George A Romero's Land of the Dead Interview Robert Joy (Charlie) INTERVIEWER Who do you play? ROBERT JOY I play Charlie, who is sort of a sidekick. I'm the facially deformed and mentally damaged sidekick of Riley, the lead character. My personal back-story is that I was a mentally challenged adult living with my mother when the zombies took over. One thing led to another and my mother got killed in some kind of crisis. Then there was a fire. All we know definitely from the script is that Riley rescued me from the fire but not before half of my face was hideously burned. That's why my special effects makeup is so dramatic. INTERVIEWER Did you get special effects makeup done everyday? ROBERT JOY Yes, on a daily basis. It takes two and a half hours to put it on and about 40 minutes to take it off.  It's the dream of an actor and, actually, it's a nightmare for some other actors. I've done this before and that experience was kind of a nightmare. I was in a movie called Millennium and I had this huge special effects makeup and my entire head was covered with this makeup and the only part of my whole body that was exposed to the camera were my eyeballs and my lower lip. You could see my tongue when I spoke and that was it.  It was really uncomfortable, super hot and kind of clumsy. This one is just kind of like Phantom of the Opera, in a way, because half the face is normal. Or, actually, prettier than normal. They make this half up with flattering makeup. And this one's got this really dramatic burn scar where this eye is half closed in a very unique way. I just love it. There's two pieces that they glue on. Chris Nelson is the makeup artist who puts it on and he really is an artist. You better feel like you're in the hands of an artist because when I get to the set, the first thing he does is put adhesive, like a glue, on my eyelids. So you got to trust a guy like that. He'll ask me to look up, then he'll start gluing it in there and he puts the top piece up like that and then the bottom piece comes right up to my mouth and all the way down my neck to there. The paint job is stunning. INTERVIEWER What is your character going through in the film? ROBERT JOY My character is one of the central commandos of which Simon Baker is the lead. Riley is the lead commando and John Leguizamo's character, Cholo, is second in command. They are in a kind of competitive relationship. I'm the best marksman of the commandos.  So I'm prized for being an amazing shot.I'm bristling with weapons, half of which you don't even see. They gave me weapons to put under my arm and you don't even see them for most of the movie. Finally, I take my coat off in the third act of the movie and you can see them. I have a couple of really cool shots. INTERVIEWER Was it fun taking out zombies all day long? ROBERT JOY Well, the truth is I take out a non-zombie who threatens my friend Riley. Then I do take out the zombies. I don't seem to do the carnage thing. I don't spray everybody with bullets or anything like that. However, I use this old rifle with a wooden stock. It's kind of like a twelve-year-old's dream, a cowboy mentality. I wear six guns with holsters like Roy Rogers. In a way, it's like the Wild West so it makes sense that Charlie, who's kind of mentally child-like, would want to have this nostalgic look at what weapons could be, what they can represent. INTERVIEWER Fans of George Romero remark that his films can be read on many different levels.  What are your thoughts on this? ROBERT JOY I do see it as a fun horror movie to watch. There is certainly a lot of drama, blood, suspense and all that kind of stuff. But I also see the metaphorical aspect of the movie, which I feel like my character is in the middle of because I'm half one way and half the other. During my first entrance in the movie I'm mistaken for a zombie and it raises the question very, very early in the movie. Who are humans and who are the zombies? Or are the lines blurred? All his zombie movies did this. George is so brilliant in Dawn of the Dead too. You start off with the “us” and the “other” being very clear at the beginning. As you go through the movie, they get more and more muddied and you wonder “Who are the good guys here? The people I thought were the good guys at the start are actually pretty morally dicey.”  And the “others” can't be just dismissed and killed as “things”. They are always referred to as “things” or as “stenches”. There's all these names invented to kind of justify slaughtering them the way they do. This movie raises all kinds of troubling questions about the food chain, which are applicable to almost any political situation in the world. INTERVIEWER Would you be doing this movie if it weren't being directed by George Romero? ROBERT JOY Probably not. I'd worked with George before, so as soon as I heard George wanted to meet me about this movie, I was pretty much telling my agent “I want to do this movie”. I'd worked on a Romero movie called The Dark Half.  We'd shot it in Pittsburgh. It was my introduction to a style of directing that was so refreshing for me. He just seemed like such a down-to-earth guy who wasn't into a hierarchical work environment where he was at the top and everyone just ran around and did what he wanted. He's a great collaborator. He makes actors feel really good, just by responding to what they bring. And what the actors bring seems to trip something in his imagination. He'll come back to the actor with an extra idea that the actor would never have thought of, which is not in the script, and which George wouldn't have thought of if that particular actor hadn't been in the scene.  You can't beat that. 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