With the latest trailer for Brad Pitt’s World War Z movie having been just released, I’m sorry to say that I’m not nearly as excited about the upcoming film as I once was. I love Max Brooks‘ original novel and I’ve been looking forward to seeing a big screen version ever since it was originally released seven years ago.
Back in 2006 we were at the zenith of the new millennium’s zombie craze and I was right in the middle of it all writing articles, reviews, and doing interviews for the now defunct Revenant Magazine (“The Premier Zombie Magazine”). I had the pleasure of interviewing Max about WWZ and the movie deal he had recently signed with Paramount.
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Interview with World War Z author Max Brooks
By John Reppion
Author Max Books is probably best known for his 2004 novel The Zombie Survival Guide – Complete Protection from the Living Dead but, all that is about to change as his new book World War Z – An Oral History of the Zombie War
Revenant’s John Reppion managed to grab a few words with the understandably busy Max and find out how zombies have taken over his career.
JR: So, let’s start at the beginning; when did your interest in zombies begin? Was there a specific film or book that captured your imagination?
MAX: Anything and everything by George A. Romero. He created the genre and infused it with both action-adventure and razor sharp social commentary. When I was young I saw “Night of the Living Dead” and it filled me with the kind of nightmares that don’t dissipate for a long, long time.
JR: How did your writing The Zombie Survival Guide
MAX: I was a struggling screenwriter, living in exile in a part of Los Angeles known as “The Valley”, writing script after script that I couldn’t stand but that my agent assured me were “what the market wanted”. In order to keep myself sane I realized I had to write something just for me, even if it wasn’t ever published, it had to remind me why I became a writer in the first place. This was around the time of the Y2K scare, when, in the States, volumes of survival guides were hitting the shelves. After reading a few about how to survive food shortages, race riots, and all out nuclear war, I said “hey, what about zombies?” So I started writing ZSG in my spare time. To this day, I’m blown away that someone actually published it.
JR: What did your friends and family think about the book?
MAX: My friends knew it was the perfect project for me. They knew how much I loved/feared/hated the idea of zombies and they couldn’t wait to read it. My family were just thrilled to see me passionate about writing again.
JR: The Recorded Attacks section at the end of The Guide is kind of a precursor to World War Z in a way. Had you already decided to write WWZ by the time you got to the end of The Guide?
MAX: Yes and no. I’d always wanted to do something along the lines of Studs Turkel’s “The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two”. I’ve always loved history and the recorded attacks were a chance for me to explore that side of the living dead. World War Z just seemed to be a natural outgrowth of those recorded attacks.
JR: WWZ is a very political book in many respects set, as it is, very much in the real world and the not too distant future. To me the zombies are just that: blood thirsty walking corpses. But, are you worried that some people might start saying “the zombies stand for this political party” or “this way of thinking”? Are the zombies in anyway analogous for you?
MAX: Zombies have always been for me nothing but mindless, flesh eating corpses. That’s what terrifies me about them, their viral nature, their singularity of purpose. For me, the exploration of political and social doesn’t come with the zombies, but how as humans react to them. In some ways, World War Z is just a simple, flat-out zombie book, but in others, it’s very much an “insert any disaster here” book.
JR: You’ve done you’re best to “clean up” the existing Hollywood zombie mythology with both books; dismissing things such as running, tool use and ghouls carrying memories of their past lives as “misguided myths”. Obviously, it was important to get the “facts” of zombie-ism ironed out in order to make the encounters within the books convincing and consistent. But, is there an element of having a bit of a dig at certain filmmakers and writers for taking the zombie genre away from its core ideas?
MAX: Not really. I definitely have my opinions about what zombie movies I like and don’t like (and in some cases, despise), but I have to shut all that out when I’m creating my own story. I want as little outside influence, positive or negative, as possible when I’m writing. I just want to live as deeply in my own world as I can.
JR: WWZ is structured in such a way that each chapter is basically a self contained short story; a first hand account of one individual’s experience of the war, often with an unexpected twist or revelation. Did you write the chapters in the order in which they appear or did you start out with a couple and then the structure the rest of the book around them?
MAX: I wrote the interviews according to who was shouting the loudest. I had all these characters in my head and all of them wanted their stories to be told. The ones who inspired the most immediate passion got their stories written first. That made for a wonderful first-draft experience but really kicked my backside when it came to second draft editing. I had to do a lot of chopping and refining to bang all these interviews into a coherent story.
JR: So, how did the whole movie deal thing with Paramount come about?
MAX: Good question. I wish I had as good an answer. As I understand it, both Brad Pitt’s and Leonardo DiCaprio’s companies had heard of this book months before it was finished and were asking for an advance reader copy as soon as it was ready. Before I knew it, there was a full blown bidding war. Both production companies were calling me to pitch their side and all I could say was “You know what you’re bidding on, right?” I just couldn’t believe these mainstream Hollywood Titans were interested in zombies!
JR: I read online that you’ll be adapting the book for the big screen yourself, are you looking forward to that or is it a bit daunting? How closely will you be sticking to the original text?
MAX: I actually won’t be the one adapting the book. In order for World War Z to work as a film, it will have to be BIG, and in order to get that kind of budget from the studio, there has to be a well established “A-list” screenwriter on board. Strangely enough, I’m totally okay with this. I got all the emotional, artistic satisfaction I needed from the book. This time around, I’m just looking forward to being an audience member.
JR: Are there any plans to do a comic book/graphic novel adaptation of WWZ in the pipeline? If so, would you plan on adapting the story for the medium yourself?
MAX: Funny you should say that. It’s too soon for WWZ but I’m in talks with several comic book companies about adapting the recorded attacks in the back of “The Zombie Survival Guide”, now THAT is a project I’d be excited to work on personally.
JR: Do you have any plans to work on future zombie novels or screenplays or are you interested in moving beyond that genre now you have revitalised it?
MAX: I honestly don’t know. I still love zombies, well… not ‘love’ them, but the genre still fascinates me to no end. I’ll have to wait until I get an idea that I just can’t let go of, the way I did with WWZ. After every project I always get a deluge of new ideas, all of which seem excellent at the moment. It’s just a question of being patient and seeing which refuses to fade.
JR: What does the future hold for Max Brooks?
MAX: Right now, just being a salesman. All publishing is self publishing and after working so hard on World War Z, I feel I have to devote as much blood, toil, tears and sweat to getting out on the road and letting people know it exists. It would be nice have just a little bit of time off in the near future, nothing overly indulgent, just a day or two to kick back on the couch, open a couple of Snapples and watch every episode of “Blackadder”, or even “Night of the Living Dead”. Is that too much to ask?
JR: Max, thank you very much for your time.
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Max was good enough to bash out an introduction for the collected edition of our own zombie book Raise the Dead which came out the following year, in which he wrote:
“[Raise the Dead] thrilled me, captivated me, angered me in places, and left me thinking, knowing, that as I switched off the light, and lay alone in the dark, that somewhere out there, was a pair of red glowing eyes.”
For more info on what he’s up to these days check out maxbrooks.com