two, and now there’s Ellen Paige taking sexual advantage of Rainn Wilson………. Now we’ve had a mind trailer.”

-Jenna actually suggested Rainn to James for the lead (she’s James’ ex-wife). Rain read it on the set of The Office, and called 22 pages in, and said “‘I’m in, I want to do this movie, my hands are termbling and it wasn’t even a sexual thing.  Well, ok, a little bit of a sexual thing.”

-The main character’s “just a normal schlubby guy, just a cook in a diner… happens to be married to Liv Tyler.  Only in Hollywood.  He’s really down in the dumps, he’s hit bottom, he’s on his knees tearfully praying to God, there’s like a page and a half monologue of him praying and sobbing and its also really funny and weird.  And then in the very next scene he gets tied down by these hentai rape porn tentacles, and then his brain gets touched by the finger of God, and I was like ‘This is amazing!  I don’t even need to read the end of the script!’”

-We were trying to get this movie made a few years ago when funding for an indie movie had dried up, it was rought.  This is a testament to the people that still love good movies.  The whole thing was made for a couple million bucks.  All the actors worked for scale, a few thousand dollars when they might otherwise get several million themselves.

-“And everybody involved in this film did it because they love movies, and even though they have great careers, they still want to do something they care about.  It isn’t a movie for everybody, it’s a move for the for the outcasts and the rebels and the geeks, and all the oddballs out there, and that’s who we made this movie for, its an exhilarating film to make, it’s a movie I love, and I’m so happy we teamed up to make this movie.”

-We can take things to the extreme in this movie, so whether it’s the drama or the violence or whatever, if we feel its true to the character, we can do it.

-Nathan Fillion plays the Holy Avenger, a Christian superhero on the All-Jesus network. 

-Rainn deliberately didn’t watch Defendor or Kick Ass because he didn’t want to be influenced.

-It’s really hard in Hollywood today, because this culture of people going on opening day has become a monster, 30 – 60% of the movie’s overall take in the one weekend, so that quality doesn’t matter as much, only getting asses in the seats.  Studios have to show profits, so their intention is to make good work, but their main focus is getting all the age/sex groups.  SUPER wont change that necessarily, but its up to the viewers to support films they love, and go see them, and tell their friends to, because that’s what they’re passionate about.

-The true fans are the tastemakers, so its up to you guys to support the films you want to see and go out and support them with your pocketbook.  

-On a normal movie you do 12-20 camera setups, on this movie we did 45-50 camera setups every day, and we did that by knowing exactly what we were going to do beforehand.  

-Not much improving in this movie – most of the time improving is done to salvage a script that’s not funny otherwise, but in SUPER Rainn had no need or urge to try and amp it up.

–The costume design is just a guy who has no experience sewing or making this kind of get up, so it’s just him trying to put it together, and then patching it and jury rigging it until is a mixture of funny and creepy.  Just like Rain, which is what makes him so awesome.

-Rainn would like to play a super villain in the future, rather than a super hero.

-Rainn and Paige were “Butt Buddies” – which just meant that they kept bonking their asses together. *Rain makes people in the audience demonstrate*  “there’s nothing gross, there’s nothing sexual, it’s not even anal”

-There’s a sex scene with Liv Tyler, but for some reason she wouldn’t do it unless james showed her what it would look like, so in the behind the scenes footage on the dvd there will be the shot of James humping Rainn.

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