Dawn of the Dead Jack Webb, Kevin Zegers Interview

What was your initial reaction to the script?
When I first got the script I wasn’t sure about it because you know when you remake a really good movie, a lot of times they can mess it up, especially if it’s a big studio project. It can become sort of generic and soft around the edges. When I met the guys I knew that they were sick and twisted and they were going to come up with something really sick and twisted – and they did. I also felt that they were going to play it really straight up, in the vein of what Philip Kaufman did with "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." I thought that was really interesting and I just kind of got along with the guys. Whenever you sign on to do a project, or someone signs you on to do a project, it’s because there’s a meeting of the minds and you feel like you can have a good time together for a few months, and that you can be proud of it at the end. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way, but in this case it has.

This is a re-envisioning and not a remake. What do you think is the difference between the two?
I think it’s always a re-envisioning. I mean, I think any filmmaker worth his salt is going to have to put his own personal touch on it. You know even when Gus Van Sant redid "Psycho," even though that was shot-for-shot, it was really his own personal movie. I think you have to do that. You pay homage to the original in ways that are respectful, and Zack [Snyder] has done that by putting some of the original cast members in, by including a lot of the humor, by getting an independent, kind of dirty feel to it, and by putting it in a sort of social context that the first film exists in. It’s bigger, it’s louder, it’s more punk rock. I think it may be a little more rough than the first one, which I think is really cool for a studio movie.

Speaking of Zack Snyder, what’s it like working with a first time director?
I never have any qualms about working with first time directors because they are usually really creative and really collaborative. They are usually not megalomaniac. And Zack’s had a lot of experience making very, very cool commercials with great visual aesthetics. And he has a great sense of humor about all this stuff. I had no questions at all that he was going to be competent, but he was also really cool and fun and never lost his temper and never got upset. That’s really cool, you know?

For the rest of this interview and more Dawn of the Dead goodness go to the link below http://romanticmovies.about.com/cs/dawnofthedead/a/dawnjw031004.htm