IN AN ABATTOIR LONG, LONG AGO...
Back in the dim old fog of 1984 (anybody remember George Orwell?) a friend of mine who shall remain nameless---so sorry, Bill!---managed to snag himself a job with George Romero, who had just embarked upon the filming of his latest gutmuncher, DAY OF THE DEAD, ostensibly to put to rest the shambling nightmare of the living dead that he had unearthed in 1968 with his seminal classic, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and chillingly intensified with lurid schrecknicolor ®fjackerman in 1976's DAWN OF THE DEAD.
Needless to say, when I heard about it, I freaked!
DAWN... was easily one of my all-time favorite horror films and the very thought that I actually knew someone who was aiding and abetting the creation of a follow-up was too much for one human being to bear---at least, this human being!
I had to be in this film!
After a few dozen phone calls back and forth to Casting, a date was set; and so, in the wee, small hours of November 31, 1984, I and Melissa (my future wife) and Steve (my employee and close buddy) set off for Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. We pulled into the Beaver Falls Motel ("Where Jesus is Lord") around 7 am, rousted my unnamed buddy Bill and his associates from bed, and by 9 am were onsite at the Wampum Industrial Facility in (where else?) Wampum, Pennsylvania, dying to get on with the show. Figuratively speaking, of course.
Within a few hours, we were checked in, had signed our official extras releases (in case we were eaten alive, I suppose), made up and ready to shamble.
We spent the next twelve hours waiting to do our scene!
It was a true immersion into working cinema. "Hurry up and wait." Half a dozen times we were told we were about to go to work, and half a dozen times we were told to relax, our scene had been bumped back. We watched videos, we ate our bag lunches, we gossiped and kvetched with our fellow undead, we scrounged for autographs, we napped. It was sheer hell and we loved every minute of it.
Around ten or so the call came, and it wasn't a false alarm.
For the next long while, our decrepit, festering, drooling sepulchre of zombie extras staggered down hallways and through doorways, gnawed on bloody bones and squabbled over dripping entrails, and did whatever other vile and despicable acts were asked of us by our director, George A. Romero.
We were as dead as dead could be. And as hungry.
My own zombie(about 48k) had nought but a sloppy legbone to work upon, and try as I might, I couldn't fit it through my facemask. I was doomed to starve, which in retrospect was excellent preparation for the life of an actor. And my future wife got a prescient look at what shopping at the Mall can do to a living dead girl(about 53k). The highlight of our experience had to be the epicurean delight of "eating Steel."(about 54k)
To make a long story somewhat shorter, filming was wrapped, and we were cleaned up and back at the motel at some dark and terrible hour, exhausted but very, very satisfied with ourselves. The next day,I was up and at it again---Melissa and Steve were too beat to join me (and wipe those filthy ideas right out of your tawdry little minds!)---so I was the only one to enjoy a visit to Saviniland(about 70k), the central make-up and effects room at the site. I was treated to spook-tacular ®fjackerman vistas of pre-formed scars and wounds of all sorts (mass-produced sheets emblazoned with the logo, Zombies-R-Us), a dessicated zombie baby (seen very briefly in the finished film), Greg (Savini-righthand-guy-and-future-effects-wizard) Nicotero's severed head, and the infamous Dr. Tongue (about 13k), a legendary special-effects creation that still stands without peer in the horror field. I was even considered for possible use as a "headshot" zombie, but failed the litmus test of not having thick enough hair. Ah, well...
My second zombie--a "collar" zombie (if you've seen the film, you'll know what I mean)--actually made it past the cutting room floor and has some visible screen time. A good five seconds, if not more. What a deal!
What does this all mean, you may ask?
Well, other than being a thrill of a lifetime (and did I mention meeting the world-famous NRBQ, who had driven straight in from a gig on the East Coast to do their own bit as zombie extras), I credit the experience with giving me the chutzpah and the ambition to audition for a production of The Elephant Man a few months after DAY... was released, an action that inevitably led to a long and rewarding "life in the theater," for which I am undyingly grateful. Pun much cherished.
Okay, okay, so it was nearly a year later. I needed some time to warm up. Study the sides, so to speak.
It was a start!
And that, gentle reader, explains the rather cryptic nom de plume that I adopted for this page, way back when I first plopped it onto geocities® ...
ZOMBIE 'R' I !!
And you thought it had something to do with Pinocchio?
Or...hockey.
You guys....!! C'moooon...
And as thanks for reading this far, here's
a link to the coolest site on the web about the
Romero Zombie Mythos.................
as well as the coolest site devoted to Day of the Dead.....
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