Actor: Zombie 101
I tell my sister, so, here I am, top drama school grad, final role King Lear, and I’m learning how to lurch and dip. “A fluid lurch,” the teacher yelled. “Lurch, dip, lurch, dip, lurch. Stop. When you stop, shuffle. Zombies don’t stand still, they shuffle, and their heads continue to lurch and dip.” I describe arms hanging straight down, how our hands weave and flutter. I say tomorrow we learn how to drool. Shooting starts in a week. “What a comedown,” my sister says. I tell my sister, “Shoot me.”
Dance Teacher: Zombie Moves
“And to think that a month ago I was on location at Chateau De Fontainebleau in France,” she tells her fiancé. “Instructing actors on customs of 18th century European Courts. How to bow to kings and queens, how to be a lady-in waiting, a courtier, a valet de chamber, a court jester. How to wear the singlet, foot high wigs, the cod piece.” She stutters, blushes at “cod piece,” regretting her brief affair with a “Duc” destined for the guillotine. But no way she’ll be seduced by a zombie. She dips and lurches toward her fiancée to flirtatiously accept a glass of wine, a total zombie move to cover her ass.
Aspiring script writer: Anthropology Minor
“I sent the zombie script to my agent,” she tells the three women splitting the LA apartment’s rent. “He says show up at this director’s office and tell him what he wants to hear. Say it’s easily three seasons. Finally my anthropology minor is good for something.” She describes the charismatic professor who sometimes wore an ascot. “He showed a cool 1940s film I Walked with a Zombie. Black and white, set in the West Indies—the anthropology connection was their use of real live voodoo. This professor persuaded the beautiful lead actress– Frances Dee—to attend the showing. By then, she was in her 80s and tottered down the aisle to sit in the front row. I’ll never forget her wrinkled face in the screen’s glow. She was rapt. A zombie.
Director: Remake of “I Walked with a Zombie”
“This script came from an agent out of the blue,” he tells the studio heads. “A sequel to the brilliant 1943 flick directed by Jacques Tourneur. No blood and gore, missing body parts. The Zombie isn’t dead, but rather in a drug-induced trance. Mesmerizing.” He scrutinizes blank faces round the table. “Never mind. I’ll do black and white. Cheap location. Night drums and flaming torches, wild-eyed dancing, bare feet, a pounding surf. A voodoo doll. Low budget. Give me a measly fifteen mil and it’s a go.” They send him away while they think about it. A week later they bring him back. He settles for three mil. Filming in Lot 34. A green screen. No surf. Damn. When did studio heads get to be so young, sitting there like—like zombies.
