George A Romero's Land of the Dead Interview 4 Greg Nicotero (Special Effects Makeup Supervisor) Previous INTERVIEWER Did you turn down War of the Worlds to do this? GREG NICOTERO We did because when they called us, they needed a hundred bodies to float down the river when the war machines are destroying the city. That was about two weeks before I was supposed to come up here.  There was no way. War of the Worlds is one of my favorite stories so I was really sad.  I was devastated that I had to turn that down. INTERVIEWER What is it about zombie films? GREG NICOTERO When you're a young, impressionable movie geek like most of us makeup effects guys are, you always look at guys' portfolios, and there's always a gorilla and there's always a zombie. There's their little sister with fake blood poured all over them. It's the standard thing that you always see in everyone's portfolio. For me, it all has to do with growing up in Pittsburgh because there, it's sort of in your blood. If you're born and raised in Pittsburgh, zombie movies are part of your culture. I would drive up InterstateInterstate 79 and pass EvansEvans City, realize that's the cemetery where they shot, or I'd go Christmas shopping at the Monroeville Mall and think, there's the elevator where the zombies got Steve. You get caught up in that folklore. Because of my relationship with GeorgeGeorge and with Tom Savini from my first film, Day Of The Dead, I moved to New York City. I worked for Richard Rubinstein for several years. After that, I moved to Los Angeles. Then in 1988, I started KNB, and since then, we've done four hundred movies. We've worked for everyone from Sam Raimi to Spielberg, Army of Darkness, Kill Bill with Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and Wes Craven. I've really had the luxury to work with everybody that inspired me when I was a kid. I watched The Thing and John Carpenter's movies. Jaws is still one of my absolute favorite movies.  To be standing on set looking at Steven Spielberg on Minority Report and having a five-minute conversation about how he did this gag on Jaws once was just amazing. It's also great to work with guys like Quentin.  We've done all of his films.  I knew Quentin before Reservoir Dogs hit big. During Reservoir Dogs, he had written a screenplay for my business partner, Bob Kurtzman,Kurtzman called From Dusk Till Dawn. He said, “I'll write From Dusk Till Dawn for free, but you do the effects for Reservoir Dogs for free.” That was our trade.  Our response was…”Okay, sure, whatever.” He was originally going to do it for $30,000 with a bunch of his acting buddies. Then they got Harvey Keitel, and then suddenly Reservoir Dogs became. We were amazed atshit what Quentin had done. Then we ended up doing From Dusk Till Dawn later with Robert Rodriguez. To watch those guys grow as filmmakers, I mean for Kill Bill, we spent almost two years working on that project. The entire House Of Blues lead sequence for Kill Bill took as long to film as the entire Land Of The Dead shoot. That one scene took nine weeks in BeijingBeijing and it was funny. INTERVIEWER Do you get a lot of people who want zombie cameos? GREG NICOTERO I would have hoped that we would have had a lot more opportunity for that.  George had said that Stephen King wanted to come up and be a zombie at one point. The only zombie cameos were Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. That came about because I deemed myself the unofficial spokesman for Shaun of the Dead when it came out. I was really helping the guys promote the movie. INTERVIEWER You were at the San Diego Comic Convention? GREG NICOTERO That's where I met them… at the Comic Con. I loved Shaun of the Dead and I wanted to see the movie do well. We were in Los Angeles and I said the guys should come up to KNB and we'd cast their faces to be zombies. When we did Day of the Dead, people would drive across the country to be zombies, guys in rock bands, and guys from The Cramps. They would literally take a pilgrimage to Pittsburgh and show up. It was a little more difficult here because you can't just drive across the border to Canada and say you want to be a zombie. It doesn't work that way. It was funny, George would say, “What happened to the days when you could just pay a guy an extra dollar and he'd come and be a zombie?” I said that they're not the same anymore. You can't put explosive squibs on the heads of just anybody.  We had to actually design exit wounds that were non-explosive so that we didn't have to squib just stunt guys and we could put them on anybody. Now there's a lot more rules and it's not the sort of guerrilla filmmaking where George would say that we'd shoot in the Monroeville Mall, and basically the entire mall is lit so you can just walk over here and shoot an insert, or walk over here and shoot a piece.  That's what they did. I would have loved to have the freedom that he had on Dawn of the Dead because they basically had the mall to themselves and they took a hiatus over Christmas. George cut the entire movie together, then came back and shot the bits he needed to film, which is why the movie is so flawless. Currently, we have two more days of shooting principal photography. They'll cut the movie together. They'll look at it. George already said he wanted me to fly up, sit, and watch the movie with him, and then we'll probably do the exact same thing.  We'll probably decide that we want a little bit more here. Let's add a little oomph here.  We're going to replace this with something else and continue to finesse it. The movie doesn't come out till October and it's December right now. We have a long time. I think that it's going to be that kind of film that's just going to sort of take on a life of its own. When people start seeing it, they're going to get excited about it. 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