In the first part of our interview with Night of the Living Dead: Origins director Zebediah de Soto, he shared why he decided to take on a 3-D animated, re-envisioning of George A. Romero's classic. We were curious, given the number of remakes already on record, what would audiences expect from Night of the Living Dead: Origins? We were pleasantly surprised by De Soto's answers.
HAZ: Where did the title, “Origins” come from?
Zebediah de Soto: You know, that is a really fucked up story that I’m not even going to answer. How dare you sir! This interview is over!
HAZ: Wll it be better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine?
de Soto: You know what! That was a fucking work of art! How dare you?! That is our generation’s Citizen Kane. [laughs] Actually, we were just talking about that in the office last week. We had a big argument about the pros and the cons of that movie. Pro being I like Liev Schreiber in that movie.
HAZ: Why did you decide to move the story to NY?
de Soto: Well I wanted to have a larger body count. I wanted to see an epic zombie movie. Like if you ever read any Max Brooks book like World War Z... we have never seen that. We’ve read about it in fan fictions and the like but we’ve never had the chance to see it on the big screen. That is something I really wanted to do. One of the coolest things about the first Resident Evil… I don’t know if everybody is a fan or not a fan… but at the very end of the movie when Milla Jovovich reaches the surface, you know, when she comes out of the hospital, the camera just keeps pulling back to this bird’s eye view of the city and you see this destruction.. it’s like fuck, man, I really wish I could have seen that part of the movie. And that was kind of like the feeling I had about the original Night of the Living Dead.
They describe these really amazing scenes but you never get to see them. And I thought, fuck it, I want to bring the original story out but I also want to show stuff we didn’t get to see.
Like the Coopers. Cooper is sitting there arguing with Ben going back and forth, back and forth. He says, “I told you, these things flipped over my car”… It’s elements like that which we didn’t see. You know, they’re stuck on the street. There are a million people running around. And their car gets overturned by a bunch of zombies and their daughter gets bitten. What was that scene? What would it be like to be in that car? What would it be like to see the entire street overtaken by these things? What would it be like, from Coopers perspective, to get bitten? What would he feel like? Why was Cooper such a dick? Was he really a dick or was he a man losing his family? Losing every element of control he ever had in his life? There area really interesting little things that are hinted around in the original. At one point, Cooper slaps his wife in the basement and you saw that there was something going on behind that, you know?
HAZ: I know what you mean. There is a hidden story there. The original Night of the Living Dead is more like a stage production in that capacity. It is limited in what you can really understand with the back story and motivation of key characters in that film.
de Soto: Exactly! In the original film, Ben talks about trying to get back to his family. Where is his family? What was he doing by himself? Why didn’t he drive directly home? Ben and Cooper always seemed like the yin and yang to me in terms of their relationship. They were both fighting for the exact same thing. They’re both fighting for their families. They both had the same motivation but different methods on how to solve the problem or accomplishing those goals. I always thought that was fascinating.
And Tom and Judy... they barely touched on it but what was their relationship? Why were they out by that lake? It’s little elements like that. So, all I did was, in terms of the story, change the location and show some things we didn’t get to see in the original while maintaining the original story. Just expanding on it.
HAZ: In your version is Barbara a feeble liability or a kick ass zombie killer?
de Soto: I’ll just say this, Barbara is Barbara. I don’t think she was a feeble liability in the original. I have some interesting perspectives. When I looked at Barbara in the original she seemed like someone that suffered from some type of post traumatic stress. She was really fucked up. But there were some different elements in terms of how she started to relate to Ben and we try to play off on that. Out of all the stories of the original Night of the Living Dead, she was the only one where we got to see how she got from point a to point b. We definitely expand upon that in this movie.
HAZ: Did you see Night of the Living Dead 3D?
de Soto: I have not seen the Sid Haig one completely. I’ve seen parts of it.
HAZ: Obviously, that didn’t intimidate you in any way?
de Soto: Not at all. They’re doing their movie. You know, I’m not here to be next in line to the gang bang for George Romero.... I’m just trying to do something… [laughs] We don’t have to be censored on this right?
HAZ: No.
de Soto: Good because I have a tendency to be swearing. We just did some radio stuff a little while ago here in LA and I could not for the life of me formulate a sentence without saying “fuck” a million times. But, back to my point, I’m not in it for sloppy thirds or seconds. I want to do something that is going to expand and add something new. And I don’t want to take away from what is already there. What is already there is fucking golden. It doesn’t get any more solid than that. I wanted to add something extra to it, something really amazing and give it that extra element. To see some parts of the movie that you didn’t get to see before.
