AS THE world's most prominent writer of the living dead, Max Brooks
is renowned as the darling of the shuffling, terrifying
monsters.
But when the American author came face to face with his first
moaning and howling zombie in Glasgow city centre, even he was a
little taken aback.
The writer flew in to Scotland this week to visit the set of Brad
Pitt's multi-million-dollar adaptation of his novel World War Z -
and he could not believe just how great the movie monsters look and
how crazy Scots were going for the film.
Max, 39, who is the son of screen icons Mel Brooks and Anne
Bancroft, was invited to Scotland to see how the film is going and
spent time watching the shoot in the city's George Square before a
book signing session in Glasgow.
He said: "It's incredible. Brad Pitt really conquered the city.
I've never seen this much enthusiasm for a film and everyone is
really excited to be working with all these people cheering and
watching.
"I was on set watching a scene where Brad Pitt is running with his
family, and a hundred extras running with him, and behind us was a
crowd of about 500 people just watching. The assistant director
said how great it would be if only we had the money to hire all the
people in behind us.
"I also had lunch with the zombies and they're great. They look
very much like what my impression would be of new zombies who had
not really begun to rot, kind of like phase one zombies.
"They have a zombie school, where they are teaching extras how to
act like zombies, and from talking to people on set they have
really put a lot of research into everything.
"It was incredible to see it for myself and I'm still amazed they
are making a movie of the book.
"I heard Brad Pitt had optioned the rights and I thought, 'That's
cool' but it probably wouldn't ever get made because most optioned
projects never do, so it was the biggest shock in the world to me
when my wife showed me pictures on her computer of Brad Pitt in
Malta filming World War Z.
"I'm still waiting to wake up from this one."
Brooks didn't follow in his father's acting or directing footsteps,
but went into writing instead.
He started off his career in TV and documentaries, writing for
Saturday Night Live, and when he was 22 he spent a winter in
Speyside making a documentary about Scots mountain rescue teams for
the BBC.
His Highland experiences lent themselves to Scotland's only
appearance in the book World War Z, as it's revealed that the
government rebuild the Antonine Wall north of Glasgow to cut off
the UK population to the south along with the majority of the
British contingent of zombies, ensuring the Highlands
survive.
Max made his undead name eight years ago with the cult hit book,
The Zombie Survival Guide.
WWZ came along three years later, following the same rules as his
detailed and entertaining handbook, and quickly became a smash hit
around the world, selling 600,000 copies.
Set 10 years after a zombie apocalypse, the book is comprised of
interviews conducted by a UN researcher into the human stories of
the war, as various countries are overrun, stage defences and
finally fight back against the plague of re-animated corpses.
The zombies capture humans and eat them, with whatever is left of a
corpse coming back to life to join the zombie side.
With no central characters and dozens of different short
story-style reports and recollections, including the story of a
Chinese nuclear sub on the run, the book was deemed
unfilmable.
"There's no reason anybody should have optioned this for a movie,
it does everything wrong," Max said. "It doesn't have a main
character, the storyline is told from a hundred different points of
view, it would be prohibitively expensive filming in all these
different countries.
"You couldn't pay me to turn it into a film. All I know is they
have their work cut out for them. It is the equivalent of climbing
Ben Nevis on your knees.
"I'm not involved so I just want to be able to enjoy watching the
movie when it comes out. At least I know they did at least as much
research into things as I did for the book.
"Brad loves Glasgow and he told me how great it was to make a film
in a place that is not used to it."
Max Brooks will be signing copies of World War Z and The Zombie
Survival Guide in Glasgow today at Waterstone's on Sauchiehall
Street at 2pm, and then at Forbidden Planet, Buchanan Street, at
5.30pm.
(Quelle: dailyrecord.co.uk)
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