UN: While most of the questions might be geared towards Die You Zombie Bastards, I definitely want to touch base on what got the ball rolling with you in terms of directing. Was there a specific time period or movie that inspired you to want to make films?

CE: Sure, the movies that really got me interested in film making were the standard list of horror films that most people my age grew up on during the VCR boom of the 80s. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Dawn of the Dead etc. But the film that really made me think I could actually DO it was Bad Taste. I rented that movie when it came out on VHS which must have been some time around 1990 and I loved it. It had a special home made feeling that I hadnt really seen in too many other movies at that point. I read a piece on the film in Gorezone or Fangoria or something chronicling the making of it and I realized that I probably could make a movie myself; not thenI was like 14 (and in 1990 it wasnt like today with consumer grade DV and home computer editing)but I knew that I could eventually get it done and I wanted nothing else out of life at that point.

UN: How did the original idea for Die You Zombie Bastards come about? If Im not mistaken it is somewhat a continuation of your short film or at least the characters found in Reds Breakfast 2.

CE: It's a feature length version of all 3 Reds Breakfast movies plus a whole lot more. I just kept expanding on the character with Tim (Tim Gerstmar, the actor who plays Red) while in college and making these short films. They were pretty shitty, but they had a certain charm and people seemed to like them. So we put them all together and filled in the gaps and came up with a feature length script. It was co-written with my brother-in-law, Haig Demarjian.

UN: How long did it take to write the movie? Was
there any improvisation during the shoot or did you try to stick to the script as much as possible? Some of the stuff Red comes out with seems rather off the cuff.

CE: Haig and I wrote it over a period of maybe a year. I would write a scene, send it to him and he would add to it and send it back and vice-versa. As far as I remember (principal photography started in August, 01) the only people who really improvised a lot were Tim and Hasil. With Tim we would usually do a few takes of a scene the way it was scripted, and then a few where I would come up with new lines on the spot or I would ask him to improvise. We ended up using a mixture of the two. Some of Tims strongest moments are improvised. And with Hasil, I just knew there was only so much direction I could give him. I would basically give him the gist of a scene and let the two of them (Hasil and Tim) go at it. The Hasil scenes gave Dan (our editor) a lot of work, but they ended up being some of the most unique parts of the movie. The Hasil sequences are really the Dan & Hasil show.

UN: The movie is incredibly over the top and ridiculous but it manages to stay coherent story wise throughout. Would you say that the Troma school of film was a definite influence on the overall feel of the movie?

CE: I guess so. I love Troma, but I certainly didnt set out to make a Troma-style film. Haig and I both had a ton of influences that we intentionally and unintentionally worked into the film with the writing, direction, the look etc. Its just that the Troma influences are some of the easier influences to spot because they are so in-your-face. If you look youll see a lot of other things happening, theyre just not quite as visible from the surface.

UN: One aspect of the film that I found hilarious what the fact that Red and Violet are incredibly violent people yet they are very much in love and the violence seems very matter of fact to them. After all you dont see many super heroes rip off zombie testicles very often. How did the dynamic between the characters develop?

CE: WellI guess I just wanted Red to be likeable. I didnt want him to be mean-spirited or evil. The character of Red was created by myself and Tim while we were making the Reds Breakfast shorts, and at least in the first Reds Breakfast I just wanted an excuse to do some gore effects. So I just had Tim being his goofy self mutilating people as an excuse to just show it and it just developed from there. Around the time I made Reds Breakfast II I had just started dating a girl (Anna Snyder, the girl who gets her head chopped off in the opening credits and who went on to be Associate Producer of DYZB!) and I guess I was just in a particularly romantic mood and wound up having my art imitate my life so I had Red get a girlfriend who not only appreciated his eccentricities, but shared in them. They banded together and embraced their roles as weirdos for lack of a better word.

UN: The acting is quite over the top but the performances of Tim Gerstmar, and Geoff Mosher are both extremely entertaining. Tim comes across like a cross between a super hero and a deranged Shakespeare actor, while Geoff does an amazing job playing the maniacal Baron. Did you have a certain style in mind for the actors, or did the two actors have a feel for the characters right from the start?

CE: Tim is just being Tim. That's an amped up version of what hes like, which is why we get along so well. He and I both do lots of impressions and basically thrive on making fun of people even (sometimes especially) people we like; so a lot of the different characters and voices he does are just bits that he and I did together in our friendship over the years. A lot of those lines and situations are based on people we knew and things we did in college. They arent references that the viewer is supposed to get; theyre just a mash-up of things between me and Tim. So, as ridiculous as his performance is it is very natural. As for Geoff, he is much more theatrical and doing much more of a performance. As research or motivation if I may be so bold I asked him to think about Jim Varney in Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam, Jerry Lewis, Ernest Thesiger in The Old Dark House and probably 20 other things too. In a way the characters are kind of similar, but I wanted each actor to go about playing them in very different ways. Red has more of an impulsive while Nefarious is more stagey. At least that was my intention.

UN: The DVD release of the movie was released by Image Entertainment. Were you excited to have the company interested in releasing the film? The DVD has a ton of bonus features as well so it isnt a bare bones release as well.

CE: We were thrilled. We had a lot of smaller companies (companies that we love and have great respect for) make us offers but the thought of Image releasing it blew us away. We knew we would find our biggest audience with a company like them. And they let us compile all of our own bonus features which was great. They basically told us to send them whatever we wanted on the disc, so I just threw them everything I had! Well, everything but deleted scenes and outtakes (which there are plenty of)Ill save those for the 10th or 20th anniversary edition if people still care about the movie at that point. Personally, I have no interest in watching deleted scenes or alternate endings from new movies, but I love seeing them for old films that I know very well and have seen 20 times. Your movie is your movie, leave it at that. Dont show me what you wish you did, or what you could have done. Dont keep fucking with it and giving me different versions right off the bat. If I watch a movie once or twice and then see a bunch of other scenes it sort of confuses me and makes the film seem unfinished in some strange way. So, on the disc we included the movie, a commentary, a 45 minute making of featurette, some behind the scenes ADR sessions, a few interviews and some music videos. There is plenty more I could have put on, like deleted scenes, cast commentary and even the Reds Breakfast films but I didnt want it to be overkill. In a few years if people want more we can make an ultimate edition or something. I would love to go back and re-transfer our negatives (the movie was shot on 16mm film) because I know the film could look A LOT better. We just went with the cheapest one-light transfer we could afford at the time, so our masters ended up being Beta SP tapes with DV compression even tough we shot on film. I would love to see the film dubbed in Spanish or Japanese though. I kind of think it would make it better. There is a French subtitled version though (which I made for the premiere in Switzerland) which is pretty awesome. Also, watch the hearing impaired English subtitles on the Image disc during the Hasil scenes. They just write Gibberish when he starts screaming. I love it.

UN: One particular homage that I found quite hilarious in the movie was the throwback to Ray Harryhausen with the sea monster, Are you a big fan of his stop motion work? Of course nothing in his movies were anatomically correct if you get my drift, but you definitely managed to get a similar feel.

CE: I love Harryhausen, particularly Clash of the Titans. There are a number of COTT references in DYZB! and in the Reds Breakfast films. Its the first movie I remember seeing in the theater. As far as giving him a huge cock? Everyone looks funnier with a big boner. Originally we were going to have the dream/nightmare scene have 2 gay krackens named Otto and Udo but that may have been a tad too much. One big Kracken with a hard-on said it pretty well. Violet is also wearing an exact replica of Andromedas dress, just cause Im a nerd.

UN: I also definitely noticed a bit of a Motorhead slant to the movie as well. The Ace of Spades card, the mole on Reds fathers face, and of course the Kilmister Police Dept. I would almost assume it goes without saying that you are a big Motorhead fan. Did you try to get them on the soundtrack, or would you want them on the soundtrack in a future film?

CE: Haig and I are both gigantic Motorhead fans. We actually looked into getting Lemmy to play Reds dad. But it was becoming a big ordeal, and no offense intended, but Lemmy cant act. It would have been funny to have him make a little appearance, but hes done that in several Troma films and we ended up thinking it might have ruined the scene because its kind of a serious scene that involves some real acting. Also, Reds fathers parting advice to him was You know Im born to lose, and gamblins for foolsbut thats the way I like it babyI dont want to live forever which is of course a line from Ace of Spades. We wrote it in, then shot it, then in post I stared thinking that that was a really stupid thing to do. Those lyrics are undoubtedly copyrighted, and not only would we need their permission wed probably have to fucking pay them, or pay somebody. We contacted their publishing company to see what kind of permissions wed need and they didnt even understand what we were talking about. So I just said fuck it and overdubbed the line o make it You know Im born to booze, and diddlins for tools, but thats the way I like it sucka, I dont want to shit forever which seemed funny at the time. It still makes me laugh, so its still in there. But yeah, Motorhead rules. We love em.

UN: I might be reaching here but I definitely thought I noticed a bit of a Monty Python and the Holy Grail influence running throughout the movie, particularly in the map scenes as well as the surprise ending with Red and Violet being arrested after just saving the world. Are you a Monty Python fan?

CE: I loved Monty Python as a kid and watched their stuff a lot. There were no intentional references at all. But Im sure since I grew up watching them that a lot of my sense of humor is influenced from them. Meaning of Life was my favorite. On many a drunken night, Tim Gerstmar has been known to launch into Oh, fishy-fishy-fishy-a-fishand he went, wherever I did goooooooo

UN: I was curious to ask if you wanted to have a huge out of control ending right from the start. You really cant go wrong with zombies, robots, ninjas, disobedient dog men and Vlad the Impaler all showing up during the final battle. Was it important to make the last fight scene the most outrageous out of the entire movie?

CE: Well, we never wrote a treatment or an outline or anything. So we didnt really know how it was going to end until we got to the end. It just made sense it end that way. And then, at that point I was so fucking sick of Red movies that I added another ending where he gets beaten up (and I got to beat him up cause I play one of the cops) and arrested. But then that was kind of a downer, so I pulled a Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens by ending the movie with a trailer for the sequel which will (most likely) never get madeso many endings, so little time, which leads me to your next question.

UN: The film makes mention of a sequel right at the end. Do you think we can ever expect to see a sequel to Die You Zombie Bastards? There is definitely still a lot you could do with the characters although it is a shame that the Baron is no more.

CE: Who knows. Maybe? I definitely do not want to do that next. Id like to try something different (that doesnt involve Red (not Tim, but Red). But Haig already wrote a sequel and its fucking great. Its more about Reds dad and the Maldonato Sisters and a lot of it takes place on a boat hunting The Shark Who Walks Like a Man. I love it. Id love to do it in a few years with a lot more money. But, if someone called tomorrow and said they wanted to finance a DYZB!2 Im sure Haig and I would be at it in a heartbeat. But Im not holding my breath. For nowone DYZB! is more than enough. Id love to see a fan film though! Id love to see other people playing our characters in other situations. Weve already had people throw DYZB! themed costume parties, and theres currently a DYZB! Themed band in Florida I think?...called Merciless Fish Cunt. They're in our top friends on Myspace, check them out. I don't think they've recorded any music yet, but who cares? The fact that they exist makes me happy.

UN: Did you put together the soundtrack yourself? I havent heard the entire soundtrack but the tracks used during the movie are quite good. Were the bands excited to take part in the soundtrack? It seems like good exposure for the bands.

CE: Yes, I did. It started with a few bands who heard about the film (while we were still in production) and sent us CDs. I think The Phantom Creeps and Superkollider were the first. They were excellent and I used tracks by both. Then Superkollider did a DYZB! Theme song. I think they just re-recorded the lyrics to an existing song, but who cares it was awesome. So we decided, what the hell why not have a ton of theme songs?! So we set up a contest and whoever wrote the best one would get in the movie. Well, they were all awesome and we used all but one and the one we didnt use was great too, there was just no place to put it. And then on the CD soundtrack, there was one that was written (by The Demon Seeds) after the movie came out, so thats something of a bonus track I guess. But we got people ranging from Count Smokula to death metal band Medlab to do songs called Die You Zombie Bastards! So cool. Then there was The Spectres. I was editing the film and I read an interview with them and the interviewer mentioned that they had a song on their new CD where the chorus was Die You Zombie Bastards! and he asked if it was going to be in the movie they said No, we just heard of the title and ripped it off. At first I said, fuck those guys! Then I heard them and they were great. I asked it we could use the song. They sent a CD and I found one I liked better called Im a Monster that fit PERFECTLY over the final fight scene. So, while much of the music was not written for the film, a lot of it kind of sounds like it was! Then theres Zakas, Im still perplexed by Zakas. If I remember correctly, someone from his record label sent us a bunch of CDs to see if there was anything we could use for the film. Nothing really grabbed me except for this CD by Zakas. It was the strangest mixture of John Zorn sounding noise, and metal and sitars and flutes and shit and he sings about Chupacabras and Lord of the Rings and stuff. Ive never heard anything like it. There are like 50 musicians listed. This guy is brilliant. I wound up using LOTS of his music. I frequently used little bits of his intros and stuff and basically used it like score. I love it. Ive never met or actually talked to the guy, and I dont think I want to. I like just having the image of him as a deranged mad genius with elf ears in a cloak. Hail Zakas. And then I was blessed by getting Paul Leary to let me use the song Fine Home from his History of Dogs record along with a bunch of unreleased instrumental tracks. Paul has been a hero of mine for ever and I feel honored that he lent me some of his fantastic music. I am forever in his debt. One of our investors owns a record label and released a DYZB! CD soundtrack. As far as I know its still in print, but if anyone is interested I would get one now, sure to be a collectors item one day. Theres a link on dieyouzombiebastards.com to buy it (we sell T-Shirts tooplug plug)

UN: You served as first assistant director on the film Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. What was it like working with Lloyd Kaufman? Did you learn a lot from working with him? He seems like a director that would always be having fun on the set.

CE: Yeah I worked on Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger 4 as well. Lloyd Kaufman is a big hero of mine. But in no way is he a director that would always be having fun on set And I dont mean that as an insult, just watch any of Tromas recent making-of DVD features. Troma films are brutally hard work. Sure, at the end of the day they can enjoyable to work on but its no party. Ive worked on many films since and nothing compares to Troma as far as work load and the dedication is required. I would highly recommend ANYONE who wants a serious crash course in indie film making be a PA on a Troma film. Youll learn it all if you make it out alive.

UN: You also worked as director of photography and editor of Pretty Dead Things. Do you prefer to be in the directors seat or do you enjoy all facets of movie making? What was the shoot like? Did it go smoothly?

CE: Yeah, and I was the DP on Richard Griffin (director of Pretty Dead Things)s new film Splatter Disco and another movie for director Lola Wallace called Ghoulde Creek as well. I like DPing a lot. You get a lot of the creative satisfaction of directing without all of the stress. Not that shooting a film is always calm and smooth, but after you wrap you go home and come back tomorrow. When youre producing and directing a film you live and breathe it for an incredibly long time. So, for me, DPing is fun and a nice break. But at the end of the day, no matter how much you contribute, youre shooting someone elses movie. So I definitely do not prefer it. But I love it.

UN: You also have acted in quite a few movies as well. If a career as a director wasnt in the cards would you pursue an acting career or do you just prefer to play the small parts while still tackling other aspects of the film making process?

CE: Well I like acting. I don't think I'm especially good, but I like it. Pretty much every movie Ive been in is something I was working on in some other capacity. I just kind of fall into roles. Even in DYZB!, the role of Peanutch was written for someone else who didnt show upso I just did it. The only role I REALLY pursued was Carl Jr. in Poultrygeist. I read the script and begged Lloyd to late me play Carl. He was the best character in the script, and had the best death. But again, I was the AD on that movie too. If someone wanted to hire me to act in a movie, and the role was good, Id do it in a second.

Caleb Emerson
Zombastic Productions, Inc.
P.O. Box 301
Los Angeles, CA
90078 0301

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