Greg Nicotero and “The Walking Dead”

Weekend of Horrors Coverage

by Aaron Vaccaro – Head Writer

If you’ve never been to a horror convention before, it can pretty much be summed up as a sea of black shirts, tattoos, and pasty skin.And let’s just say that the majority of T-shirts being sold were XL’s and above.  Now, mind you, I’m not dissing that aspect of the convention, just stating the facts.

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The “Weekend of Horrors” is put on twice a year here in Los Angeles by the people at Creation Entertainment.  The convention, taking place at the Burbank Marriott here in Los Angeles this weekend, aims at bringing in a plethora of guests that would be the equivalent of taking a peek inside a horror fanatic’s wet dream.  Saturday was no exception as I got a chance to see a “The Walking Dead” panel with the FX wizard Greg Nicotero, a Q & A with Dawn of the Dead‘s Ken Foree, the cast and crews of both Maniac Cop and the Night of the Demons remake, and culminating with the highlight of the weekend, the Q & A with my new man crush, Bruce Campbell.

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The “Weekend of Horrors” is more than simply a B-movie star studded affair, there’s also numerous booths selling all kinds of merchandise from zombie jerky to bootleg  DVD’s (including Grizzly, which I would’ve bought if it hadn’t been $30).  There’s also lots of artists displaying their work.  It’s basically comic con on an astronomically smaller level and focused solely on horror/cult/B-movies.

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I was really excited to see “The Walking Dead” panel because I have been tracking this project from it’s very inception and was secretly hoping that Frank Darabont and Robert Kirkman would show up as surprise guests.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t case, but the panel was run by FX guru Greg Nicotero (Day of the Dead, Piranha 3D, The Green Mile, Army of Darkness, and many, many others) and Greg brought along some of his cohorts from his FX company, KNB FX Group, as well as one of the stars of “The Walking Dead,” Norman Reedus who happened to be a guest at the convention but for his cult hit, The Boondock Saints.

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The panel opened with “The Walking Dead” sizzle reel that has been making the rounds around the web, and then Nicotero went on to tell the auditorium that working on this project was extremely challenging and simply incredible.  Working as Key Special Effects Supervisor as well as 2nd Unit Director and Consulting Producer, Nicotero said that each episode is basically its own movie.  In regards to the pilot episode, Nicotero said, “We basically shot an hour and a half movie in 12 days.”  The makeup effects were intense, and the overall scale of the project was huge.  Both Nicotero and Reedus went on to say that “The Walking Dead” is unlike anything that is or has ever been on TV, it “felt like an epic film,” according to Reedus.

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Next, Nicotero shared with the audience a six minute clip from episode 2 of the series, and we were also only the second group of people to see the clip as they just premiered it as last week’s NY Comic Con.  The clip starts out with a gorgeous overhead shot of the downtown Atlanta and we zoom in on a tank in the middle of street with hordes of “walkers” aka zombies, circling around the tank.  Our hero, Rick Grimes is trapped in the tank, and eventually makes a break for it in an effort to reach safety.  My only complaint about the clip was the dialogue, which was a tad bit on the corny side.  When this Asian kid leads Grimes to safety and exclaims, “Nice moves Clint Eastwood, you the new Sheriff?” I knew this was no Shawshank.  But hey, it’s still a fucking show about zombies coming to television, and I will continue to worship the ground it walks on.  Not to mention, you could tell from the way that Nicotero and Reedus were talking, that they’re genuinely super excited for this project and think it’s going to blow people away.

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We got some behind the scenes stories including the challenges that were involved in dealing with hundreds of zombie extras.  According to Nicotero, due to time conflicts, for some of the zombies in the way background of shots, the would just throw blood on them and say, “Okay, you’re a zombie, now get the fuck out.”  They also had the extras attend a zombie school to learn how to vary their zombie walks, and according to Nicotero, “If we had a nickname for your zombie walk, you were screwed.  Nicotero admitted that the most fun day on set was when they were shooting the last episode of the season where one of the shots calls for a parking lot filled with dead bodies.  In order to decide where to place all the dead bodies, they used the calculated method of chucking blood filled condoms and water balloons.  Wherever they exploded, that was where a body went.

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It was on to the Q & A portion which opened with a question from Reedus’ Boondock Saints co-star, Sean Patrick Flanery, which at first seemed like a pathetic excuse for an actor to try and steal the spotlight but redeemed himself later when he asked Nicotero if his kids must dominate at school on Halloween, to which Nicotero admitted that they do, adding that he constructed a Godzilla costume for his son last year, and he won every contest.

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“The Walking Dead” premieres Halloween night on AMC.  You can find out all the details here.