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6-27-05
 Move aside George Lucas, another George is in town. This George’s name is Romero and yeah, you might have written a little space opera called STAR WARS, and yeah, you might have made a bit of a cultural impact in the land of sci-fi, but hell, in the land of horror, this guy made the modern landscape what it is today! A land of rip-offs and parodies and remakes and sequels and sequels to remakes and even sequels to sequels of remakes (got that?), and it all started in Pittsburgh 40 years ago with a bunch of chocolate syrup and leftover goodies from the local butcher shop and a certain little line of dialogue… Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. No matter how freaking old you are now or when you first heard that immortal line, whether it was a Drive-in in the 60’s, a revival house in the 70’s, a rented video in the 80’s or a netflick last week, that line is to horror freaks what “Luke, I am your father” is to sci-fi geeks. But NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD has a full ten years on the STAR WARS legacy, and one would be hard pressed to think of another genre series that has lasted this long, let alone bringing forth a new chapter in all but one decade since its first entry. (Ah, one wonders what a 90’s George Romero LIVING DEAD movie would have been like. Think of it, a mid 90’s Clinton-era zombie parable, sandwiched between the alternative grunge of the early 90’s and the boy band pop of the later 90’s). This summer is Nirvana. Not only have we finally seen Anarkin become Darth, but we are finally seeing the maestro play comeback kid on the long side of 60, showing all his moviemaking protégés how the mentor does it. The grandfather of the modern horror film is back kiddies, and Grandpa can shock and roll with the best of them, maybe even better than us all. Pay attention, cuz this is how it is done. With thoughtfulness and storytelling and craft and characterization. Oh, yeah, and did I mention blood and guts and chopped off hands and stomped heads and imploding entrails? This is George Romero supersized. Widescreen for the first time, a bigger budget than previous zombie efforts, but with his independent spirit and unique flavor intact and as potent as ever. Along for the ride with Grandpa Zombie is one of his ‘grandkids”, make-up impresario Greg Nicotero, a fanboy FX assistant 20 years ago on DAY OF THE DEAD, now, with partner Howard Berger of KNB, in charge of the entire special make-up effects army so integral to Romero’s world. Greg is proof in the pudding that one can go from apprentice to colleague, so aim high, zombie kids. Here now, is a double feature for y’all, straight up from the LAND OF THE DEAD. After all these years, “They’re STILL coming to get you…” 2 OF 2: GREG NICOTERO Dude! What’s going on? I’m doing my whirlwind publicity tour. You’re a rock star, man. Mr. “Entertainment Weekly”! Hey, you know, it’s all for the benefit of the movie. There was also something written up in “Premiere” and “USA Today”. There’s a big article with a quote from Eli Roth saying, “ LAND OF THE DEAD is like STAR WARS for horror fans!” So fucking cool. Here’s a question I asked George I want to ask you as well. What differentiates a Romero zombie movie from any other. Now I know you’ve literally seen them all. I have seen them all. You know, George’s fingerprints are all over his characters. It’s how they perform, it’s how they react. They’re not just out there to eat people. I remember a lot of people’s initial reactions to the LAND OF THE DEAD script, and they were saying things like, “Zombies that think? Oh, no! That’s terrible. What a horrible idea.” But everybody seems to forget the part at the end of DAY OF THE DEAD after Bub shoots Rhodes, he actually salutes him. Right. You know, I did forget about that. Well, people do forget. And Bub shows the beginning of that sort of intelligence. So in LAND OF THE DEAD, in that opening scene where you see Big Daddy come out of the gas station and grab the gas pump, he’s exhibiting exactly what George set up in DAWN and DAY. In DAWN, you know, the idea of the shopping mall being an important place that they return to and congregate, and then in DAY, you’ve got a smart zombie like Bub. So, it’s a logical progression. It’s all thoughtfully orchestrated. It’s not just zombies for the sake of being zombies. In many ways, when I was watching the film, I thought it should have been called EVOLUTION OF THE DEAD. It never hit me till LAND that all along, this saga is really about the progress of these zombies in terms of their intelligence and adaptation. People don’t think about that, because, you know, it’s hard to look at the movies in any sort of sequence because of the fact that they all were released so many years apart. 1968 to ’78 to ’85. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another twenty years for the next one. Getting back to Bub and characters like Big Daddy, tell me about the different characters that you and George created. One of the defining aspects of Romero’s zombies is that they do have such individuality. You’ve got Bub, you’ve got Doctor Tongue… We had six featured zombies and they were Big Daddy (Eugene Clark), the Butcher (Boyd Banks), Jennifer Baxter played the softball girl zombie which we called the Number Nine zombie, and then we had a teenage boy (Michael Belisario) and a teenage girl (Lara Amersey). And then Jasmin Geljo was the Tambourine Man in the opening… That opening was great! Listen, that opening shot as far as I’m concerned… I just love the fact that the opening shot is a sign that says, “Eats”. Which is so George. It’s sly and it’s telling and it’s satirical. It says “Eats” and there’s an arrow and we follow the arrow down… I love that shot! It’s one of my favorite shots in the entire movie because it really sets you up perfectly. Anyway, our six reoccurring zombies… Our action figures, if you will… Yes, exactly. You know in DAWN when you see the nurse zombie and the business suit zombie and the zombie with the M-16, well, this was our little group I agree, the zombie set pieces were among the best ever. I think people, myself included, were going in there thinking, “Not only do we have the other Romero zombie movies, but we also have all the remakes and the parodies”, but you topped it! You guys came up with stuff that I didn’t imagine. That must have been a load of pressure on you to top all that. Did you and George sit down together and come up with the zombie set pieces? Or where they in the script? When we first started the movie, we sorta sat here at KNB and brain stormed this huge four page list of zombie gags. Some of them ended up in the movie, some didn’t. There’s two really good set pieces, one of them that was inspired by a piece of artwork that Bernie Wrightson had done. It was a really great drawing of a zombie whose head is attached with just a couple bits of sinew and a little bit of a spinal chord, and when I was showing George all the art work, I said, “I want to do this character as a puppet.” And he loved it and when we got to shooting that sequence, we had a combination of some CGI stuff and That’s my favorite gag in the whole film. I was really delighted with how that one came out. Cuz, you know, its tricky. Even George was like, “God, I’d love to cover it more and get more footage and try and prolong it”, but it really works. I also love the ammo mag scene. I think it really reeks of classic Romero. The scene where they go in to get all the ammunition and they find the zombies chomping away on the dead soldiers. We shot that the last night of the shoot. Listen, I’m telling you, the first twenty minutes of the movie are riveting. And it’s funny, because I’m so accustomed to looking at those gags clinically, like, you know, the cheerleader gets half of her face ripped off, and the father zombie’s head is machine gunned off and Big Daddy is left holding the head as the body drops. There’s literally eight gags in the first fifteen minutes of the movie where you’re going, “No way, did I just see that? Did they just do that?” How the fuck did you guys get away with an R Rating? You got to remember one thing. Those gags are cut fast. I mean, when the cop zombie bites Mike on the arm in the liquor store, there’s only a couple of frames of that bite in the movie. By the way, that was actually my arm that doubled for the bite, and I tell you, that gushed blood like you wouldn’t believe. And I love the fact that Gino Crognole, who played that zombie, was one of my guys. He went in and really bit hard, and when he pulled the big chunk of flesh out, he just stayed there and chewed for a minute. And they cut back to him with a big chunk of flesh in his mouth as he’s chomping away before he gets up. As great as it is for George, this is great for you, too, cuz what self respecting teenage gore hound in the 80’s didn’t have Tom Savini’s SCREAM GREATS video in which you where quite visible, talking about your work as his assistant on DAY OF THE DEAD and the scene where you got your head ripped off. You’ve always been a role model of someone who followed their dream, followed their I’ve also known George for almost thirty years, and I’ve known Tom almost just as long. For more than three quarters of my life, these two men have influenced me and inspired me and made me happy and made me cry and made me bewildered. When we did FROM DUST TILL DAWN, Quentin and Robert really wanted Savini to play a part in the movie. So I called Tom, and Tom set a video camera up, filmed himself, and when they saw the audition tape, they were, “We have to have this guy in the movie.” Tom has so much screen presence in DUSK TO DAWN. And the fact that so many people are going, “Why isn’t Tom Savini doing the make-up on LAND…” Well, Tom Savini’s a great actor, and Tom Savini’s a great director now. He’s been there, done this stuff before. This is a question I like to ask people who work in this genre; Why do you think we love to see blood and guts and gore and mayhem on screen, and we pay to see it, and when its done well we applaud it or make a nice paycheck. What is it? Well, you know, there’s something about horror movies. It’s putting yourself in a precarious situation to analyze how you would react. Like, “What if you were walking down the street and there was a dead body on the ground? What would you do?” And you can project yourself into a movie. Here’s a perfect example. When I saw TITANIC, I remember thinking, “Why didn’t somebody take a couple doors off the Titanic and just float away?” (laughs) You put yourself in those scenarios, and in horror movies, that’s the ultimate scenario. You can watch a great white shark jump up on the back of a boat, or you can see a crowd of zombies cornering people and think, “What would I do?”, without ever leaving the safety of the real world. And I think that’s what its all about. That adrenalin rush. There’s nothing more gratifying than immersing yourself into a movie and going on this amazing rollercoaster ride. And when the movie’s done, you feel that elation of, “The ride has ended and I survived and I had an amazing time, and now I want to get back on and go again.” I’ve also thought of it as the appeal of a magic show. You’re basically a magician, Greg, and you’re make-up effects are your tricks. I mean, what really is the difference between the head severing gag in LAND OF THE DEAD and the old lady being sawed in half trick? There’s no difference! It’s about misdirecting your audience. And when you have guys What do you prefer creating; The gore effects? Or do you prefer character make-ups? Well, you know, gore effects are changing a lot now. After BATTLE ROYALE, which had some of the most amazing digital blood I’ve ever seen, gore effects are a little different, and you don’t see them as often. It’s gotta be in the right story, the right framework. I don’t know. I have to say I like it all. I’ve been lucky enough to deal with great character make-ups on SIN CITY, fantasy characters on CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, and then I go and do zombie gags for George. They’re all great. You’re just living the life. Blowing up zombies. Making Mickey Roarke up as Marv in SIN CITY… You know, I’ve had an amazing career. I’ve been really lucky. I’ve worked with some of the best directors in the world. I’ve worked with Spielberg and I’ve worked with Tarantino, who is one of my greatest friends, and Robert Rodriguez… I’ve been able to fulfill my dream and live out this fantasy life that begin because George Romero opened this door of opportunity for me. It all goes back to George. It does. And that’s the other issue, which was LAND OF THE DEAD was ultimately me paying back George for giving me my first job. Why do you think it is that a movie like LAND OF THE DEAD would not get nominated for a make-up Oscar whereas you hopefully will for SIN CITY? And the people who do probably aren’t the guys giving out Oscars! I would probably have to agree (laughs). You know, there’s magazines that focus on movie make-up and I don’t even think they would write an article about zombie make-up. Do you consider gore an art form? Yes. When its done well, there’s nothing better. What’s a favorite gore effect you’ve done? Oh, my God. There’s so many. Hmmm. Guess I would have to say the severed ear in RESOVOIR DOGS. We made a lot of blood for that movie. KILL BILL and KILL BILL 2, I don’t know if you consider that gore, but when you spill four hundred gallons of blood, I would consider that relatively gory… How about a favorite character make-up? I’d have to go with Marv from SIN CITY. Without a doubt. Mickey Roarke is a fucking genius, and I’ll tell you, he brought that character to life. But that’s How about the oddest make-up effect you’ve ever done? One of the things I get asked about more I ever would have imagined is the penis Mark Wahlberg wore in BOOGIE NIGHTS. I can say, “Guys, I’ve worked on THE GREEN MILE, I did DANCES WITH WOLVES, ARMY OF DARKNESS, but they want to hear about the dick from BOOGIE NIGHTS”. It never ends. Literally. Ha ha. All right, what grosses you out? Anything were you just say, “Oh, My God….” As I get older, and John Carpenter called me a pussy the other day because we talked about this, but you know, when you have kids, you look at films differently, and I went to see THE AMITYVILLE HORROR remake, and what was hard for me to stomach during that film was seeing children put in danger. Because when you have your own children, you spend your entire existence keeping them out of harm’s way, so its hard for me to find movies entertaining that do put children in jeopardy. LEMONY SNICKET? Hated it! Hated that movie with a fucking passion. And John Carpenter told me, “Oh, you pussy, you’ve got to get over that.” And I was like, “Why?” And he said, “If you want to be a storyteller and a filmmaker, you may make something that doesn’t sit well with you but you got to do it.” That leads nicely to the next question, will we ever see you behind the camera as a director? We saw you as an actor, you were hilarious in Roy Knirim’s CEMETARY GATES… Yes, I saw it. It cracked me up. Roy said that Howard Berger and I steal the movie. You do! You guys were hilarious. I’d see a movie just about you two guys. Don’t say that cause Roy will one and I’ll have to reprise that cheesy character. (laughs). You know directing is something that I would like to experience. On LAND OF THE DEAD, during the last two weeks of the eight week shoot I really felt I started getting my momentum going as a Second Unit Director, you know, shooting gags and getting a lot of good stuff, and yeah, I think it’s something I would like to do once. I don’t think I would want to make a career out of it. I mean, I’ve spent the last 18 years of my life promoting my FX company, I just can’t see spending the rest of my life promoting myself as a director. ‘Cuz I would never leave KNB. It’s my life. But it could be fun. Everybody always talks about doing movies with your friends… That’s what I would want to do. Well, you’ve got a lot of cool friends to pull from. Darabont, Carpenter, Romero, Tarantino, Rodriguez… I know. I know. But the thing about all these guys that amazes me is that aside from having a working relationship with them, I really care about them as friends. When I saw Carpenter a few weeks ago for MASTERS OF HORROR, we had a little bit of work to talk about, but we spent an hour talking about his family and my family and what we’ve been up to. And then it was like, “Oh, we gotta talk about this script.” And he was, “I don’t know. Do whatever you want”. But with all these guys, I couldn’t work this closely with them or with anybody without really caring about them as people. I always go out of my way to maintain that friendship with them outside of work and not just ‘showing up on set’. And that’s important to me. You have to have a life outside of work, and unfortunately you get into the spiral insanity of this business, but, I mean… I was delighted that I was able to sit next to Frank the first time I saw LAND OF THE DEAD. In fact, when the movie ended, Frank came up to me and said, “George Romero just erased every zombie movie that was made in the last twenty years.” |
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“They’re coming to get you, Barbara…”
Eli’s right. It is to horror movies what STAR WARS is to the sci-fi genre. It’s the real thing! The real LIVING DEAD! And it’s the man who created the series, for God’s sake! What horror film series has lasted this long? We’re talking 40 years.
That’s a really good title, actually.
of reoccurring zombies that we knew we would be seeing over and over again. So each of them had a specific look. We fine tuned them. With the teenage zombie boy, he’s got a big bite on his neck, and we always imagined that he and his girl were making out and things went from getting a hickey to being a zombie (laughs). George really cast people that had a unique look. With Eugene, George liked the “Bub” aspect of his make-up. We went with a wrinkly flesh effect with “Big Daddy” And then with the “Number 9” zombie, she was supposed to be almost pristine looking except for this big huge chunk taken out of the side of her face. And then, of course, The Butcher, he’s really more far gone and rotting. To me, he is the creepiest looking. There’s a couple of my all time favorite zombies, and he’s one of them. Boyd was so great. When his eyes would get so wide and his teeth would get really wide… For me, one of the things that was most important was that I wanted all the zombies to look a little different. I didn’t want to just do the standard, “Oh, we can digitally remove their nose”. We saw that before. We saw that in RESIDENT EVIL. So, that to me was the biggest challenge. And my plate was full ‘cuz George was relying on me to come up with gags that people were going to walk out of the theater thinking about. He kept saying, “I want to make sure there are five gags that people keep talking about.” And I was like, “George, you’ve got five in the first five minutes of the movie!” It’s like a visual onslaught. And there were a couple bits and pieces that he almost didn’t use. There was the hand grenade gag where the guy is holding grenade and it gets cut off. Well, George fixated on that forever. He was like, “Well, the hand hits the ground, it kinda bounces unnaturally. It looks a little funky.” But, you know, when that gag happens… I was sitting next to Frank Darabont at the screening, and he literally jumped out of his seat. People love that stuff. I mean, George’s vision is so precise and he has so much to say, and in the 20 years since DAY, George’s voice is as clear as ever. His fingerprint is all over that movie. It’s touching and its sad and its funny and its scary and its creepy.
I’ll tell you, for George and I both, the pressure was really incredible. George said at the premiere the other night, “You know, I can’t say that this movie was a lot of fun to make” and he’s right. It was a really grueling movie. I can only imagine the pressure that George felt as a director, cuz to me as a make-up effects guy, it was hellacious. You know, everybody knows that I came out from under Tom Savini’s wing, and there was a lot of resistance initially when people heard that Tom wasn’t doing the make-up effects and we were doing it. Everyone just assumed that George Romero and Tom Savini were a fixture. So already I felt that I had an uphill battle. And with George, well, George also had such a good working relationship with Tom. And George was so used to working in the independent film world. George kept saying to me jokingly, “Listen, you and I are going to be in my garage with a 16mm camera shooting inserts when this is all done.” Well, that was what he was used to. He was used to, “Hey, I want to shoot that guy getting shot and falling off the balcony” and we’d go over and stick a squib on the back of his head and BLAM! But that was 20 years ago. Now there has to be a stunt guy, there has to be a bump in pay, you just can’t do a lot of it the way that George was accustomed to doing, this sort of guerilla filmmaking style. If I were to compare any director now to the way George is, it’s Robert Rodriguez. Robert does it his own way, and Robert has restructured how movies are made to suit his vision. George did the same thing thirty five years ago. He really restructured how horror films were made to suit his particular vision. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, perfect example. No one had ever seen anything like that. DAWN, the opening scene where the guy gets his head blown off with a shotgun. C’mon! I mean, it’s the first 10 minutes of the movie!
some articulated puppet head stuff. To me the best part about it is that you see the zombie’s hands grab the soldier’s shoulder, and you pan up and there’s a headless zombie, and anybody who knows the rules George has set up is going, “Wait a minute, how can a zombie not have a head?” And then as it leans forward, the head, which is precariously attached by its spinal chord, flips forward and bites him on the arm!
mentor and then made it. I mean, look at you! You went from being Tom Savini’s assistant on DAY OF THE DEAD to designing a zombie character for him in LAND OF THE DEAD!
like George Romero and Mike Doherty, who did a great job editing LAND, you have master magicians. And I have to say, in directing a lot of second unit for George, I learned more about filmmaking from George than I have from any other director that I’ve worked this closely with.
Well, horror movies have always been considered low brow. I think a lot of people look as horror movies as cheap, get rich quick schemes. Exploitation. And after DAWN OF THE DEAD and FRIDAY THE 13 TH, the onslaught of low budget horror movies simply trying to cash in on the success of those films definitely fueled that contention. When you have a movie like FRIDAY THE 13 th making ninety million dollars on a one million dollar investment, well, those guys making the rip-offs were definitely just trying to make money. They weren’t doing it because of the art. So I think that all horror movies suffer for that in terms of their reception as ‘viable creativity’. And yes, they are definitely a developed taste. I sat next to a woman at a screening of LAND who was groaning and hemming and hawing. Any one in the world can watch a western or a comedy, but you have to have a certain stomach for horror movies, and not everybody does.
what character make-ups are about. Character make-ups are about actors making you believe they’re not wearing rubber. Everybody in SIN CITY accomplished that. Nick Stahl also did a great job. Robert put such a great cast together for SIN, they could have been wearing paper bags on their heads and it would have been equally insightful.
Oh, my God, did you see that?