Zombie Walk Interviews

This local Minnesota news piece goes farther than other items into the reasons why people participate in these zombie walks. I am extremely curious about this phenomenon, and wish I could undertake more in-depth interviews with a number of these individuals. What a field day for a psychology major in need of a thesis.

Zombie Walk:
Death Imitates Art

Faced with a few dozen young people in ragged clothing, mumbling and shuffling, covered in fake blood, the bystanders had to ask: What ... is this? And why is this?
Well, it’s a zombie walk.

But people pretending to be zombies are not the best conversationalists, so mostly they just moaned and sometimes cried “braaaiiinsss,” as zombies are wont to do. And while this was a good hint for the first question, it doesn’t speak to motivation.

Organizer Ben Hodapp, 20, is a huge fan of zombie movies and learned online about people in other cities dressing as zombies and going for a walk.

“I thought it was pretty hilarious,” he said, and thought it would be fun to do himself.

Getting people to dress up like zombies and stumble around Mankato was easier than one might imagine. He just set up a Facebook and people joined. More than 180 people said they were going and hundreds more listed themselves as “maybes.”

In the end, between 25 and 30 people met in the Wal-Mart parking lot at about 5 p.m. Friday afternoon. By 5:30, they were off.

Jeremy Warden, 17, dressed up as a zombie for Halloween last year and came prepared. He even brought a cup with fake blood, corn starch mixed with food coloring, for his compatriots to throw on their face to simulate a fresh meal of blood. He even burned his jeans with a lighter and smeared the ashes over his limbs.

Each zombie had to decide for him or herself what “type” of zombie they’d play. Talking or moaning? Stumbling or sprinting? Flesh-eating or brains only? “Well, I figure zombies don’t remember how to talk, so I’m just going to groan a lot,” Warden said. Some of them walked for three hours under the hot sun but lacked a zombie’s infinite stamina, so a sprint was out of the question.

Hodapp cut his beard into a Fu Manchu mustache, bought a camouflage vest at a thrift store and went walking as a redneck zombie. Chris Menton donned a gown to be an escaped-from-the-hospital zombie. Amanda Kleist wore a blue-green dress, emulating a prom-night zombie.

Hodapp had planned some rules for the group. No harassing passersby. No scaring children. Don’t walk in the street. Don’t get drunk first. “I’d rather not get it shut down for a stupid reason,” he said.

Still, they were asked to stay as in-character as possible, to “keep somewhat of an illusion of a zombie horde,” Hodapp said. They had a route picked out that stuck to Madison Avenue, but in the end the temptation to wander through the mall was too great, just as it was for the zombies in John Romero’s 1978 zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead.

Onlookers’ reactions differed. One mother shielded her child from the group, while another asked for a photograph with her baby, said Kleist, the prom zombie.

Hodapp says he’d like to make the zombie walk into an annual event. There often isn’t much to do in Mankato for people under 21, he said. Hannah Moon, spattered with blood and clutching a torn-up doll, agreed. It’s fun to “dress down,” the 17-year-old said. “Summer can get boring.”

---

This coverage was written by Dan Lineham, as posted online at Minnesota's "Mankato Free Press" website on July 25, 2009

Woke Up Dead Online

Woke Up Dead
Jon Heder, the actor who starred in "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Blades of Glory," has announced that his next project will go after an audience of nerd-friendly webheads, Reuters reports. "Woke Up Dead," whose Internet-only webisodes premiere in October 2009, is a sci-fi comedy thrill that will have Heder playing a 20-something college student who wakes up in a bathtub full of water only to find that he's turned into a zombie. "It plays with the conventions of the zombie-horror genre," Heder said. "Drex doesn't believe he's a zombie, but his friends start to realize he may be as he has no heart rate, all his vital signs are gone, and he has this hunger for brains."

The scripted online series, created by John Fascano, is being produced by Electric Farm, with Heder as a co-producer. The show marks Heder’s strut into the world of online programming.

"Woke Up Dead" was developed with Heder in mind as the lead. It will comprise 50 three-minute episodes for online and mobile distribution in the United States. (Does that mean those of us living outside the United States will not be able to watch the program or benefit the program's sponsors?)

The project will combines live-action with limited CGI elements, is a seemingly superb springboard for Electric Farm. The series is being made outside of a deal Stan Rogow, Brent Friedman and Jeff Sagansky’s Electric Farm signed with NBC Universal, which gives the conglomerate domestic rights to the company’s upcoming Internet sci-fi series "Gemini Division," starring Rosario Dawson. Sony Pictures TV International co-produces and internationally distributes "Gemini Division," (which features some elaborate 3-D art) as well as Electric Farm’s first online drama, "Afterworld," a 2.5-D-animated series, on mobile, broadband and traditional television.

Rogow said that "Woke Up Dead" was developed with Heder in mind for the lead. “He will be terrific,” he continued, “he’d always wanted to play a zombie.” "Woke Up Dead" is currently in pre-production and set to be released later this year.

This item taken from Collider.com

Chomp to Show at 2009 Edinburgh Festival

This item is taken from a "teaser" posted at the website for the Scunforth Telegraph newspaper in Britain. Local theater enthusiasts are putting together a zombie musical called Chomp. The puns in this article truly take a bite out of one's patience. Sorry, couldn't help that one. How interesting that this will be featured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Based on the teaser below, I can't believe this play will amount to much. It seems more of the typical juvenile testosterone-driven drivel, but I admit that I might be surprised. After all, would the addition of music and, presumably, dance naturally incline the work towards something more mature?

New Musical Zombie Show

FOUR teenagers from North Lincolnshire are about to transform zombies into all-singing, all-dancing showbiz stars.

Aidan Savage, Harry Kelly and Tom Jackson, all 15, and Ciaran Savage, 18, all star in 'Chomp' which heads for the world-famous Edinburgh Festival next month.

'Chomp – A Zombie Musical' is the brain wave of Andy Evans, the staff development officer at Scunthorpe's John Leggott College.

Mr Evans, 42, who has also co-written all the songs along with his long-time friend Jack Pudsey, said: "Who doesn't love the idea of zombies doing a soft-shoe shuffle?"

He wrote the musical specifically last summer for the North Lincolnshire-based Fusion theatre company of which Tom, who plays the lead make role of 'Mac', and his three fellow Scunthorpe actors are all members.

Mr Evans, who has taught in Scunthorpe for 16 years, explained: "Mac is the leader of Surge, a group of resistance fighters, who fight back against the zombie mutants on behalf of humanity." The idea was to write a show that would guarantee an audience at one of the UK's largest theatre festivals."

"Our young cast inject an incredible energy," he added.

Tom, a student at the Vale of Ancholme School in Brigg, said of his lead role: "We're all really excited to be taking the production to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as well."

Monday, July 20, 2009, 06:30

What Mother Never Told You

Here's a piece of indie short fiction, "What Mother Never Told You," courtesy of D. Lynn Frazier, who is proud of it being posted at an online-zine site. "What Mother Never Told You" is available at Electric Spec.