George A Romero's Land of the Dead Interview 2 Robert Joy (Charlie) Previous INTERVIEWER Is the word “zombie” used in the movie? ROBERT JOY That's a good question. Yes it is.  he word zombie is used. But far more frequently they're referred to as “stenches” or “things”. INTERVIEWER How are humans portrayed in this film in comparison to the zombies? ROBERT JOY The humans lock themselves away in an enclave, kind of like Bel AirBel Air except smaller. So what's great about the vision to me is the food chain idea, which is never presented quite that way. But in my brain, when you see the arena scene, you see all the different levels of the society and what they've done and how corrupt the humans have become. How eager and susceptible they've been to exploiting the zombies. They have zombie porn and they have these, like, gladiatorial matches where zombies are encouraged to fight over food. People will bet on which zombie will slaughter the other zombie first when they fight over food. It's kind of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. This is the moral center; I mean, the political center. You were asking before about the metaphor. Slack, played by Asia Argento, is a character that comes in at the bottom of the food chain. Here she is a perfectly healthy female, ex-commando who's been forced into prostitution. Because she has displeased someone higher up, she is now being offered, instead of the normal dead cat or dog, as the food in that gladiatorial match. So she is literally at the bottom of the food chain and it raises that troubling question: “I thought it was the humans `over here' and `we are all good, trying to keep the world safe', and the `stenches' are `over there'. But now we're taking advantage, and feeding the `stenches' the undesirable humans.” So, it raises a lot of very interesting questions. INTERVIEWER Can you talk about the town or city the film takes place in? ROBERT JOY It's kind of like a medieval town, a fiefdom. You've got Kaufman at the top and you've got the castle, which is Fiddler's Green, and around that you have all the hovels of people who live inside the castle walls. The art direction is really cool that way. It really has a playground sort of feel, this real post-apocalyptic grunge. Then beyond the walls of this city is the wilderness where all the zombies live, and in the medieval paradigm, it would have been the barbarians and the wolves out there. But out there you have to get stuff and come back in and the commandos do that. The typical way they distract the zombies is to fire fireworks up in the air, which are irresistible to the zombies. They just gape at them while we all pick up our supplies and go back and interesting things happen when the fireworks malfunction. Charlie actually calls these fireworks “sky flowers”. In one of the very first scenes, he says that they're “sky flowers way up in heaven”. They all call them sky flowers. Charlie still believes in heaven. In a way, Charlie is this kind of innocent presence who's naïve and does not ask troubling questions. Just the fact that he's there raises the question of heaven because he believes in it. INTERVIEWER How have the zombies in this Romero film evolved, if at all? ROBERT JOY The movie doesn't spend a lot of time explaining it, but you feel the scourge of the zombies because the only food the zombies have are humans. So anyone they bite is destined to become a zombie. The scourge has spread like an epidemic. The only way to not be touched by that epidemic is to shut yourself up and it's an isolationist mentality. Even when we go out into the wilds, we have this vehicle, Dead Reckoning. It's this big tank the commandos can isolate themselves in when they go outside. The new thing that's happening in this movie is that the zombies are learning, and I think that was hinted at in Day of the Dead. They've been accustomed to this zombie state for long enough. Like any other species, they are learning things. They're adapting. They're evolving. So suddenly, zombies of the previous years might not have been able to use a tool or pick up a rock and smash a plate glass window. They just hit their heads against it until they eventually went through. INTERVIEWER Do they show this zombie evolution, or have they just evolved and we, as the audience, are expected to accept it? ROBERT JOY There's one in particular, the zombie leader. It's almost like you're watching, in evolutionary terms, the missing link. You're watching someone step up to the next evolutionary level. He realizes, hey, his past, the zombie's past, even in Dawn of the Dead, is still in them somewhere. They were used to coming to the mall. In the same way, he used to work at a service station. So he knew a few things about how these things work. They were sort of in his muscle memory and, in a way, he reminds some of the other zombies about them, like, hey, Zombie Butcher, that cleaver you're carrying in your hand, we might be able to put that to some use. From the beginning of the movie to the end of the movie, you watch the evolution of the zombie population. INTERVIEWER Are the zombies ready to replace humans? ROBERT JOY Yeah. By the end of the movie, the question is raised about the future of the humans and the future of the zombies, and if there is a parallel. INTERVIEWER So the question is left open? ROBERT JOY Yeah. It certainly would always have to be left open.  I mean, what's the alternative to leaving it open? Absolute carnage and Armageddon and everyone's dead. The audience is just left in the theatre. There's always the hope that if you get backed into a corner that you may eventually be able to find some way to start having the population grow again. There's no implication at the end of this movie that this will happen.  There are people who, at the end of the movie, are saying “Okay, we got to move on to the next isolation”, and you hope that they can figure out something that the others couldn't. It's the same way in those science fiction movies where you end up on a planet because earth has been destroyed. You always hope that the people are going to find some way to generate future generations. Partly because the humans are surviving within their own contained enclave, it becomes sort of incestuous. This accounts for the claustrophobic atmosphere in which they turn against each other and start exploiting the zombies. It gets kind of decadent. INTERVIEWER How big is the city? ROBERT JOY Fiddlers Green is meant to be a very fancy condominium community building. A high-rise that has shopping malls attached, maybe that kind of big urban community for rich people. There are a lot of people who don't live in Fiddler's Green so there's a class hierarchy. Certain chosen ones live in Fiddler's Green and then there's the military wing that are taking care of them and have utilitarian ways, very much like the Roman Empire. Then you have the peasants and the servants who make things happen at ground level. INTERVIEWER Do you have many scenes with Dennis Hopper? ROBERT JOY I don't have any. Zero scenes with him. I had a scene with him in Waterworld where I picked up his eyeball and handed it to him. I reminded him of that. The funny thing was that the first time I saw him on this movie was just yesterday and of course my eye was gone. I said, “I picked up your eyeball, can you do the same for me?” INTERVIEWER Does the film give hope for the human race? ROBERT JOY There was one suggestion when Cholo is looking for a place. There's a feeling from several characters that the humans could survive if only there were a way to get out of there. There's a rumor that goes around that there was an outpost in Cleveland, so there is just a hint that civilization has been reduced to several enclaves all over North America. But that's about as specific as it gets. It doesn't get more specific than that.		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