Well, here's a pleasant surprise: a horror remake that's actually good. I'm speaking of The Crazies, the updating of the 1973 George Romero film about a biological weapons spill that turns the population of a rural town into remorseless killers. For director Breck Eisner, son of controversial former Disney czar Michael Eisner, it's his first feature since 2005's epic dud Sahara disappeared into a sandstorm of legal filings. The Crazies brings a measure of redemption -- it's a taut and beautifully shot horror film that manages to both honor and embellish upon the classic '70s exploitation genre to which it pays homage. We spoke this week with Eisner about staying true to the spirit of Romero, what he learned from Sahara, and the status of his dream project: a huge-budget version of Flash Gordon, based on the original Alex Raymond comic strips.
What are your memories of seeing the original The Crazies?
When they first approached me about making the movie, I had very distant memories of seeing it as a kid of maybe 14. I think a buddy had brought it over on VHS and we watched it. I hadn't thought about it since, but things in the movie definitely stuck in my brain. That idea of the people closest to you suddenly turning on you. I figured if I had remembered it this much later, there must be something to it.
To what extent was George Romero involved in the remake?
I was brought in after a draft had been worked on for about a year. They had purchased the rights directly from Romero, and developed the first draft with him. Then I came in and had a somewhat different take on the movie. The original has a bifurcated point of view, being told from the point of view of the military and the townsfolk. I wanted to excise the military point of view, and rewrite it to be just the townsfolk's point of view. We've since finished the movie and shown it to Romero, and I talked to him after we screened it in Toronto, and he seemed quite pleased with it. So that was a nerve wracking call, but one that seemed to go well.
Beyond the shift in points of view, how different is your film?
There's no question it's a very different movie. When I think about making a movie, and think about a year to three year commitment of my time and life and all that effort, you really need to be sure of why you're making the movie and why you should be making the movie. For me, there was a massive limitation in The Crazies, in that he had only 200 grand to make the original. And this was a movie that had some scale to it. It had the military invading and occupying a town, and those things can be expensive. And so I think his version's shortcomings suffered somewhat from lack of funds. So that's one of the big differences. It's not a big-budget movie at all, but it is significantly bigger than what Romero had. So we could get really great actors like Timothy [Olyphant] and Radha [Mitchell], we could scale up the movie and have a military presence, and spend more time on some of the horror-action set pieces, and really build the world we wanted to build.
Did you find a way to modernize it, and perhaps tie it in to more current themes and issues?
Romero's original was from the tail end of the Vietnam War, and it was definitely a response to that. This movie takes place in the present day, but it is very much a response to the post 9/11 world under the presidency of George Bush. It's a commentary on the use of military by politicians to forward their own means, and the idea that the populace of this country can't just blindly trust politicians to use the military in ways that are always best for the greater good of the country. In remaking Romero it felt important to me that the message of the movie be part of the design of the movie, because the message was always part of the DNA of his movies. But it needs to be somewhat in the background -- a modern day audience doesn't want to be lectured to.
Will fans coming to The Crazies in hopes of finding "fast zombies" be satisfied with what they find?
It's not a zombie movie, even though it's a Romero movie. They're not zombies. They're similar. But these people are not undead. Zombies act in a cohesive way -- they all want to eat brains and have the same goals. But when people get infected with the toxin "Trixie," it reacts differently in everybody. It creates a rage that boils deep within, but their actions are based on the people they were before. So it's not like the people are completely lost -- the individuals are still very much there. They're just acting out their innermost demons in very rage-induced ways. To me the real scare of the movie is that concept of your best friend, husband, wife, father going crazy and going after you. It delves into a very primal fear that develops at a very young age -- that perhaps your family or best friend will turn on you. It's a primal human fear.
Is it at all exploring the primal fear of actual mental illness invading your family or private sphere?
No, it's not supposed to be relate to mental illness. It's way too aggressive and active, and comes on too quickly. It's definitely a toxin that infects everyone who comes in contact with it. It's not akin to mental illness, no.
How graphic is the violence?
Depends who you ask. If you ask my mom, she'd say incredibly graphic. If you ask any of my friends who love horror movies, they'd say it's aggressive but not over the top. It's a horror-thriller movie, not a gorefest or porn horror as some people like to call certain types of horror. There are moments that are really quite graphic and violent and terrifying, but also the realism of the movie, there to enhance the scares not overwhelm them.
Were there any scenes you had to cut for ratings?
No. I mean it was clearly going to be an R. There was never any question that it would be anything but an R. But I don't think I had to cut anything to keep it to an R.
So nothing to look forward to in the unrated DVD release?
Every scene we shot is in the movie except for one scene that I shot, that is incredibly bleak and really dark. It didn't make it into the final movie.
I wanted to ask you about Sahara. Looking back now, the dust having settled, what have you learned about the perils of launching a franchise, and working from pre-existing material?
For me the biggest lesson in the perils of making any movie, whether it's a franchise or costs a dollar or a $100 million -- you got to have a solid script going into production. It's crucial. That's your blueprint. You can make a bad script an OK movie if you work really hard, but it's really easy to make a great script an OK movie. Which is not the goal any of us want. But what happened in Sahara is that we had an author who by contract had absolute script approval, and who wouldn't approve any script. And they had a date they had to shoot by before they lost the rights. And those two do not mix well. And so on production we were having to make it up as we went. We didn't have a clear path. We were only allowed to make script changes once we started photography, and at that point it's just too late. So the perils of that is that you have to be sure you have a good script no matter what it is you're making. That was the biggest lesson I learned from Sahara. And it's a lesson they seem to forget over and over again in these big movies. They figure out a release date, they figure out the rights, and sometimes a script doesn't come together but the commitments have already been made. And that's a dangerous situation.
And looking ahead, I wanted to ask about Flash Gordon.
Flash Gordon is a project I've been pursuing for years, it's a real passion of mine. The writers have been breaking story the past couple of months, and we have a couple months to go until the draft goes into Sony. Assuming they achieve everything we talked about, I think it will be a really great script. It's not a remake of any movie that's been done before. Nothing to do with the camp of the '80s, nothing to do with the serials of the '50s. It's definitely based on the Alex Raymond strips from the '30s and '40s, told from the point of view as if he was redoing the strips today. The audience that was reading the strips back then was a very different audience than today's audience. It's an action-adventure, very dynamic, aggressive, with a really strong central character.
What kind of commitments have you gotten from Sony?
We're a long way off. It's a gigantic movie, so these things are tough to get made. I made Crazies took me years to get made -- I can't imagine a movie of this size. There's a long way to go. Sony's got to commit big money to it and love it, and there's going to be years of prep. It's a lot of work! But if we can pull it off, I think it would be quite fantastic.