Zombie romance Warm Bodies is currently the #1 film at the box office, taking in more than $20 million during its opening weekend. Prior to the film’s release, we had the opportunity to catch an early screening followed by a Q&A with director Jonathan Levine and star Dave Franco. The next day, we were lucky enough to sit down for a chat with Levine about adapting the screenplay and bringing the film to life… or is it death?
[Editor’s Note: some of this material is taken from the audience Q&A sessions, with the rest being pulled from our interview. Beware of mild spoilers.]
First things first, I’m a huge fan of your work.
Thank you. Hopefully I won’t disappoint you with my personality.
I’m a big fan of The Wackness. I used to work at a video store, and I took it home one night and was blown away by how great it was.
I used to work at a video store in New York. Like the character in The Wackness, my parents kind of ran out of money. I was kind of like this rich kid, and then all of a sudden I had to get my own job, so I went to work at a video store. And the fucking asshole owner of the video store wouldn’t let us watch movies while we worked. He would make the monitors face away from us so we couldn’t watch movies. That guy was a dick.
Obviously, this film is coming out at a time when the zombie genre is very big. Do you think it was easier to get this film greenlit based on the popularity of the genre?
You know, it’s weird. This movie came to me from Summit, and they were so passionate about this movie. But they weren’t passionate about this movie because they thought it was going to be a billion-dollar hit, although I’m sure they hoped that. But they were passionate about this movie because they actually just liked the book, and they thought it was unique and they thought it was interesting, which is such a great place to come from.
When I read the book for the first time, it was right before I did 50/50, and The Walking Dead wasn’t a TV show yet. In this case, the reason it was easier to greenlight was because they just liked it a lot and they found it to be unique and interesting. It’s a very strange thing to say about a studio, but that’s the truth. Stuff like The Walking Dead and World War Z, that stuff helps, but we had no way of predicting that.
How did you approach adapting the screenplay from the book? Were there moments that you cut out, or moments that you created for the film?
When I got to the book, it hadn’t even come out yet. I got a very early copy of the book, so I felt free to do whatever I wanted. Now that a lot of people have read the book, there’s a lot of people that are mad at me. [laughs]
When you’re working on your own material, or adapting someone else’s, how different is that from doing a film like 50/50 where you weren’t involved in the writing process?
I think this was actually closer to 50/50. Even though I wrote the script, Isaac wrote the book, and I felt a responsibility to him in a very deep way. He was self-publishing it on a website, and he was this young guy that was very passionate about it, and I don’t want to mess up his life by screwing up, so I felt a great responsibility there. And with Will [Reiser, screenwriter of 50/50], obviously you feel a huge responsibility because he went through cancer, and it’s his life.
So those are very scary, but in those situations, what I’ve learned to do is ask a lot of questions of both the writers, and the people around me, to make sure that I’m always thinking about everything and doing justice to stuff. And by questions, I mean like “Did that take suck?” [laughs]
This movie breaks a lot of the “rules” of the zombie genre. Were you worried about fan reactions?
I think we tried to tweak the rules a little bit. Isaac’s book was careful to acknowledge the standard Romero zombie rules, and then sort of push them in a new direction, which I really liked. There are a lot of people that really defend zombie rules, and I respect that, and we tried to let those people know that we cared about their feelings. But at the same time, there’s really cool stuff, like when they eat the brains, they get into someone’s memories. I didn’t care that it wasn’t part of the lore already. But yeah, I was definitely conscious while making it that a lot of zombie fans would want to destroy me.
Did you draw any influence from other zombie comedies, like Shaun of the Dead or My Boyfriend’s Back?
I’ve actually never seen My Boyfriend’s Back. I re-watched Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, and Dead Alive. They’re just different, though. Our movie is like half comedy, half romance, and those movies are like three quarters comedy, or ninety percent comedy. I think the biggest influence in tone was Zombieland. Shaun of the Dead is such a wildly unique movie that it’s really difficult to cherry-pick anything from.
I watched all sorts of movies for this, not just comedies, and not just zombie movies. We always played with tone a lot, and it ended up getting funnier and funnier throughout production. Before I do a movie, I put all these images up on my wall of movies that I want it to feel like, and at the end of the day it ends up sort of feeling like some of them. The short answer is, I love Shaun of the Dead, I love Zombieland, I love Dead Alive, and I was hoping to be consistent with that tradition.
Were you influenced by Wall-E? I notice some similarities in the way “R” collects items and takes them home.
I’m not gonna lie, I watched Wall-E. Nick forced me to watch it, and I think it was clearly of the same cloth as Isaac’s book. I’m a huge fan of Wall-E, and I definitely think there are some similarities, and hopefully no one sues us. [laughs] They both collect things, they’re both interested in pop culture. If there’s one movie I’m happy to rip off, it’s Wall-E.
How important is music to your storytelling process?
It’s really important. It’s my way into the emotion and the soul of the movie, even when I’m picking a movie to do. If I can think of the soundscape of that movie, if I can think of five songs I would put in that movie, I get really excited about it. Growing up, my favorite moments in movies were moments where music and image are married together, whether it’s Public Enemy in Do the Right Thing, or any moment in Almost Famous or any moment in a Scorcese movie or a Tarantino movie. Even the score in Taxi Driver, those are the things I remember, the way music makes me feel.
In this movie, music represents a time that no longer exists. It’s an inherently nostalgic thing, so it was really fun to kind of play with that, and it’s always really fun when you can have a kind of shorthand with the audience. Warm Bodies owes a lot to John Hughes as well, because it’s sort of the nerd getting the girl. That’s why we ended up with a lot of 80s music, too, because I was trying to channel John Hughes.
With each of your films, you take characters in complicated situations that people can relate to, and you approach it in a humorous fashion. Is that a key factor in your decision-making process when you’re looking for a new project?
Maybe. Not consciously. I feel like there’s probably some things you just like, unconsciously, because you like them. They’re all guys, too, they’re all young guys. I think I probably identify a lot with that, I think I really identify with young people in very intense situations. Those moments are so formative in helping you become who you’re going to be, so I think I’m attracted to the intensity of youth.
Those are also times when you first learn to laugh at yourself, because life gets so hard, and that’s a common theme in all of my movies. Even this guy in Warm Bodies, even though he can’t do anything he’s always aware that he’s a zombie, and in every situation he’s messing up and he can’t change it, so he hs no choice but to make a funny joke about it in his own head. So I think I’m attracted to that kind of world view, and that tone.
What do you think when you hear the film described as Romeo and Juliet meets Night of the Living Dead?
I’ll take that over Twilight with Zombies.
Warm Bodies is currently playing in theaters everywhere.