Interviews | Blitz The League II
Blitz II Producer Jacob Beucler: “Caliendo Is A Beast”
October 21, 2008
Odds are that up to now no one has ever described comedian Frank Caliendo as “a beast.” But in this second and final interview segment with Blitz The League II producer Jacob Beucler covering the celebrity talent behind Blitz II the phrase gets tossed into the mix. While Lawrence Taylor gets top billing, comedians Jay Mohr and Caliendo lent their voices to characters in the game. Peter Eagan, the writer behind ESPN’s controversial Playmakers series, handled the script. Then there’s the nameless crew crew of stunt men that spent a week knocking each other into oblivion so the victims writhe in pain in exactly the right way on screen.
Hit the jump to read what Beucler had to say about dodging an Adult Only rating, getting Caliendo to use his John Madden voice to stick it to EA and stunt men losing all sensation in their feet.
Das Gamer: With all the drugs, violence and sex references, did Midway ever worry about getting slapped with an AO rating?
Jacob Beucler: [Laughs] The AO football game, oh man! I’m like shit, if GTA IV got a Mature, then there’s no reason we won’t. Wal-Mart won’t take an AO game. Seventy percent of games are sold out of Wal-Mart, so you got to be on the shelves there. But like, to the raw feeling, to speak to that, we probably watched, uh, Any Given Sunday, like a thousand times, just to really get the feeling. And watching that movie, it’s been a real inspiration to us, just because it’s so gritty. You know, the beginning scene with the quarterback getting hurt, we really wanted to adapt that. So, even starting at the front end.
So Playmakers wasn’t raw enough?
Jacob Beucler: No, not for us, you know? But Peter Eagan wrote for [both Blitz II and the original], so that’s cool.
Peter Eagan wrote the script for Blitz and Blitz II. Did you ever take him aside and say, “Look, Playmakers is great and all, but let’s ratchet this up a little.”
Jacob Beucler: (Laughs) No, it’s Peter Eagan. He does what he needs to do. He nailed it. he turned in a great script for us.
In the promo outtakes of Frank Caliendo and Jay Mohr doing voice over recording they both took a second to say, ‘Can I really say this shit?’ Is there anything specific? They were referring to?
Jacob Beucler: There’s a lot of really tasteless jokes and pretty over the top stuff, over the top comments that they have. They just weren’t expecting that level. You know? They come into it thinking “video games.” They don’t think, ‘Oh man, this thing’s going to turn some heads.’ And that’s what we’ve been pushing for all along, kind of shock value.
Bill Romanowski was on the last cover, but he did not come back for this one?
Jacob Beucler: No, Romo didn’t work on this one for us. He did good for us on- and that was like the 360 version. Uhm, when we took Blitz: The League to the 360. We decided all we needed was LT this year; we just wanted to roll with him. And it worked out good.
