Recently I had the chance to talk to Zebediah De Soto to discuss his upcoming remake of Night of the Living Dead. Not only was it a great interview due to Zebediah’s nice demeanor or how interesting he was, but because he truly gained my confidence in this project. While I was a little more than skeptical about this remake going into the interview, I no longer feel any of those hesitations. From the way he described his vision to his take on zombies I left feeling somewhat excited about this remake’s potential. While the film is still a little ways away, I think all Romero fans should gain a glimmer of hope from the fact that Zebediah has nothing but love for the original and is looking to do something unique.
Could you talk about some of the departures you’re going to make from the original?
Soto: Yeah, absolutely. Basically Night of the Living Dead, I’ve always been a big fan of and it was actually one of the first VHS tapes I was ever allowed to watch as a kid. Yeah you know, it was one of the first ones that I ever watched and I remember distinctly the impression I walked away with when I was a kid was that seeing that black and white… You know when you’re five or six you don’t really understand the context of what you’re looking at so I remember the first impressions that I walked away with was that I didn’t understand that it was not real (laughs). I remember distinctly asking my mother at one point,”when is this going to happen to us,” and she was like,”oh its not going to happen and this is why I don’t let you watch this crap”! It was one of her favorite movies too, its almost been this very nostalgic thing thats always been very close to me. As things went a long I had zombies on my mind so as I got older its just been attached to me. I watched the entire Romero series and was obsessed with it, literally obsessed with it like in a fanboy sense. You know I’d stand in line for hours to pay money to get autographs for that [stuff]…
Its funny that all the actors I’ve been working with… Back in the day when I was thirteen or fourteen I was the guy in line buying these things. For Night of the Living Dead, from watching the original story and the scope that it left me with in terms of the idea of this being a world wide event and all these different things are taking place. I’ve always wanted to see that and now flash forward a couple decades later I get to do that. Night of the Living Dead, one of the things that always struck me was the back stories. I remember sitting there and listening to Ben’s monologue…
About the truck and the horde of zombies?
Soto: Oh my god, that always fucked with me! You know he talks about the fire and sitting there staring and he’s looking at it and its looking at him, its an odd moment. Just the way he delivered the line, it was always those kinds of ideas that stuck in my head and it was the part of the movie you never got to see but you always wanted to see. I always wondered about Cooper being in his car and the highway being attacked by these damn things then being flipped over. Those were things that were seeded in me that I couldn’t walk away from and they gave me the best nightmares of my life. You know, when you’re a kid and you always get afraid of these “what if” scenarios like what would of happened if we were here or if we were over there. We got a little taste of that through the dialog and its something I’ve always wanted to see.
So, when I approached Night of the Living Dead I starting thinking wouldn’t it be amazing to actually see this part and that part of the story that we never got to see? You know it kind of gives you this creative freedom in a sense that it was never written, the idea is there but it was never written. So we gotta flesh it out and it was a nice little jumping board. Then the second part was about the scope with the whole news reporters running around and talking to government officials and scientist trying to chase them down. It feels like a very post-911 movie and I was talking to my producers Jim and Simon who are fucking amazing people that hadn’t re-watched it in a while and I told them to re-watch it and they were like,”this is a really great film.” There’s a brand new generation…
One thing I had to come to grips with as a fanboy is that you fucking hate remakes and you hate the fact everyone lines up for them while their gang banging something (laughs). I don’t know if I should go there, but you just don’t want to be that guy but there was a part of that story I never got to see and I wanna fucking see it. If Romero had a one hundred million dollar budget which I really hope he gets one of these days because he really needs to do his zombie film. We haven’t seen his true vision yet, the man is fucking amazing and a visionary. I mean look at Max Brook’s book…
World War Z is great.
Soto: Why the fuck hasn’t anyone done that? You never get to see that, no ones ever done a zombie film on that scale thats over-the-fucking-top. I’ve been wanting to see that and as a fanboy you’re dying for it and to finally get that opportunity is great. Jim and Simon (producers) are so extraordinarily supportive, people always talk about Hollywood and all this bullshit that they’re always trying to change everything and fuck up with raping remakes and stuff. Jim and Simon were just totally fucking into the idea! We all sat down and watched a bunch of movies together like Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, and Dawn of the Dead and its like they actually got it! Which was great, there’s always this cliche that hollywood is going to ruin everything but our entire approach to this is we get it and lets fucking do this. They totally get it and believe in it.
I keep jumping away from it, but for the scope I wanted to see that huge environment. Like I said if Romero had a huge budget he’d set it in New York and go balls-to-the-wall out and destroy the entire fucking city. You would see it on a level no ones ever seen before. He didn’t have that to do it originally, the whole movie is designed to be a low budget film but it was extraordinarily well written. His and his producers at the time hammered out something really amazing, but if they really had that budget they would have done something bigger. So, this time around I’m sitting it in New York in this post-911 world and every single one of Romero’s films had something to say. Maybe the message kind of filtered out at times and maybe it didn’t come out as strong as he would of liked it at times, but each one still had something to say…
I was here in LA for the riots and you gotta rewind to go back to that and the city was just un-fire. It was just blasting with lights and it looked like the end of the fucking world with seeing people being pulled out of their cars and stuff like that. I remember as a child hearing horns and the whole city getting loud while I was in school. Soon parents started coming in and getting their kids out of class, very zombie-eseque like where you know something is happening but you don’t know what. Then I remember being pulled out of class and driving down the street with my mom being pissed off and listening to the radio then seeing these people angry with rage like a virus then seeing smoke on the horizon. The whole city was going nuts, everyone was getting angry, and you’d see it happening so rapidly. It was over-the-fucking-top and I carried that with me, I saw something I should have never seen. I saw this rage and violence that functions like a virus that hits you so quickly that you’re all the sudden surrounded by fire and death. It always left me with that impression and thats why I love World War Z so much because it captured that, but we still haven’t seen that on the big screen dammit!
It pisses me off. Then with 9/11, we all remember sitting watching it happen on TV with constant replays and we were all convinced. We knew something had changed the world by seeing that second plane hit. No one has captured that, this is that generation’s movie. I’m going to try to do that and do something over-the-top. I know it sounds crazy, but we’re saying something more than just living dead. We’re saying something that people will understand because this is our generation’s tragedy. When I finally got the opportunity to do that I thought what would be a better place to set Night of the Living Dead than New York City? Thats kind of when our world changed in a very significant way. We saw a lot of changes in terms of law and freedoms, I don’t want to elaborate on that but we all know…
So with that I knew this is where I’m going to set my movie, this is where its going to be, and this is going to be my Empire of the Sun of zombie movies. I wanna see people running through crowds not knowing who’s fine or attacking, I want to see that happen. Thats what I want to do with Night and with all the fanboys freaking out… I’m kind of a fanboy so I would also be freaking out, complaining, and being the first one in line on the blogs to bitch about it. I don’t really blame them and I think its cool that people still feel passionate and love for this movie. I love it too! Then it all goes back to,”oh hollywood is doing another fucking remake,” but no its not like that. We’re taking this very seriously and I don’t want shitty fucking dialog and a bunch of cliches.
And characters we don’t care for.
Soto: Exactly! I want people to feel for these people. Even down to Ben and Cooper man, think about it. You know, people got upset about Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead.
I really liked Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead.
Soto: I loved it! The reason why I loved it was because it wasn’t just Dawn of the Dead, it was Night of the Living Dead. Literally, think about it. You follow Barbra who’s living her life and she’s got a good life then suddenly the infection chases her. She ends up in this house and she’s waiting to die then she meets Ben who’s a nice guy. You also got Cooper who’s all about survival and saving his family. Look at Sarah Polley, she’s living her life and she also meets a nice guy and a bad guy who’s that security guy. Look at the end of Night of the Living Dead, Cooper was hundred percent right and where did Ben end up? In the basement alone. Then there’s the security guard who…
He blows up that gas tank to kill the zombies along with himself.
Soto: Exactly, he’s all like fuck it. He was hundred percent right with thinking don’t let the wrong ones in and I’m willing to kill anyone who’s trying to kill me. Same attitude and outlook with Cooper. Thats what it comes down to in a fight or die scenario and thats what I saw first hand with these LA riots. I saw first hand! People say,”oh that sounds cliche,” but no. You see the most brutal side of humanity come out when people’s lives are threatened. You see people walking away from someone who’s bleeding to fucking death in the middle of a street. You see people getting beaten to death and there’s almost nothing you can do and most won’t do anything.
I was wondering if you could talk about your program called The Beast?
Soto: Oh man, the beast is pretty fucking nuts actually. Its essentially, I’ve been working mostly in digital effects because when I first started out… You always have these grand ideas as filmmaker, but then you go to try to execute them and you end up with shit. I’m like, fuck man I really want to make something big! So you start working on this stuff and I became an effects artist just so I could understand and figure this stuff out. I was always so tired of having to deal with hearing,”you can only spend this much on this shot or that shot,” so I decided to build my own system. I started my own digital effects company and essentially what my system does is everything that Cameron’s does, but one up and times ten. Its actually, Cameron named his after himself with a couple of numbers in the title and thats great, but its not great in a practical sense. Its not available to everyone and you cant use them, as a new filmmaker I’ve been looking for something like this for so long.
I’ve heard a bunch of times that I can’t do this or it won’t happen, but fuck that. So I designed a real time effects system so essentially if I’m shooting on a green screen I can go on that screen and I can go handheld, import environments, see the CG environments, and see the characters emerged in that environment at the same time. So then I know what I’m shooting and I know what I’m looking at as opposed to a movie like 300 where they ended up having a bunch of issues. It was really hard for Zack Snyder and all those guys since ultimately it ended up with dailies that just showed half naked men on a green screen. When you see that you’re just like Ok? Then imagine the director trying to explain how its going to look great and saying try to use your imagination (laughs)! Not going to happen and everyone just going to say,”I can’t believe we’re spending sixty-five million on this and all we got is a bunch of half naked guys.” Then you got wait about sixty-five days in post until you can actually see something and then its shown that everyone realizes we’ve done something fantastic.
Just imagine how many projects have existed that have never happened, because there was never a great director like Zack Snyder going out there all balls to the wall explaining his ideas. Really imagine that, how many projects have been started but have never seen the light of day? I was very fortunate with Simon and Jim since they understood what I was talking about. They had already been exposed to Cameron’s system when I brought them mine. When I brought it to them I explained its doing something new thats never been done before and they were like,”what do you mean”? I proved it to them by bring my system to Paramount and by bringing a sixty-foot robot with me. I told them I’m really going to bring a sixty-foot robot and I’m going to film it while walking around it like whenever I shoot a normal person. When I bring the camera up-close it looks bigger and when I pulled back it looked smaller. So when I showed them that they were really impressed.
I’ve heard you describe the aesthetic as American Anime, can you elaborate on that?
Soto: Exactly, its totally like anime. I’ve always loved the scope of Anime… I mean, look at The Matrix and thats heavily inspired. American anime is just anime to me, with the movements and the lingering shots. There’s something really cool about it and there’s a certain style to it that builds to something. Like Akira, Akira was fucking great. Just look at it with with the smoke coming down the streets which is like straight out of 9/11! Straight up 9/11 footage. Its amazing that anyone was able to capture that idea before anyone had seen anything remotely similar, but then again they live in a post-apocalyptic Japan. The Beast is something thats really fucking amazing and it gave me the tools to where I don’t need a twenty-five man crew, don’t need a huge mo-cap set, and I can easily set up the system in nine minutes to do what I want it to do as opposed to every other system. I can do mine on the fly anytime and anywhere. I referenced our system in one interview being similar to Cameron’s system where I said,”trust me, I love Cameron and I will bend over and have his children in a fucking heart beat, but its like our system is better.” There are very clear differences. They have to deal with all the same technical issues we have to deal with except we don’t have as many as they do.
Honestly, I built the system with the idea of it being like a consumer brand version of it. I want to see people go out there and do their own Sin City without having to be a brainiac and having to read a bunch of fucking manuals. Your knowledge on an effects program is an entirely different language from what we do. Its almost like this weird code thats almost as easy to operate as a video game and about as cheap. I wanna see people go out there and make their own movies. I’ve seen some great projects, but that are limited by budget and the tools they have.
When do you think we’ll hear some more casting announcements?
Soto: Literally within a week and thats it at the latest. I guarantee you that we’re going to cover the internet with that and I can barely contain myself from commenting on blogs about this. I really just want to go on there and say,”dude, don’t worry this is going to be really cool”!
Have you guys locked in a release date yet?
Soto: Its going to be 2010, but for a couple different people throughout the year… Well it looks like we’re going to have a trailer out by the end of October which is really cool. Its going to blow people away, knock their socks off, and blow their fucking minds when they see this. They’ll see a thousand people in the street tearing up New York city, helicopters coming down crashing on the road, and fire trucks skidding towards crowds of people. Its total chaos and madness on a level thats never been seen before. In my world, The Night of the Living Dead was where zombies first became known. Nobody knew what it was and I don’t think at any point in the original were they referred to as zombies.
Obviously having seen so many zombie movies lately that follow the same rules of what a zombie can and can’t do, are you going to make them any different or use that same formula? Are they going to be slow moving or rapid fast?
Soto: Ok, this is where it gets fuzzy… I’m not going to lie you, my zombies are going to be both slow and fast. They go through two different modes and it all depends on the rate of how fresh they are in terms of their death. If you’re fresh dead then you’re ready to rock and roll like if you just got bit you’re going to fucking haul ass, but as time goes on they’re going to slow down. Their joints will begin to freeze and their eyes will get all messed up.