Interview: Kevin Smith and the Stars of "Tusk" Talk the Horrific Walrus Suit and Johnny Depp's Crazy Performance

How did Kevin Smith design the horrific walrus costume in "Tusk" and what was it like for Justin Long to wear the damn thing?

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Complex Original

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In the horror genre, people always lose their humanity, literally and metaphorically. Scare flicks have transformed homo sapiens into everything from zombies, vampires, and werewolves, to aliens, insects, and even crude approximations of bugs (thank you, Human Centipede). But nobody has ever been transformed into a walrus—until now.

In writer/director Kevin Smith's frequently hilarious new horror flick, Tusk, Michael Parks plays a serial killer who wants to turn a man into a walrus so he can relive the period in his life when he was shipwrecked with only a blubbery tusked friend for company. Justin Long plays his victim, a podcaster who's already lost part of his humanity by chasing fame on the Internet with mean-spirited humor (Haley Joel Osment plays his co-host on the "Not-See Party" pod) and by cheating on his sweet and gorgeous girlfriend (Génesis Rodríguez). But no matter what kind of asshole he is, nobody deserves to be turned into a walrus, right? And how does that even happen? With some creative surgery and the funkiest human-skin suit since Leatherface and The Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill. It's must-see. Trust.

Complex sat down with Smith, Long, Osment, and Rodríguez to discuss FX god Robert Kurtzman' walrus suit, the experience of spending a couple days inside of it, and how anyone kept a straight face while a barely recognizable Johnny Depp played Guy LaPointe, a cross-eyed, penis-nosed, mustachioed French Canadian private investigator who's tracking the killer. Check it out.

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