A movie mashup like Zombieland could only be made by a man with credits as eclectic as the film's many influences, and it found its perfect helmer in first-time feature director Ruben Fleischer. The 34-year-old cut his teeth on low-budget music videos before moving onto bigger artists like M.I.A. and Dizzee Rascal, then found success directing commercials, producing the MTV series Rob & Big, and helming episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live. Now, after a quick shoot and post-production schedule, Fleischer's found himself shepherding one of the most anticipated films of the fall into release tomorrow.
The day after he turned in his final cut, I traveled to Fleischer's office on the Sony lot to get the scoop on Woody Harrelson's casting, the Jonah Hill film he'd first tried to direct, and the perils of luring actresses to a movie called Zombieland.
When I saw you after your panel at Comic-Con, you seemed a little nervous about how the movie would be received.
I was worried about Comic-Con because it was such a core audience. I don't come from that world, I don't have that cool, kind of comic-y fanboy cred. That's just not who I am and it's not my sensibility, but this movie so appeals to that demographic that I didn't want them to call bullshit, basically. When I was down there, I was worried that somebody would call bullshit, but luckily, people just really like it.
So do people quiz you on your zombie movie bona fides?
People do, occasionally. It's not rampant, but that's definitely an easy interview question. The thing is that once I got the job, I watched every zombie movie so I could know the reference points and see how they work. At this point, I actually am a student of the zombie genre, but I didn't go into it that way. There are plenty of horror nerds that love those movies, and for them, it's precious. Because I wasn't one of those people, I was always really insecure about it.
What do you think it is about the genre that's so compelling? The vampire story is having a resurgence right now, and you can see all those elements of sex and lust and danger, but what is it about zombies that attracts such a devoted following?
People have written their dissertations on it -- apparently, there are theories that it has to do with fear about the future. Actually, when times are tough, zombie films do well. That was the case with Night of the Living Dead which I think was '68, and obviously that was a pretty rough patch in American history. Dawn of the Dead was during the recession in the 80's, in the Reagan era. I think people have a lot of anxiety now about the economy and the future. I don't know what the direct correlation between zombies and the economy is, but there definitely seems to be a relationship between America doing badly and zombies doing well.
So there's a silver lining for you!
I also feel like our movie doesn't take itself too seriously and it's just kind of fun. You sit there and watch it and it's got cool music and funny jokes and big explosions and you can just sit back. It's almost like an amusement park ride: You can take your mind off things for an hour and a half. I feel like it's an escape in the truest form, and zombies or not, movies have always done well in times of recession or depression. Hopefully, people can go see Zombieland and watch people blow away zombies and get the girl and have fun and take their minds off of other things.
How much would Shaun of the Dead be a horror-comedy touchstone for this movie?
For me, the touchstones were Shaun of the Dead for sure, American Werewolf in London, and to a much lesser degree, Evil Dead and Scream, which are horror movies that have comedic sensibilities. As far as tone, American Werewolf in London is the closest because it's a grounded, horror-based comedy that happens to have this heightened horror component -- really, though, it's about these two guys backpacking and it just so happens [that one can say], "I'm a werewolf."
Shaun of the Dead was a real reference point because I loved the movie, but also, it's something I was hyper-aware not to overlap with. I made every effort to distinguish our movie from that because the natural thing to do is compare them; if you look online, every kid's comment is, "Oh, America's Shaun of the Dead."
What did you make sure not to do?
A lot of things were already there in the script, the biggest difference being that we have fast zombies and they have slow zombies. Another difference is that theirs takes place at the moment that people start to turn [into zombies], where ours is more like 28 Days Later where it's already post-zombie apocalypse. To me, their movie is very much a parody of other zombie movies through a comedic lens, whereas I never wanted to venture toward parody or satire. I wanted to keep it grounded in character-based comedy the whole time.
The last time I talked to you about projects, you were trying to get a movie with Jonah Hill and a Pez dispenser off the ground.
Yeah, Psycho Funky Chimp.
How did you get from there to here?
Psycho Funky Chimp was a terrific script at Paramount that Todd Phillips was producing. Basically, Paramount said they weren't going to make it. We jumped through every hoop they presented us with, and at a certain point they made the decision that no matter how great we got the script or how low we brought the budget down, it just wasn't a movie that was a priority for them. As a first-time director, I really wanted to make a movie, so I was kind of stuck reading scripts again and I was looking for that perfect first opportunity.
I met on a few films that I was considering, but there really wasn't anything I was 100% committed to until I read Zombieland. Even upon first read, I wasn't convinced it was the one, just because of the zombie component and my insecurity about the genre, but when you think about the movie and take out the zombies, it's really a classic hero's journey about a kid that's afraid and then becomes unafraid and gets the girl. There's a lot of comedy, it's a buddy movie, and it relates to a lot of films I like, like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off...Midnight Run's my favorite example to use about these two unlikely people who are paired together and go on an adventure.
So how do you think you won the project over the other directors who were interested?
The movie was originally a television pilot and it didn't have an ending. I think it was deemed too expensive to do as a television show -- it just wasn't realistic to accomplish that -- but as a TV movie to set up a series, it didn't have a climactic ending. It kind of ended with the natural ellipsis that would lead to the next episode. When whatever network it was decided they didn't want to do it as a show, the producer Gavin Polone took it to Sony, set it up as a feature, and that was the script that it was -- it has the same characters and sensibility, it just didn't have a third act. So when I went in to meet with people, I pitched the idea of the amusement park and giving them a destination for their journey. In Wizard of Oz they have Oz, or they have Wally World in Vacation. There's a place they're going to that the road trip ends at, so I used those as examples and thought it would be fun from a directing standpoint to have a zombie showdown in an amusement park.
How did casting go? None of these actors is necessarily who I'd expect to find in a big-budget zombie movie.
It all became real once we got Woody on board. We were searching for "the name" that would get the studio excited and Woody was kind of my first idea of someone who was unconventional and quirky and funny and could pull off the action, but he's not totally what was scripted. Definitely, the way he ended up bringing the character to life is not at all what was scripted.
How so?
Originally, the guy was written as kind of the comedy version of Michael Douglas in Falling Down: a normal dude, but then when the shit goes down, he becomes a zombie-killing weirdo. To me, of the scripted version of that character, the next closest thing I could think of would be Walter, John Goodman's character in The Big Lebowski. He was a guy who was amped up and ready to go, but actually got a chance to use his guns. Woody turned him into this cowboy, this High Plains Drifter zombie killer, which I loved. I saw No Country for Old Men and he came on the screen, and he had that cowboy hat and Texas drawl, and I really thought he'd be so fun.
I had to sell him on the movie, because never in his wildest dreams would he want to do a zombie movie. He wasn't a fan of the genre, he was afraid of it, in a way. I had to convince him, but once he got on board, the studio got on board.
What do you think Woody was afraid of?
I think zombie movies have a certain association, that they're B-movies or schlocky or whatever. He wasn't the only one: pretty much every single actress said the same thing to me when they came into audition. "My agent sent me the script, I didn't want to read it, I avoided it but they kept hounding me saying, 'No, just trust me, you'll love it,' and then as soon as I started reading it I couldn't put it down." That was the recurring theme from pretty much everyone who auditioned. You know actors, they want to do Shakespeare or something. They don't want to do something titled Zombieland.
How did you get your big break in the industry?
I started doing low-budget videos for my friends' bands. Basically, the first video I ever did cost $50, for my friend Gold Chains. We shot it on a subway train in San Francisco, and somehow it got on MTV. I did more videos for indie rock bands like Piebald, and Gold Chains was on a UK label that liked my videos a lot, so they gave me a bunch of other UK artists to do, and that's when I got hooked up with DJ Format and did that video with the breakdancing animals ("We Know Something You Don't Know," below). That was the big break in my career because it led to me getting signed by a production company and I started directing commercials, actually making money and being able to support myself as a director and commit to that as a profession.
DJ Format - "We Know Something You Don't Know" from Ruben Fleischer on Vimeo.
Commercials led to me doing this race across Europe called the Gumball Rally, which I did a documentary about, and through that I met Rob & Big because they were participants in the rally. That led to me doing the television show with them, but all along I was doing commercials and videos and hoping to make a feature. My background was in feature filmmaking -- like, my first job was as an assistant to the director of Chuck & Buck, and working with him again as his assistant on The Good Girl. So it was really by being an assistant/apprentice to Miguel Arteta and him being a very generous mentor that I was inspired to be a director.
Now that you're nearing the finish line on this project, it'll be time to look for the next one -- and Zombieland is a quirky enough film that it wouldn't seem to lock you into one genre. What are you hoping to do next?
Well, I have to say that making a movie is the funnest thing I've ever done in my life, and all I want to do is make more. I can't wait until I have more time so I can read more scripts and find the one that'll be the next movie. What's cool about Zombieland is that it really opens me up to opportunities: I can go do one with real action in it, I could do something that's just a comedy, there's a romantic component to the film so I could do a romantic comedy if that's what I was inspired to do. As a non-writing director, I'm beholden to whatever scripts I find, so really, it's about what's the best script and what gives me the opportunity to learn and stretch my directing muscles.