MAX BROOKS IS SERIOUS ABOUT ZOMBIES
Interview by Philip Nutman
Max Brooks is probably tired of being described as “the son of comedian Mel Brooks and the late actress, Anne Bancroft.” But then he’s probably inured to it at the age of 34. What seems to bother him a little is the fact that as the son of Mel, people expect him to be funny, especially as he wrote for SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE between 2001-03 (Brooks won an Emmy for his work). This led to his first book, THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE (2003), being stocked in the humor section and passed off as a parody, which was far from the truth. The book, a fictional “manual” explains in detail how to survive the zombie apocalypse—“the perfect book to have in the event of a zombie outbreak in your region”—but is actually chock full of serious advice. The fact that a lot of horror fans believed Brooks was taking the piss out of their favorite horror subgenre didn’t initially win him any popularity contests in certain quarters. Fortunately, over the past three years, opinions have changed and Brooks now has a cult following. So much so that his new novel, WORLD WAR Z: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE ZOMBIE WAR, debuted at number 11 on The New York Times bestseller list last month.
In person, Brooks is disarming (no zombie pun intended!); in front of an audience, he is both self-effacing and witty (just don’t call him funny, although he frequently elicits laughs from the crowd); one-on-one, he’s serious, charming, thoughtful, erudite and still self-effacing. Some people stink of fake modesty, but Max Brooks is the real deal: he’s humble but no Uriah Heep. And did I mention he’s serious?
Reading WORLD WAR Z, one is immediately struck by the obvious attention to detail (see review following the interview)—for “obvious,” you could make a case for “obsessive,” but in the best sense of the word—and it’s no surprise to learn that Brooks is both a history and military buff (he has a degree in history). Beyond his love of detail and desire for realism, Brooks is very serious about his prose. While I can’t contrast WWZ with TZSG, which I haven’t read for the reason stated above—I thought it was meant as a joke and refused to even pick up a copy and skim it in the book store—make no bones about it (sorry! another unintentional zombie-ism pun), WWZ is fiction at its finest. Dare I say “literature”?
The following interview took place in the bar of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Secaucus, New Jersey on the Sunday afternoon of the recent Fangoria Weekend of Horrors immediately following Max’s guest appearance and signing session. WWZ had been out for two weeks and had moved up from number 11 to the 10th spot on the NY Times. Also, plans are already afoot to turn WWZ into a major movie—Brad Pitt’s production company beat out Leonardo DiCaprio’s team in a heated bidding war that has netted Brooks six figures against a seven-digit figure once the movie goes into production.
PHILIP NUTMAN: Congratulations on your movie deal.
MAX BROOKS: Thanks. It was a surprise.
PN: You just told the audience you’re not planning on doing the adaptation yourself.
MB: I don’t feel I’m as experienced a scriptwriter as the project needs.
PN: How does it feel to have people take you and a novel about zombies seriously?
MB: THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE ended up in the humor section. Okay, I understand Random House had to find a way to market the book. But the next thing I know is I’m being described as a political satirist. I’m just a zombie fan who loves, loves George Romero’s movies. But I’m very serious when it comes to writing. Whenever you watch a zombie film, there’s often talk about what’s going on in other places, but we never see that. I want to know about what’s going on in Germany or China. I decided I wanted to read a book about a global zombie pandemic, so I sat down and wrote WORLD WAR Z.
PN: Why did you set the start of the pandemic in China?
MB: Have there been any plagues coming out of China lately? Hmm...I’m not being sarcastic here. There’s SARS, avian bird flu, which is dumb because avian means bird. There are a lot of diseases coming out of China. The Black Death started in China. I wanted to be realistic. More than that, the Chinese government are so repressive. You read the stories about how SARS was repressed. If it started in Philadelphia, it’d be over before it began to take hold. I had to put it in a place where it would be allowed to fester, where it would spread because the government would deny its existence. Unfortunately, on a global marketing scale, I’ve priced myself out of a potential billion readers.
PN: The novel is quite dense. I was impressed with the amount of detail—military strategy, environmental problems, the vivid descriptions of exotic locations—how long did it take you to write?
MB: Two years. I did a lot of research. I did a lot of research before I started writing, but then I ended up doing both. For every hour I wrote, I probably ended up doing 10 hours of research. And I couldn’t depend on the Internet. The Internet is very unreliable. Anything I found on the ‘net I had to back up with books. I’d start investigating one topic and that would lead to other areas, things I hadn’t thought of, but that impacted the initial topic. I wanted to make the book authentic. Just like THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE, everything you read about is real: real science, real politics, real history, real weaponry. I wanted to know, 10 years after the pandemic, how has humanity survived? What would it be like to survive on a submarine? What would happen to you if you were working on the International Space Station and were cut off, watching a global war take place beneath you? With THE [ZOMBIE] SURVIVAL GUIDE, I talked about what to do when it happens; with WWZ, it’s happened. I’m very fortunate that there are a number of people I know in certain fields—the military, medicine—who are experts in those fields who I could turn to for help with research.
PN: The survivors’ stories are very vivid, but you really capture each character’s voice, their background, their environments. I particularly liked the sections set in Japan. The way you depict the reaction of the Japanese government and the populace is so on the money.
MB: Thank you. I wasn’t going to shy away from controversy. Some people hate it, some people love it—
PN: But it’s not being ignored.
MB: Exactly. I want people to be passionate. I had to make political statements because you can’t get away from political issues in this case. What governments would survive? How would they survive? You can’t save everybody—so how do you make that decision and what are the consequences?
PN: I was interested by the point you made when you just asked the audience how many of them work with their hands, and about one percent of the audience raised their arms.
MB: We’re writers. We wouldn’t be much use to society in terms of trying to rebuild the world in the aftermath of a post-apocalyptic event.
PN: (Laughing) I can change a light bulb, a spark plug. I’m not very handy with power tools. But I can cook and know how to raise a vegetable garden.
MB: That’s something.
PN: I was particularly impressed by your geographical details. I’ve traveled fairly widely, but there were a lot of places in the book that I was unfamiliar with, particularly the Chinese details and the places the submarine goes.
MB: I’ve traveled to some of the locations, but not all of them. I’ve been to South Africa, I’ve been in those townships; I’ve been to Australia and New Zealand, the Caribbean, Cuba. But I haven’t been to China. I’ve only been to Moscow and northern Russia, not the other locations I write about. That was some of the most exacting research, trying to figure out how long a car ride would take from one place to another. I had to look at new maps, old maps, satellite photos...
PN: For all its seriousness, WORLD WAR Z has some great moments of social satire—
MB: There has to be.
PN: —so is that Bill Maher fucking Anne Coulter in one scene?
MB: (Totally deadpan) It could be.
PN: Let’s talk movies. You are a big Romero fan. What’s your favorite Romero movie?
MB: The original DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) because it breaks all the rules of standard cinema. You don’t know what to expect. It broke every genre. It wasn’t just horror. It’s the kind of movie I can just watch and watch and watch. If I’m going to plug anyone, I’m going to plug his work. Yes, there were zombie movies before George came along and made NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), but he really defined the modern genre
PN: What’s your least favorite?
MB: Easy. The RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) movies. It’s zombies in black face. Those movies did for the genre what Adam West did for BATMAN. I mean, how long did it take for Batman as a character to recover from that TV show? Because of those movies, I believe zombies are kooky and funny. You mention the word “zombie” and people laugh. They’re not scary; they’re funny and goofy.
PN: What about the trend for “fast” zombies?
MB: I’m a purist. I was at a convention with George Romero and somebody asked him about the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004), and he said, “My zombies will need a library card before they get a gym membership.” He’s totally against that notion, and that’s the way I feel, too. I think it’s much more scary. They just keep coming and coming at you, slowly, but inevitably. What really scares me is their lack of intelligence, their steady drive, the fact they are like a virus. That they keep on coming and will keep on coming until either you destroy them or they destroy you.
PN: How do you feel about the audio book version of WORLD WAR Z? It’s an impressive cast.
MB: It’s great. I couldn’t believe how lucky we were to get the kind of actors we did. I mean, Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Jürgen Prochnow, Henry Rollins, John Turturro, Rob and Carl Reiner...so many other great people. Jürgen just nailed it. I mean, this is real acting; this is not just reading a part. Everybody gave performances. Jürgen was the first one I saw [in the studio] so maybe I’m biased.
PN: What’s next for you book-wise?
MB: I don’t know. But I’m still not done with zombies.
DON’T BOTHER TO BAR YOUR WINDOWS – THEY’RE ALREADY HERE!
Review by Philip Nutman
WORLD WAR Z: AN ORAL
HISTORY OF THE ZOMBIE WAR
By Max Brooks
Crown Publishing 344 pages. $25
Having written a zombie novel (the acclaimed cult novel WET WORK [1993]), I know how challenging it is to make zombies fresh, exciting and interesting in the wake of screenwriter/director George A. Romero’s cinematic legacy. And did I mention scary? Fortunately, for us living dead fans, Max Brooks has done the genre proud and produced the first true work of zombie literature. WORLD WAR Z eschews the pulp sensibilities I deliberately adopted in the aforementioned novel, and unfolds like a brilliantly composed documentary. Brooks’ writing is so vivid, so authentic in its details the reader feels as if they are there. His characters, all finely drawn, bring each vignette to life. Using a global canvas, Brooks goes where no writer in this field has gone before as he reports on the aftermath of the world war between the remnants of humanity and “Zack.”
Although the central character, the interviewer, is nameless and a recorder of the memories of others, it is sufficient glue to bind this ambitious, impressive first novel (THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE doesn’t count in my eyes) together. Like Studs Terkel’s THE GOOD WAR: AN ORAL HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II, which WORLD WAR Z was clearly inspired by, the voices of this disparate cast of characters (some of whom put in more than one appearance) create a unity that makes the work as a whole as compelling as a first-person narrative.
Fascinating ideas are at work here—large portions of humanity take to the seas only to encounter the living dead both in the ocean and under it—and every detail, however seemingly outlandish becomes plausible. So, too, are some of the situations recounted to the interviewer. For example, Queen Elizabeth II doesn’t desert Great Britain as the population turns lethal; she turns Windsor Castle into a fortress and rallies the survivors, living up to her role as a figurehead for the country. Heck, it almost makes me feel proud to be an Englishman.
I could wax lyrical over Brooks’ achievements but will conclude with this: WORLD WAR Z isn’t just a great zombie novel, it’s a terrific novel. Period. In fact, I’d go so far as to state it’s one of the best books of the year.
