George A Romero's Land of the Dead Interview 5 Greg Nicotero (Special Effects Makeup Supervisor) Previous INTERVIEWER Do you wish that you were in Pittsburgh? Do you regret that? GREG NICOTERO I do.  I miss being in Pittsburgh. My family's still there. I miss that sort of energy. I'm telling you, people from Pittburgh make the best zombies. They really do. It's in their blood. There's not one person from Pittsburgh who didn't, at one point or another, stand in front of their mirror after watching Night of the Living Dead and try to figure out what their zombie walk would be if they were ever a zombie. I've had a lot of friends call me and say they want to come up and be a zombie. They would show up and I'd throw them in the makeup chair, and they'd get made up as zombies. Even Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.  They said, “This isEdgar a dream come true, you have no idea.  We're zombies in a George Romero movie.” I wish there were thousands more like them. Even George would say to me sometimes, “Where are the guys who would kill to be here?” Those are the people who make the best zombies, the people who say, go ahead, pour the blood on. Whereas a lot of times, when you're dealing with people who don't know the genre…not fans, their response is, “You're not going to put that on my hands, are you?” They'll hide their hands and say their sleeves cover it. Literally, you have to go up and say, “All right, open your mouth. We're going to put the black mouth blood on you.” They say, “You're not going to see my mouth anyway.” You'd never have that if we were in PittsburghPittsburgh. INTERVIEWER How long does it take for guys in the background to be made up? GREG NICOTERO We have masks that we use for the deep background and they just stick them on, and we pull their hair forward. Their hair covers any of the edges of the seams. That's pretty quick. My thing is, they're shooting three cameras. There's always one wide, one medium, and then there'll be one camera sort of searching the crowd. I'll run out after a take and shift people around because I want to make sure that in every take, the best zombies are featured. I don't want to see one guy who's watching dailies too. You always see the people with the funny zombie walks. We give them nicknames. There was one guy who was a skater, and when he walked it looked like he was ice-skating. Then we had the get-the-hell-out-of-my-yard zombie, who was a guy who raised his arms and ran, “get out of here, you damn kids”. So we would sit there and make up names for the different zombie walks. It's funny because George will find those certain people that look great. You'll have a crowd of a hundred people. Of course there's going to be a couple that look like goofs. But there'll be those ones that look great. Most of the featured zombies have excellent walks. The guy who plays the Tambourine Man zombie, and Jennifer BaxterJennifer Baxter, who plays the softball girl, Number Nine zombie, look great. INTERVIEWER How were Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright as zombies? GREG NICOTERO They were good, but they were chained up. They didn't get to do a walk. Simon's favorite zombie character is Bub from Day of the Dead. So we actually sculpted a Bub-like makeup on Simon. So Simon's on the set saying, “I'm Bub. Look, look, look.” He was so excited. It was really one of the highlights of the movie for me, helping friends who I admire so much realize their dream. I've had a couple other people come up and I told them they could be zombies. They were on set with George Romero and they were so excited. I wish we would have had a lot more of that energy because George feeds off it too. George loves that kind of stuff.		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