Nicotero, Greg (Land of the Dead)
Dread Central Staff
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George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead. Say it. Say it again. Doesn’t it just roll off the tongue? I don’t know about you, but every time I imagine seeing those words on a theatre marquee or, even better, on the big screen itself, a little chill runs down my spine. If there is a single positive note that has come out of the recent uptick in zombie films, particularly the remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, it’s that the legend himself has finally been given the green light to do it his way.
And right by his side is makeup effects wizard Greg Nicotero, an icon in his own right and arguably the one man — aside from Tom Savini, of course — who could shoulder the responsibility of bringing Romero’s vision to life in the 21st Century. Nicotero needs almost no introduction to genre film fans. KNB EFX Group, the company he founded with Howard Berger and former partner Robert Kurtzman, is world-renowned as one of the best makeup effects shops in the business with a long and extensive list of credits that practically encompasses all horror filmmaking of the last two decades, not to mention mainstream hits like Spy Kids, Kill Bill, and Austin Powers in Goldmember.
For Nicotero, Land of the Dead is a special project on a very personal level. He was studying to be a doctor when he got a chance to assist Tom Savini in creating the makeup for Day of the Dead nearly twenty years ago, and to use the old cliché, he has never looked back. Now, in a sense, he’s coming around to where he started, working once again with George A. Romero on a zombie movie; and as you might be able to guess, Nicotero couldn’t be happier.
Dread Central: How the hell are you?
Greg Nicotero: I’m very good. It’s the eve of one of the soon-to-be-greatest zombie horror movies ever made!
DC: Let’s talk about that. How did you get involved?
GN: Well, of course, my movie career began twenty years ago in Pittsburgh with George Romero on Day of the Dead. So I’ve always felt . . . not an obligation . . . but I always felt that George and Chris (Romero) and Tom (Savini) opened this tremendous door of opportunity for me, and I’ve always been really respectful and proud of the fact that they gave me that opportunity, and they’re such great people.
I’ve been friends with Tom since then, and I’ve stayed in touch with George and Chris ever since as well. And, you know, there have been a lot of incarnations of Land of the Dead that were floating around for a couple of years. At the same time, I was able to introduce George to people like Frank Darabont and Guillermo Del Toro — I was trying to put all my friends together. So the idea for Land was around for a while, and no matter what anyone thinks of the Dawn of the Dead remake, the fact that the movie comes out and makes $60 million would show the most stubborn studio head that there’s a place for George’s film. It’s taken a little while, and George and Christine have really fought the good fight to get it made, and I couldn’t be happier to be involved in it. When I did my initial bid for the script, that was almost two years ago, so we’ve been talking about it for quite a long time.
Now, Tom and I have been talking about it for quite a long time as well because the first thing that most of the fans ask George is, is Tom Savini doing the special effects makeup? And the three of us have collectively talked, and I also agree that a George Romero zombie movie is not complete without Tom Savini’s name in there. Tom has become quite a good director, and he’s acting quite a bit, so we both looked at each other and Tom said, “Well, I don’t do effects anymore. I’m a director and actor, and I want to have a part in the movie.” So I said, ‘That’s cool, and meanwhile, you and I can consult on the effects and we can talk about gags.” And I’m sure there’s gonna come a day on the set when, for old time’s sake, we’re gonna hand Tom the blood syringe and say, “All right, Tom, show us where it all came from.”
So, when I told George that, he said, “Look, I want Tom involved in the movie.” And I said, “Tom and I have already talked about that, there’s no hard feelings. There’s none of that. Tom wants a part in the movie.” And George was like, “Done.”
DC: What’s your take on the script?
GN: The script has been probably gone through three or four drafts, and usually what happens is that you have a script, and as they rewrite it, it gets pared down and all the good stuff gets taken out. All of a sudden, it’s a skeleton of what it was originally supposed to be. But in this case, the script has gotten better. Every time George has gone in and done another pass, it’s gotten more of the Romero flavor. I can’t remember a time when that’s ever happened. I’ve read several drafts of this script, and it gets better every time.
It’s basically taking the idea of where we left Bub in Day of the Dead, where there’s a glimmer of intelligence and they’re not just mindless devouring animals. This movie takes that to another level. So a lot of the lead zombies are all gonna be cast and they’re gonna be performers, so we’ll get a lot of that sort of Howard Sherman performance, which really brought the character of Bub to life. I mean, he wasn’t just a guy in a rubber face — people genuinely love that character.
It’s funny for me to listen to people talk about Bub and know that George’s movie is going to come out, and twenty years from now, there could be another iconic zombie that could be created based on George’s vision, the character, the makeup design, and the actor.
DC: Your job is to build on the first three movies, plus take into consideration everything that’s come after them, and strive for something new. So what’s your mindset and approach going into this project?
GN: We’ve been doing makeup designs and tests for a while. One of the things that we talked about is that even in Day of the Dead, there were different kinds of zombies: There were the character makeups, then the blue background ones, and then the old man masks. It never really felt like there was continuity between the three because there were so many different people doing them. So what we’ve talked about is changing the color palette. Dave Anderson did a great job on the Dawn of the Dead remake with gelatin and latex, making it look like the skin is sloughing off and peeling away, and the guys at Optic Nerve did a great job on Savini’s version of Night of The Living Dead. So our hope is just to make it look different. None of us want to see the same zombies, so we’re gonna try to avoid those looks and focus on character design for each one. We want to keep the real actors’ brows and maybe accentuate the mouth and cheekbones and chin a little bit, and we’re going into a very different color palette. Instead of the traditional blue-gray, we’re gonna maybe go into this sort of putrid yellow look. We’re really putting a lot of thought into it because it’s important to me that people remember these zombies as well in years to come.
We’re doing a lot of puppet heads; we’re doing a lot of mechanical zombies. We’re planning on doing a lot of stuff involving rig removal, where there will be guys puppeteering full body zombies, and we’ll erase the puppeteers out of the shot so that you don’t have to have digital zombies. You’ll have a live zombie there, operated by guys — similar to the way that it was done in Army of Darkness, except that was prior to the rig removal concept. We want it to be something where you’re seeing every different kind of zombie there is. There’s gonna be Berni Wrightson-inspired, really gaunt, skeletal zombies with bone hanging out, and then there’s gonna be the more traditional types. You have to also remember that these things have been existing outside, in the sun, every day, so there’s gonna be peeling, leathery, black-looking skin.
George has been, as usual, so receptive to every idea. He’s liked everything we’ve shown him, so the project is completely open to whatever we can come up with. George really wants to see things that we’ve never seen before, and he really doesn’t want to have to rely on CGI stuff, so we’re coming up with a lot of concepts that we can do with mechanical makeups and prosthetics as much as possible. Nothing looks better than the real thing. Even if we digitally remove an actor’s nose, you always have to start with the actual physical (zombie) on set.
DC: When I last interviewed Romero, we touched on the “slow zombies vs. fast zombies” debate, and he was firmly in the “slow” camp.
GN: Oh, me too. Listen, with fast zombies, you have more of a chance of being trampled than being eaten (laughs). That was always my concern. I loved 28 Days Later; I thought it was great — although they weren’t zombies, they were infected people — but if you see Shaun of the Dead . . . I can’t say enough great things about this movie. And they tip the scale right back to the slow zombies. To me, it’s always about slow zombies. Even though a lot of people never thought the Mummy was scary, he still always catches you. And it’s the same with zombies!
It’s strength in numbers. At this point in the Dead series the zombies are the majority, so they are now the norm for society, and the humans are the ones struggling to live and struggling for existence.
DC: The other element that Romero is famous for is the way he uses his stories as social criticism.
GN: In the rewrites George has been able to inject his social commentary into the film. The world, even in the shambles that it is in this movie, is still about greed, and it’s still about power, and it’s still about control. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the world, that’s still what everybody strives for and wants.
DC: Something else that George has been upfront about is the fact that for business reasons, he’s got to deliver an R-rated film for theatrical release, but of course he’s got the DVD down the line to put out the film the way he wants it.
GN: There’s no reason to worry. I know what George’s intention is, and we know what the fans want to see, and I’m hoping that there’s a point where, if they release the R version and it does well, then maybe they’ll release the unrated cut for midnight screenings to whet their appetite for the movie to come out on DVD.
DC: Universal Pictures has to know that there’s a market for the uncut version…
GN: Absolutely. Why do it if you can’t? We all saw how unfortunate it was that George’s original vision for Day of the Dead was never realized for that exact reason, but the world’s a much different place now. Movies have a whole second life on DVD now, and the marketing campaign for DVDs is almost as big as when the movies come out! All I can tell you is that for what we’re planning, we’re not pulling any punches. One thing we may do is get the primary shots with the main unit and then let them walk away while we work with a small unit to get some bloodier stuff. George was delighted with the idea because he knows that if we can take time and finesse the gags with a small unit of people, it’ll be that much better. We were usually just never able to afford that before.
DC: What else is going on at KNB?
GN: We’ve had the best year we’ve ever had. We’re currently working on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. My partner, Howard Berger, has been in New Zealand for the last three months, and he’ll be through in December or January. We’re doing all the creature effects for that. I spent three months in Austin, Texas, working with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City, which is based on the Frank Miller graphic novel. That’s supposed to come out in March, and that was an absolutely unbelievable project to be involved on. The fact that we got to realize Frank’s character designs on actors like Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro, and Bruce Willis was amazing. The whole film was just so ingeniously devised and designed through Robert and Frank, who co-directed the film, and used Frank’s books as the actual storyboards. So this is going to be one of the most faithful comic book adaptations that I can imagine. We recently wrapped on House of Wax, and we also did Serenity, which is the Joss Whedon feature film version of Firefly.
So it’s been a great year, and for me to be able to see my career come full circle . . . in July, we did a life cast of my head for Land of the Dead for a test makeup. As we were getting ready to do it, I said, “Twenty years ago, we were casting my head to be a zombie on Day of the Dead, and now we’re casting it to do test makeup for George Romero’s Land of the Dead.” So this is an ultimate dream come true. It’s a project that I have wanted to be associated with for so long because of my friendship with and admiration for George and Christine and the debt of gratitude that I’ve always wanted to repay them for. They came to L.A. and the KNB shop, and they pulled me aside and said, “We are so proud of you. Look what you’ve accomplished in these past 18 years.” And I said, “Guys, you opened that first door for me, and I will always remember that.”
There you have it. The lay of the Land seems to get more and more interesting each time we speak of it! Stay tuned to Dread Central for more developments.
Categorized:Interviews News
