Andrew Hebert Hey Dave, thanks a lot for sitting down with us. Dave Gebroe Not a problem, man. Thanks for your interest. Andrew Hebert It’s my pleasure. I really loved [Zombie Honeymoon]. It had a lot of more heart than I expected. Dave Gebroe Yeah, that was kind of the idea with the title. To lower people’s expectations to reach the basement so that they would be hopefully emotionally sucker-punched. Andrew Hebert And once you watch the “Behind the Scenes” featurette, it certainly adds a lot more to the story. Dave Gebroe Yeah, it’s rare that a movie that’s titled like a Troma film would have some personal content to it. Andrew Hebert Well since the film is based on your sister’s late husband, did you find it difficult presenting the idea of “Zombie Honeymoon” to her? Dave Gebroe I felt a little bit weird that maybe it would be interpreted that I was capitalizing off of her tragedy, but she knows me and after mulling it around in my head for a little while, the two of them are and were really big horror fans. Not just horror but, psychobilly and anything horror related. So the idea of the kind of juxtaposition of two people who are really into cartoony death imagery having to go through the real thing was kind of the initial excitement of working through the real life tragedy and trying to get some understanding in them. But she was okay with it. There’s no way I would have gone ahead with it if she weren’t. Andrew Hebert Is that where the psychobilly and surf rock soundtrack came from? Is that something you interpreted onscreen through their relationship or were you trying to fit the musical scene of the jersey shore area? Dave Gebroe Honestly, a lot of those bands like The Photon Torpedos were some of their favorite bands. I really wanted to have it hit close to home on that level, but it also certainly fit into the feel of the film in the beginning. I wanted it to sort of have that zombie/psycho-beach party vibe. So a lot of the psychobilly is frontloaded on the movie so as your expectations of what it is melt away, the score comes in and hopefully it’s very unnerving. Andrew Hebert Aside from the obvious classics like Night of the Living Dead, are there any other recent zombie/infected films that influenced the style of the zombies and their behavior in the movie? Dave Gebroe No. The honest truth is that the accident where Danny died happened in March 2002, and I was done with the script by August 2002. So there was not a zombie revival happening yet. I started getting a little excited when there was a resurgence and I think it was the week before production kicked off when "28 Days Later" came out. And then with "Shaun of the Dead" and some of the lesser films like "Die You Zombie Bastards!", it seemed like the timing was serendipitous. But really, the zombie movie that will always be most influential to me is "Dawn of the Dead." Andrew Hebert In your movie, all of the actors are amazing and cast perfectly. Did that just fall together on its own or was there extensive casting? Dave Gebroe I went through a lot of actors. I knew I wanted a certain type of acting style like the John Cassavetes films like "A Woman Under the Influence." I wanted to play it straight. I could’ve played it with a wank and went in that direction where the audience is in on the joke, but I wanted it to be played like he was cheating on her or had cancer, really straight-faced shit. So during auditions, I had a page handed out with the sides, and we used the scene when she first catches him eating the fat jogger in the bathroom. And I said, “You’re gonna walk in, you’re going to see Danny eating severed body parts. And don’t come in [to the set] and say 'Hi.' If you're casted, then there will be plenty of time for that. You’re just thrown into the deep end. Feel free to go off script." There were improvs and if [the actors] could roll with it and not be scared by the prospect of creating something out of real life, then they had a shot. And there were really only as far as the leads went, the two of them. We didn’t actually rehearse any of the scenes. We used improv experiments where they met in character and fell in love in character and I followed them around and gave them situations to grapple with in character. So when we were in front of the cameras, everything would be unfolding in real life as if for the very first time. And that kind of nervousness and fear of “Oh fuck, what’s gonna happen now?” would hopefully come out in the terror and panic of the characters. It was a calculated risk because I had never worked like that before, but for me, the result speaks for itself. It was exactly what I wanted onscreen. Andrew Hebert And I think that worked. The film goes from being wildly silly to straight up serious between the main characters. Dave Gebroe I wanted the pacing to flip it. Something will build up in intensity and speed as it goes on to wrap things up and get the audience’s adrenaline pumping. I wanted it to feel like the movie was dying so it’s really fast up front and as the movie goes on in the third act it’s very methodical camera movement and stillness and that comes out in the same kind of concept. Andrew Hebert In almost any independent film nowadays, budget constraints can prevent directors from including everything they want in their movie. I don’t think that "Zombie Honeymoon" suffers from these constraints, but is there anything different you would have done with a bigger budget? Dave Gebroe [laughs] Yeah I would’ve liked to have shot it for a hundred billion dollars! That’d be great! I’d have a salary and everything. What I’ve gotten used to is a style of budgeting called reverse budgeting and you start with a number and work backwards so that in the final result, people won’t say “Wow that was a good movie for its budget” but that it was just a good movie. It was written to be mostly shot in the house with a small handful of locations. One luxury I would’ve liked to have had was more time. We shot it over twenty days and 5 of those days were 21 hour days. It was madness, but who’s to say…if I had more money there might have been a certain amount of laziness that would’ve crept in. Andrew Hebert I had noticed in the behind the scenes that they wouldn't let you film in the grocery store. Dave Gebroe Yeah there was supposed to be a scene where she was shopping, but they kicked us out. Looking back at it, I probably would’ve used that if we had it, and it’s totally irrelevant. It wouldn’t have added anything. So I guess it wound up being the movie it was supposed to be. That being said it would’ve been nice to have a little bit more money. It was pretty crazy at times and we had no money and were running on that steam and that momentum. Andrew Hebert So you won the "Best With Less" award at Fangoria's 2006 Chainsaw Awards. After touring the festival circuit, was that a rewarding experience for you and your cast? Dave Gebroe Oh yeah. For me, starting out there were two goals. And really, the main goal was to make a great movie. But externally, the two things I wanted to happen were to get the Fangoria Seal of Approval and to get Roger Ebert’s seal of approval. In fact, I just sent Roger an email today. He’s seen the film. I bumped into him at Park City a couple of years ago and he said he would review the film if I could get a Chicago release. But I wasn’t able to procure a theatrical release in Chicago. But he only publishes reviews for movies that he likes so although I don’t exactly know how he feels about it, I know Roger Ebert liked it [laughs]! And Fangoria..they’ve been so fucking supportive. And it’s a dream come true. I think that I have issues from 1 – 150. Every single one. And I’ve known who Tony Timpone was since I was a little fucking kid. So it’s a dream come true. And now they’re starting a feature division and I would really love to work with them. Andrew Hebert Well, as we all know, message boards can be pretty brutal. Do you keep up with user reviews of your films and if so, how do you handle the criticism? Dave Gebroe Once it goes out there, it has its own life and I’d be lying if I said that shit didn’t affect me at all, but if I read something that says “This movies sucked and I’ll never get those hours of my life back,” then I’ll just assume that they don’t like me personally for some reason [laughs]. But to even go on and type up a review, that person cared enough to do that. Honestly I’ve met enough people who were affected by the movie in a positive way. I did a film previous to this called “The Homeboy” and I was proud of it, but not proud the way I am with "Zombie Honeymoon." So when people would tell me they didn’t like it, I was more defensive because I knew it was more flawed than "Zombie Honeymoon" and I guess it comes down to your relationship with the movie as a filmmaker. If you have a good relationship, you can be a little more thick skinned with the Internet dicks. Andrew Hebert The Internet Movie Database recommends "Titanic," "The Notebook," "Nurse Betty," and "Dawn of the Dead" for those who enjoyed "Zombie Honeymoon." Does that sound like a fair mash-up to you? Dave Gebroe [laughs hard] I think we should throw in "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Steel Magnolias" as well. I love that "Titanic" is in there. And I actually agree with "Nurse Betty" because the tone of that movie is hard to pin down and I’m really flattered that it somehow got in there because I love that movie. Andrew Hebert I know you're not a fan of Hollywood remakes, but if you were approached to do one, what would it be? Dave Gebroe I was actually talking with a company about doing Oliver Stone’s “The Hand”. I would really love to do that but maybe it’s not a great example because I love that movie and I don’t know offhand how I would improve on it. Off the top of my head…let me think here for a second, it’s a tough one. To reintroduce this movie to people, Monte Hellman’s "Cockfighter." It’s a great movie. But the danger is that I’d only want to recreate it because I love it so much. Man…that’s a good question. [laughs] I’m gonna stick with "Cockfighter." Andrew Hebert So I noticed in "Zombie Honeymoon" there's a scene in a video store where a customer is complaining about a crappy movie rental. It took me a second glance to realize it was your previous film "The Homeboy." Was that a self-deprecative jab to your early film career? Dave Gebroe I feel like you can only be self-referential if you’re self-deprecating or else you’re a pompous asshole [laughs]. I figured the only way I could get away with it was to have the character badmouthing it. Andrew Hebert But then again you have the zombie eat him as he leaves the store, so what does that say? Dave Gebroe [laughs] I think it’s the zombie defending "The Homeboy." Andrew Hebert [laughs] He represents those IMDB users! Andrew Hebert Finally, what does the future of horror and film hold for you? Dave Gebroe I have a script that I’m done with that I’m setting up now. And I have two ideas that I’m developing which aren’t written yet but the ideas are flushed out. It’s on the line of "Zombie Honeymoon" in terms of what I call "emotional horror" by really using the brutality that’s been exploited recently in modern horror films and flipping it around so that it creates more of a sense of empathy. There have been a lot of horror movies recently that are cold-hearted experiences and if there is a glut of those, it’s gonna fuck the genre up for another 10 or 15 years like it always does. Horror goes in waves because as soon as a couple of movies are successful in the genre, there’s a flood of bullshit and whatever I can do to hopefully reverse the trend, I’m going to do.