Dawn Of The Dead Page #5

- And the Muzak is fantastic,

the choices that G Mark and his guys,

the stuff they provided.

We had temped it with Titanic,

which we were never gonna get.

We temped it with stuff

from The Stratosphere.

We had The Beatles,

which we weren't gonna get.

We were driving and l said to Wes,

Dead Man's Party came on,

l'm like, ''Why don't we have this?

What's the matter with us?''

Wes goes, ''l'm sure Danny Elfman

would love to...''

Like, that'd be cheap,

to get a song from him!

There's a good line from Barry here.

- ''F*ggot.''

- That was the trainer...

l love this moment.

lt's just like, ''What? Look at you.''

- ''What are you doing?''

- We shot all this stuff

in the Panasonic store later on

because they were still building it

and it was supposed to be

the second storey of the mall.

- We shot it on the first floor...

- So you couldn't see down the aisle.

Then we had to redress and make

the Panasonic store on the second floor.

- We spent a lot of time with that store.

- We did.

- We were in there a lot.

- lt was a lot of time.

lt went quick, though, cos the guys

were in their zone by the time we got there.

There's lnna in the background putting

her clothes on. You can barely see her.

l love this big revolution shot of the keys.

- There are a lot of keys.

- Yeah, it takes keys to do stuff in a mall.

A little bathroom drama.

- That's good.

- This is a good scene.

These guys were great in it.

We'd been talking about

the origin of the zombie plague

and, you know, our sort of initial...

decision not to reveal where it came from

because l felt it was obvious

that in this fallen society

you wouldn't know where

the whole plague started

but it's been a bit of a bone of contention.

Melissa, our assistant editor,

has been fighting that front

in the chatrooms.

And she's done a great job

convincing the masses that you don't need

to know where the plague came from.

And you wouldn't.

l think people would be more pissed

with some scene where Jeff Goldblum

says, ''Here's what happened!''

- Exactly.

- You don't want that.

You're in a mall and the TV's gone,

that's real!

That's real.

This is where Mekhi's struggling with his...

This is the existential...

- debate.

- He's good.

He is good.

''Five Hail Marys and wipe your ass.''

Remember we went to your house that day,

the two of them and us?

- We just talked out the scene.

- lt was cool.

lt was fun.

- He's a little voyeuristic.

- You think it's going in that direction.

l would want it to but then, OK, fine,

let's deal with this.

That was awesome.

lf you look back at that scene

there's a big guy at the back

who's kind of lumbering, it's pretty fun!

l only had a couple of zombies that day

when we did the overhead,

there's like ten of them there.

You're supposed to imply

there's more in the background.

Some days we didn't have enough zombies,

it was like, ''What are we gonna do?''

Exactly. Clay would come to me and go,

''l've got five zombies

''and l've got on my list

'crowd of zombies rocks arks'.''

- Yeah, exactly.

- ''What am l supposed to do?''

l'm like, ''l don't know what to do.''

But Clay did an awesome job,

he really did a great job.

He puts up with ''no'' for an answer

and got it done.

Love him.

- Here's a little confrontation on the roof.

- Yeah.

Terry sells out.

- And the irony is that he's kinda right.

- CJ's right.

We shot this on top of the mall.

Look in the background at that skylight,

you can see our movie lights

hanging inside the atrium.

So it's kinda cool that

you can see the movie itself.

We also got lucky with Mr. ,

the Toronto-based effects house.

They were awesome.

Dennis and Aaron and Eric and Patrick.

Great.

Coming up, the running

and the backing over the guys.

That was the first thing that we saw

that really, for me anyway,

- l felt, ''That's the movie right there.''

- l feel that.

Everyone we showed it to said,

''What kind of movie are you guys making?''

This bit right here.

We had the stuntmen run backwards

to the position of the dummies,

that's how we could have them

running right into the...

Those are real actors running

to the last frame. Then they get hit.

- That made us very happy.

- Yeah. That's all good.

That was Clay's angle, the low angle.

l'm glad he did that.

- This got pretty severely truncated.

- But it's good, it's tighter.

lt is tighter, yeah. lt was always...

The movie went off on this buddy-movie

kind of thing...

Not so much here but in the sequence

afterwards, opening the door.

There's a shotgun blast

from the inside there.

ln the theatrical version you have

no idea why there's holes in the door.

And then, ''Shoot 'em in the head!''

This was fun cos Jayne doesn't like heights

so she was a little bit...

She didn't go too close to the edge.

- That was the kabuki!

- That's Patrick. ls that Patrick?

He was one of our zombie MVPs.

- Yeah, he was awesome.

- He was great.

- We used the same guys over and over.

- They got mad at each other.

- And here's Ermes.

- Ermes!

Ermes had been Chris Farley's

stand-in and stunt double

when l did Tommy Boy

in Toronto in 1995 or whenever it was

and we cast him as the old woman

and got a lot of laughs.

When you see it in the theatre,

people look at that...

And they're like...

After we shot the sequence

Ermes came up to me,

l'd never seen him outside of his make-up

and he was like, ''Zack, how are you?''

And l was like, ''Who the hell are you?''

''l've only been staring at you

and talking to you intimately for a week.''

And l just didn't recognise him.

We had teamsters beat him

before we figured out...

Who he was, it was too bad.

Ty Burrell!

Ty Burrell and Michael Kelly and Jake

we met on the same day in New York,

the first day of casting.

Joseph Middleton, who's fantastic,

hooked us up with them

and we knew they were the guys right away

and Ty is awesome.

And he's a great guy.

Halfway through people were trying to laugh,

he's not saying something funny.

People were...

l'm like, ''No, that's not funny.

''Why are you laughing at that?

Don't give him everything.''

He's our Paul Reiser.

This Davy Crockett line

was a reference to the Alamo.

l wanted to reference it whenever l could.

- And you did.

- l did.

- ln the chess set is the Alamo.

- Jayne Eastwood is great.

This is like the Alamo

and out there are the Mexican army.

There's Jayne.

She's not gonna use the truck.

- Dead-ish.

- That was a Zack Snyder.

That came out...

We were in the conference room and that...

''What about dead-ish?''

lt's in every radio spot.

Have you heard them?

They end with, ''ls everyone there dead?''

''Dead-ish.''

That's great.

Remember where Ving did that outtake,

''Kiss my smooth-shaven black ass''?

That was great.

He just threw that at us out of nowhere.

We were like, ''OK, that's awesome.''

''Let's do one where you...

You're ruining my movie.''

That's great.

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