FILM 2244: TANK GIRL (1995)

TRIVIA: The film takes place in 2033.

Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett, the creators of the Tank Girl comic have since spoken poorly of their experiences in creating the film, calling it "a bit of a sore point" for them. Hewlett said, "The script was lousy; me and Alan kept rewriting it and putting Grange Hill(1978) jokes and Benny Hill jokes in, and they obviously weren't getting it. They forgot to film about ten major scenes so we had to animate them ... it was a horrible experience."

Malcolm McDowell has spoken favorably of his experience working on the film, saying it had the "same flavour" as A Clockwork Orange (1971), and praised Rachel Talalay and Lori Petty.

The song "Girl U Want" played during the film's title sequence was performed by Devo. They re-recorded it to sound like the Soundgarden version, which was too expensive to license.

Ice-T recalled one interview on a hip-hop show where the host made fun of him for doing Tank Girl. He replied "I was paid $800,000 for that movie". The host moved on.

MGM insisted on cutting a scene of Tank Girl and her kangaroo boyfriend Booga reclining after sex, despite spending $5,000 on a prosthetic penis for Booga.

Emma Bunton, Victoria Beckham and Geri Horner from the Spice Girls tried out for the role of Tank Girl.

One band the filmmakers wanted for the soundtrack was little-known act named Green Day. During production, they got so big that they could no longer afford them.

Filming started in June of 1994 and was completed on September 21st. On December 9 a director's cut of the movie was screened to a test audience, and their reaction was positive enough that the studio heads thought they "have a hit on their hands." By Christmas 1994, the movie had a couple more test screenings which received various reactions from the audience. Their reaction to songs in the movie was positive, but many didn't like the big musical number in the middle of the movie and it was cut down more and more after each test screening. MGM started to demand some drastic changes and when their demands weren't met, they took the movie away from Rachel Talalay on January 6, 1995. About a week and a half later, the movie was being "directed" and re-edited by one of the people involved in marketing, although Talalay was allowed some limited approval of the changes that were made.

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This is featured on the podcast We Hate Movies Episode 374 - Tank Girl (Live in Milwaukee)