George A Romero's Land of the Dead Interview Arv Grewal (Production Designer) INTERVIEWER Can you give us your name and your history? ARV GREWAL My name is Arv Grewal and this is my first production design job. Arv Grewal I've worked on K-19: The Widowmaker, Finding Forrester, Exit Wounds, and The Pacifier. I've also worked on Spider, Crash, and EXistenZ, all with David Cronenberg. I've been assistant or art director on all of these and a variety of others. INTERVIEWER What was your approach in designing and constructing Dead Reckoning? ARV GREWAL The idea was to make this truck somewhat medieval, somewhat of a battering ram, somewhat of a post-apocalyptic SUV. We just brought in a certain vernacular of military vehicles, the utility vehicles, garbage trucks, airport vehicles, and that sort of thing. That's where we started essentially, and then from that derived the interior. We ended up with a kind of mix of old and new.  Everything that we did was oversized. INTERVIEWER Did Jurassic Park inspire you in the look you were going for with Dead Reckoning?   ARV GREWAL That was a bit more high tech. Actually we went more for the Death Ray 2000 end of it. A little bit of Alien and so forth. The interior, you never knew what anything did. There are hoses and pipes everywhere. That element added to the eeriness. We also have a scene where this legless zombie gets into it. We wanted to show a bit of vulnerability to it. It's a piece that supposedly one couldn't get into.  So the idea was that things would break down in the Dead Reckoning. A lot of it's held together by duct tape. So, it's not a slick machine by any means. It could actually break down. We tried a great deal to make the interior and the exterior work seamlessly coming in and out of it. That was a tough challenge because you build it on the set and then try to get it on the truck that's a little bit smaller. This interior set is a little bit larger than the Dead Reckoning exterior truck. INTERVIEWER In the movie, is Dead Reckoning the only vehicle of its kind? ARV GREWAL Yeah, there's only one. INTERVIEWER Why did you have only one? Why not fifteen of them? ARV GREWAL That's a George Romero question. I mean the city and the area in which the film takes place is quite small. The geography is based on Pittsburgh. And it is the thinking that there aren't that many people left. Once the zombies came and started biting each other and the apocalypse happened, everybody got in their cars and left. We don't know what happened to them.The amount of people we see in the movie is not that many. The hero in the film is sort of the engineer who conceived of this piece. So there is only one crew who runs it. INTERVIEWER Why is there a contrast in look from Kaufman's modernistic penthouse to Dead Reckoning? ARV GREWAL We designed the exterior of that penthouse and basically designed the building as Hitler's dream which stands, 20, 30 stories taller than any other building. It's the only building lit up in that central business district. The idea was that this guy, Kaufman, has not only taken over the building and controls its inhabitants, but also controls the rest of the city.  He won't let the rest of the city near him, so the buildings around him are quite blacked out. The idea was to contrast the ghetto where the people live and the depot where Dead Reckoning rests and where the soldiers are. There's an area called The Throat, which is the line that separates the zombies and the outside world from the inside. We tried to show Kaufman, Dennis Hopper's character, as a bad guy living off control. Then we tried to contrast it when CholoJolo, John Leguizamo's character, and Riley come in to show how odd they would feel in a space like this. What we tried to do in the penthouse set was give Kaufman a great room, alluding to the rest of the apartment.  Give him a corporate world, which he sort of runs right from the penthouse, from a great table to his personal side where he has a terrarium.  Essentially, contrast his world with the guys outside. When Riley or Cholo come in, they're so out of place. Next		Home Interviews Antoine Fuqua Interview King Arthur Interview Arv Grewal Interview Asia Argento Interview Behind the Scenes of "War of the Worlds" Bernie Goldmann Interview Clive Owen Interview Dakota Fanning Interview Dennis Hopper Interview George A Romero Interview Greg Nicotero Interview The Hulk Press Conference Ang Lee Press Conference Ioan Gruffudd Interview John Leguizamo Interview Kathleen Kennedy Interview Keira Knightley Interview