STACK #187 May 2020

FILM FEATURE

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STACK chats with New Zealand filmmaker Jason Lei Howden about his insane new action flick, Guns Akimbo , and how he roped in Daniel Radcliffe and SamaraWeaving to be a part of the mayhem. Words Glenn Cochrane

B est described as a cross between Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The Running Man , Guns Akimbo is a fast-paced cyberpunk thriller featuring a central character (played by Daniel Radcliffe) with guns bolted to his hands, who is forced to participate in a deadly online game of death called ‘Skizm’. When STACK asked director Jason Lei Howden about the film’s curious title, he was more than eager to elaborate. “You know, you’re the first person to ask me about the title and it’s crazy because I have been itching to tell someone. It’s sort of a general term, a film trope, and a gaming term. Akimbo describes someone who holds two weapons – two handguns or two Uzis, or whatever – sort of like John Woo-style. “So for me it stems from a video game called Blood 3D that I used to play back in the ‘90s. It was sort of like a Doom type of game. And it had this power-up mode where you’re running around with, say, a machine gun, or a shotgun, and then you get this power-up called Guns Akimbo, and then you pull out two guns

one of those things where it’s been bubbling away since then. Originally it was going to be made as a New Zealand Film Commission short film, which they turned down,” he explains with a laugh. “But then after Deathgasm , I was doing the film circuit and ended up in LA meeting with some producers. They asked me what other film scripts I had, and because I had been working in Melbourne full time on VFX, as well as finishing the film, I had no time to write anything. So I just said, ‘Yes, Guns Akimbo , about a guy with guns bolted to his hands.’ They loved it and asked when they could see the script. So I said, ‘Just give me two weeks’ and then flew back to Melbourne and wrote non- stop. Two weeks later I sent them the first draft and they went for it.” The most striking thing about Guns Akimbo is the fact that Daniel Radcliffe’s character has guns physically bolted to his hands. It’s a bold image that informs the very crux of the story, and Howden explains the necessity of such a strong motif. “It started with wanting to do a film that

and for 30 seconds you just blow away all of your enemies. So yeah, you can tell that I’m a video game lover. And no one really questions the title, Guns Akimbo , they just think it sounds kind of catchy.”

Akimbo describes someone who holds two weapons... sort of like John Woo-style

Howden’s sophomore feature had actually been gestating long before his first film, the splatter-comedy Deathgasm (2015). “I first had the synopsis around 2010, and it’s

26 MAY 2020

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