AVC: It seems like there's a new studio horror film every week, and they're big for one weekend and that's it.
RZ: Right. What these great horror movies have is not that they're extreme, necessarily, but that there's a lot of heart in them, in a certain sense. The people involved, actors and filmmakers, really were trying to do something different, trying to do something special. And even when it doesn't succeed, it still succeeds on that level that you can just sense it. This may sound ridiculous, but look at something like Plan 9 From Outer Space. Yeah, okay, so it's a bad movie. Everyone likes to make fun of it. But it's a more entertaining and iconic film than Last Action Hero or S.W.A.T. I mean, those are just big-budget, forgettable nothings.
AVC: When you first set up Corpses at Universal, how did you convince them to make it? What were their expectations?
RZ: I'm not really sure. I mean, I was really blatant when I talked to them. I didn't want to get into a situation where they thought I was making something mainstream. And I told them that I wanted to make a drive-in movie, something very gritty and nasty and weird. And they were all like, "Okay, great, great, great. That sounds great." Maybe they just didn't know what I meant by that.
AVC: At what point did you lose their support?
RZ: It was really late in the process. The movie was done and sitting there, more or less, and the executives had seen the movie, and everybody knew what it was. It wasn't like it was a big shock one day. The political climate at the time was toxic. And I know Universal, like a lot of the other major studios, had been pulled in front of Congress to testify about marketing violent movies to children, because the Columbine High School shooting had just happened, and there was all this stuff floating around in the air concerning that. And I just think that our movie seemed like too big of a publicity risk for the studio, and it wasn't worth it to them, because Corpses was not going to make them $100 million. And that's why we were dropped.
AVC: But they allowed you to bring it to other places?
RZ: Yeah, they were cool with it, because I had a good relationship with them, and I still do. I don't have any hard feelings. It just didn't work out. So they allowed me to shop it around and find someone else to distribute it.
AVC: Since it was for Universal and Universal has such a history with horror, did you have that in mind when you were making the film?
RZ: Well, I was very excited about working at Universal, because I always think of Universal as the house of horror, but I really don't think the people that work there today think of it that way, considering there's virtually no mention of horror movies when you're there. [Laughs.] It's just the giant Waterworld attraction and the Spider-Man ride, you know what I mean? They did recently do the Dawn Of The Dead remake and Land Of The Dead, but when we were making [Corpses], it seemed like nobody cared about horror movies over there.
AVC: What was it like to shoot on the studio backlot?
RZ: It was a fun experience at first. But it was mostly just a pain in the ass, because the studio backlot also functions as part of their theme park. And they don't shut down the tram ride while you're shooting. So we would keep getting interrupted. The theme rides were more important than the movie.
AVC: How did you get Corpses and The Devil's Rejects past the ratings board? Were you ever asked to make cuts?
RZ: Yeah, on both of them. It's a tricky song and dance. It takes a long time to get a movie through, and you have to make a lot of concessions, a lot of cuts, with a lot of discussions. Especially with The Devil's Rejects, because it's a pretty hard R-rated movie. It took a lot of negotiating to get it through.
AVC: Did you feel like it was fairly arbitrary, the things they asked of you?
RZ: Yeah, usually. I mean, sometimes they make... It's a tricky business, because I don't think they want to be seen as censors, they never really tell you specifically what the problems are. They're very vague. You sort of have to work with their vague notes and try to work your way through their system. It's an exhausting scenario, because you're totally working in the dark.
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