Here’s my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies. I’m generally not a fan of the genre because the primary elements of a zombie movie – gross looking zombies, gory human deaths and spectacular zombie slaughter – just aren’t enough to keep me coming back.
That’s why the best zombie movies are hybrids of another genre. I’ve highlighted five movies that use the framework of the zombie genre to create movies that can stand on their own as comedies or thrillers. Plus they ease off on the gore, which is just fine by me.
The very idea of reanimated dead who must eat live humans is, of course, absurd, and that absurdity can set up some fine film comedy, including Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead, Fido and Warm Bodies. And when you add a first rate filmmaker like Danny Boyle to the mix, you can get a top thriller – 28 Days Later.
Here’s my interview with the writer-director of Fuzz Track City, Steve Hicks.
So many LA detective tales are set in art deco offices and Bel Air estates, but yours is set in the most ordinary neighborhoods and the seediest retail strips. Why did you choose to feature the LA that movie audiences and tourists rarely see?
STEVE HICKS: I live in the San Fernando Valley (area code 818) in Los Angeles County and I wanted to celebrate/exploit the valley’s locale. Personally, I find so much solace and inspiration in The Valley and I wanted to add my cinematic two bits into the mix. The Valley is a most wonderful place…come and see.
The movie’s MacGuffin is an obscure B-side track – which you wrote yourself. Tell me about writing the infectious lick for the rock song “Ricochet” and arranging it for the commercial jingles.
STEVE HICKS: I’m a devout guitar god enthusiast; Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen…etc. These artists transformed my life as an adolescent. Truly. I know riffs–I’ve researched and obsessed over guitar riffs note-for-note…However, as I discovered–I am not a natural guitar player. I studied piano for many years when I was a kid, but that is the extent of my musical prowess…I wrote ‘Ricochet’ out of necessity when I could not find a guitarist that was willing to write riff after riff after riff for no money. It should be noted, however, that I DID NOT perform the song, ‘Ricochet.’ I wrote what should be played, but it was performed with slick shredder excellence by NICK MAYBURY–a tried-and-true guitar master.
How did you select songs for the sound track? It’s a remarkable compendium of pretty good but not popular rock songs.
STEVE HICKS: I felt that the music in FUZZ TRACK CITY should be as a strong and prominent character as the protagonist…In the initial cuts of the film, I used tracks by Bob Seger, Led Zeppelin, Strawberry Alarm Clock–all the while knowing that one day I had to swap them out (for cost/licensing reasons–too much $$$). However, two music libraries that I can’t say enough good things about (APERTURE MUSIC and DeWOLFE MUSIC) helped me find legitimate music tracks from the actual eras from their vaults to redo the film’s song soundtrack. I was able to replace every ‘popular’ tune with songs from their libraries that–in almost every case–I liked better than my original choices. And they could not have been more helpful or more “indie” friendly when it came to negotiate rates. Thanks to APERTURE MUSIC and DeWOLFE MUSIC.
I think that people will note superficial similarities to THE BIG LEBOWSKI? Any thoughts?
STEVE HICKS: I love ‘The Big Lebowski.’ And it definitely influenced me on some level. When I was writing FUZZ TRACK CITY, I was drawn to a throwback and somewhat passive protagonist for whatever reason. I certainly wasn’t trying to compete with the Coen Brothers. Comparisons are inevitable, although I never intended to compete with The Dude. Certainly not. I just wanted to tell my own story in my own way. FUZZ TRACK CITY abides…indeed.
Who decided that Josh Adell would spend the entire movie as Ziggy in his tidy whities? (I think you missed a product placement opportunity from Fruit of the Loom.)
STEVE HICKS: The ‘undie concept’ was Josh’s…I’ve known Josh since we were 10 years old. We met in sixth grade and bonded over our love for “Caddyshack” and “Stripes” and became inseparable friends. We were roommates at NYU for all four years–he was a drama major, I was in film. I’ve made more projects with Josh than I can count. I wrote the part of Ziggy specifically for him and he just ran with it. He’s a very creative guy–kinda out there. In a good way. One night we went to discuss the role and he had only one thing to say: briefs. Inherently, I understood. And so it goes…
Is that you in the photo of the missing Mike Lockwood?
STEVE HICKS: That is me, yes. I was the cheapest and most accessible person to pose for the photo. In fact, I took the photo myself…of myself. And printed it, too. Myself. Low budget filmmaking at its most sincere.
What’s next for FUZZ TRACK CITY? Will there be a wider release after the festival circuit?
STEVE HICKS: We’ll know soon–working on all that. I’ll will let you know!
What’s next for you? Is there a new film project?
STEVE HICKS: My next project is an adaptation of a memoir by author Peter Conners called GROWING UP DEAD. It’s about a kid going through high school in the late 1980’s–coming of age by way of his love and passion for The Grateful Dead and their music/culture. Fun, trippy stuff. Further…
Good news. The indie comedy Here’s the Kicker, which I labeled the biggest surprise at San Jose’s Cinequest film festival last year, is now out on DVD.
Please go to the movie’s Netflix page and click SAVE – once it gets enough SAVES, it will become available on Netflix.
It’s hard to write comedy. Otherwise, we’d be seeing lots of good comedies. That’s why it’s worth tagging along on the uproarious road trip in Here’s the Kicker.
Mainly, I’m just so glad that Beasts of the Southern Wild was nominated for Best Picture and that its star Quvenzhane Wallis (now nine years old) was nominated for Best Actress. Both are very deserving of nominations, and it would have been easy for the Academy to overlook such a small indie film and its first-time director and actress.
For the most part, the Academy avoided leaving out the obviously deserving and rewarding the ridiculously underserving – very few big brainfarts this year. I am completely baffled that Ben Affleck of Argo and Kathryn Bigelow ofZero Dark Thirty did not receive Best Director nods; (I would have passed over David O. Russell and Michael Haneke). But that’s just about my only quibble.
Eight of the nine nominees for Best Picture are currently playing at your local theaters (although Amour is harder to find until next weekend). Beasts of the Southern Wild is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streams from a host of VOD services.
You can also find Flight at the theaters and watch Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington. The Sessions, with Oscar favorite Helen Hunt, is still lurking in some second run houses. Among the nominated documentaries, Invisible War is available on Netflix Instant and some VOD services, while Searching for Sugar Man is available from several VOD services (although pricey).
After seeing Ruby Sparks and Celeste and Jesse Forever, I can hardly wait for the next screenplays by actress-writers Zoe Kazan and Rashida Jones. Those were two of the smartest and most inventive screenplays of the year, and revived the thought-to-be-brain dead romantic comedy genre.
Popular singer Macy Gray turned in an astonishing performance in The Paperboy. Like Mariah Carey in Precious, Gray has proved that she can act.
Also in the The Paperboy and in Liberal Arts, Zac Efron proved that he is more than just the pretty boy of High School Musical. I am looking forward to his dramatic turn in Ramin Bahrani’s (Goodbye Solo, Chop Shop, Man Push Cart) At Any Price.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead turned in what should be a star-making performance inSmashed. Let’s see if she gets a chance in a big movie.
1. This year I attended over ten screenings that were followed by Q & As with the filmmaker. My favorite was the rip-snorting Killer Joe, followed by an hour with one of the great raconteurs, director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist).
2. Sitting with other film geeks at the San Francisco International Film Festival, only to be surprised and delighted by the hilarious Norwegian comic thriller Headhunters.
3. Watching the three-hour director’s cut of Margaret with The Wife and our friend Paula.
4. Watching Bill W. (about the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous) in an audience that contained over 200 AA members,
5. Enjoying the classic Italian comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street for the first time.
Pre-theatrical Video on Demand is emerging as a mainstream platform for movies. In 2012, I watched thirteen movies on Amazon VOD, YouTube and DirecTV BEFORE they appeared in theaters. These films includedTake This Waltz, the Sarah Polley film that made it to my Best Movies of 2012, as well as three other movies that I really liked, the affectionate documentary Paul Williams Still Alive, the rip-roaring satire King Kelly and the thriller Deadfall. Of course, I also saw a higher proportion of stinkers on VOD than in theaters. Anyway, I find that nowadays it’s well worth checking the pre-theatrical VOD offerings (which I do on IndieWire).
San Francisco Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle recently wrote “Very few movies need to be longer than two hours. Directors should make movies, not take hostages.” He’s right.
Some filmmakers seem to have the mistaken view that length conveys importance. It does not. What makes good movies good – unpredictable plot, intriguing characters, evocative settings and singular visuals – can be accomplished in 90 minutes. A movie only needs to be longer if the sweep of the story requires it.
Sometimes it is necessary, but length itself never makes a movie better. It does make a poor movie more unbearable. The opening sentence of my comments on the ponderous The Dark Knight Rises was, “Well, there’s 2 hours and 44 minutes that I’ll never get back.” A much better franchise movie, Skyfall took two hours 23 minutes – but how much was really the action spectacle and Bond coolness that we were looking for? The Master was two hours 24 minutes long, but only the first 110 minutes was good; a potential masterpiece just fizzled out, trying to find an ending.
For some movies, being overlong is the fatal flaw. I wrote about A Royal Affair: “It’s a romance and tragedy of operatic depth, and, unfortunately, operatic length. It would make a gripping 90-minute film, but A Royal Affair slogs through 137 minutes. As a result the sharpness of the tragedy becomes dulled into mere grimness.”
Its 2 hours and 47 minutes duration was the only imperfection in In the Family. I wrote: “There’s probably a 130 minute indie hit somewhere inside In the Family.” If it lost half an hour, In the Family would have made my list of the year’s best movies.
Of course, an epic like Lawrence of Arabia needs to be long. That’s why this year’s Cloud Atlas needed over two hours to cover its six story threads across six centuries. With this year’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, the leisurely pace and long length were key to its hypnotic appeal.
This year I wrote farewells to four of my movie favorites.
Most Baby Boomers first saw Ben Gazzara as the star of the 60s TV series Run for Your Life, and cinephiles point to his work in two groundbreaking John Cassavetes films, Husbands and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. I immediately thought of the Coolest Movie Character Ever, John Russo in Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed.
Levon Helm‘s 17 acting credits include some very top shelf stuff. He was Loretta’s father in Coal Miner’s Daughter. In The Right Stuff, he played Ridley, test pilot Chuck Yeager’s aircraft mechanic, the guy who loans him Beeman’s chewing gum before each life-risking test flight. He was also the narrator in The Right Stuff. I particularly loved one of his last roles, Old Man with Radio in Tommy Lee Jones’ overlooked 2005 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
Susan Tyrrell was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for a dead-on performance as a pathetic sad sack barfly in the under appreciated Fat City (1972).
For his very first feature film, Andy Griffith shed the likeability and decency that made him a TV megastar and became a searingly unforgettable villain. In the 1957 Elia Kazan classic A Face in the Crowd, Griffith played Lonesome Rhodes, a failed country guitar picker who is hauled out of an Arkansas drunk tank by talent scout Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal). It turns out that he has a folksy charm that is dynamite in the new medium of television. Presaging communication in the television age, A Face in the Crowd is one of our most important political movies.
(Note: I’m saving room for some films that I haven’t yet seen, especially Amour and Zero Dark Thirty, which I won’t get a chance to see until mid-January .)
You can watch the trailers and see my comments on all these films at Best Movies of 2012.
According to Metacritic, all of my picks (except Detachment) were highly rated by prominent critics. I did disdain some well-reviewed films, most notably The Master, which made lots of critics’ end-of-year lists.
(Further Note: A Separation won the 2011 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and Monsieur Lazhar was nominated, but neither were widely released in the US until 2012. Similarly, The Kid with a Bike was screened in October 2011 at the New York Film Festival, but was not theatrically released in the US release until March 2012. These films are on my 2012 list because, like most Americans, I couldn’t see them until 2012.)
