Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on August 19, 2004, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
As part of KNB EFX Group, Greg Nicotero has been in the special makeup business for nearly two decades, and worked on dozens of horror films large and small. Yet at the recent HorrorFind Weekend convention in Maryland, the one KNB project that both fans and Fango wanted to know most about was one that hasn’t even started shooting yet: George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead. The fourth chapter in the writer/director’s classic zombie saga will roll this fall for release in 2005—just in time for the 20th anniversary of the saga’s last installment, Day of the Dead—and Nicotero and his KNB cohorts are already hard at work on the multitude of required makeup FX.
The number-one question regarding the project has to be: Considering that Land, unlike its unrated predecessors, will undoubtedly have to be an R-rated theatrical release, will Romero’s signature graphic visuals have to be toned down? Will fans get to see the extreme sights they’re accustomed to? “Without a doubt,” Nicotero answers the latter question. “George has already expressed to me that, whether it means that there will be an unrated DVD edition vs. a regular [theatrical] cut—and I’m sure ratings will come into it—he wants to pull out all the stops. There will be an unrated version; whether it’ll play theatrically or just be released on DVD, I don’t know. But we’ve already been doing zombie feasting tests, and it’s like, ‘OK, how do we do this in one take?’ The whole goal is to push the envelope, because I’m not only working on this film, I’m excited to be the first guy in the audience to see it.”
With that excitement comes the challenge of living up to an FX legacy that has served as a benchmark for the presentation of ghouls and gore. “We have a big task ahead of us,” he says, “because there have been a lot of movies, and everyone’s gonna expect these zombies to be something we haven’t seen before. People still come up to me and tell me that Day of the Dead [on which Nicotero assisted Tom Savini] is the pinnacle of zombie makeup effects, so we have to look at what I helped create with Tom and improve on that. It’s about changing the color palette, and the idea of what the zombies look like; the joke was always that when you become one, your eyebrows disappear, because on Day we’d put the foam appliances on them and that was it! So we’re trying to get away from the deep, dark-socketed eyes of the standard ghoul, and build up other aspects.
“There are also going to be a lot of puppet heads, similar to things we did on Army of Darkness, where we built full-body, articulated creatures,” he continues. “We’re going to use CGI to erase the puppeteers so that every zombie you see is a practical effect. We don’t want to do CG zombies; I don’t want to remove people’s faces digitally. I want to do it for real, and George has basically said, as we’ve gone through the screenplay, ‘Greg, I’d like 10 or 12 zombie gags that people are going to look at and say, “How did they do that?” ’ My goal is to create characters that, 20 years from now, people will come to a convention with a photo of that zombie and want me to sign it.”
Yes, he said “characters,” revealing that in Land, the undead won’t just be mindless hordes. Instead, Romero’s new scenario incorporates “four or five featured zombies” who will be brought to life as much through performance as via makeup. “That’s part of George’s storytelling arc,” Nicotero says, “that these zombies become—not superintelligent, but they aren’t just walking around chomping on people. It’s taking the groundwork that Howard Sherman laid [as experimental ghoul Bub in Day] and building on that. They’re casting for those now, and of course there’ll be mass cattle calls for zombies; in Toronto, we already have a lot of people with experience being zombies, ’cause they shot the Dawn of the Dead remake there.”
As previously reported, among the ghoul extras will be Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg—creators of the upcoming horror/comedy Shaun of the Dead, which Nicotero can’t praise enough (“it’s absolutely my favorite film of the year”)—while Romero-film stalwart Savini will have a featured acting role. “And I’m quite sure that there are gonna be days on set” when Savini will contribute to the FX here and there, Nicotero says, recalling his experiences on Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn, on which KNB supplied FX and Savini played the character Sex Machine. “Robert kept saying, ‘You gotta do one gag, come on!’ ” Nicotero recalls. “ ‘You have to do a blood effect, just for fun!’ Tom is a born performer, he loves acting, and he’s also a great makeup effects artist, and we tried to coax him to do stuff on Dusk Till Dawn, ’cause Robert was like, ‘I want to see the master in action!’ I’m sure that we will convince Tom to pump blood on something for Land.”
The details of Romero’s Land screenplay are being kept tightly under wraps for now, but Nicotero is able to share a few hints about the direction of the storyline, which once again ties in to current affairs. “At this point in the story, the zombies are the majority, and we’re taking up where we left off with Bub, who was the first ghoul we saw with a hit of intelligence,” he reveals. “They’ve basically taken over, but there are still bands of [surviving] humans, and the story is all about their existence. It’s intriguing how George has still been able to inject social relevance to today’s culture, which is what made Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead so important, in terms of social commentary. This one is going to be about greed and selfishness and money, and how that drives everyone. George’s movies are always about one part of society consuming another, whether it’s consumerism or wealth and power, and we’re definitely going to stick with that.”
The artist also reveals that earlier drafts of the script, back when it was called Dead Reckoning, might have hewed a little too close to recent events. “This was pre-9/11,” Nicotero explains, “and some of the things that happened in the finale of the original draft had to do with skyscrapers and helicopters and things. So George’s first rewrite was like, ‘Well, that’s kind of insensitive, I’m going to have to change that around a little bit.’ So he’s been rewriting and rewriting, and what I’ve found amazing is that usually, when you get a script and they keep changing it, the revisions feel like a fleshed-out skeleton that has more and more meat picked away from its bones, but it’s the exact opposite with this movie. Every draft that I’ve read has been a little better, and feels more and more like the film everyone’s expecting from George.”
Land of the Dead isn’t the only project to keep the KNB team busy this year. Nicotero’s partner Howard Berger is in the midst of the epic fantasy adaptation The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (“He’s been in New Zealand since the end of May, and he’s going to be there until January”); the company recently wrapped up work on Dark Castle’s House of Wax, collaborating with Australian artist Jason Baird, as they did on the previous Dark Castle flick Ghost Ship; and Nicotero just spent three and a half months in Austin, TX reteaming with Rodriguez on Sin City, based on the comics favorite by Frank Miller (who is co-directing with Rodriguez).
“That was an unbelievable experience,” Nicotero raves. “We were able to realize Frank’s character designs on Mickey Rourke, Benicio del Toro, Bruce Willis… People were so interested in being involved that they were coming to us, saying, ‘I want to wear makeup, ’cause I want to look like the guy in the comic book!’ ”
The artist is equally enthusiastic about his crew: “I couldn’t be more proud of the people at KNB; I could spend 10 minutes naming all of them,” he says. “Chris Nelson, Jake Garber, Gino Crognale—these guys have absolutely elevated the quality of the work that comes out of our shop. It’s not one person’s individual achievement, its everybody’s involvement.” And now they’re poised to make a bloody splash with what can only be seen as a makeup FX artist’s dream project. “All I can say when people ask about my feelings on Land of the Dead is, 20 years ago this month, I was having my head cast to be a zombie in Day of the Dead, and now I’m doing George’s new movie,” Nicotero says. “As far as I’m concerned, my career has come full circle. And it has been great. I couldn’t be more delighted or enthusiastic.”
