I think I remember hearing something about James Gunn heading some sort of short horror film project for the XBox 360 a while back, but I’ve never actually seen any of the final films. The project was called ‘Horror Does Comedy’, in which he and a handful of other notable modern horror film directors — including James Wan (Saw), David Slade (30 Days of Night) and Lucky McKee (The Woods) — were to create exclusive content made available for download over the XBox Live Marketplace. Well according to Gunn, not everything went entirely as planned. It seems as though Microsoft had a hard time getting behind anything that pushed the boundaries of what they considered PG-13. This meant that Gunn was apparently forced to compromise his work in order to meet what he thinks are some pretty ridiculous standards. From his blog:

I wasn’t too happy with the version of S&M that was shown on XBox, as they cut the living shit out of it. Shortly after I signed on to produce the HORROR GOES COMEDY series, as well as write and direct my own, XBox became pain in the asses about content. They started by promising us directors complete creative freedom — that’s the whole reason we agreed to do it for, essentially, no money. We were told that anything goes. So I shot the most balls-out, fucked up thing I’ve ever shot: HUMANZEE!

XBox saw it and freaked out. There wasn’t even a way to cut it down to make it acceptable. So they offered me the chance to do something else, and to take the rights to Humanzee myself, which I gladly did. That’s when I came up with the idea for SPARKY & MIKAELA. As long as it was PG-13, with no sex, they said it would be all right. So that’s what I shot. But they saw it and, again, freaked out. Obviously they had no fucking idea what PG-13 was, as they wanted me to cut the words “penis” and “vagina.” They made me cut a piece of very fake poop and a bunch of other stuff. And then, when they were done making me cut things, they took the final cut and cut it up themselves even more before airing it.

I can see it now; a group of Xbox execs sitting around a table trying to figure out what’s ‘hot’, coming to the conclusion that James Gunn (is he really ‘hot’?) would bring in some edgy new content to appease their hardcore gamer audience. Without actually having seen any of his work (or reading about his past: see Troma) they sign the guy who wrote Scooby Doo on to head their series of shorts. Once the content starts flowing in, they quickly realize they’re in above their heads and become less interested in the films as they are the marketability of the names attached to them. Cut that shit up!

To sum things up, Warner Bros was a bastion of creative freedom on SCOOBY DOO 2 in comparison. I’m not exaggerating or being facetious. Microsoft/XBox was by far the most dreadful, non-talent friendly company I’ve ever worked for. And if you think I had it bad, some of the other directors (most specifically, SAW director James Wan, who just happens to be one of my favorite people in the world) had it even worse.

I actually have some experience working with Microsoft XBox on original video content and I can say that they are quite the finicky bunch. On the one hand, I suppose there are standards to be met and its their decision what they slap their brand name on, but shouldn’t they have thought about this before hiring this group of directors? And isn’t their distribution model something that should be pushing boundaries and supporting creativity? After all, how much worse could Gunn’s film have been than half of the video games released for the XBox 360? Either way, at least Gunn has finally found his freedom to express himself with his PG Porn series of shorts. I guess Spike.com has bigger balls than Microsoft? OOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.