
WARM BODIES
About the Feature WARM BODIES began life as a seven‐page online short story titled "I am
a Zombie Filled
with Love" that attracted a wide Internet audience and led author
Isaac Marion, with some
encouragement, to expand it into his debut 2010 novel. Described as a
"zombie romance" by
the Seattle Post Intelligencer, complete with allusions to
Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," the
novel captivated producer Bruna Papandrea (MILK, ALL GOOD THINGS).
"As a piece of writing, it was so elegant and beautiful," says
Papandrea, who at a
friend's recommendation got hold of the book before it was published
and read it from cover to
cover during a flight. "It had such an incredibly strong voice and
character. Although it was a
genre piece, it was an incredibly emotional, character-driven story."
Papandrea, who had just started her own production company, Make Movies,
immediately set about securing the film rights, and three days later
she was in Marion's
hometown of Seattle to meet with the writer. Soon afterwards she sent
the manuscript to some
of her closest studio contacts, including Erik Feig, a production
executive at Summit
Entertainment.
"It was a little astounding how fast they responded," Papandrea
recalls. "Within weeks,
they told me they wanted to make the movie and were optioning the book."
In part Papandrea and others were drawn to the novel's portrayal of a
post-apocalyptic
world from the viewpoint of the zombies themselves.
"I'd never heard anyone treat these creatures as individuals,
something that would have
a perspective," Marion says. "They're always used as props in the
background that come rushing
at the human characters. They're anonymous and mindless."
Instead of the typical black-and-white, all-or-nothing,
human-or-zombie portrayal of the
conflict between living and undead, Marion chose to explore the gray
areas in between -- how a
person transitions into becoming a zombie and then back to being
human. "That concept really
fascinated me," he says.
In a strange way, Marion says his novel was not only personal, but
even a little
autobiographical. "As I developed this story, I started to notice
parallels with what was going on
in my life at the time," he explains. "I was coming out of this period
of being very emotionally
detached, cynical and living in a lifeless state. It became a fairly
thinly veiled metaphor for that
process that I went through." With Summit on board, Papandrea next
took the project to writer-director Jonathan
Levine (50/50, THE WACKNESS), whose initial resistance to doing a
movie based on a young adult
novel waned when he saw how wildly creative the book was.
"I identified with the main character, and the book Isaac wrote really
allowed for these
incredible directorial flourishes and aggressive style," Levine says.
"I was excited about the
opportunity to push the envelope visually, and it was a great
character piece, as well. It's an
adventure. It's a romance. It's got comedic elements. It's got horror
elements."
Collaborating closely with Marion, Levine went on to write the
screenplay for the film.
He says he saw the love relationship between R and Julie at the heart
of the story as a "mash-up" of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Frankenstein."
"The arc of their relationship was the most important thing to me to get right
directorially -- the push and pull of guys and girls, the way
relationships start and people are
nervous at first, maybe even repulsed, and then come together," he says.
For producer Todd Lieberman (THE FIGHTER, THE PROPOSAL), Levine was a
great pick for
director. "It's a zombie genre film, there's a love story, but it also
happens to capture a unique,
self-aware, self-referential, humorous tone," he says. "Jonathan is
tailor-made to do something
like that."
As for the film's larger themes, the filmmakers say it follows in the
tradition of zombie
movies that make a social commentary, including George Romero's Night
of the Living Dead, but
with some key twists that make it especially original.
"The salient theme at the heart of it is that people have forgotten
what it means to be
human and, through the interaction of these two characters, other
people re-learn what it
means to be human," Levine says. "Not just the zombies, but the
humans, too."
Despite the existence of the so-called "Boneys" -- a more advanced
breed of zombie that
is beyond the point of no return -- WARM BODIES also features less
gore and physical
disintegration than many other films in its genre.
"I don't even look at it, really, as a zombie movie," Levine says. "I
look at it as a monster
movie that turns into a love story. We're working within the zombie
mythology, but we're using
that mythology as a means to an end, as shorthand for something else."
Part of that shorthand is the startlingly original conceit -- and
recurring structural
device -- of having the zombies relive the memories of their human
victims by eating their
brains. To wit: R falls in love with Julie by reliving her boyfriend
Perry's memories through ingesting his brains.
"It's such an amazingly unique way to fall in love with someone,"
Papandrea says.
In casting the movie, the filmmakers pulled together a blend of
seasoned actors and
relative newcomers. For the role of the film's undead romantic lead R,
they cast British actor
Nicholas Hoult (ABOUT A BOY, A SINGLE MAN), after seeing his work on
the envelope-pushing
British TV drama SKINS.
"He was sensational; the performance was just so strong," says
Papandrea of Hoult's
work in SKINS. "He had an intensity to his face and gesture that was
remarkable."
For his part, Hoult says he was drawn to the challenge the role presented.
"The idea of this zombie who I have to try to make an audience care
about and root for,
that was interesting to me," he says. "In the script, he was very
funny and eloquent in his
voiceover, so there was a charm about him and a humor as well."
Hoult, who found Marion's book "a fantastic read" and Levine's
adaptation "a real page-turner," describes the character of R as a
zombie who feels trapped and lonely, stumbling
around the abandoned airport that is his home and wanting more from life.
"The most compelling thing about R is his need to connect," Hoult
says. "He wants to
connect with the other zombies in the airport, even though they've got
nothing to really say to
him and can't even say their names. He wants to connect with Julie and
to feel alive. That's one
of the most human instincts ever -- to want to feel a part of
something and to connect with
another human."
One of the challenges of the role was the fact that, at least
initially, R cannot speak in
words -- a condition that gradually changes as the story progresses.
"A lot of the time I had to communicate just through movement, my
eyes, the things I
do, or the records R plays for Julie," Hoult says. "The idea of not
being able to say what you're
thinking was something that was exciting for me. It makes you think in
a slightly different way
than you normally would."
For the role of R's human love interest, Julie Grigio, the filmmakers
chose Australian-born Teresa Palmer (I AM NUMBER FOUR) from a
shortlist of five actresses who made it through
to read with Hoult.
"There's something about Australian actresses, a confidence and strength," says
Papandrea, who is an Aussie herself. "It's a very hands‐on approach
over there, a little different
from America. It's difficult to find a girl who is young, very
beautiful and has vulnerability, but also is such a fireball."
Those qualities perfectly equipped Palmer to play the role of Julie.
"She's a warrior," Palmer says of her character. "She's strong and has
an amazing
energy. She's bubbly; she's got a big spirit and a good heart. Things
have really been dimmed for
her since her mother was killed by one of the zombies. She's unhappy.
Then she meets R. He
breathes life back into her. They fall for each other and she's
reminded of what life can be like
and starts to hope again, which is a really beautiful thing. "
But it wasn't love at first sight for Julie and R, who meet under the
most violent of
circumstances. When R saves Julie from the other zombies and takes her
back to his lair in an
old airplane at the abandoned airport, Julie figures he's just storing
her as a snack for later. But
she begins to soften when R starts to look after her by bringing her
blankets and food. And so
the seeds of their unlikely romance are sown.
Although Marion insists the film is not "Romeo and Juliet" with
zombies, he admits that
the Shakespeare classic informs some of the film's subtext. There's
even a balcony scene and --
in what is surely a first in the genre -- a romantic kiss between the
zombie R and his human
object of desire, Julie.
Levine admits the balcony scene is a nod to "Romeo and Juliet" and
says it was fun to
shoot -- even though he had doubts about it: "It was a scene I wasn't
always sure about, to be
honest, because it kind of comes at this point in the script when
we're transitioning from the
first to the second half of the movie, which is a little broader. It
was always a tonal shift that
concerned me. But I watch it now and I'm really happy with it."
For the role of General Grigio, Julie's cold, dogmatic father and the
leader of the human
survivors, the filmmakers were thrilled to land landed John Malkovich
(DANGEROUS LIAISONS,
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH). "It's a smaller role in the context of the
other roles in the movie but it's
incredibly important," says Papandrea. "We really needed someone who
immediately came on
the scene and had gravitas. I honestly could not imagine else who
could play that role."
For his part, Malkovich says he was attracted by the film's
storytelling. "I especially liked
the two main characters and the way the story unfolds. In the writing
of the screenplay based
on the novel, there's still quite a novelistic approach that I liked."
Although the actor shared something of a father-daughter dynamic with
Palmer off-camera, Malkovich says the General and Julie are in intense
opposition on screen. "He ups the
pressure on Julie and what she's feeling and thinking, because her
father is in charge of exterminating the group which her love object
happens to belong to."
But even General Grigio evolves eventually. "That's really in the very
last frames of the
film," Levine explains. "It's a sudden conversion, based on something
he sees that he's never
seen before."
The filmmakers turned to THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART alumnus Rob
Corddry (HOT TUB TIME MACHINE) to play the character of R's best
friend, M, which Levine describes as one of
the film's most critical roles. "M, in many ways, is the heart of the
movie," Levine says. "R's
change sparks everything, but M's change is representative of everyone
else."
For Corddry, who also read Marion's novel, the role of M was much more
interesting
than the average "best friend" role. "Those guys are usually just
straight plot devices," Corddry
says. "I actually get to change. I might be the only best friend in
movie history that has his own
trajectory."
Ironically it was the simplicity of the role that gave Corddry the
most angst initially. The
actor likes to do a lot of preparation around his character's back
story to stave off anxiety. "If I
feel like I have a lot of subtext, I'm not going to be worried when
I'm shooting," Corddry says.
"But I couldn't do that this time. I had to be prepared in the moment.
This movie was an
exercise for me in really being present every time the cameras rolled."
Palmer says Corddry's character, while lovable and hilarious, has some
pretty complex
aspects. "He's the most sexual of the zombies that we meet," she says.
"He wants to eat
humans and he doesn't understand what's going on with him. He can't
quite wrap his head
around the idea that R has taken this human girl hostage and is now
falling in love with her. He
finds it bizarre and strange, but he loves R so he goes along with it.
There's also a hint of
jealousy in there too, at one point."
Dave Franco (21 JUMP STREET, SUPERBAD) plays the role of Perry,
Julie's high school
sweetheart who becomes R's lunch early in the movie. Papandrea says
that in many ways the
actor was the greatest discovery of the movie.
"He's just starting to break out," she says of Franco, who is the
younger brother of actor
James Franco (127 HOURS, SPIDER-MAN). "He just lights up the screen
and he's a joy to be around.
He's a very inquisitive actor and person. I think that really comes
across in the character of
Perry."
"He has to make a very big impact in a very short time and he really
does it," adds
Levine. "He's so charming and likeable, and so talented, that he
sticks with you throughout the movie."
Perry starts off as a naïve young man who is madly in love with Julie,
but then becomes
obsessed with killing zombies after he witnesses them killing his
father. Although Perry doesn't
last long, his memories of doomed love affair with Julie --
experienced second-hand by R -- form
a crucial through-line of the film.
"I actually get killed off within the first 10 minutes of the movie
and the rest of my story
plays out in flashbacks," Franco explains. "It affects R's
relationship with Julie. From the start,
we're desperately in love with each other and going through all this
together. By the end Perry
completely loses sight of that because he's so single minded, and
their relationship starts to
disintegrate."
Franco speculates that Julie may be drawn to R because she sees some
of Perry in him.
"I feel like he reminds her of how Perry was when they first met --
this very innocent, sweet
relationship," he says.
Finally, for the role of Julie's best friend, Nora, the filmmakers
cast Analeigh Tipton
(CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE.; THE GREEN HORNET) -- a casting decision that
had producer Todd Lieberman's
full support.
"Analeigh blew me away in CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE.," he says. "She was a
stand out in that
movie. Finding an accomplished comedic actress in that age range is
difficult. Analeigh came in
and read for the part and nailed it."
For her part, the actress says her character is "a bag of fun" who
combines wit with a
talent for killing zombies. She also provides something of a pragmatic
foil for Julie's romantic
tendencies.
"When Nora discovers Julie has fallen for a zombie, she freaks out,"
Tipton says. "Like
any good friend would be, she's concerned that her best friend is
falling in love with someone
that could eat her brains. But she comes around because she trusts Julie."
Tipton says Nora's worldly ways may be a form of self‐preservation at
times. "She
approaches situations with dry humor instead of really dealing with
them -- or her feelings," the
actress says. "She tries to make everything no big deal. She's so
strong and doesn't give a damn.
That's fun, to be really out there, especially for a female character."
With the cast assembled, the filmmakers had to secure three main
locations to shoot
the film: the abandoned airport where R and the other zombies live;
the walled-off Green Zone,
where the General's home is; and the Dead Zone outside the wall.
Finding a location with an abandoned airport seemed like a tall order,
but with the help
of Summit's head of physical production, Andi Isaacs, the filmmakers
were able to get
everything on their wish list in one city: Montreal.
Papandrea says the team could barely believe their good fortune in
gaining access to an
entire abandoned airport, which was called Mirabel. "Collectively,
none of us had ever seen a
location that gave this much value. It so perfectly fit the film we
were making. It also has a very
eerie, abandoned quality, which is great for the genre."
There were some shooting restrictions, in that while Mirabel is no
longer a commuter
airport, it is still used by cargo planes. But aside from that, it was
virtually abandoned roughly a
half-dozen years ago-just as the fictional airport was in the film.
As to what they should call the airport, the filmmakers at one point
decided on Barack
Obama International Airport, and even began the process of clearing
the name with the White
House. But on second thoughts, they decided that name was too obvious
and instead chose to
call it Isaac Marion International Airport -- "after our brilliant
novelist," Levine says.
The other two main locations were the Green Zone and the Dead Zone, which are
separated by an immense wall built by General Grigio to keep zombies
out of the humans'
space. Levine credits production designer Martin Whist (SUPER 8,
CLOVERFIELD) with creating these
two worlds in a way that made the film look like it had twice the
budget that it did.
"The transition at the wall is strong," says Whist. "Once we're in the
Green Zone, which
was located in Old Montreal, things are cleaner and we have evidence
of society trying to
sustain itself. Inside the Green Zone it's a quasi‐military state;
they're survivalists."
There were also livestock in the Green Zone in the form of cows and
goats -- something
that became quite a curiosity for the locals.
"These are the things and research that you have to do when you are
creating a post-apocalyptic story," explains executive producer
Nicolas Stern. "How do these people survive?
Where do they get their food, power and water? These are the things
that Jonathan and the
production designer thought about for months and months."
Other key locations inside the Green Zone were the beautifully ornate
Mount Stephen
Club in downtown Montreal, some distance from Old Montreal, which
stands in for General
Grigio's home; and a church that was actually an old monastery
building located outside
Montreal in the Laurentian Mountains.
"It's an incredible location and was picked for the sheer architecture
of the space," explains Stern. "In this movie, we use a lot of big,
wide-open spaces. We put small groups of
people in them to really let you feel that there's not that many
people left in our world."
For parts of the shoot, the filmmakers had to ask for whole sections
of Montreal to be
shut down -- areas around the Old Port, in Old Montreal and in the
financial district. "We're
talking long blocks, big vistas and cross sections of the community,"
says Stern. "They were very
helpful in doing that."
For the Dead Zone, the dangerous area outside the wall where zombies roam free,
Whist and his crew brought in plants and dirt to cover the ground,
using them to visually show
the passage of time as nature reclaimed the remains of civilization.
But there are also signs of
the civil unrest that erupted during the plague that destroyed
civilization -- specifically, socially
conscious graffiti. Spray painting the walls of the heritage buildings
that line the historic streets
of Old Montreal was obviously not an option, so Whist and his crew
coated the walls in a clear
plastic material that hugged the contours of the stone when heated.
"We then painted or
printed our graffiti on it so it looks like the graffiti is on the
stone," explains Whist.
The team recruited graffiti artists from L.A. and Montreal to create
this aspect of the
post-apocalyptic world, and even approached renowned graphic designer
Shepard Fairey about
copying the style of one of his most famous works, "Andre the Giant
Has a Posse." Fairey
obliged, and the team appropriated the image, replacing Andre the
Giant with a Boney and the
word "obey" with "pray."
"To be able to use something that's iconic, particularly in the world
of street art, is
fantastic," says Whist. "It legitimizes and grounds our work in the
real world. We created a
whole library of street art and graffiti that I've been using from
location to location."
As for the wall itself, VFX supervisor Dan Schrecker (LIMITLESS,
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM) and
his crew used CG to make it longer and higher than was physically
possible to build.
Levine credits director of photography Javier Aguirresarobe, ASC
(VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, THE ROAD, THE OTHERS) with helping to make
WARM BODIES a visually stunning
movie.
"Javier is a brilliant visual artist," says the director. "The other
great thing about Javier is
that he has a lot of soul and heart and he connects to the soul and
heart of the movie."
Aguirresarobe even managed to make the brain‐eating scenes visually
appealing. "That's
a slightly violent moment in the film, where R is cracking Perry's
head open, but it's shot very
beautifully," says Hoult. "The way Javier framed and lit everything,
it just looks fantastic -- even the more gruesome aspects, there's
still something very cinematic about them."
Adding a surreal texture to the film are the numerous flashbacks R
experiences as he
eats the pieces of Perry's brain he has hidden in his pocket.
"We're often seeing things from Perry's point of view or from behind
Perry," says
second‐unit director Stephen Woolfenden (HARRY POTTER), who shot some
of the flashback
footage, often adhering to very specific pointers in Levine's script
about shooting into the sun in
order to create flares for an abstract effect.
"We've tried to get as many lens flares as we could in this one,"
Levine says. "I like the
idea of kind of distorting the image. That's something that lens
flares can do beautifully."
As part of the film's visual palette, Aguirresarobe created a very
specific look for scenes
shot at night. "Our night look is fantastic," says Levine. "He's
created a wonderful palette for it --
a little blue, a little green. It's very pretty. I love the flickering
fluorescence of the airport, the
darkness of the subway and the stadium, and all these giant abandoned
locations that are lit in
these very expressionistic ways that make sense because of the kind of
world we're in."
Of course, a monster movie is only as good as its monsters. WARM BODIES' most
menacing creatures, the Boneys, were created using CG and stunt
performers in motion-capture
suits. Levine says using CG gave him a freedom he hadn't experienced
before.
"The great thing about CG is, not only can you create these
characters, but you can do
things stylistically that I feel like some people aren't taking
advantage of remotely enough.
When we go into R's dreams, for example, we do surreal transitions. At
the very beginning of
the movie, about the first 10 minutes, there's a lot of really
interesting, stylish CG that is used to
tell the story in a way that people haven't seen before. I've never
had it as a tool in my arsenal
before. It allows for the editorial process to be as creative as the
production process."
In creating the zombies, Levine says the team avoided an extremely
gory look, drawing
on things like Depression-era photos and images of coal miners instead
of traditional zombie-movie references for inspiration.
"We wanted to make a movie that appealed to all ages, so we couldn't
necessarily get
involved in some of the fun stuff that other zombie movies do," Levine
says, adding that the
process of designing the looks of both the zombies and the Boneys was
a lengthy one that
started early in pre-production. "We had people doing sketches,
artists taking a picture of Nick
Hoult from SKINS or X-MEN, and tweaking and playing with it," Levine
says. "It would be back
and forth internally, and then we would take it to the studio and do
makeup tests." It was just one of numerous challenges the
filmmakers had to overcome in the course of
the production -- not the least of them being the inclement Canadian
weather. With shooting
continuing well into November, some of the WARM BODIES actors ended up
with decidedly
cold bodies, particularly for scenes that were outdoors or in the
unheated airport terminal.
Palmer recalls one scene where some actors were driving a luggage cart.
"It was about zero degrees, we all had heat packs and were wearing a
thousand layers,"
the actress recalls. "Just before we shot, I asked Jonathan Levine,
'What's the temperature
actually supposed to be in the film?' He's like, 'It's a balmy night.
It's warm.' How were we going
to pretend that? It was so cold that I couldn't even get some of my
words out."
Even more extreme was the climactic fountain scene with Hoult and
Palmer. The water
started off hot but had turned freezing cold by the end of the day.
"It's such an imperative scene
in the movie and there we are absolutely freezing cold," Palmer
recalls. "Our teeth were
chattering, but it was really fun."
And then there were the challenges stemming from the sheer physicality
of the film's
fight scenes, which Palmer says she was not prepared for.
"When I first read the script, I was focused on the emotional depth
of the film and the
heavy dialogue scenes," the actress says. "The second day that I was
running around, because I
hadn't stretched, I was like someone with arthritis. I realized that I
was just super unfit -- it was
quite embarrassing."
Fortunately, it was Palmer's second action film so she wasn't a
complete rookie, and had
a good stunt crew to work with. "We didn't really get a ton of time to
rehearse specific moves,"
Palmer says. "I would arrive on set and then have 20 minutes with the
stunt team so they could
quickly show me what to do. Thank God I had a little bit of martial
arts training on my last film."
Gun training was also part of the job for several of the actors. "The
first day I got to set,
they had me and Dave Franco go to the gun range," Tipton recalls. "We
learned how to shoot
every type of gun under the sun. It was terrifying, because I'm
terrified of loud sounds, but it
was also very freeing."
Franco says his favorite scene is the one in the pharmacy where his
character, Perry,
meets his demise. He, however, is not in it. "My double was standing
in for me and he gets
pulled off the table," says Franco. "He takes this brutal hit. So my
favorite moment is someone
else playing me in the movie!"
A major challenge for the makeup department was creating the right
look for the zombies, which are referred to as corpses in the film.
This was especially true for the character
of R, who needed to be a somewhat sexy, good-looking zombie. Levine
was keen to achieve
these effects without prosthetics, using only makeup, and turned to
head of makeup special
effects Adrian Morot for the task.
Morot says R had to be somewhat attractive in order for it to be
feasible that Julie
would fall in love with him. "You can't have teeth showing or a piece
of flesh or ribcage; that's
really gross and a different kind of movie. The way I thought of him
is that he needs to look a
little like an undead James Dean."
Morot says four distinct stages in R's transformation from zombie back
to human were
designed, with the first stage being the palest and most zombie-like.
For that stage, Hoult had to
wear contact lenses of a desaturated blue hue to give him a dead look.
His skin was mottled and
covered with a network of dark veins that were applied daily using
tattoo transfers. He also had
oozing zombie pus coming down his ears and the corner of his mouth.
"You still want to keep it sexy, so you don't want to overdo it with
the pus and gore,"
Morot says.
For most of the movie, as R evolves back toward his human self, he is
in stage two,
which is characterized by less pronounced veins and a healthy pink
tone to his skin. In stage
three, which is even closer to human, R just looks a little sickly.
And stage four is what we see at
the very end of the film when R's transformation is complete.
"The scars have magically retracted into the skin and he has a nice
complexion," says
Morot. "He's a good-looking guy now, ready for action and love."
The greatest challenge from a VFX perspective was the epic battle
scene at the end of
the film, in which the Boneys and corpses have their final showdown.
It presented the obvious
challenge for the human actors playing the corpses to believably
interact with imaginary CG
characters that were not yet there.
Also technically challenging was the preceding sequence in which the
Boneys show up at
the stadium and appear on the glass rotunda above the corpses. The
corpses look up to see the
silhouettes of the Boneys on top, smashing and eventually breaking the
glass before dropping
down onto the corpses for the grand finale. Schrecker says that in
addition to making sure the
lighting matched, unanticipated details arose, such as when M throws a
Boney across the floor
towards the soldiers.
"There's lots of broken glass on the floor, and as that Boney moves
across the floor, that glass is going to have to displace," Schrecker
explains. "We took a grey pillow and threw it across
the floor, and that gave us the real glass sliding out of the way so
that, when we put our CG
Boney in, we could just follow the path of the pillow and the glass
would slide out of the way
like that."
A less dramatic, but equally vexing, challenge was how the zombies
could communicate
in an interesting way but still stay true to zombie lore. Levine
points out that this is not generally
an issue in the genre, but it was in WARM BODIES because much of the
film is from the
zombies' point of view. This was especially true for the characters of
R and M, whose friendship
required them to communicate.
"They're able to have conversations based on short, one-word things
and to interpret
each other's groans," Levine says, adding that this led to a lot of
on-set laughs. "We were
shooting this scene at the very beginning of the movie and it's
basically just two guys groaning
at each other. The guys kept cracking up. By the time we got to take
five, they were literally
groaning and having conversations with each other."
As Hoult recalls it, "There were moments where we'd both zone out in
each other's
eyes. It was just very weird stuff."
Corddry took a scientific approach to speaking zombie. "I went about
it as if I was
playing a brain‐injured patient," says the actor, whose wife is a
speech therapist. "We talked
about how brain‐injured patients can sometimes see the word in their
head, but they don't
know what it is or what it means, and it's hard to get it out. So,
even when I'm grunting, I'm
trying to make a word."
R's thoughts are revealed via voiceover, which makes it clear to the
audience what he's
trying to communicate with his groans. "Sometimes the script
supervisor read out the voiceover
on set so I could hear what the character was meant to be thinking
during the scene," says
Hoult. "It helps with the timing of the scene to make everything link
together."
Another R's thoughts and feelings are expressed is through music.
Levine, who worked
closely with music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas (GREY'S ANATOMY,
TWILIGHT), says R's use of
records to communicate with Julie was a clever feature of Marion's
novel that helped draw him
to the project.
"Music really does help set tone," Levine says. "It's another way to
have a shorthand
with the audience. Music is, in a big way, how I access the world in a
movie and the characters.
It's really nice that it was already written into the story."
The cast and crew of WARM BODIES believe the film has pretty broad
appeal -- and not
just because of its novel premise and quirky humor. "The character of
R is written quite well,
quite uniquely, and his journey is a unique one," Malkovich says. "You
know what percentage of
teenagers feel alienated? How many of them feel cut off, excluded and
not human? It's a pretty
big percentage. This film is a little bit of an exploration of that,
rather than just a gory film."
WARM BODIES might even be something of a game-changer in the zombie genre, says
Morot. "There's definitely something for everybody, even for zombie
purists such as myself. It's
the kind of zombie movie that a guy can actually take his girlfriend
to. The guys get the Boneys
and cool zombie action, and the girls get the sensitive, handsome
zombie guy."
Although Levine is aware that some horror purists might disapprove of
the way the film
plays with zombie‐movie conventions, he hopes they will approach the
film with an open mind.
"I have a great knowledge and love of films like 28 DAYS LATER, SHAUN
OF THE DEAD, DAY OF THE DEAD and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD. But one of
the great things about making movies is you can
use genre and mythology to tell different kinds of stories."
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