As some of you know, I am fortunate enough to have a prolific independent film career. My latest acting project is a sequel to a low-budget zombie movie in which I portrayed the heroine, Mary Beth. Like most sequels, the director wanted this movie to be bigger and better than the first, but the only way to accomplish this goal would be to increase the number of zombies, and it seemed a daunting task to find more than the 20 people we managed to scrape together for the climactic final scene of the first movie. The director was just about to give up on his aspirations of eclipsing his first creation, when, by a stroke of luck, local media caught wind of our filming efforts and ran a newspaper article mentioning our zombie shortage. With anticipation, we hoped the article, combined with our avid recruitment efforts, would muster the 50 or 60 zombies we’d been dreaming of.
As it turns out, we grossly underestimated the general public’s interest in portraying a reanimated corpse. In the first 24 hours after the story ran in the paper, the director received 1,300 e-mails, which increased to 2,400 by the end of the week. His inbox was flooded with e-mail after e-mail, each professing the author’s deeply held desire to join the undead fleet. We were ecstatic. Unfortunately, the park we were scheduled to film in had a 300-person maximum capacity, so the director explained to the hopeful zombies via an extremely sympathetic mass e-mail that zombie participation would be on a first-come-first-served basis.
The e-mail also contained a very specific set of instructions, the most important of which was that zombies should under no circumstances wear the color white. This prohibition may seem counter intuitive if you’ve never filmed a zombie movie, because to the unsuspecting zombie, white seems like the perfect color to spatter with fake blood and intestines. However, there’s a little-known phenomenon that people in the independent film business refer to as “white T-shirt syndrome.” By happenstance so consistent that it can only be explained as an evolutionary imperative, any time you tell people to wear old clothing that they don’t mind spattering with fake blood, everyone will show up wearing matching white T-shirts and tank tops, as if they had all coordinated telepathically. And while the coincidence is impressive, it results in a very generic, mundane faction of zombies.
On the big day, people started gathering at 8 a.m., far in advance of the 2 p.m. start time. Soon, zombies started emerging from the make-up tents. There were big zombies, small zombies, young zombies, old zombies, lumber jack zombies, businessmen zombies, punk rocker zombies, zombies in night gowns and curlers, zombies carrying watering cans and gardening sheers, and a host of other undead summer attire. There were zombies from all walks of life, and when one of the zombies fell ill, three doctor zombies rushed to her side, although the ob/gyn left quickly after learning that she was not giving birth. Putting make-up on all 300 zombies took approximately 6 hours, meaning that the “early bird” zombies spent a considerable amount of time in face paint and stick-on latex lacerations, but the group admirably remained in good spirits.
As I spent the day awaiting the preparation of the 300 zombies, it occurred to me that it’s not very often that you see a group of 300 people hanging out in a park with zombie make-up on as if this were an average, every day, run-of-the-mill activity. Sadly, I may never see another cartel of zombies sitting on park benches eating cheeseburgers, and this could be the last time I see a zombie playing on a merry-go-round, but alas, time marches on.
When it finally came time to film and the zombies stood shoulder-to-shoulder in an ominous circle surrounding me and the other survivors, I couldn’t help but feel a bit intimidated by the rogue creatures, even while they performed their thriller impersonations and executed the wave, which surely meant the scene was going to be a success. I was equally impressed when the cameras started rolling and the zombies very dutifully performed the commands that the zombie coordinators barked at them-walk slower, slump your shoulders more, add some soft groaning-all seemed to be going according to plan.
Unfortunately, trouble did arise. When it came time for the zombie’s final command-to gradually collapse once the curse was lifted-every zombie wanted to be the last zombie standing. A collapse that was supposed to last ten seconds or less, drug on for forty-five, despite repeated orders to the contrary. Zombies would stare at one another menacingly, daring the other zombie to maintain their standing position longer, like an undead game of chicken. The zombies weren’t even trying to chase the main actors anymore, and the groans grew audibly louder and distinctly more threatening. All hell was breaking loose on the set of Hell Walks the Earth II.
Eventually, the director was forced to select the “final” zombie, to end the unspoken zombie squabbles, and the zombies adhered reasonably well to this command (although I still suspected that some of them were trying to vie for the position of “second-to-last zombie standing”). All in all, it was a very impressive performance by a very dedicated group of people.
P.S. If you ever gather a group of 300 people together, paint them all with zombie make-up, and keep them captive in a park for 12 hours, expect to spend some time cleaning bloody handprints and footprints off the walls and floor of the park restroom stalls afterwards.