Our interview with Brendan Hay about all things zombie comes to a grisly conclusion. Brendan was a headline producer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and a contributing writer for America: The Book. More recently, he’s written for The Simpsons, Frank TV, and The Mighty B! A lifelong comic book fan, Brendan also wrote and created the mini-series Scream Queen for BOOM! Studios and is writing BOOM!’s newest series, Eureka, as well as an original graphic novel for Oni Press, due out in 2010. He also co-wrote the book Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? Brendan resides in Los Angeles with his wife, playwright and freelance writer Jennifer Chen, and their three-legged cat, Bentley.
DL: Why are humans so stupid in these movies, almost as stupid as the zombies?
BH: In a good movie, it’s too show how we as a people will keep dying until we all learn how to get along, or how its human nature to self-destruct, or some other thematic reason central to the film’s larger message.
In a bad movie, it’s because of poor writing.
DL: Why should Joe the Plumber be interested in zombie films?
BH: Well, the actual Joe the Plumber should be interested because he’s the type of character who’d meet a horrific comeuppance in most zombie movies. As for the average American, it’s up to them. We’re all afraid of something; for some folks it’s zombies, for others its ghosts, and yet others it’s deadly traps involving a saw. My only request is that people watch more horror movies. Horror is as rich and varied as any other genre, yet it tends to unfairly be ghettoized as “trash.”
DL: I recently saw a LEGO zombie film on YouTube. Is there a zombie film that hasn’t been made? One you’d like to see?
BH: I’m still waiting for a movie that mashes-up zombies with the killer animal genre (Jaws, Cujo, etc.). Say, maybe, zombie squirrels and zombie pigeons taking over Manhattan?
DL: Are zombies simply misunderstood dead people with an appetite?
BH: Ah, I see you’ve been reading those pamphlets from the Association for the Advancement of Undead Americans (AAUA). I do think zombies get a bad rap. They’re only following their undead instincts! Blame nature, not zombies!
DL: Or a mad scientist with a syringe full of mysterious glowing green fluid--
BH: Ah, yes! Jeffrey Combs, the actor in Re-Animator. He just owns that movie. So creepy but funny and charismatic, one of those performances where you can't believe he wasn't in more movies afterwards.
DL: Speaking of creepy, Rob Zombie, a zombie?
BH: Hmm… his Halloween remake was a walking corpse of a movie, so the argument could be made that he is. However, since he also revived the long-dead vibe of morally ambiguous 1970s American horror movies in his excellent film The Devil’s Rejects, I think he’s technically more of a necromancer.
Brendan Hay’s top five zombie films
Night of the Living Dead – George Romero is the master and this is, in my opinion, his best mix of scares and social commentary. That little girl at the end haunted me for weeks afterwards.
Dawn of the Dead –Romero’s return to the genre is darker, with far more disturbing observations on human nature, yet also more fun, with a sick sense of humor and groundbreaking gore effects.
Re-Animator – Stuart Gordon’s darkly funny, loose adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft offers a zombiefied take on obsession. It features possibly my single favorite edit in any movie (at least on par with 2001’s bone-into-spaceship cut).
Shawn of the Dead – Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost create a hysterical portrait of arrested development, then sets it against the only creatures lazier than their lead characters: zombies.
Dead Alive – Peter Jackson’s splatter-rific horror comedy deserves a spot just for inventing the best fake animal name ever, the Sumatran Rat Monkey. The fact that there’s also a solid story about a man and his overbearing mother only helps.
