Arv Grewal's Interview - George A Romero's Land of the Dead 2 Previous INTERVIEWER The Throat, what is that exactly? ARV GREWAL The idea arose from George's geography of Pittsburgh. When he was describing Pittsburgh, it sort of ends in the Ohio River. Its two rivers come together to form a V. As he was thinking, if you were going to cut yourself off, go to the water. A zombie can't swim, so put up a fence or a wall or a barricade across this way. As I was studying and looking at the aerial map of Pittsburgh, there's a very natural highway running through, cutting across it. So, I suggest to George, that perhaps, these guys just went to the underside of this highway, and built themselves this triple electric fence out there. Put in a bunch of pillbox-like stations, where the Army just stayed in and monitored the area. INTERVIEWER What were the dimensions of Dead Reckoning? How long? ARV GREWAL That's a good question. Initially, when I read the script, this was going to be three freight train cars long. That would have been a little bit impossible, given our budget and given the shooting locations. So we went through four or five versions of the vehicle. Essentially the maneuverability of the piece around the locations and the amount of action that required dictated how long it should be. At one point, we settled on about a 120 feet in length. Even that was a little too much to make some of the turns at the locations we're going in to. So, we ended up around 75. INTERVIEWER Was Dead Reckoning the most fun thing for you to do, or did you have another favorite? ARV GREWAL This was fun. There was a piece called The Ghetto that we did, where we essentially took images, where we had to manage what people in a post-apocalyptic world would be doing. What do you do when you have nothing to do? So we set up a series of booths where they would be safe from a completely useless light, and we set up a series of totems that some crazy person or people are making to sort of allude to what's coming. That was kind of fun. Dead Reckoning was really cool, too. The exterior of Dead Reckoning was a lot of fun. The challenge was getting it built. I think it was only about four weeks that we got the truck, started cutting it up and started construction on it. INTERVIEWER What did you use as the base for Dead Reckoning? ARV GREWAL It was a long truck. It was basically a trailer. It was about a 75 foot regular trailer and weighs about 34 tons. INTERVIEWER The film was going to be called Dead Reckoning so obviously it plays an important part in the film. How much is it featured? ARV GREWAL We initially start up with Dead Reckoning in a town outside of The Throat where these guys, John Leguizamo and Simon Baker, go to bring back supplies. The whole film is basically set around John LeguizamoJohn Leguizamo's character stealing this truck. The rest of the film is RileyRiley trying to find it. INTERVIEWER Why did you decide to choose a horror movie to be your first production design job?    ARV GREWAL Not necessarily the fact that it's a horror movie, but it's the king of horror films asking me to do the job. I've been offered other jobs before and didn't want to do any of them.  When I got the call for this one, and they said it's GeorgeGeorge RomeroGeorge Romero, I said yes automatically, went crazy, and did a bunch of sketches. Then I think it was about 15 minutes after I left the interview, when they called me and asked if I would like to do this. INTERVIEWER Did you go back to any of George's other films as a point of reference? ARV GREWAL No, I specifically didn't, actually. I'm looking at them now because we just bought the set.  After I read the script, I didn't think we needed to go back to any of those. It just felt like it was a lot different than anything else we have done. I didn't feel the need to get a look at it. I just thought I would rather talk with him and figure it out and do some sketches. There was a week when George was in LA writing the script. We were faxing sketches back and forth so that every two hours we got more out of it that way. We didn't want to second-guess it by looking at his older films. INTERVIEWER Do you think you and your sketches had an impact on the film and how the script turned out? ARV GREWAL In fact, yes.  George is great that way because there are suggestions that we would come up with, and he would, in fact, change the script. This penthouse, for example. Initially we were going to try and find one, but there is not a huge budget on this film. We had been trying to find one and had been trying to find Kaufman's boardroom as well. Eventually I had the idea of combining them and suggested that for the budget we had, we could create a pretty decent one. George had the trust in me to say yes and rewrite the scenes to work it that way.  When we did the depot, where Dead Reckoning actually docks, there were a number of pieces that we wanted to put in as a design element and he really worked with it. He's amazing that way. He comes out very collaborative, whatever you want to add to it. The idea of the face of the Dead Reckoning, initially I think these guys were thinking that it was a big truck with a lot of metal added onto it. When you see it, it won't look like that at all. My idea was to make it look more medieval, make it more of a battering ram something that is ruthless, in a way. We've seen the truck, with the pipes around it and all that. George was really keen on it once we got him sold on the idea.		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