Baker, Simon (Land of the Dead)
At the recent press conference for Land of the Dead, which was where our most recent interview with George Romero came out of, a lot of the stars of Land that were supposed to appear were unable to, but luckily star Simon Baker was not among them. Baker took the time to chat with the press about his work in Land and what might be next for Romero…enjoy!
Question: I wanted to ask about your first Dead experience. It said in the notes you were 17 when you saw the first one? Do you remember it and who you were with….?
Simon Baker: What kind of detail can I go into with this? Can I be incriminated? Can I be impeached? I worked at a restaurant – most actors used to be waiters, so I hated waiting on tables cause I wasn’t an actor at the time. But I liked to wash dishes in restaurants, because I was behind the scenes. So I used to wash dishes and there was this guy that worked next to me and after work we’d have a drink, he was a wealthy kid and lived in a high-rise building, I think his father was really wealthy, he said, “let’s go to my place and we’ll watch this movie”. We go into this beautiful big apartment and its all dark; he’s living there like this sort-of student and his old man’s paying the bill, so it’s a really dodgy kind of vibe. Then he puts the movie on and it was Dawn of the Dead. I was a little high and I was just like “What the hell is this man?” It’s like two o’clock in the morning…so that was my first experience. Am I going to get in trouble for that?
Q: I wanted to ask you about getting in the mind-set for a film like this, because when you’re on the set there are all these people in the heavy make-up and everything; it must feel kind of silly. So getting in the mind-set of being taken seriously, how do you do that? What’s that like for you?
SB: It took a little time. The first day that I shot, I think it was the scene with the Dead Reckoning and zombies getting run over by the truck. I kept walking around just laughing because, you know, there’s a lot of people on the film crew and everyone was so obsessed with watching it back on the monitors, these bodies getting crushed underneath the wheels and getting excited as to whether it was right or not and having to redo it. Peter Grunwald, who’s one of the producers, is sitting next to me – he’s a great guy – he’s sitting there in his suit. He looks down and I just said “this is crazy…grown men concerned about getting the right splatter of this body”. He goes “I know, and I’m Ivy League educated”. He laughs and sort of shakes his hands. So yeah, it took a while. Walking into the catering area for lunch and seeing tables of people sitting there with half their face sort of eaten away. Occasionally someone would say “Hi Simon” and I’d have no idea who it was; it would be someone from the crew or something “Oh, it’s Gina. Hi Gina, how are you today? Good, good.” So that was always really weird.
Q: Could you talk a little bit about how George would balance the directing of the actors with the make-up and the effects work; how he would keep at an actors pace while also making a zombie movie?
SB: George was really generous with us as actors. He sat down with us all individually, made sure that we all understood what the story was, what the deal was. And he let us go a fair bit. Leguizamo and I worked together a bit in my hotel room, working out certain stuff so that the characters were defined and different. Often, with a lot of pieces when there are conflicting characters, the characters end up becoming the same kind of character and we wanted to make them very clearly defined. George welcomed that. But then on the set, you have a question, George would be right there or he’d sort of drop the zombies and then do this.
It was a very piecey film to shoot because a lot of it is cut back to different zombies. He had his whole make-up effects guys there, Greg Nicotero and that whole crew, so they’d have their little meetings we, the actors, would be doing our thing. “Where’s the zombie? Oh he’s going to be there? Right. He’s still in make-up?” So we’re shooting it before the zombie’s even there. It’s like “can someone sort of stand there so I know where it’s going to be?” It’s piecey and separated, but George is fine; seamlessly goes from one thing to the other. Watching him direct the zombie stuff is fantastic because he knows exactly what works and what doesn’t. It’s like a mathematician; he can see the equation from every single shot. You see him putting all the pieces together in his head. He knows – you go “Oh, I thought that was going to work”, but then he lets you see why it wouldn’t and moves on.
Q: To horror fans, the first three films are like the holy trilogy as Star Wars is to sci-fi fans. Did you feel any extra pressure trying to live up to those first three films, what with it being twenty two years later; almost similar to how when Lucas went back and made new Star Wars films?
SB: I felt the pressure for George, but personally I didn’t feel that much pressure. I thought that it was kind of very much “due”, you know? It was the right time to make another one; almost overdue. It’s interesting working with the make-up effects guys, because they’re so entrenched in the genre; they know every detail and everything about it. So you’ve got twenty guys walking around the set at all times that are encyclopedias of the genre, so you can find out information. I think the most important thing for me, with my character – and you know I’m the straight guy – is to tap into what these zombies are and where they fit in, that’s the moral compass thing. The most important thing was just to try and find the truth in that for George, I didn’t want to send that up at all. But no, I didn’t really feel that kind of pressure. Once you see George on the set, you know he knows exactly what he’s doing.
Q: You describe yourself as playing the straight guy role. What else did you feel you could bring to the role?
SB: Well, my role is a mercenary – that’s what they say – I shoot zombies and get supplies and all that sort of stuff, so I thought straight away, that if you create a conflict with this guy; if you make him essentially at his core a pacifist, then there’s automatically a conflict with him in the time in the place. So I just played around with that idea. He’s also a guy who is kind of a leader. Then if you make the guy somewhat anti-social, then he’s a leader that has people with him that he doesn’t want to be responsible for, there’s another conflict. They’re not obvious conflicts. He doesn’t want money. He doesn’t want the more obvious things that Dennis Cholo’s character wants. He’s trying to work himself out. It’s kind of a more internal conflict; personally.
And he has this notion that maybe there are no zombies in Canada, or maybe there’s no Kaufman in Canada. I think his whole thing is – it’s referenced a few times in the script, where he says “it’s good shooting, there’s no such thing as nice shooting”. He’s a guy that sort of looks at it the other way and says, “Well, hang on a second. We’re the ones killing each other here”, and Cholo and Kaufman are the example of that.
Q: Because you were there for all the make-up and all the behind the scenes stuff, is it possible to still be disturbed by any of the gore you were seeing around you or are you able to just laugh it off?
SB: It’s funny – I’ve seen it twice now. I saw it once without an audience, and I’m not very vocal when I watch films generally, the most laugh you’ll get out of me is “hmm hmm”, that’s it. But I found myself, at a few of the moments moaning and groaning very loudly and then afterwards laughing because I actually enjoyed the fact that it was able to make me do that. Then I watched it again last night, with an audience and yeah, still those moments shock me. I even know when they’re coming now but they still shock me and scare me. There’s some very precious gore moments in there that just slipped in – I know they that only just slipped in because the ratings people would say “You’ve got to shorten the shot of that. You can’t show any more of that”. I know that since George finished this cut, he’s been up in Canada working on an unrated cut, which is going to be crazy (laughs).
When I watched Day of the Dead again before I started this movie – my manager bought me the three DVD’s after I met with George so I could check them out again – It was hard for me to watch. I’ve got three kids and I put it on the tely in my bedroom and sat there and was like “whoa”. I looked over at my wife who was looking up over her book going “What is this?” I’ve come a long way from shooting on the movie when I would get absolutely excited about the idea that they’re shooting some sort of gag on the splatter unit; an insert shot of someone’s arm getting bitten or whatever. As soon as I wasn’t working on the main set I’d run over to watch it. I like the craftiness of it and I like the way it’s all put together. Then when you see it in the context of the film it’s really cool.
Q: I wanted to ask you what you think this movie in particular, without putting too fine a point on it, is actually about; aside from the obvious stuff. It seems George is making a lot of points about where we are today. In your mind, what is this film really about?
SB: Well, I think if you asked all of us that question we’d all have different answers. You guys likewise. For me, a lot of the movie, with my character and the way I approached it and the stuff that I thought about a lot, was the idea of having and making decisions on your own and not being told or believing the propaganda. You’ve got to understand, the time we were shooting this the US presidential election was taking place. In fact I can tell you the night and the scene we were shooting when it was happening; you know, the actual countdown. We were shooting all night and I’d go back to the hotel, turn the tely on just to chill out and then it’d just be CNN and it’d be all the propaganda. It was just so hard for anyone to have their own idea or their own opinion without being influenced by the publicity machines of each of the parties; the spin of someone’s opinion in the newspaper or CNN. The whole thing is not targeted for the individual to make up his or her own mind. Everyone’s being influenced by different things. That was a major thing for me because my character tends to want to go against the grain and say “No, no. This is what I think” or “I’m trying to work out what I think. I don’t buy into this, I don’t subscribe to that way of thinking. I want to look at it more like this”. That was what it was about for me.
Q: Are you contracted for maybe a sequel, perhaps World of the Dead? Are you quite surprised at, with the considerable low budget the film was – I heard it was 37 million or something, that it was actually a lot better than the remake of Dawn of the Dead?
SB: I don’t know what your question was there, but I think the budget was maybe even lower than that. I’m not sure. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say. Am I going to get shot when I leave the room? I’m sure there’s people watching me somewhere. I am – yeah, there is an option for a second one. Who knows what’s going on inside George’s head? He’s probably got things already put together already with ideas and stuff. He’s mysterious, he’s Mr. Mysterioso. He doesn’t really let too much on and he’s a really special guy. I think there’s obviously room for it. I like the movie a lot, that’s why I saw it twice and I’m a pretty harsh critic. A very harsh critic, in fact. There’s not really much stuff that I’ve done that I was like “I’m gonna go see that again” a week later, and I actually want to see again. I like seeing it in an audience; it’s a different type of movie to see because universally people within the theater have the similar reaction and then come down from that reaction at the same time. I’ll tell you, it’s kind of nice to be in a theater like that and feel the presence of the rest of the audience. Did I politic my way out of that question? Good. Cheers.
Thanks to Universal for arranging our time with Mr. Baker, and of course to the man himself for answering our questions. Land of the Dead opens on Firday, June 24th, so make sure you’re there all weekend to support the triumphant return of George A. Romero!
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