“Zombie Atrocities”

Many of you are aware that I’m a member of the Blank Stage Screenwriter’s Group (based out of Roswell, GA).  As a member of the screenwriter’s group I get the chance to listen to and read from some very interesting screenwriters  and help them critique and analyze the good and bad points of their work.  On occasion I get to present some of my own as I’ve most recently done with my Night of the Living Dead fan-film script NOTLD: Parallel Lives, an anthology of stories about the characters from the original George A. Romero ’68 film. 

What was most shocking about the night I presented my screenplay was that over 70% of the group members had neither seen nor heard of one of the most iconic horror films in history.  This wouldn’t have been as surprising if I was in a group of non-filmmakers and writers but this is a travesty to behold.  It is my belief that in order to be a good screenwriter (or any writer in general) that you study the classics and are aware of the iconic stories in order to better immolate them.

If you want to write better films you study the best – Casablanca, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Rocky, Gone With the Wind, The Searchers, etc   You don’t have to have studied and read the screenplay but you should have at least seen such films as Cinema Paradiso, The Seven samurai, 8 ½, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Star Wars, Blade Runner, and most certainly Night of the Living Dead.

Why Night of the Living Dead you ask?

Night of the Living Dead (1968) was a film that changed the face of horror films of the ‘60s and redefined the term “zombie” while also commenting on the state of the United States post-Vietnam war era.  It had an African American as the star (hitherto unheard of) and was uncompromising in its gore (for the time).  It has since been held as one of the greatest horror films of all time alongside The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby and Jaws and continues to influence the horror genre and filmmakers even today while still being held as the Godfather of the zombie genre.  It’s not just a great horror film but a cinematique masterpiece.

So, in my opinion it was an utter travesty to hear that many of my fellow screenwriters had neither seen nor heard of the film.  In order to be a better screenwriter and filmmaker I’ve watched some of the best films from all over the world from Bergman to Kurosawa to those of Howard Hawks, Dario Argento, and Samuel Fuller.  I’ve studied the films of Woody Allen, Spike Lee, Mario Bava, Bernardo Bertolucci and Stanley Kubrick; the films of Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, Martin Scorsese, Walt Disney, Lina Riefenstahl, Seigi Eisenstein, and William Friedkin.

Romero took his inspiration for NOTLD from Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend.  He took a classic novel as an influence for his own apocalyptic tale.  Just like he borrowed from an iconic novelist we should take inspiration from the best that cinema (and novelist) has to offer.  As a screenwriter I cannot stress this enough.  I watch (or at least plan on watching) as many classic films that I can in order to better write captivating stories and films.  Like Romero I also read a lot of different materials from novels to graphic novels to news articles for inspiration.  I read a lot of different materials in order to get a better understanding of story structure, style, genre, and execution, among many other things.

It is my hope not only as a filmmaker but as a writer that I can write material at the caliber of the people I admire and stories I know have resonated with audiences in the past.  It is my hope that other aspiring writers and filmmakers (and all artists in general) look to the past not only for inspiration but also to see what came before in order to see where we are heading and can go.  Today NOTLD, tomorrow the world.

Steve Niles & Horror

I’ve read a lot of the horror comics from iconic horror writer Steve Niles from his most influential creation 30 Days of Night (which is finally going to an ongoing series) to his sinister Savage and The Nail to the more somber Freaks of the Heartland and comedic exploits of The Cryptics and the noire stories of Cal McDonald in Criminal Macabre.  Niles gets around.  Not all of his stories are masterpieces (i.e. I didn’t generally enjoy Giant Monster or The Ghoul) but there is no denying that he strives to tell stories different from everyone else in the field.

One of my personal favorites of his is his epic adaptation of Richard Matheson’s classic I Am Legend.  Despite the fact that I was first introduced to his work with the original 30 Days of Night series it wasn’t until I read his version of I Am Legend that I truly became a fan.  He’s the only one to truly get to the meat and potatoes of Matheson’s story and present it in a faithful way; not one of the three film versions have been able to do this yet.  Its amazing detail in story structure and execution is hands down spotless and brings out the nuances of Matheson’s story like few others have ever been able to do with the author’s material. 

Niles has done other adaptations of other authors work including Clive Barker and Bram Stoker (Dracula) and H.G. Wells (The War of the Worlds) and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein, Or the Modern day Prometheus), to name a few and he has taken some liberties with the material (not always for the best). 

Most horror writers find a niche and stick with it but Niles weaves in and out of all types of genre stories refusing to be pigeonholed into any one sub-group.  It would have been easy for Niles to have continued doing hardcore violent horror stories after the success of 30 Days of Night but instead he’s done dramatic horror with Freaks of the Heartland and comedy The Cryptics and even a giant monster story inspired by Godzilla in the form of Giant Monster and he’s even tackled Bigfoot in his series Bigfoot.  

Niles is a professional at crafting entertaining stories whether they be horror or not.  I just recently read The Cryptics (I got to it late since it was one of his series that didn’t look all that appealing to me at first because of its comic overtones).  It’s an inspired collection of short stories based around the offspring of the classic movie monsters (Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein’s monster, Dr.Jeckle & Mr. Hyde, and the Creature) as they go about their daily lives living in the suburbs.  Not all the stories hit their mark but there are a couple that are quite funny but the thing that struck me the most is that as standalone stories they can be just moderately entertaining but by the time I got to the last couple stories I had really gotten into the lives of these characters and found the stories more entertaining because of how much “character” Niles incorporated into the series as a whole.  If you can get past the fact that this is meant to be a coming of age comedy and not a monster free for all then you’ll enjoy the series as much as I did (I enjoyed it more the second time I read it).   Despite the types of stories he does (the horror genre), Niles’ stories are always about the characters within which is why he is so able to maneuver from one type to the next.  As long as he writes good characters then every story (no matter how strange or unusual it may be) will always be entertaining and good.

If you’ve never read a Niles story before than any of the ones I’ve mentioned above are a good start but there are plenty of others to get your hands on such as City of Others, Epilogue, Doc Macabre, The Lurkers, and many, many more.  All have their own unique take on both classic and modern horror stories and all are worth taking a look at.