Details about Diary of the Dead

[Geophyrd]

http://www.flixens.com/script_review...ry_of_the_dead Interesting...it actually sound good! From Flixens (above) BREAKING NEWS! Hi everyone, Nina here. We've had a lot of zombie news in recent days, and today is no different. Below is an EXCLUSIVE preview piece where Leather Lass and Jenny From Canada double-team George A. Romero's upcoming Diary of the Dead script. Now before you go jumping ahead to feed your insatiable appetite for all things zombie, be forewarned... there be SPOILERS ahead. Having said that, read on, Big Daddy! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LL: Leather Lass here with my thoughts on George Romero’s newest venture in the world of zombies, Diary of the Dead [with comments from Jenny From Canada!]. I just couldn’t do this one alone to be honest. I love horror movies, but I have never been one of the Cult of Romero. Other than the first movie, Night of the Living Dead, I have been rather bored with these zombie films. At the risk of alienating our readers, I actually found the remake of Dawn of the Dead to be a much more interesting and exciting film than the original. And don’t even get me started on Day of the Dead. That movie made my logic hurt. Not that Romero isn’t trying, though. At heart these zombie movies are trying to convey some relatively complicated social analytics, and that isn’t the easiest thing to do when the kids want lots of gore and neck munching. Romero’s zombie films have some really bad tendencies though. The chief problem I have found is that while the ideas are grand in their own right, the dialog to support them is almost universally cornball, and matters are not improved by the fact that Romero has a weakness for casting poor actors. So why am I reviewing his latest entry into the Dead franchise? Well, I actually enjoyed Land of the Dead a lot more than I ever thought I would. Land has some terrible problems. It’s a heavy handed movie with a plot that doesn’t quite sit well with me, but the big difference between Land and Dawn or Day is that he staffed the film with a group of talented actors who had charisma and took the material seriously enough to keep me engaged. Suddenly, Romero didn’t seem like a one trick pony to me, and when I found out about Diary of the Dead and its high concept plot, I couldn’t resist getting my hands on the script and sharing my feelings about it with you. JFC: Jenny here. I’m not going to bore you with details on why Lass sucks and is wrong on all her points. She knows she’s wrong, and I’m only saying that because she’s on the opposite side of the continent so she can’t hurt me. LL: The premise behind Diary is simple really. The entire movie is told from the point of view of different cameras the characters encounter along their adventure. Most of the footage is obtained through the main character’s camera. He’s a young filmmaker trying to make a low budget movie when the world begins to change. Since all of the main characters are either college students or one plucky professor, they decide to stick together in order to get home to their families during this terrible crisis. JFC: It’s such an awesome premise. LL: The movie doesn’t initially start off with those we would follow throughout the rest of the story. Instead Romero, who penned the screenplay, offers up a prelude featuring the exact moments when Hell arrives on Earth. A young reporter is with her camera man covering a murder-suicide involving a family in some inner city neighborhood, and the reporter encourages the camera man to obtain footage of the bodies being escorted from their home. Suffice to say, we soon find out that the murder victims are still moving after they were pronounced dead. The set up is brief, but handled very well. The only glimpses we see are from either the cameraman’s viewpoint, and the scene is blocked in such a way as to maximize the horror and surprise of the situation. From there we are introduced to the main heroes of the story. Jason is basically the eyes and ears of the film. When we first meet him, he is filming a cheesy scene for his Mummy movie. A woman in a skimpy white dress is chased through the woods by a heavily bandaged mummy. Eventually, poor direction and lack of decent make up effects halts the scene, but Jason keeps the camera rolling as we meet the rest of the crew, who all seem to fit into some skimpy level of characterization. Along with the girl in the diaphanous dress, Tracy, we meet Tony, the Brooklyn trash mouth Doubting Thomas of the group. We have Elliot, the presumably geeky sound guy with long hair and glasses. We also meet Jason’s college instructor Maxwell. Romero goes overboard to insure we understand Maxwell is a drunk as he quickly takes a swig from a flask he keeps hidden no less than three times in the course of a page. In short order, we also meet Gordo (no defining characteristics), Ridley (rich twat), and Francine (looks good in overalls? Is that a stereotype?). Romero takes this moment to comment on zombie movies in general with something I would like to address. When the Mummy character in the movie within the movie moves too quickly, Jason chides him saying, “How many times do I have to tell you? Dead things don’t move fast! You’re a corpse, for chrissake! If you try to run that fast, your ankles are gonna snap off!” This is obviously a backhanded jab at the Dawnremake (or even the stunning 28 Days Later), but I have to bring up something that really irks me about this. If this is Romero’s definitive vision of how zombies would behave, then in Land of the Dead, why do we have a zombie operating a damn jackhammer?!? I hope this petty line gets cut. JFC: OMG, you missed the point entirely. Yes, he’s knocking the recent “fast moving zombie” craze, but he’s also setting up a key moment later in the film. LL: All the characters are quickly consumed with news over the radio about the dead returning to life to terrorize the living. Francine and Ridley quickly leave in order to get back to Ridley’s parents’ sprawling estate where they are guaranteed security and supplies, enough to outlast the coming tumult. Jason on the other hand wants to find his girlfriend, Debra, and get the hell out of Dodge. This leads to the group headed out into the harsh new world in their van to try and get Debra back to her parents. The set up is a sound one for any movie, but events are heightened by the sense that we are not watching paid actors in their roles, but instead real people dealing with an extraordinary situation. The point of view from Jason’s camera does an amazing job of humanizing the characters, and this is only in print! The best part about this script is that, despite the fact that Blair Witch apparently now owns the concept of first person horror, Diary is a totally different type of film. The movie is basically structured around three set pieces each involving the main characters going into a spooky home and having to deal with the consequences. If it sounds a tad repetitive to you, you’d be right, but I think that might have been the point. As I mentioned earlier, Romero really tries to hammer away at some secret agenda about social injustice in each of his films. Diary is no different. In this case Romero seems to be tackling the desensitization to violence we are all exposed to because of the preponderance of the media in our lives. And we aren’t just talking about the news and reality shows here. The movie almost seems to follow the structure of a video game. The characters quickly have to adapt to their surroundings, and the repetitive set pieces only reinforce their leveling-up. The group starts out as a group of skeptical naïfs, but they are quickly forced to use their wits and resources in order to survive the new world they live in. What makes the idea of over-saturation of media interesting here is that the main character becomes obsessive about keeping his camera rolling at all cost. You are left to wonder, is he documenting all of this for altruistic reasons? So people who find it might benefit from his mission? Or perhaps he can’t grasp what is happening right in front of him, and the only way he can be engaged in this reality is by experiencing it through the monitor on his camera. JFC: I think it’s the latter, personally, and I think it’s brilliant. LL: The first person perspective here should do a lot to enhance the idea, and I am anxious to see if Romero can pull it off. Since Blair Witch managed to remain an effective and creepy ride without the talent of good acting, I am not going to comment on Romero’s propensity to cast bad actors. As long as the cast isn’t too stiff, things should get interesting. I am especially anxious to see who is cast as the professor, Maxwell. The character gets more interesting and less “one note” as the movie progresses and he actually gets to do some zombie killing in a way we haven’t seen before.

[Mr.E]

Good find Geo!!!

[Danny]

if this is really coming out i think its georges big joke people will all go "oh wow i woner what kind of social commentary there si ,maybe its shot like that to show how cameras see us everywere......or somethin' and itll turn out to be an old fashioned gore fest ala evil dead, heres hopeing.

[LouCipherr]

Great find, thanks for posting. ...but the big difference between Land and Dawn or Day is that he staffed the film with a group of talented actors who had charisma and took the material seriously enough to keep me engaged. The problem I have is, with a quote like the one above, how can we take this woman seriously?!

[creepntom]

please do not shoot a snot scene

[bassman]

Sounds good and all....but I'm alittle confused. Is the ENTIRE film going to be shot like it's a first person view with a hand-held camera, or will it also incorporate "normal" footage?

[DjfunkmasterG]

THis still sounds retarded, and those two airheads made nothing any easier. I just hope Diary comes out good, or he scraps it in favor of doing WORLD of the DEAD. he has already done a zombie uprising film, suprised he is doing another. I dunno I smell BS.

[jim102016]

To hear about Diary of the Dead right after getting the jist of what the upcoming Day remake will be about kind of bums me out. In fact, I'm pretty disappointed. Like going fishing and coming back an old tire, a severe hangover and a public urination citation from the Fish and Wildlife people. Nothing wrong with Romero re-discovering his roots, but I was of hoping for some good news to balance out the stinker that Day 07' may become. What about all that talk about a sequel to Land of the Dead with some of the same characters? What about the next installment to an original series which George created from nothing, to which others have spent millions of dollars to try and bend over backwards to imitate since the hay-day of the hippie generation? It's a shame we don't have a direct line, or a cold-war era Washington-Moscow "Hot Line" with George Romero to figure out just what is going on in his head. I for one would sure as hell like to know. As die hard fans of his movies before any of these half-ass remakes and rip-offs about vegetarian zombies, we are due an explanation. I'll give any of his projects the benefit of a doubt, but its nice to reward loyalty by keeping your friends on the level.

[Trencher]

This sounds great!

[Geophyrd]

Look, its unfortunate that someone chose to use the Blair Witch analogy as applied to this movie. But even George's failures (Bruiser which was nearly unwatchable, Season of the Witch) are usually interesting if only for a lesson in what could have been. I didn't hate Land of the Dead. In fact, I've watched it a couple of times (one in the movies, twice in hotels and over last weekend on my ReplayTV). It was a pretty good flick. I agree that George usually casts poorly. Usually his leads are pretty good (particularly in Day of the Dead) but everyone else is clearly non-professional. If I ran into that guy from the TV from Dawn 79, I'd smack him. But in Land, his actors were very professional. John Leguizamo is a terrific actor (you should see his stage shows in NY if you get a chance. He's really good) and Simon, Asia (who I could happily watch for two hours standing still, looking bored so long as she was in some stage of undress) and even Dennis Hopper were all good. Goes to show, knowing how to direct non-actors to semi-competence works even better with good actors. It just really ups the costs... But I'll go see Diary of the Dead (admit it, so will you and probably kvetching every step of the way from now till then and then some more) and at worst, I'll have wasted a couple of hours. At best, it will join the pantheon of cool flicks that I go back and rewatch several times and mention in forums every once in a while when the next one comes up. I have to admit, like poor ailing Roger Ebert, I've seen them kill zombies in every possible way. I mean everything. I've seen 'em shot, stabbed, decapitated (by helicopter in one memorable circumstance), bashed, stomped, etc. I'm getting a little tired of it (although I just bought Dead Rising for my Xbox 360 and, after looking at the manual last night, I suspect my current fatigue with watching zombies bite it will be nothing compared to what it will be in 6 months) I'm kind of digging on the fact that George is trying something new and I look forward to it. Ok, flame me, rep me or ignore...on to my day. Vivat!

[Tullaryx]

This project will end up with people either loving it or hating it. And I think GAR wouldn't care either way. This may be his way of exorcising the time he had to deal with the studio heads with Land. From what I've seen so far on details for Diary it almost seem like it could be a chapter straight out of World War z.

[EvilNed]

After reading that bit, I think it sounds pretty good. The initial stages of an outbreak have always been the most fascinating for me, and to me we haven't seen enough of that. In Night of the Living Dead, we saw a bunch of survivors holding up in a farmhouse, far from civilization. We didn't see anything of the outside world. In Dawn, we saw some of it in the first twenty minutes. But none after that. In Day, nothing. The same in Land. The Dawn remake, the first ten minutes (including the news montage) was the best, after that the film derailed and didn't reach that high again. 28 Days Later? None! This film will be centered on the outbreak, and the only outbreak. There'll probably be no jumping from Day 1 to Day 12, it'll just stay at Day 1. The initial reaction of the people, what's happening around them, how society crumbles. We actually never really saw that, except for the tidbits in the Dawn films. An entire film of it will probably please me for good. Then I'd like to see a film set FAR after a zombie outbreak. Maybe 10 years after it. Land was close, but I want to go even farther.

[Maitreya]

Yea... I'd have to agree, especially after watching the intro credits to Dawn 2004 and the "We Interrupt This Program" special on the DVD is when I became interested in the beginnings of the outbreak. Seeing the fear and confusion in the streets/individual people's stories as the hours pass is what I've always wanted. Now I know there's a dozen "Beginning of the outbreak" movies, but most of them will be centered in a very small area, I want to see the general streets, those newscasts... The first few, sorta like the stories in the fiction section (1 becomes 2, painkiller, 2 becomes 4). I think this will help to satisfy that primal urge of all zombie-lovers (aside from the, "What the **** caused it?")

[AssassinFromHell]

Poor casting tendencies? Who the hell was the one who casted Mehki Phiffer?

[jim102016]

Try as I might, I just do not understand the point of watching a GAR film through a teenager's camera... One could easily get some priceless inspiration and fresh ideas from reading some of the great stories that have been and continue to be posted in the Fiction section of this website. There are so many different angles, ideas, perspectives and view points to have a film that is primarily aimed at the initial devistation that I'm confused to why GAR would want to film it in a "Blair Witch" type atmosphere? I'd dump those IPod snot noses in favor of maybe a story told from the view point of some suburban or even small city police force? If anyone has ever spent a night in a police car (I have), you know there is plenty of excitement even without the living dead falling out into the road! I'm now excited at the prospect that Romero might be capturing what he glanced over in his other movies....but at the same time....disappointed at the way he's going about it. Walk toward the Light, George!