Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse – Exclusive Set Visit Interview: Christopher Landon
We caught up with director Christopher Landon last year, right around the time his horror hit Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones was out in theaters. Rather than basking in the box-office afterglow, Landon was hard at work on the set of Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.
Intense night shoots, working with child actors, dealing with elaborate makeups, overseeing stunts involving fire, cars, and cats, blood soaked strippers, plus zombie hordes, hadn’t flagged Landon’s enthusiasm one bit, even deep into the shoot – here’s what he had to say about all those things, and more.
Dread Central: How much fun can you have with horror style when you’ve got to take into consideration the comedy too?
Christopher Landon: It’s pretty stylized but in a way that it’s funny. We keep saying that we’re actually making an 80s movie. I describe it as a gory R-rated version of The Goonies.
DC: Did your young cast even know what The Goonies is?
CL: It was required viewing when we started out, and there were a few other things that I wanted them to watch. I think it just has that kind of old school quality to it, only we have those zombie strippers and stretched out old zombie dicks and all sorts of [crazy stuff].
DC: How did you come on board to direct this?
CL: I read the script and I automatically fell in love with the characters. What I loved about the movie so much was that even though it’s this big type of zombie epic, ultimately it’s really about friendship. It’s about these three guys who over the course of one night found out why their friendship means so much to them. Every movie that I write or work on, the characters always come first and if there isn’t some sort of relatable emotional story to connect with I’m not interested. I think good horror and good comedy works when you have characters that you care about, and so that’s what hooked me. Then for me it was just about the gore, because the older version of the script was really fun but they were trying to go PG-13 and it never going to happen. I’m a big horror fan and when I see a zombie movie I want to gore, I want to see guts and all that stuff because it’s fun. That was a big part of the challenge rewriting the script for me, it was just really like concentrating on aging it up that way, of sort of ramping up the set pieces because the other thing that I wanted to do when I read the script was, I wanted to make it an action movie. Now it’s a full-blown action movie; there is this wall to wall set piece, and they’re really fun.
Related Story: Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse – Exclusive Set Visit Interview: Tony Gardner
DC: Should the genre fiends be looking for any type of Easter eggs as homages to other zombie movies?
CL: You know, it’s funny: I have one really fun Easter egg in the movie because John Carpenter is one of my heroes and there is a John Carpenter Easter egg in the movie. We talked about cameos and we talked about how do we invite a ton of different people to be in the movie, but a part of me was like, ‘No.’ I just wanted it to be its own thing because as much as I love a good cameo, it still takes you out of the movie no matter what; you stop and you go ‘Oh, there’s so and so’ and then you go back into the movie and I didn’t want that to happen.
DC: Can you talk about your decision to go primarily practical with the effects verses CG?
CL: It was again going back to the spirit of what we wanted; we wanted to do this old school, and for me that is practical. I just think practical effects are better, still, and I have so much respect for the digital world and how much they can do, but I feel like there’s just something really cool about going that direction. There’s stuff that people will see in this movie and I’m not going to be specific about it because I don’t want to spill anything, but there is stuff that people are going to see and go ‘Wow.’ It will clearly be a practical effect, but it’s on purpose. We want people to go to that Gremlins place and go to that old school vibe and so that was a big part of it for us; it was making sure that we had that. Our DP Brandon Trost was amazing. When he and I were working together and brain storming together, we kept talking about all this stuff and so literally the lenses that we’re shooting the movie on right now is awesome old effects lenses that they shot Poltergeist on.
SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
Left to right: Sarah Dumont plays Denise, Tye Sheridan plays Ben and Logan Miller plays Carter in SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE from Paramount Pictures.
Photo credit: Jaimie Trueblood
© 2015 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
DC: What’s your balance in the film between the horror and the comedy?
CL: The obvious one, because I just mentioned it, is I think Gremlins. Gremlins is kind of a cool reference because it had some fun with the scares but I think it is much more of a comedy. I think this movie is more of a comedy, but we have a lot of good scares and they come from the Paranormal Activity world; I’m still a big fan of still delivering some really good jump scares, stuff to really get people, and the great thing about humour is that it disarms people and so there’s some stuff in here that’s really unexpected in scares, but they just go hand in hand with the comedy.
DC: We know that you have zombies that are sticking to their former professions…
CL: Exactly. The strippers.
DC: …but do you have hero zombies; like, one zombie that is pursuing your leads throughout the film?
CL: We have one zombie who is actually the scout leader, David Koechner. He can’t get a break, but he keeps pursuing our characters over and over again. It’s kind of funny because it seems as if, yes, he’s out to eat them but I also have this weird thing in my head where he’s drawn to them because of his connection to these guys and so that’s how he keeps finding his way to them. He’s awesome in the movie. I can’t wait for people to see him.
SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
Left to right: Tye Sheridan plays Ben, Joey Morgan plays Augie, Logan Miller plays Carter and Sarah Dumont plays Denise in SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE from Paramount Pictures.
Photo credit: Jaimie Trueblood
© 2015 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
DC: What is your approach to the zombies?
CL: There’s a couple things that I think we did differently in this movie. I think first and foremost is that we actually gave our zombies personalities. I wanted them to have ties to their former selves and not just be mindless wandering. We have those when it’s like horrid situations where obviously they’re being pursued by a lot of zombies, it goes to that which is traditional and it should be. But they have these one on one encounter with zombies that are completely original and funny; one of them is the stripper, and there’s the homeless zombie. They interact with the zombies in a way that is not typical and that’s one thing, and then we have zombie animals which is really funny.
DC: We’ve heard about the cats.
CL: Yeah, we have zombie cats. There’s a neighbour who lives next door to Carter, her name is Miss Fielder, played by Cloris Leachman, and Cloris ends up being attacked by the cats; they turn her into a zombie and then there is a whole zombie attack scene.
DC: Where do you shine in this film? Would people look at this and say there is Chris’s strength?
CL: Again, I think the strength for me is even if you go back and look at the Paranormal Activity (movies) especially the last one, I like humour, I love to bring comedy into my world. I just think that they go well together, and so I think that we really deliver. I feel like I’m bringing the humour but also I’m just proud of making a movie that feels like something that I watched when I was a kid. I’ve missed these movies; I feel like they’re not being made anymore and I think everything is either $5 million and small or its gigantic tentpole, and we’ve lost the spirit. I’m really grateful that Paramount wants to go back and to take this chance and to make a movie that I think that audiences really want to see but they are just not getting. I think we’re going to have a great time on this; it is really funny and scary.
SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
Left to right: Logan Miller plays Carter, Tye Sheridan plays Ben and Joey Morgan plays Augie in SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE from Paramount Pictures.
Photo credit: Jaimie Trueblood
© 2015 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
DC: How was Tye Sheridan cast as Ben? And your other scouts?
CL: I saw Mud when I was on the plane, and really didn’t know much about the movie [but] I saw this kid, and so as soon as I got the script it was, like, ‘That’s person that I want to work with, and I was really nervous about casting him; not nervous about him, but more worried about him not wanting to do it because he does have these awesome indies with the finest directors on planet earth, and so I was like ‘Shoot, he’s never going to do this’. So he read it and he called me right away and said he loved the script and it was crazy and fun. I’m really grateful because he’s awesome and it’s so different, nobody has seen him like this, he’s so funny but he also brings an emotional depth that I know that Ben needed to have to anchor the movie. Then Logan Miller’s awesome; he’s just like a professional comedian, everything he does is funny but he does it with honesty. It’s not too over the top he just hits the right note, and Carter is such a tricky character because he’s a bit of an asshole but you don’t want to be too much of an asshole, you want to still like him and so he brings a certain kind of heart to it that’s critical. Then Joseph Morgan; he’s self-taped. He lives in Chicago, he’s never done anything and our casting directors said ‘Hey, you should check this kid out,’ and I watched him. I looked at the casting directors and I was like ‘This is the guy for sure’ and so we set up a screen test for him, and I was really nervous because he was going to be working with these other guys who were seasoned; they have done tons of movies and have been working their whole lives. We did the screen test with him and he just killed it. I showed it to the studio and they flipped out over him, so it was a no brainer for him and their chemistry is great. They’re best friends and I think that it really shows that they’re genuinely close off camera, which has been nice. I was nervous at first because you’re wondering, ‘What if they hate each other?’ but you’ll never know with people so, we started organising these little day trips and things for them to do together, and they just clicked and that was perfect.
SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
Left to right: Logan Miller plays Carter and Joey Morgan plays Augie in SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE from Paramount Pictures.
Photo credit: Jaimie Trueblood
© 2015 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
DC: What are you thinking about for the score?
CL: I want something that’s kind of big and that does throw back to that old school style, because I think it will work. We have some scenes in the movie that requires 80s vibe to it, but yeah: big and loud.
DC: What’s the key to surviving all night shoots?
CL: It was just like urgency, on crack. It’s hard, it’s the transitioning in the beginning and it’s funny because we all became zombies, which is fitting. Then you start to get used to it and then you drink a lot of coffee, you don’t sleep a lot. I think we all operated on four hours per night, and it is what it is but the whole cast [is] so dedicated and I couldn’t be luckier in that right.
DC: How has it been to direct the zombie hordes?
SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
Left to right: Tye Sheridan plays Ben, Logan Miller plays Carter and Sarah Dumont plays Denise in SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE from Paramount Pictures.
Photo credit: Jaimie Trueblood
© 2015 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
CL: We have a zombie choreographer; Mark is awesome and he has been the one to really wrangle. It’s big because you’re working with extras, some are good and some have never done it before, and so it’s an education. I’ve got no worry. He had to teach me how to do a zombie walk so that I could get into it, and I had to go and get the contact lenses and put them in my eyes. I wanted to feel what everybody else was going to experience before they did it so that I could at least speak from a place of knowledge. I’m surprised that they weren’t terrible to wear, you just can’t see anything but it’s been funny working with them. They’re great, it’s amazing that these people would come out and spend all night with us and run around and fall down and do all kinds of crazy stuff and do it because they love being zombies. It’s kind of crazy to me. I’m a big fan of getting my hands dirty and when I get to smash things I try to smash them myself first and its fun. There’s a lot of blood in the movie, but its funny blood so it’s okay. I’m squeamish when it comes to the real stuff. I have horror movies that I’ve watched, and had to close my eyes because it’s too much for me.
DC: On that note, how hard an R are you hoping for?
CL: There’s so many tits and there’s so much blood and stuff in this movie, that there’s no chance that we are not a hard R. There’s a couple things in here that might get us in a little bit of trouble, but it’s good stuff.
SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
Sarah Dumont plays Denise in SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE from Paramount Pictures.
Photo credit: Jaimie Trueblood
© 2015 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Directed by Christopher Landon (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones), the film stars Tye Sheridan (X-Men: Apocalypse), Patrick Schwarzenegger, Logan Miller (The Stanford Prison Experiment), Joey Morgan, Sarah Dumont (Don John), Halston Sage (Neighbors), one of our all time favorites – Cloris Leachman (Young Frankenstein), and David Koechner (Anchorman).
Look for it in theatres on October 30, 2015.
Synopsis:
Three Scouts and lifelong friends join forces with one bad-ass cocktail waitress to become the world’s most unlikely team of heroes. When their peaceful town is ravaged by a zombie invasion, they’ll fight for the badge of a lifetime and put their scouting skills to the test to save mankind from the undead.
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