Int: Greg Nicotero

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

JoBlo.com/AITH interviews Greg Nicotero

Greg Nicotero has been part of our
beloved genre for a long time, starting out by assisting KING TOM SAVINI
on Day of the Day, to working on Evil Dead 2 to starting his own FX
company with KNB and beyond! Personally, it was a thrill for me to
meet Greg where I have been a fan of his since my teen years.
Thankfully the man was as sociable as ever, light hearted and very
chatty. Without further ado; here is Prince Nicotero, yapping
about his work on Land of the Dead.

How will
the Zombies look in this film?

One of the
first movies I did was DAY with George, and we had taken the zombies
to a level of decay using browns and pustule areas and bad teeth, no
eyebrows. Always a joke for us, the undead always lot their eyebrows
fro some reason in older zombie movies. Wanted to stay with a
completely different color palette than we had used before, sickly
pale yellows. We didn’t want to build any foreheads out because they
tens to look a little caveman-ish.

So we went
with a lot of nose and brow pieces to make the area look sunken and
sullen. Every zombie has contact lenses, so the life is taken out of
the eyes. Not white, designed about 12 different ones. Had to give
them dead eyes because actors don’t look dead if they’re eyeballs
are showing. Bloodshot on outside with yellow color on inside, some
are harder to see out of because we went for that cloudy diseased
look. No white lenses with little hole in it as that still looks
like make-up.

Puppet stuff
where we actually created 5 different looks for emaciated zombies.
Ones that could never be a person in make-up, with noses missing,
jaw bones hanging, but still with enough movement to look around so
they are all radio-controlled mechanical heads. In-between versions,
some are fresher, some more decayed. Some of our hero zombies, like
Big Daddy, they didn’t want him to be too rotted as it became too
graphic for audiences.

Other zombies
are more rotted with brown blood, dentures, more a grey-black gum
look, with grey teeth. Designed thin vacu-form dentures so they
didn’t buck the mouth out in a fake way. . Black mouthwash made
their tongues black so no sense of life in mouth. The funniest thing
about this movie is the first night we did 100 zombies. WE didn’t
start in a farm house or a mall or the missile silo where only one
or two zombies are needed. Then 5 later and building to around 20.
Here it was 100s from day one as the world has been taken over by
the undead. Our heroes ate looking at this small town overrun with
zombies as the movie opens. Started with that and built from there.
CGI can make a crowd, that’s exciting.

Do you feel
like you’re walking in Tom Savini’s shadow?

I don’t feel
that at all. Tom is my mentor. He and George gave me my first job.
We talked a lot about FX for this movie and he came up to visit and
I kept hearing him say, George has never had zombies like this
before. He was excited about what we were doing. Showed Tom a lot of
our tests, with dentures that went outside the actor’s faces,
prosthetics on top so you could tear chunks away to reveal the
supposed inside of their mouth. It looks like you are looking
through the jaw at the teeth. Really effective.

Adding an
extra level you haven’t seen before. Proud of that and I sent Tom
photos all the time and he was always excited. He’s been 150%
supportive. I was his ball of clay who has now stepped in while he’s
gone off to act and direct. Never once was there an issue about
make-up, Tom even does a gag in the movie for old time’s sake. His
enthusiasm is always astounding. He’s still such a fan, so into it,
can’t help but rub off on you. Neither George nor I felt the movie
would be complete without a Tom contribution, I’ll say no more than
that.

This is the
biggest budget that George has had but you’ve worked on bigger
films. Have you had to make any compromises?

I hear George
saying there has to be enough gingerbread in the movie to please the
fans. He really wants to make something the fans are going to walk
out of knowing they got their money’s worth. You can see RESIDENT
EVIL and 28 DAYS but everyone knows they’ve been inspired by George.
SHAUN OF THE DEAD was such a loving Romero recreation that it’s
inspiring a whole new level of fans. A tremendously ambitious movie
because it isn’t just set in one place, but all over this new world
inside this downtown Pittsburgh area where the fat cats live.

The movie has
way bigger scope. DAY took place on an island off of Florida,
guerilla faction, a character who ran this commune area. I called it
the TEN COMMANDMENTS of zombie films. George kept a lot of those
aspects for this film. It’s interesting to see George with this
great cast and this scope. The dailies are amazing, you feel like
you are looking at this dead world. The DP has used cold colors,
warm and alive in Dead Reckoning.

DAWN raised
the violence bar, what about this entry?

It’s a
different filmmaking world. Audiences are more sophisticated and
they don’t want to see rehashed gore gags. Using every trick in the
book, CGI, rod removal, animatronics, prosthetics, we will be using
digital augmentation. Even George was amazed at what we could do
today. It will still be shocking and scary. The scene tonight is
where a woman finds her husband who’s hung himself. The sun is
coming up and just as they cut him down, his eyes open. You see him
lurch and he pulls the chandelier out of the ceiling and all you see
is the lamp being dragged away. You know it got tangled into
zombie’s foot, visually so much more interesting.

George has so
many details like that. It’s where you see his mind wide open and
how you know he’s been able to scare so many people in the past. The
biggest challenge was the look of the zombies and they are slow to
give you a chance to look at them rather than rushing by at 100 mph.
The camera is on our zombies for a great length of time so every one
has to look great. The sheer volume of it. On DAY we had a small
group of people, so not many were attacked and the showstopper was
when Rhodes was attacked and torn in half and you saw his legs drag
off. We go on with that here; one character here is torn limb from
limb. Our zombies are ravenous; food is in short supply, so when
they get someone it’s a feeding frenzy.

We found a new
way to do a zombie bit that involves a vacu-formed protective plate
that goes on the actor’s arm and then gelatin goes over perforated
with little holes. Pump blood up through holes before zombie even
bites it, so it can go in anywhere it wants to, not hit any specific
spot, as soon as teeth bite gelatin blood spurts out and he can keep
going in on the same arm at various places. First piece I tested out
on George because it meant he didn’t have to cut. The DAWN bites
never bled, and you can see it’s just raw foam being bitten into. No
blood spray. Done a lot of more freeing effects like that so George
can effectively manipulate the audience in his own distinctive way.

What was
the average make-up time to get the Zombies ready?

About two
hours per featured zombie. I have a 14 strong team. Some US, some
Canadian. Includes dentures, contacts, and then their hair done with
Fuller’s earth and KY to gunk it up. Stringy, gross and matted. On
nights we start at 2 pm and continue to 9 am where we clean them up.
These circles under my eyes are a product of how time consuming this
show has been. Everyone’s here because we want it to be great and
it’s George’s comeback. All the extra effort shows. George wanted
zombies clawing at Dead Reckoning so they’re fingernails would bend
backwards, split and bleed. So we do it, rig it up, I do it on
second unit and George loved it. With bone-crunching sound FX it
looks wonderful. A digital blood splash can extend things further,
GCI tendon etc.

Background
zombies used masks, pulled hair forward. Very quick. Shooting three
cameras, one always searching the crowd, so I’d run out after a take
and shift the best looking ones into position. Making sure in every
take the best zombies are featured. Always people with funny zombie
walk, one we called the Skater, made up names for the walks. George
will find the people who look great and most featured zombies are
great. The Tambourine Man zombie is fabulous, put a lot of thought
in it. George feeds off that energy.

What’s your
favorite gore gag in the film?

First bite in
film is set up really well, a rookie guerilla, a zombie grabs his
hand, tears a huge chunk out of his flesh. Simon Baker and Asia
walked over to see what we were doing and they reacted well. We’ve
all had zombie cameos. So have Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright because I
was SHAUN’s unofficial PR in America. Helped them promote it at
Comicon. Cast their faces at KNB. It was a dream come true for them.
They were chained up and didn’t walk, sculpted a DAY Bub make-up on
Simon. Wanted Stephen King as cameo too… Famous people drove to
Pittsburgh to be zombies in DAY. The Cramps etc. More difficult in
Canada.

And times have
changed, you can’t put explosive squibs on extras any more for $1 an
hour. Had to design exit wounds that were non-explosive so we didn’t
have to squib just stunt men. Could put those on everyone. There are
more rules today in the industry. Wish we’d had the freedom on
DAWN. Have a long time to finesse the movie before its October
date. George spent prep time finessing the script and tailoring it
for the budget. I wrote up lists of zombies and kills. I came up
with Siamese twin zombies. Weird visuals like one who gets tangled
up in his IV line from hospital. You are following 4 separate
stories here that all meet up at a certain point. Following these
factions with the zombies getting closer until everything converges.

What else
do you have on your plate?

KNB wrapping
up LION, WITCH, Howard Berger in NZ since May. Start Bruckheimer’s
THE ISLAND next week. Doing re-shoots on SIN CITY. Having Benicio
del Toro rush in saying I want to wear make-up because I want to
look like the guy in the comic more, Are you crazy? Most rush away
from make-up. That should be cool. I turned down WAR OF WORLDS down
for this. They needed 100 bodies to float down the river when the
war machines start decimating the city. That was about two weeks
before I was due here and there was no way I could do it in time.
WAR is one of my favorite stories too, bummed out I couldn’t do it.

What is it
about zombie movies, why do they seem to be the Holy Grail for
make-up artists?

When you are
young and impressionable, zombies make the most impact; Portfolios
always consist of a gorilla, their sister covered in blood and a
zombie. Standard thing. For me it has all to do with growing in
Pittsburgh. If you are born there, zombies are part of your film
culture. I would drive past locations for NIGHT and DAWN constantly
as a reminder. Caught up in that folklore. I miss being in
Pittsburgh as the people there make the best zombies. It’s in their
blood. Had friends call and sneaked them over the border to play
cameos. Where are the guys who would kill to be here, they make the
best zombies?

Tell us a
bit about your history?

DAY was my
first movie; I then moved to NY working for Richard Rubinstein, then
to LA and started KNB, done 400 movies, everyone from Raimi to
Spielberg, Kill Bill etc. Everyone who inspired me I’ve worked with.
Entire House of Blue Leaves sequence in KILL BILL took longer than
the entire schedule for LAND. 9 weeks in Bejing. I remind George
about that all the time, which he shot an entire movie in the time
it took us to do one scene.

I’d
like to thank Greg for being such a stand up chap during our chat!
With him onboard as lead effect duder on Land of the Dead, I have ZERO fears
that the film will come through in the undead and red grub
department. Bring it Greg! BRING IT!

 

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OF MY LAND OF THE DEAD SET VISIT