Original Title:
Exclusive first set report: ZOMBIELAND
Tuesday, 07 July 2009 10:55 Philip Nutman Fearful Features
Links:
IMDb | Original Article @ Fangoria
Wearing Western gear?cowboy boots, hat and black coat?actor Woody Harrelson strides up on the (fake) night-shrouded porch of a Texas gift shop filled with American Indian tourist kitsch. Using his sawn-off, double-barreled shotgun, he dings the bell above the entrance to ?Kimo Sabe?s? and steps to one side. Like one of Pavlov?s dogs, the now-zombified owner lurches toward the front door. All flesh-chewing instinct, the ghoul doesn?t see Harrelson hiding and gets a head shot from the gun, dropping like a sack of rotting enchiladas.
The kill, as physically shot, is bloodless (no squib used, but splatter may be digitally added in postproduction). It?s a far cry from the gore-drenched chaos and killing Fango witnessed 10 days earlier, when the gutters of Atlanta, Georgia literally ran with blood as first-time feature director Ruben Fleischer supervised a scene of mass mayhem, featuring over 25 zombies attacking screaming, uninfected Yuppies trying to escape the plague of ZOMBIELAND.
A living-dead horror/comedy coming from Columbia Pictures October 9, ZOMBIELAND is the warped brainchild of screenwriters/executive producers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese (who are now scripting the SPIDER-MAN spinoff VENOM). Fleischer, like Wernick and Reese, comes from a TV background?he was one of the creators of the ROB & BIG MTV reality show. All are fright-genre virgins, and perhaps it?s no surprise that ZOMBIELAND began its years-long, almost undead existence as a potential series. Starring Harrelson, ADVENTURELAND?s Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and SIGNS? Abigail Breslin, the film is produced by PANIC ROOM and SECRET WINDOW?s Gavin Polone. The director of photography is Michael Bonvillain, who lensed CLOVERFIELD, but Fleischer promises that ZOMBIELAND will not be a handheld, shaky-cam experience.
It?s the end of the world as we know it (again) and two dudes meet in the aftermath. One?s a young, nerdy guy who?s afraid of everything (Eisenberg), the other a shitkicker with attitude (Harrelson?no surprise); both are trying to dodge the dead and get back to someplace special before everything goes to hell. Along the way, they meet up with two girls with the same plan (Stone and Breslin): they?re heading for an amusement park they believe to be zombie-free (ha!). As the quartet are forced into an alliance to stay alive, Harrelson?s character decides to keep an emotional distance and renames everyone from where they?re from (Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock, respectively). But who is more dangerous: the living dead or a quartet of gun-happy humans?
?This is an R-rated movie. There are serious guts and stuff. But for me it?s like MIDNIGHT RUN with zombies,? explains Fleischer. ?That?s one of my favorite movies; it?s basically a road movie where two different people, a badass guy with a history and a nerdy guy, team up to drive cross-country and have to deal with various problems. Here, instead of the Feds, bounty hunters and the mob, we?ve got zombies. It?s about two opposites who join up and learn something along the way.?
Like Rob Zombie?s HALLOWEEN II and Breck Eisner?s remake of THE CRAZIES, ZOMBIELAND is lensing in and around Atlanta, Georgia for several weeks. And like those movies, this one is doubling the Peach State as somewhere else (with the exception of a postapocalyptic setpiece scheduled as the last day of shooting on Hollywood Boulevard in LA). In today?s case, a derelict roadhouse/restaurant has been turned into a Texan casino-cum-tourist trap. Conceptualized by production designer Maher Ahmed and built by his crew, this incongruous set of buildings on a deserted stretch of road outside rural Rutledge, GA is hard to miss: A 30-foot high caricature of an American Indian palming ?How? and over a dozen giant arrows embedded in the ground mark the parking lot. But not for much longer.
Between multiple takes, viewing the playback, Harrelson is largely quiet, intense. None of the other principal actors are on set at 2 p.m. on a cloudy April Fool?s Day. But later on, Eisenberg will join Harrelson, and after clearing the place of the undead, trigger-happy Tallahassee and Columbus will cut loose and shoot the store to smithereens. Based on the early edited clips Fleischer screens for Fango on his laptop, there?s plenty of gunplay and craziness in the film. (Fleischer has posted a number of his own non-scene-specific behind-the-scenes pictures at his website/blog.)
Another take is set up. On ?Action!? Harrelson dings the bell and the zombie stuntman bites the bullet again.
It?s just another day in ZOMBIELAND. For more gruesome details, look for further exclusive location coverage in FANGORIA magazine, starting in #285 (on sale now) and continuing in #287 (on sale in September).
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