Interviews

Interview with Max Brooks

Marcel “Dangermouse” Sarfati and Michael “Zomblog” Funk traveled out to Dark Delicacies in Burbank and sat down with Max Brooks, (Author of The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z, and The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks).  You can watch both parts of the interview below.  Due to the sound on the video, Dangermouse took some time to transcribe the interview.  Enjoy! (Check out the video at the end of the article…Max Brooks takes a phone call from a fan…)

ZWN Interview with Max Brooks Part One

ZWN Interview with Max Brooks Part Two

Interview Transcription:

ZWN: Your new story presented in this anthology (The New Dead), where did this come from?

MB: This is mainly just a fear of the living dead, just wanted to explore it further. I wanted to see sort of how these people would react in a post zombie world, since this story sort of takes place in a post war. Because you know there’s just as much suffering and misery that happens in a post world war as in the actual combat. I’m sure if you’d wandered the streets of Europe in 1945 you’d probably agree with me.

ZWN: Is that when it takes place?

MB: No, it takes place after the zombie war.

ZWN: It’s a spin off of World War Z?

MB: Yeah, it’s after World War Z. It’s within the World War Z world.

ZWN: Any of the continuing characters?

MB: Nope, well there’s the narrator guy, but none of the other guys.

ZWN: Which is you.

MB: No, which is Jon Cryer. He’s gonna play me.

ZWN: What was the first real piece of literature you wrote? It could’ve been on SNL or wherever.

MB: When you say literature, that’s a very broad term. How do you define literature and I’ll give you an answer.

ZWN: Just run with it. What did you feel good about that might’ve been published?

MB: So alright, criteria number one-had to have been published. Alright, criteria number two, I had to like it.

ZWN: You know, it gave you that warm feeling.

MB: Okay. Many years ago, I think it was 97’ or 98’ my first writing gig was to write content for the website Fandango.com and I came up with the idea of doing trivia questions. So I came up with the idea of writing, “How do you feel about teen movies?” This is when teen movies were popular and I wrote, I gave them three different answers A, B, or C. This one was “love em, keep em coming”. Number two was “don’t really care for them”. Number three was “Anyone under thirty should be put behind barbed wire.” Now that draft didn’t make it into the original website of Fandango.com. However, I was extremely proud of it and that to me was literature.

ZWN: Who’s your favorite Author?

MB: Michelle Collis, yeah I think she’s brilliant. She has an ability to really get into darkness and misery without sort of the things that I do. Nobody comes out of the swamp and gets shot in the head, you know what I mean and yet it’s still just as much sadness. So yeah, Michelle Collis.

ZWN: What’s your favorite book?

MB: That’s an excellent question. It depends on which one you’re talking about. If I want to talk about the end of the baby boomers dream, it’s Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. If I want a realistic war book, of a war that never happened, I would want Red Storm Rising. If I wanted a positive view of the baby boomers, sort of before Hunter S. Thompson, it would be On The Road by Jack Kerouac. It’s sort of different books for different things.

ZWN: Talking about the Zombie Survival Guide, what was the hardest part to write?

MB: The hardest part in writing the Zombie Survival Guide was doing the homework because I wanted it to be real.

ZWN: The research?

MB: Research, yeah. I mean, once I was writing, that was the easy part. It was just scribble, scribble, scribble, but to get it right, because I knew that I would have to answer to myself if something was wrong, if I had screwed up. So you know when I recommend the AK-47 as a more reliable weapon than the M-16, I know what I’m talking about.

ZWN: Because you did your homework.

MB: Yes, I mean actually in that instance I cheated because in ROTC I had a chance to work with the M-16 and it is a P.O.S.

ZWN: Over the past few years in writing your books, have you learned anything you may want to share with people or aspiring writers?

MB: Yeah, the only way to fail as a writer is to write something that you don’t believe in but you hope your audience will, because then if they don’t believe in it and you don’t believe in it, then you’ve just wasted your time and that’s a failure. But, if you love it and they don’t, fuck it, it’s got one good fan and that’s where it’s got to start with.

ZWN: There’s a lot of people that when the Zombie Survival Guide came out, that really thought it was real. In the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, can you give a percentage on how much might be real?

MB: Oh, you mean my fan base that think it’s real? I can tell you that 10% of my fan base thinks it’s a witty social satire for the times we live in. I can tell you that 80% are just zombie nerds like me that are just really into zombies and just want to take it to the next level. And another 10% are really ready and 80% of those 10% live in Utah.

ZWN: What’s your next project?

MB: Next project is G.I. Joe. I heard that G.I. Joe was coming out and I don’t know if you guys know Christos Gage the comic book writer. He wrote something for Avatar (Avatar Press), I was writing something for Avatar. I said “hey I’d love to do something for G.I. Joe” and he said, “Well I’ll make an intro.” God bless him.

ZWN: So is it a book?

MB: It is a comic book mini-series. It’s called Hearts And Minds. It is five issues, each issue is divided up into one story about a Joe and one story about a Cobra. Each story is either a day in the life, like what does it take to be one of these people, what’s their job entail? Or how did they become who they are? So it’s really like an up close and personal of a Joe or a Cobra.

ZWN: Without giving too much away, who can we expect to see in that?

MB: I can tell you the first ones that are coming out are Spirit and Major Bludd. Remember those little cards on the back of the action figures that had like a paragraph? Well, I just gave them a few more pages.

ZWN: How do you write Major Bludd because he has that weird lisp?

MB: Funny that you should say that. Major Bludd, I gave a…I don’t know if it’s a whole new take on him. But I definitely put a whole new side to him.

ZWN: Kind of refined him?

MB: You’ll see, you’ll see. Major Bludd!

Time for the standard ZWN questions:

ZWN: Do you have a favorite zombie movie or book?

MB: The original Dawn Of The Dead. I can watch that all day. 1978 I believe, maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. In the mall running around, I can watch that anytime.

ZWN: Why were they so green though?

MB: Because they were just dead.

ZWN: Do you have a zombie survival plan and if so would you care to share?

MB: Yes I do, next question.

ZWN: In dealing with zombies, what would be your weapon of choice?

MB: It’s right behind you. (whispers:”they’re looking at a machete that Jason is holding”) Well because let’s face it, most weapons, most melee weapons for those of us that played Dungeons and Dragons as kids. Melee weapons never start off as weapons, they start off as tools, they have practical uses. Wars used to be fought by peasants, their weapons weren’t government issued. Nobody ever invented a battle axe. At one point Bjorn Bjornsen was chopping woods in Norway and had to go on a raid and he didn’t have a weapon and he said, “well, I’ll just bring my axe into battle, it is a battle axe!” and so it was invented. So yes, something that has to be practical, a machete is practical.

ZWN: So would Robert Trujillo (meant to say Danny Trejo), the guy who played Machete, would he be a badass zombie killer?

MB: Well, I’ve seen him in Blood In, Blood Out and I’d want him on my side.

ZWN: In literature and movies, do you feel that zombies are overdone or is there still room for growth?

MB: Good question, I feel there’s always room for growth. Whether that growth will actually happen, no ideal because I think zombies are so popular, everybody is jumping on the band wagon and most of it that comes out is just people trying to make money, who never would’ve done zombies otherwise. Now, my problem with them is that they may blow out the market, because somewhere out there there’s a guy who is thinking of doing a zombie book infinitely better than World War Z and he may write it but it may never get published because someone will tell him the market is saturated, we’re past zombies, and that’s what bothers me.  Somewhere, some kid is thinking, “I’m gonna make a zombie movie better than the original Night Of The Living Dead”. It’s not gonna happen because by the time they get it done, the market’s gonna be saturated. So, there’s always room to do it better than me for crying out loud. I just hope that somebody does it.

ZWN: Have you noticed that now the big thing in zombie books is that they’re kind of putting a spin on zombies, there’s the pro-zombie characters now.

MB: The pro-zombie people tend to hang out with the pro-aids people, the pro-cancer people, you know, people that say, “C’mon I don’t think that ball cancer has enough fans.” So, yeah there’s always gonna be those people.

ZWN: Who do you think is the best zombie hunter? It could be living or dead.

MB: That’s a really good question. The best zombie hunter? Hunter’s a broad word. Best zombie shooter, I personally would want Vasily Zaytsev on my side, the Soviet sniper. I would want that guy. If I wanted a survival guy to help me out, I’d want Les Stroud, not the other guy who goes in the wilderness alone but with a camera crew, because the zombie revolution will not be televised. So I think it all depends, like I’d want, she’s not with us anymore, but I’d want Julia Childs. If I’m alone in a cabin and I need someone who’s willing to whip up those squirrels and potatoes into something, I’d want Julia.

ZWN: Last question, brains, yummy or gross?

MB: You’d have to ask a zombie.

ZWN: In closing I’d like to say that we think of George Romero as kind of the father of the modern zombie and we pay him a lot of respect immensely. But, a few years ago when you wrote the Zombie Survival Guide, you brought about this resurgence of zombies, because up till then I really don’t even know if I can think of a zombie book, I really can’t, unless you think of some of the short Stephen King stuff. Vampires were all over the place (in literature) and they’ve been around since the 70’s when Anne Rice wrote them. So, in my opinion, you brought about all this zombie resurgence.

MB: Well, that’s a brilliant opinion, however, I don’t know. That’s up for guys like you to decide. All I can say is there were zombie movies before Romero just like there were space movies before George Lucas. Y’know Romero, he created the world, we’re just living in it, it’s Romero’s world. He deserves all the praise.

ZWN: But because of you, there’s guys out there that are now buying AR-15’s and M-16’s, AK-47’s and stockpiling their storage.

MB: Which is why I put in the Zombie Survival Guide, “Please obey the law.”

ZWN: The disclaimer.

MB: I’m covering my ass on that one. I’m from the suicide solution generation so I understand what happens when people get sued. But no seriously, it’s Romero’s world, he rewrote the zombie narrative. When I hear about Romero, I kind of slip into the Malcolm X character, talking about Elijah Mohammed, but it’s kind of true. All praise is due to the honorable George Romero and only the faults are mine.

ZWN: Well Mr. Brooks I want to thank you for your time and thank you for the interview.

MB: Thank you.

Max Brooks takes a phone call…

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