Dawn of the Dead (1978) | Zombie Book Club Ep 97 - Zombie Book Club

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club
where the book is a mall and themall has everything you could
ever want to consume.
I'm Dan, and when I'm notconsuming everything in my path,
I'm writing a book about anoligarchic government so focused
on consuming as much wealth aspossible that they allow a
deadly virus to wipe out themajority of the population in
the massive resource grab andtake the opportunity to enslave
the survivors to work in theirfactories for next to nothing.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
More and more.
I think that your book is justa really dark version of reality
.
Right now, I'm Leah and I havesomething very important to
share with everyone a newsupdate.
Oh, when there's no more roomin hell, Dan, the dead will walk
the earth.
Oh, finally, how full do youthink hell is right now?
You know, I feel like Are wegetting?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
close.
You know how you go to asleepover and your friend has
bunk beds and there's three ofyou and one of you is like I'll
sleep on the floor.
Well, I think we've filled upthe floor space, we've got both
the bunks, and there's peoplenow that are like, well, maybe

(01:24):
if we all just stand, we couldprobably fit a lot more in there
.
So I think that's the stagethat we're at.
We're a standing room, but wecan fit more in.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Well, dan, I think when all of the oligarchs have
died, we will have achieved afull hell, and that's what's
going to bring on the apocalypse, or?

Speaker 1 (01:42):
salvation.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, I think that's what they call nirvana but that
ruins the whole quote from dawnof the dead it does, I don't
know maybe, maybe the devilwalks the earth for all the
other people who love theoligarchs, and then we get
raptured like I was told as achild, that the good people

(02:03):
would just like disappear fromearth yeah, and we leave our
clothes behind yeah yeah, we allgo naked into the sky yeah,
except for that, I never gotraptured in all of my nightmares
and I just was left, usually ina car with no driver.
Oh wow, scary.
Yeah, that was like a recurringnightmare as a child.
Thanks christianity, you really, uh, taught me some good morals
I never had rapt rapture dreams, well.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
But also I had only learned about the rapture when I
was like 30 years old.
Yeah, wow.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
You're lucky to not have that kind of religious
trauma.
Anyhow, today, if it's notalready obvious, we're talking
about the original 1978 GeorgeRomero film Dawn of the Dead.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, we talked about the remake before and, leah,
this was your first timewatching it?
It was, yeah, it was actuallyone of my first zombie movies
that I ever watched.
How old were you?
Oh, I don't know.
Um, I was.
I was probably at the timewhere I was a little gun psycho,
so probably 13 or 14, a littlegun psycho.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, I loved guns.
You have to unpack that for usa little bit little gun psycho.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, I loved guns.
You have to unpack that for usa little bit.
What I mean?
I kind of still do.
You know I've, you know they'refun, um, but uh, yeah, when I
was 13 or 14, it was, that wasmy identity.
I just loved.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
I would just talk endlessly about just every kind
of gun when I was 13 or 14, Iwas in my prime god hating phase
after leaving christianity,before briefly becoming a mormon
.
It's complicated, yeah, it'scomplicated, yeah, but I just
went and looked uh, the lastepisode we had for the 2004, uh,
rendition of dawn of the deadwas episode 22 wow, that was a

(03:35):
long time ago yeah, it wasaugust or, sorry, november.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
12 2023 dan wow, that feels like a lifetime ago.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
A different world of hope.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, I wasn't a citizen yet, and I was still
excited about becoming one.
Yeah, as soon as you become acitizen, leah, everything's
going to be great.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Oh God, you can only laugh when it's bad.
Out there, we release episodesevery Sunday.
So Submarine, submarine, Idon't know.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Submarine.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Dive deep into our collection of 90,.
What are we at now?
97 episodes.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, we have means subscribed, but Submarine will
work.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, and if you're new here, welcome.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, thanks.
Thanks for being a new personhere.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, before we dive into Dawn of the Dead, we have a
author pitch today that I'mreally excited to share with you
, dan.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Oh yeah, I haven't heard it.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, I've only heard a little bit of it.
I will say already like shoutout.
We've had a lot of great authorelevator pitches on the show so
far, but Jason Strutz for theReturned has given us the best
produced one with music andeverything.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
So you're not going to get the chance to put your
cheesy elevator music in thebackground.
But what if I do anyway?

Speaker 2 (04:47):
and it's just it just blends with it and makes it
horrible.
That would be such a terriblething to do to jason, who
clearly made this with care, sodon't, please, don't.
Okay, are you ready?
I'm ready to listen to thereturn by jason strats, let's
hit the button on the elevatorokay, what button are we hitting
?

Speaker 1 (05:02):
um, I'm I just kind of like slap all of the buttons.
Oh, there's gonna be a lot ofdinging happening.
Well, we're gonna get out thefirst floor that pops up, but
whoever gets in next is fuckedyeah, jason, you're taking us
for a ride, let's go medievalhorror family drama.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
introducing return, a heartfelt horror adventure
graphic novel written andillustrated by Jason Strutz.
Vale is among a dwindling bandof soldiers fighting a losing
battle against an army of thedead.
As we join her story, a newfigure, seemingly directing the
extermination of humanity,emerges.
There is no time to fight backas Vale and her fellow warriors

(05:43):
quickly fall and are conscriptedinto the dead army Floating
above.
But still attached to herrampaging form, vale's spirit is
forced to bear witness to thehorrible acts her undead body
commits.
Just as she is about to give up, she is saved by the family she
thought she'd never see again.
After ten years illustratingstories, I am proud to present
my first large-scale projectI've both written and drawn,

(06:05):
featuring a working mother and awork-at-home dad raising a
child.
Returned is both an emotionalfamily drama drawn from my own
experiences, as well as anexpansive horror epic that goes
far beyond anything you've readbefore.
Returned is a four-part graphicnovel releasing twice weekly
for free at returnedcomiccom,following a successful March
2025 Kickstarter to print partone.

(06:27):
Part two launches onKickstarter in September 2025.
Join the mailing list for freemonthly PDF issues and all of
your returned news.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
It's the music for me at the end.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
So good, like I listened to this and I was like
damn Jason.
Yeah, that sounds great.
That was well produced.
Yeah, and you've seen a littlebit of it, haven't you?

Speaker 2 (06:49):
I have read the first issue.
Yeah, it's really great.
I've got to say kudos to youfor both being a good
storyteller, jason, and also anartist.
That's a rare combination thatI find really impressive.
I can only do one of thosethings, and badly, which is the
art part.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, and I can only do either of those things badly.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yeah, but I think what you've done really well is
captured motion in your art.
That's a highlight.
Go and folks to check it out.
It's available for free online.
I know I'm going to sign up forthe newsletter.
I haven't done it yet but weneed to.
Yeah, and another shout out Iwant to give to you Bale, the
main character, a femalecharacter.
You know how refreshing it isto see a female character that
is not hyper-sexualized.

(07:27):
Like they're clearly a soldier,they're a warrior, they don't
have, like, booty shorts on,they're not running around in
heels.
No boob armor.
They don't have heaving titswith boob armor.
No, they look like a warrior.
That's sort of androgynous,actually, because they don't
have any of those markings of ofwhat a woman is supposed to
perform and how she's supposedto look, and I just find that

(07:48):
super refreshing.
So that alone, I think, made mean instant fan of this graphic
novel series, and also thank youfor making it available for
free for everybody.
So, uh, listeners, go check itout.
All the links will be in theshow notes yeah, look in the the
notes for links.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, they'll be there and uh.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Sign up to that newsletter so you can support
the kickstarter in september.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
I know it will be also.
You could sign up for ournewsletter too yeah, we have one
.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
we've not been doing a good job advertising it, but
we recently went by, we dan madeone, I made it, and we did
actually get somebody.
Um another author reach out tous via the newsletter.
Yeah, oh, but that's foranother time.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
I'm hoping they'll send us a pitch.
I don't know anything thesedays.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
I get the emails and Dan just works.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, I come home from work, I crash, and then
usually by the end of the weekI'm ready to speak with my voice
again, but not very well.
And at that time Leah informsme of all of the things and I
try to absorb it with my brainand it just it penetrates the

(08:57):
mush, doesn't, but then it kindof drips out my ear.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
It's OK, that's how I am with everything.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
At least you have really good memory for some
things.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, like what?
Um like how to fix a machine,any machine well, that's more of
a trauma enforced memory how todo a radio signal thing.
Very typical of me um random,random facts that just live in
your brain about mushrooms.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't know how much I remember
about mushrooms anymore butregardless, we are here.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
We are doing this.
I gotta say it was a hard one.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
I think you're about a month into working now, dan
yeah and starting to feel thewear and tear yeah, so I only
have to do this for anotherseven, possibly eight months.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Um, by then I'll probably just be a pile of goo I
like you, nice and squishy justa gelatinous corpse with bones
sticking out this is making methink about the dead city, uh,
methane power lab.
Yeah, we just watched.
Uh, before we get into it, wejust watched episode one of

(10:04):
season two of the dead city andum, spoiler, but not really.
It wasn't that great.
The first season was good.
We were going to do a anepisode about it actually, so I
feel like maybe we should dothat before we have it ruined
for us by season two.
Yeah, we'll talk about seasonone.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Season one was good.
Check it out, guys.
Yeah, I bet season two is gonnabe great, yeah, yeah well, I
mean, it's just the firstepisode we'll see.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Today.
We are talking about the sequelto the 1968 night of the living
dead, which is up there as oneof my absolute favorite zombie
movies of all time, which Inever expected, and so when you
told me this was made in 1978, Ithought, okay, I have the same
level of expectation as night ofthe living dead 1968 for
quality and enjoyment of thefilm.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, did it live up to that?
No, oh.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
It was pretty good it was still pretty good.
Yeah, I enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
It is kind of interesting sometimes,
especially with older movies,when directors have a shoestring
budget.
A great example would be theEvil Dead.
They didn't even have money forgum on that set.
Uh, you know a lot of like umindie filmmakers from the 90s,
like robert rodriguez andquentin tarantino.

(11:15):
Some of their best movies werewhen they had no money and um,
and that's probably what you'renoticing between night of the
living dead and dawn of the deadis like now that they had money
, they're like we're going toget a whole bunch of red paint
for blood.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
It was so bright red.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Whereas in 1968, like they had to they had to get
creative with their special itwas also black and white.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
So, like you just couldn't see if the color was
off, it was just you know gray.
If the color was off, it wasjust you know gray or black.
But I I think, um, there's alsothe fact that, like I said,
when I watched night of theliving dead with you and then we
reviewed it was I had terribleexpectations for that movie,
because I don't have anattention span.
I was like this was made wellbefore I was born.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
It's gonna be bad I didn't expect you to like night
of the living dead, because youknow it's.
It's an old.
First of all, you don't likeold movies.
But you know what thedifference is between the night
of the Living Dead, because youknow it's an old.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
First of all, you don't like old movies, but you
know what the difference isbetween the Night of the Living
Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
Before we get into the detailsat a high level, dawn of the
Dead had an hour of setup.
Night of the Living Dead, youget to the cemetery and shit
goes bad.
Yeah, you know, you have areally lovely intro scene of the
car driving down the road, butthen it's crazy.
But I don't feel like it'squite as intense.

(12:24):
Um, for the first.
Well, there's like the intense.
Okay, we're diving into it.
Let's talk about what it is.
You may not have ever watchedit.
Maybe you're like me and you.
This is the first time you'veseen it.
Probably not I.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
I want to give a warning.
Um oh, because I planned thisepisode and because Dawn of the

(12:57):
Dead is like such an importantmovie for me and I think so much
about it, I've so overplanned.
The notes on this want to avoidsounding like we're just
reading random autistic factsthat I've jotted down in in a in
a big, long, 13 page documentdan, you've broken the fourth
wall.
I'm doing it on purpose?

(13:18):
Don't do it.
I'm doing it on purpose.
Now they'll know, yeah, but I,I want, I, I want you to
understand that this was achallenge for me to not just
completely go off the wall andwrite an essay about this.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
I bet you, every single person, is now like can I
have the essay?
No one's getting the essay.
I don't think so because peoplelove your rants, but it was
more like a fact dump, an infodump, and Dan's getting the
essay.
I don't think so because peoplelove your rants, but it was
more like a fact dump, an infodump, and Dan's opinions, yeah,
but I feel like you've gotten itto a really good place.
So what is Dawn of the Deadabout?
During an escalating zombieepidemic, two Philadelphia SWAT

(13:56):
team members a traffic reporterand his TV executive girlfriend
seek refuge in a secludedshopping mall.
That happens after they flythrough the air on a helicopter.
It's a really important pointthere, yeah, and in just a few
weeks we will be at the mallwhere this was filmed.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, we're going to Living Dead Weekend.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Monroeville Mall near Pittsburgh.
We're going to go to the mall.
It might be the last one.
There's rumors that Walmartbought it.
I don't even think there'srumors.
Actually I think I saw a newsarticle.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, they definitely bought it, and they want to
turn the monroville mall into awalmart yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
So if you have not yet made the commitment to come
to living dead weekend, now isthe time it's happening june 6th
through 8th.
We're going to be there.
A lot of our zombies are goingto be there.
We've got brandon staraki fromavalon comic.
Joe salazar, the dead weight.
Alice b sullivan and hernumerous like she's one of those
prolific writers zombie and hernumerous zombie books.

(14:48):
And another prolific writer,courtney Constantine, is going
to be there.
So we're all going to behanging out.
You should come.
It's not too late.
I will Well, yeah, you'recoming down.
Yeah, I think I'm going to go.
I'm not talking to you.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
You know I love that Dawn of the Dead starts off as
such a simple premise, becausewhat you described is exactly
what the plot of the movie is.
It's very simple, it's justthey go find them all.
They live in a mall, that's it.
There's nothing more to it.
But the levels of storytellingwithin that is what I love about
the zombie apocalypse genre.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, and we're going to get a chance to meet some of
the actors of this originalDawn of the Dead at Living Dead
Weekend.
How do you feel about that, danUm?

Speaker 1 (15:30):
scared.
Why are you scared?
Well, meeting new people isscary, oh.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Well, if you're listening to this as a Dawn of
the Dead zombie actor or griplike Lenny Lies for the movie,
you'll know why Dan and I maylook at you zombie like and be
like hi.
I might just run away okay,that's a good plan, but, yeah,
lenny lies great, great name, bythe way, the grip for the movie

(15:57):
is going to be there.
Marty schiff and joe shelby,who are both motorcycle raiders,
are going to be there.
Oh, nice, uh, and a bunch ofzombies we'll talk about in a
minute.
Zombie actors are going to bethere, including some of the
really iconic ones.
Iconic zombies, like for thefilm.
Yeah, oh, this is what we meanby.
Dan is tired dan, what kind ofzombies are the?
The dawn of the dead zombies?

Speaker 1 (16:19):
well, um, people would call these romero zombies,
because george romero kind ofinvented the, the, the modern
zombie.
But there's painfully slow.
Uh, they shuffle along.
They are not getting anywherefast.
No, um, they can be easilyknocked over.
Um, they retain some memoriesand patterns from their former

(16:43):
life, even though they don'thave a lot of reasoning
intelligence.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yeah, like, apparently the reason why
they're all coming to the mallis because that's where they
used to come when they werealive.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Yeah, they just know it's important, they want to be
inside.
I feel like we get that fromour dogs, like they know that
they want to be inside of aplace, and then you let them in
and then they're like oh, I washappier outside.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Yeah, especially Nero .
As he gets older he's notreally sure where he wants to be
, but he's being a cutie rightnow, sleeping.
Yeah, he is, they're bothsleeping.
The other thing that'sinteresting about them is that,
unlike a lot of the zombies thatI grew up with before, watching
.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
You grew up with zombies.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Well, I mean, I'm old now, so in 20 years, yeah, I've
grown up with them.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
I thought you meant like in your hometown.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Oh, sadly no In zombie, although my first, I did
realize, my first zombie moviewas Evil Dead, which we need to
do an episode on someday.
But what was strange to me isthat it's very clear in this
movie that they don't care aboutsound, they're not attracted to
it, they're just attracted tomeat.
And if they're already eating,they're not going to come after
you, they're just going to behappily chewing on an arm.

(17:46):
And that was really strange forme to see, and that was not as
evident in night of living deadthey are attracted to sound, um,
it's, it's, it's stimulus.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
So, if you make, that's why they weren't, um,
shooting any zombies back intheir little abode in the back
of the malls, because that wouldattract the zombies.
But it is.
It was interesting.
In the very beginning of themovie we saw a situation where,
um, all of these zombies wereeating a bunch of corpses and
they didn't care that people,you know, the, the, the, the

(18:16):
actors in the movie showed up to, like, one by one, shoot them
in the head.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
They didn't seem to even notice them because they
were just fully, fully eatingyeah, whereas, uh, the walking
dead zombies are like adhdzombies they could be eating,
but if you make a loud enoughnoise they're gonna come.
Yeah, they're gonna stop whatthey're eating and come and get
you.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Uh, they can also sneak up on you really easily in
this world because they're soquiet that's one thing that I
love about romero's type ofzombies is that, like it's, it's
less about them beingaggressive or scary and it's
more about, like, the charactersbeing aloof and not knowing
that they're there, so likethey'll just be pumping gas and

(18:55):
minding their own business.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
And then there's a zombie in the in the shot,
encroaching on the camera, andyou can clearly see that they're
just walking very slowlytowards the actor, but they
don't notice it, which makes itkind of panic inducing another
point with these zombies that'simportant to me is it's the
first romero film that I've seenwhere there's color is their
skin is kind of like sometimesit's purpley and sometimes it's

(19:19):
gray, uh, and the makeup is youcan there's.
Their lips are very pink on theinside.
They really don't get thatclose to their eyes so you can
see that they're aliveunderneath.
It's not great makeup, yeah,but the actors make up for it.
I feel like they've had a lotof great zombie actors.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
They have fabulous hair.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yes, and great outfits, great outfits.
Let's talk about the zombiesthat are going to be with us at
Living Dead Weekend.
There's is performed by SharonHill and she's going to be there
.
I'm really excited to meetNurse Zombie.
Yeah, bob Micelucci.

(19:56):
I'm so sorry, bob, if I'msaying your name wrong.
Another zombie actor is goingto be there.
Then there's the red leatherjacket parking lot zombie, gary
Marlott, who will be with us,and you're the zombie girl in
the airport chart house.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah, there was two kids, I think is the one that
you're talking about.
That, uh, burst out of a backroom.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, let us know if we're wrong, melissa, because
that one was played by MelissaDunlap.
But they're all going to bethere, but not as zombies, as
real people we can, like, shaketheir hand and stuff.
Oh, okay, which reminds me Igot us a bunch of hand sanitizer
for our table.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Okay, good Cause you, because you're going to need
hand sanitizer if you're shakinghands with zombies.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Also oh yeah, what if they scratch us?

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, and also I just imagine that zombie hands are
just not that clean.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah, that's probably true, sorry, melissa.
The fingers that are coming outof my zombie crayons that I
make definitely are disgusting,so I don't want to shake those.
Then there's the Hare Krishnazombie, which I'd never heard of
before, but was such a distinctzombie I had to stop the film
and ask you what is a harikrishna?

Speaker 1 (20:57):
uh, it's, it's, um, it's a form of hinduism that uh
came to america in the around1965, um, I don't know how long
it lasted, but they, uh, theytended to show up in public
places to try to hand outpamphlets to people to join the

(21:19):
Hare Krishna movement.
They wore orange robes, theyshaved their heads, they had
tambourines.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
This guy had very nice round glasses.
He had round glasses.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Which is how you know he's smart Round glasses, yeah,
round glass, yeah.
Um, when I was a kid and Ifirst watched this movie, I I
have the distinct memory thatsomehow I knew that because he
had glasses, that he was a smartzombie, and that's why he finds
their hiding spot so easily Imean that might be yeah I don't

(21:51):
know how I knew that, but I Iknew that it.
But I knew that it was theglasses.
Dan, yeah, it was the glasses.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Even at that age we knew the stereotype that four
eyes equals extra brain power.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, it magnifies your brain power.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
One of my favorite zombies is a zombie who gets
their head chopped off by thehelicopter blades.
It took me a minute to evenprocess what happened.
I was like where did half itshead go?

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah us what happened .
I was like where did half itshead go?
Yeah, he steps up on a on a boxas the helicopter's running and
it lobs just the top of hiscranium off and then it just
starts shooting blood out of thetop of his head yeah, yeah,
there's.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
This was interesting because the makeup was so you
know, from our 2025 lens obviousthat most of it wasn't scary
for me, but there were a fewthings like when the zombies
were ripping somebody's guts out, that was really gross.
Yeah, watching a zombie gettingtheir head smashed in with a
machete was gross.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
I remember specifically you said I draw the
line at guts.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
I do.
There's something aboutwatching entrails getting pulled
out.
That is like absolutely where Ican't handle gore anymore.
It's not nice yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
My favorite zombie is the gun zombie.
The gun zombie is the zombiethat um in the mall grabs onto
the barrel of an m16 whilethey're trying to get through a
door.
They have to let go of the therifle and he just kind of holds
it to his forehead the entiremovie.
He's just walking around withit.
I would love to know the storyabout that because, like, did he

(23:14):
know that he was going to dothat?
Was it in the script?
Or did george romero be likewell, you did it?

Speaker 2 (23:20):
so now you have to hold it, now you gotta hold it
for the rest of the movie thatsounds like some basic training
level stuff but at the end hereappears.
Yeah and somehow he trades guns.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, he reappears and he grabs a different gun.
That's pointing at his head andhe likes the new gun better, so
he drops the m16 I wonder.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
He must have used guns in his real life, because
he really was attached to hisgun maybe yeah, it was kind of
cute.
He's sort of an adorable zombiehe was.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
I like him.
Uh, let's talk leah about somecharacters.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
There's four main characters right, the two swat,
yeah swat people.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
So swat officers, officers.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
We got a helicopter pilot and a tv executive
excellent, all right, who we'regoing to talk about first, dan
uh let's talk about the onewho's introduced last in in the
movie and then becomes the mostimportant character, peter
washington.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Um, he's a, he's the swat officer he's.
He's also just kind of likelevel-headed and cool about
everything he's.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
He kind of becomes the emotional anchor of the
group and the leader I mean he'slevel-headed until somebody
shoots a gun very close to hishead.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Oh, I mean, I understand in that situation,
flyboy, who's the helicopterpilot, tries to shoot a zombie
and he's standing on the otherside of the zombie and almost
kills him and yeah, he getspretty mad about that, but I
think that's understandable.
That's, that's coming from areal place.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
But he is other than that one episode where he points
a gun at Flyboy and says, likenow you know what it's like to
have a gun pointed at your face.
Don't ever do that again.
Yeah, he does seem like themoral compass of the group.
Yeah, and definitely the leader.
Definitely, Even though Flyboywants to be the leader.
But we'll get into that.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
I have also read the book the dawn of the dead, and
because I've read the book, Ihave a little bit of information
that they don't discuss in themovie.
Um, both of the swat officerswere formerly vietnam era marine
corps veterans, so they've beenthrough it, yeah.
So, like both of them, you cansee different types of combat
stress, but in the case of uh ofpeter, it kind of like channels

(25:40):
into a protective leadership.
He's also, uh, the only blackcharacter only main lead black
character yeah, and this is um1978, so this is.
This is kind of first.
Granted, there's a lot of blackcinema at this time in history,
but in a, in a feature film inmovie theaters around the world,

(26:07):
a black character that's notportrayed as either the enemy or
sacrificed um is is kind of abig deal, especially when they
when he's depicted as beingstrong, being intelligent and
being the leader and the mostrespectful one of women of the
three men that have that's rightwoman present.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
And also I think it's cool that george mario carried
on that tradition of having ablack male lead in the first one
and then again in the secondone.
Yeah, both times being reallylike just if I was going to rely
on a character in one of thosemovies, this was real.
I would trust them the mostyeah, um, yeah and even, uh.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Even in his first movie night of the living dead.
In the end his black characterdoes become a sacrifice yeah in
the in in the story.
So this is a little bitdifferent, being that he doesn't
get treated that way.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, he survives and in fact he survives because
he's the best at surviving.
I also want to, just as asidebar, point out that I have
seen so few black zombies inzombie films and TV to the point
where it is noticeable, whereI'm like why are all the zombies
white?
White?
Is it just because it's theextras who are volunteering are
mostly white, like what's goingon here.
And this one had a healthybalance of different zombie, um

(27:23):
folks of all different races,which I appreciated.
I don't know, I just it's likeit's very weird when, like, all
of a sudden, the dead people arewhite.
It makes sense when it's bloodquantum and it's like um karmic
penance.
But, like, like in other films,I'm like what is going on here?
So that was cool too.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Like the Walking Dead that started in the South.
There should be a lot biggerdemographic than just white
people.
Yeah, I think that in Romeromovies it's not just about being
inclusive, but also because hiszombies are all characters,

(27:59):
they're all unique.
They don't just put a plaidshirt on all of their zombies,
paint them gray and be likeyou're a horde now.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
No, they all have a story to them.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
If you look at them close enough, you can see sort
of who they were before, and Ilike that a lot, yeah they're.
They're less of a, a mindlessmonster and and uh, more of an
individual I'll put it this way,george romero zombies have more
dimensions to them than manywomen who are portrayed in
zombie media.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah, uh, moving along, roger, um, he's the other
, uh, swat officer, the one thatlike you kind of assume is
going to be the main character,because he's the white guy, he's
the action guy, he's, he's,he's doing a lot of the kicking
in doors and jumping over things.
So you're like this guy's gonnabe the main character, right,

(28:51):
yeah, he's gonna make it to theend, um, but uh, the thing about
roger is that he kind of is anadrenaline junkie, um, and this
is like kind of a, a symptom ofhis battle stress as well, which
is like, uh, back then theycalled it battlefield euphoria,
which, uh, which I didn't knowthat that was the name for it

(29:11):
until I did research for thisepisode.
But it makes sense, becausethere's a point where you're
facing mortality on a dailybasis and you kind of get of
staying behind cover in afirefight.
You run across an open area toget to somewhere else that you

(29:38):
need to go, because you're like,fuck it, I'm gonna go, but then
you get this huge rush becauseyou're like I lived through it.
That's.
That's where roger is at, um,and it doesn't go well for him
it doesn't, but he's an exampleright off the bat.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
I mean there's there's a number of examples of
disability in this movie.
Right at the beginning we havethe black preacher who's missing
a leg that's right.
And then roger I think if youwere listening to this I'm gonna
assume you've watched it, butif you haven't spoiler ends up
getting bitten and shot.
Shot right, not just bitten,bitten and shot.
Uh, he gets bitten multipletimes.
Okay, bitten multiple times,and they take care of him.

(30:16):
They see him still having arole in like helping secure them
all and protect everybody.
They just kind of pull it, pushhim around in like a cart, a
wheelbarrow yeah, I reallyappreciated that, you know your
mobility when it's hard to havemobility, and he plays a key
role even when he is uh slowlyzombifying he still had a lot of
skills that he could contribute.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
He could still hotwire cars.
He could still blow a zombie'sbrains out.
All they had to do was justwheel him around in a car.
Just throw him in the back of acar, yeah, and they could just
drive around and he would justpop zombies while he's just
laying in the back in cripplingpain.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Let's talk about my least favorite boy of the four
fly boy I I love his characterbecause he's he's such a complex
person.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
But steven uh, also known as fly boy, the helicopter
pilot and fran's boyfriend, um,he is an insecure male, uh, and
I find this really fascinatingbecause it's like you know, we
we talk about like alpha malesnow, like we have we have that
word for that um, but I don'tknow if that was necessarily the

(31:25):
word that they used back then,but he very much is the person
who would probably callthemselves an alpha male.
But, as I've found with everysingle person who's ever told me
that they're an alpha male, Ifound that he is the weakest
version of that.
He is so insecure and entirelybrittle in his masculinity.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, like he doesn't want his girlfriend Fran to
learn how to fly the helicopter,because then she helicopter,
because then she wouldn't needhim.
He doesn't want her to have anykind of say in their plans,
because I don't think he thinkswomen have brains.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Yeah, he.
Just he wants her to play, playher her female role in their
group and to just rely on himfor protection as the man in
their relationship, and to justlisten to him and take his lead.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Meanwhile, he's the one who makes the most risks,
whereas Roger and Peter areusually.
Who saves her?

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yeah, and he's obsessed with proving himself,
which puts him in situationsthat are really dangerous, and
that's because he suffers fromthis deep inferiority, uh
complex, especially when he'saround peter and roger, who are
very skilled and, um, andactually know what they're doing
.
So, like we talked about before,he almost shoots, uh, peter,

(32:48):
because he's trying to go around, shoot all and shoot all the
zombies, but he doesn't actuallyknow anything about shooting a
firearm, so he doesn't realizethat you have to consider what's
on the other side of yourtarget when you're shooting at a
zombie.
So he just sees a zombie, triesto shoot at it and he doesn't
realize he's almost going tokill Peter.
If Peter didn't notice thatthat was happening, yep, and

(33:11):
Roger would tend to come up nextto him as, as a fly boy, is
shooting zombies in the chestlike six or seven times, and he
would just knock his gun out ofthe way and then take one slow,
steady, aimed shot of the zombieand drop it and, like you could
see that he's throughout themovie just being emasculated.

(33:32):
He's throughout the movie justbeing emasculated, but he's.
I always feel that, uh, the actof being emasculated is the act
of allowing yourself to beemasculated, so he didn't take
that opportunity to learn fromthem, he just instead resented
them for it yeah, and heespecially resents fran for a
long time, yeah, and trying tohave autonomy, which is our last

(33:53):
main character, tv executive.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
That's how she knows uh flyboy, whose real name I can
always forget steven, right, Ijust think of him as flyboy,
fran and flyboy.
Uh.
It was interesting is that whenuh they're asked what their
relationship is, fran says likeI think they asked like, is that
your boyfriend or whatever?
And fran's sort of likesometimes, which indicates that
there's already some dispute ortension between them.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, there's a point later where Peter makes a fancy
dinner for the two of thembecause Stephen wants to take
that opportunity to proposemarriage to Fran, and she's just
like so not, not now yeah, like, and you can.
You can see his eyes just likeice over with that, yeah, with

(34:42):
that uh, resentment and thingsjust kind of go bad from there.
Uh, francine, uh, tv executive.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
She's the only woman in the group yeah, in the
beginning, like I'd say thefirst hour, I was like, really,
george romero, I thought youcould do better than this super
two-dimensional female character, passive just for the most part
following the lead of what themen are saying.
But then she really does startto be like, hey y'all.
Like once they get to the mall,she's like I'm not gonna just
make you your dinners.

(35:10):
Yeah, I want to learn how tofly.
I want to learn how to use agun.
Um, I want to be part of theplanning.
You can't just like inform melater.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, she has, she has to be included in the plans,
yeah, and she has a say yeah,um, but yeah, like you said in
the beginning, um, she was, shewas passive, but she was also
kind of traumatized too, which Ithink is probably where most
people were mentally during thattime.
But what she brings to thegroup is emotional intelligence.

(35:42):
Her and Peter both are theemotionally intelligent
characters where the other twoare just emotionally inept.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
Yeah, the whole time I was kind of hoping her and
Peter would get together.
I mean they could, they couldbe in the future.
Right, that is, it's notimplied, but there's the
possibility, because steven'sout of the way, well, let's talk
about that later.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Um, but, yes, uh, one , one quote that I love when she
is asserting herself to thegroup, she says that, um, I'm
not going to be a dead motherfor you guys.
Yeah, and that's such apowerful statement for 1978.
Um, and like, because it's 1978, that like I kind of feel like,
along with, along with, uh,other types of, like, racial

(36:28):
inclusion and, uh, you know, um,gender identity inclusion and
everything, this is probably asgood as it's going to get in
1978.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Let's think of it this way In 1974 is when women
were allowed to get their owncredit card without asking their
husband, in their own name.
Yeah, so four years previously.
No financial autonomy isavailable to women in the United
States.
So, yeah, I think for thatalone she represents a lot of
the progression.
Let's get into the story.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Yeah, act one we, uh, I mean, I think most people
have seen this movie, but sothis will kind of just be like a
refresher.
But if you haven't seen thismovie, um you should, you should
watch it yeah, yeah, just youcould?

Speaker 2 (37:13):
You could two times the speed for the first hour.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
What I love is that it shows in each act.
It shows so much that goes intothe collapse of society and
long-term survival.
It's everything that I loveabout the zombie apocalypse.
So in Act 1, this is whereorder is collapsing.
The outbreak already happenedback in Night of the Living Dead

(37:40):
.
We're starting at a place wherezombies definitely exist and
we're reacting to it as asociety.
So when we open up in thenewsroom, I remember reading
this script back when I wasfirst getting interested in
writing, like seriously wantingto write and I read the script

(38:00):
and I could see it play out justlike the movie.
And this newsroom scene is sochaotic and it depicts so much
that panic and chaos thathappens in the first few days of
an outbreak and I love it somuch.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Including the audio, which is horrible, and half the
time I have no idea what thecharacters are saying, because
there's just like cacophony.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
We had to turn on closed captioning 100%.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
I think the cacophony was intentional.
It's just, you know, the audiomixing of the time makes it so
that you can't really hear someof the main characters unless
you have the subtitles.
But it definitely conveyed thefeeling of chaos and stress.
I will be clear here that I hadthis expectation in my head,
having watched the 2004 John ofthe dead, that it was going to
be the same movie.
And so we open up in thenewsroom.

(38:46):
I'm like what?
What is happening?
This is not how the more recentone started, so I was a little
confused at the beginning morerecent one started, so I was a
little confused at the beginning.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Um, and there's some themes that go with with this uh
, media is being shown as thisfailing institution, so there's
confusion, misinformation, uhchaos.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
Um, they're they're unable to manage a crisis that's
unfolding and that they are allindividually falling apart,
while the institution of themedia is falling apart around
them yeah, it's interesting thatthey're prioritizing you know,
the one person's prioritizingratings over actually providing
accurate information, and Ithink that's a little sobering
to realize that in 1978 that wasa critique george romero had

(39:28):
over society.
Yeah, and like look at where weare now with misinformation.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, because these?
Because what they had is theyhad a list of safe houses that
they were sending people to, butit hadn't been updated in a
really long time and they didn'tthink that they were even, uh,
up and running anymore.
They thought that they'd beenoverrun by zombies.
So they would be literallysending people to their deaths.
If they said these are are safeplaces, go to these places.

(39:55):
And Franny takes it down.
She takes it down off theteleprompter or whatever machine
in 1978, put words on thescreen, yeah.
And the TV producer is like yougot to put those back up.
And she's like are you okaywith sending people to their
deaths?
Like she's saying this live onthe air.

(40:17):
People can hear her over theover the pa system.
And he's just like if, if wetake those off the screen,
people are aren't going to watchanymore and our ratings are
going to go down quick.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
What would you do?
You're watching this on tvunfold.
Do you just decide you're goingto stay home and hope the the
SWAT team doesn't come after you?
Yeah, I think so too.
I'd be like I'm not goingfucking anywhere, let's go to
the basement.
Baby need some peanut butter.
And I'm gonna keep watching thisbecause this is entertaining,
yeah I think another theme thatit really shows up in the next

(40:48):
scene is where they have theproject housing raid.
Yeah, is um, some big brothervibes like forced displacement?
I don't really know that Iagree with this idea of what the
government was choosing to doat the time and I don't think
George Romero did either whichis essentially forcing people
out of their homes to thesequote unquote safe houses and
instead of letting them stay.

(41:09):
And so we come across the scenewhere, again, full chaos, where
we have a whole SWAT teambreaking into a project and by a
project housing, I mean likewhat's it called in the United
States, section 8?
In fact, I don't even know ifthe term project housing is
derogatory.
Let's look that up live.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
I think project housing is a correct term, but
section 8 is like the code thatthe housing department would use
to classify it yeah, that's how.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
That's what I learned about it, as when I moved to
the united states with sectioneight housing in augusta which,
by the way, you could be on awaiting list for years and never
get in that place, so still notvery great, but regardless.
In the movie, the police arecoming in and are basically just
like forcing people to leaveand or opening the door and
shooting them outright.
Uh, you have a white cop namedwillie who is clearly racially

(42:02):
motivated and just using it asan opportunity to shoot people,
particularly black people.
Man, every time we do theseshows, I'm like we needed a
content warning at the beginningof this um and it's really
interesting because he alreadydoesn't clearly doesn't see
people who are not white aspeople, regardless of whether or
not they're zombies.
And I think that there's aclear intention romero has to

(42:25):
mirror that dehumanization ofblack people in the same way
that we dehumanize zombies.
And it's actually where peterand roger meet and sort of form
an immediate bond because theyhelp each other.
Take this racist asshole downyeah, there's.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
There's a scene and I will never forget this scene
because it's iconic um, whenwillie kicks in the door of
somebody's apartment and,without even identifying any of
the targets inside, uh, fires ashotgun at a black man and blows
his head to pieces.
And I remember the first time Isaw that and I didn't know was

(42:59):
that a zombie or was that aliving person?
And back in the VHS and theaterdays when you could only see
the movie once, maybe youwouldn't know.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
George Romero was so woke for 1978.
He was.
Yeah, think about it.
Police brutality has been goingon forever but as a white
person, like it really didn'tenter my consciousness, frankly,
until 2020, with the murder ofGeorge Floyd.
Like that's the embarrassingtruth, because I've never had
that experience, I've neverknown people who are directly
targeted by the police for theirrace.
Well, that's not true.

(43:32):
I've known people, but in myinner circle, right like growing
up, it was a bunch of otherwhite people, so that was not a
part of my reality.
But again, like george romerowas just calling it all out in
this, in this movie yeah and um,yeah it was.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
That was a shocking moment because, you know, until
until you got the, the freezeframe and rewind ability of vcr,
but in the in the 80s and 90s,you couldn't go back and be like
, was that a zombie?
Because it's definitely not.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
It's interesting.
I knew it wasn't a zombie rightoff the bat, but I think that's
because I was so, uh, focusedon the zombie makeup, because
I'm working on another crownyeah, a zombie crown and I was
like taking notes about what Ido and don't want to do.
So I was like, oh, that persondoesn't have a purple face.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
On a side note, definitely alive about the
makeup.
I bet when it's when it was ona screen in 1978 and on like low
resolution tvs, it probablylooked a lot better wow, yeah, I
guess we should get a lowresolution tv in our bunker.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Our bunker needs.
We need one of those likewooden case tvs.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah we could get them from uh, the mall.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
That would be incredible.
That's exactly.
Yeah, the antique mall that'snear us probably has one.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
I'm at the monroville mall we could go and get a
floor model tv you think?
they're gonna have one of those.
Oh, they better.
Something I didn't think aboutuntil until, literally, we
watched it this time is how thezombies and, uh, poor minorities
are kind of viewed the same andby.

(45:02):
In the eyes of a lot of thepeople in this universe, there's
not a whole lot of differencebetween a zombie and somebody
who's poor.
And this wasn't just aboutconsumerism, it was also about
class warfare.
And even when they get to themall and they are clearing out
the mall of all the undead, the,the zombies still show up to

(45:25):
bang on on the doors becausethey want to get inside.
They want to get inside and beone of them inside the mall, but
they're on the outside becausethey're a different class I
wasn't paying attention.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Let's talk about the helicopter escape okay, I'm so
sorry uh.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
So our four characters meet up, um after
after uh taking willie out, umroger and peter become.
After taking Willie out, rogerand Peter become best friends
and decide that they're going toskip town.
And Roger knows somebody who'sgoing to steal a helicopter and
he's like, why don't you comewith us?
And they become best friendsand they decided to take off.

(46:09):
And the person with thehelicopter is Flyboy and his
girlfriend, fran, and they haveno plan they're going to get
with the helicopter is fly boyand his girlfriend Fran, and
they have no plan.
They're going to get in ahelicopter and fly away.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
I mean that's the best plan you've got in that
situation.
Like, as much as we don't loveSteven fly boy man, uh, it's
really handy to have ahelicopter pilot.
It is yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
At some point I do remember them saying something
about getting to Canada.
Um, At some point I do rememberthem saying something about
getting to Canada, but that'snot until we get to the mall and
they're like do you know howmany stops it'll be before we
get to Canada?

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Can I say from how hilarious it is so many of these
movies and shows it's likeabout escaping to Canada, as if
there's like a magical wall thatwould stop the zombies from
coming in.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Well, you don't have a wall Not yet, protecting
Canada from Americans?
Not yet you don't have a wallNot yet Protecting Canada from
Americans.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Not yet, but it is very funny that it's like people
are like, let's get to Canada.
I see it over and, over andover again as a trope.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
And because they're in a helicopter, we get to see a
lot of the things that aregoing on because they're flying
over these things.
Because they're flying overthese things Like, we're seeing
National Guard and policeconscripting hillbillies to go
out like it's a hunting session.
They all have their like orangevests on with their deer

(47:27):
hunting tags on their back.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Having a great time.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
They're like here's some coffee, here's some donuts.
Go shoot the zombies.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
I kind of got to give them credit for how organized
they were yeah they were doing abetter job of self-organizing
than the us government was inactually protecting its people.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, um, and then we're also seeing like a lot of
the out the outer skirts areaslike they land at a few
helicopter airports to try toget fuel, and those places have
been, have been, uh, empty anddead for a long time.
It looks like like completelyunmanned um and just signs of
like nobody's.

(48:03):
Nobody's been here for a longtime and this is, this is now
chaos.
Yeah, so we get to see a lot ofthe stuff that's going on in
the world at that time, which Ithink is important because it
leads you to the same conclusionthat they arrive when the world
at that time, which I think isimportant because it leads you
to the same conclusion that theyarrive when they get at the
mall, which is you know what.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Maybe we should just stick around here, yeah, for a
bit.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
You find a place with food, water, a place to land
your helicopter.
Um, you should probably hangout there for a while now it's
time to talk about the mall.
Yeah, act two baby the illusionof safety Act.
Two baby, the illusion ofsafety.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
I mean, isn't there always an illusion of safety?
Yes, in our reality.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
Yeah, it's absolutely true.
You know, something that I'vebeen thinking about a lot lately
is that like there's been thisillusion of safety in our
society and everyone's like,yeah, there's rules, there's
safety, you know, you just putyour head down and go to work
and then you'll get to 85 yearsold and then you die of old age.
Um, but I think, a lot like thecharacters in this story, they

(49:04):
realize that, uh, that survivalis a little bit more complex
than that, and in my own life,um, I've I've always felt like
in the back of my mind thatthere's always something lurking
that is just ready to changethe whole world.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
Well, I know we haven't reviewed this book yet,
but in Parable of the Sower, oneof the religious values that
the main character develops isGod is change, and I think we
see that in this film.
We see it in Darren Smith's theUndead Symphony we talked about
last week.
It's this reality that the mallis a safe place for a while,
but stability will becomeunstable and you have to be

(49:44):
ready for that change.
So the mall is a really goodmetaphor for that, especially
because it's filled with all thethings, all the things we're
supposed to need and want anddesire things, all the things
we're supposed to need and wantand desire, yeah and uh, I think
what we learn is thatconsumerism is unstable.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
You know it's, it's, it's good for.
It's good for a little while.
You know, get all the stuffthat you want, um, but it can't
last yeah, uh.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
So they, they fly to the mall.
They discover first of all islike how convenient is, how
convenient is this?
And is this a real thing?
I don't know, but they discovera room full of survival
supplies, boxes and boxes.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
It literally says survival supplies.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Yeah, like, or something like that.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
I do think that this is realistic because back before
it was called FEMA, thegovernment had a program called
COG continuity of government andpart of that was being prepared
for a nuclear disaster, and oneof the things that they would
do is they would set up supplyzones, usually at schools or in

(50:45):
churches or government buildingsand I think probably, in this
case, malls, where they wouldsupply non-perishable food that
would feed a large number ofpeople for a period of time.
So I think that's probably whatthey found when they landed on
this mall.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Okay, that makes it more believable for me, but how
convenient, you know.
And then they get into the malland we watch.
First of all have to kill thezombies, which we'll get to, but
what I think is amazing is thatwe actually see them like live
out the fantasy of havingeverything you could possibly
want.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
Yeah, yeah, it's.
It is the the temple ofconsumerism.
Yeah, um, everything you couldever want it's.
It's kind of funny watching itnow, where they're just like.
They're like they goteverything in this place.
It's like like we have Amazonyeah, except for we don't want
Amazon anymore.
We don't, but we live in a timewhere we all live in malls.

(51:41):
It's just like you just got towait a couple days for it to
show up.
You can buy anything.
You want anything.
You could imagine things thatyou can't imagine, and you could
have it on your doorstep in afew days.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
If you're an American and you have a little bit of
cash.
Yeah yeah, it's a pretty weirdworld that we're in, and the
recent whole tariff drama Idon't even know what to call it
and the threat of havingunstable supply is really
unsettling for your averagemiddle-class white American, I
think, or anybody who has asteady cash income, because
we're just used to being able toget everywhere we need with

(52:14):
ease.
I was.
It was what's the word?
It was out of stock and I waslike WTF and I had to buy it
from Amazon.
I tried really hard to buy itfrom another place but then it
was gone.
Yeah, so Bummer, yeah.
But it does make me feel safethat I can just like get the
thing I want whenever I want it.
And it's really really powerfulthat the zombies just keep

(52:35):
coming to the mall for no otherreason.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
Yeah, inst instinct they, they knew that they wanted
to be there and, like the eraof the mall, like we don't have
as many malls now because, well,because of the internet
probably.
But, um, but there there wasthis instinct to go to the mall,
like you don't know if youactually need anything, you're
not going there because you'relike oh, I have to buy pants, I

(52:59):
gotta go to the mall.
I never went to the mall when Ineeded to buy a thing really.
No, like the like going to themall.
I never went to the mall when Ineeded to buy a thing Really.
No, going to the mall, it'slike you're going to pay more
for the thing that you want, soyou want pants.
I mean, I was going to buythose pants at Walmart.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Oh, I didn't have Walmart as a kid.
We had a place called Zeller's.
Oh yeah, You're nodding likeyou know what Zellerers?

Speaker 1 (53:20):
is.
I've heard of that word, yes.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Oh, weird.
Okay, it doesn't exist anymore.
It was replaced by targets thatthen failed in Canada.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Yeah, complicated story, um but we went to the
mall because it was it was anactivity.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
It was like uh, the thing to do.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Yeah, like you could, like you start at the, you walk
all the food all at once, um,which is something that I didn't
realize I would miss issmelling every food at once,
like chinese food next to a tacobell and a pizza place, like
all of that at once, um.
And then you, then you walkdown down the rows and you look

(53:59):
into the stores of all thethings that you're like, ooh,
there's things in there.
But yeah, you went there towalk around and look at things.
It was like a museum that youcould buy the things.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
I did do that.
Sometimes the mall that wasclose to me as a kid was
actually attached to the Zellersand we would go as like teeny
boppers.
Sometimes my parents would dropus off and we would go to this
store called claire's and getlike stupid earrings or whatever
for five bucks you'll get yourears pierced oh my god, I didn't
get my ears pierced.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
A horrible infection um, another thing that I love
about act two in this model isthat we start to see, uh, we
start to see, like, howmasculinity, the different ways
that each of the charactersapproach this.
So, like peter and roger areexperienced, they're confident,

(54:50):
they have abilities that aregoing to keep them alive and
they immediately decide to runoff and go find some stuff that
they can use to survive.
They're like let's go get somestuff.
And they have a great timedoing it.
They're running around, they'rehooting and hollering, they're
fighting zombies, they're justhaving a great old time.
And Flyboy, who's just sodesperate to prove himself, when

(55:15):
he wakes up after flying ahelicopter for 48 hours straight
, wakes up from his coma eighthours straight, uh, wakes up
from his his coma and he's likehe's like where do they?
Where where'd the boys go?
And fran's like they left to goshopping and he's like, well,
I'm gonna go too.
And he leaves her there byherself.
So rude.
He runs off and he goes into thegenerator room and he's just

(55:37):
like, fucking around in thegenerator room, finds like he
does find keys, and he findslike a layout map and a big
binder.
So he did find something, butthey could have found that later
.
But he puts himself in seriousharm's way as he's in the
generator room and there is azombie in there with him and,
instead of being cool andcollected like the more

(56:00):
well-trained members of hisparty, he's in out of his depth
and he just starts shooting atshadows.
You can hear the bulletsricocheting around inside of the
room and uh, and he almost diesbecause the zombie just keeps
creeping up on him andeventually gets on top of him
and he has to beat his head inwith a hammer because he just

(56:22):
wasted all of his bulletsshooting at shadows good thing
there's an entire store full ofbullets and guns we discover
later.
Yeah but you know the the thegun store inside of the mall is
a little bit before my time, butlike I could, I could totally
see that being a thing.
I bet you people could smoke inthe mall in 1978?

Speaker 2 (56:42):
definitely.
Can you imagine like everythingyou buy already stinks like
smoke.
Yeah, but you pick it up fromthe mall but you also smell like
smoke and you don't know?
Yeah, because everybody smokes.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Yeah, I mean, the coolest ashtrays were the 70s
ashtrays, that's true well, yougo and you get your, your, uh,
your mink coat and it's just,it's just like permeated with
cigarette smoke and it he waslike hmm, smells like my house.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
I mean, it wasn't that much longer that I was
alive, it was 1984.
And by the time I was like 1987, so like a decade later.
I was going to bars wherethere's smoky all the time and I
just, you know, inhaled a lotof secondhand smoke anyways.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
So they secure the mall, they go out, they decide
that they have to clear out allthe zombies.
They got to get all the stuff.
It's a fun time, um, and theydo a good job.
Yeah, and this also, like this,plays into other other themes
of of, uh, of masculinity, likethis fantasy of control, like

(57:38):
they're fortifying theirfortress, they're doing they're
like killing the zombies andmaking a castle inside of it.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
There's also this you know, like there's four, there
are four people, and it's anentire mall of things.
They don't need all of that,but I can see why that creates
this sense of like.
We should stick around here andwe should protect it, cause
they also do.
It's where Roger gets bit, butthey drive giant trucks in front

(58:08):
of all four entryways so thatzombies can't come in after
they've cleared out, which isreally smart too, and roger's
death, or well, roger getting um, getting bitten during that is
like a perfect example ofroger's unchecked masculinity.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
You know he's he feels, feels unstoppable and he
becomes reckless.
You know that that euphoriatakes over where he's just
taking these huge risks, butalso because he's so amped up
and so so hyper in those moments, all the hooting and hollering
just like, completely warps hisperception and he starts making

(58:43):
mistakes, leaving behind histoolkit, which is why he had to
go back in the first place andended up getting bitten.
It's because he started makingsmall mistakes that just kept on
adding up and you could seethat he was just kind of, he was
really starting to lose it inthat moment.
And then Peter was measured.
He was staying cool in thosemoments because he is more

(59:08):
emotionally regulated than Rogerand he was trying his best to
protect Roger from himself inthose moments, but ultimately
there was nothing he could do.
And then we see how all oftheir comfort and their wealth,

(59:28):
all of the stuff that they have,just turns into complacency.
And there's this moment wherePeter is questioning what is the
point in survival if you're notactually living?
Yeah, you're just sort ofplaying house.
Yeah, um, that's something thatthe raiders call them out for

(59:49):
is playing house inside of their, inside of their castle.
I think it's time for us to getto the raiders.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Let's talk about the raiders we're gonna meet two of
the motorcycle gang members atliving dead weekend.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
I'm stoked you think they'll smash our heads in with
a sledgehammer?

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
I mean, that would be the photo op, wouldn't it?

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
yeah, act three, a rubber one, the collapse.
So, uh, these raiders see franand fly boy practicing in their
helicopter on the roof, um, andthey're like there's a lot of
stuff inside of there and we'regonna call them on the radio and
tell them to give up all theirstuff.
And uh, and they, they didn'tdo that.

(01:00:27):
So the raiders are like youfucked up, now we're gonna come
kill you I think the raiderssymbolize a lot they do.
Um, the raiders are the mosttoxic and unchecked form of
masculinity.
Like it's all about violenceand it's destruction just for
the sake of destruction.
They're taking joy indestroying the mall and causing

(01:00:53):
chaos and they're and even eventheir their fight against the
zombies instead of like theycould have easily just killed
all the zombies and gone inthere and taken the stuff, but
instead they're just having afun time.
They're literally throwing piesat zombies at one point, Like
it's a big game to them andthey're not taking it seriously
at all.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
What's interesting about it to me, though, is like
this is an example where therewas an opportunity because the
mall had plenty of stuff, somaybe there's like 30.
I think they say there's 20raiders, but there's more than
20 raiders.
That's just somebody's one ofthe people's estimates in the
movie, but they could have justsaid, hey, why don't we share
them all and you can help usprotect it?
That was never an idea oneither side.

(01:01:33):
Both sides needed to hoard andcontrol and keep the things, but
at the same time, I feel likethe raiders also critiqued that,
because they really had aninterest in destroying things.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
It's like they wanted all the stuff, but they also
were okay with destroying it,because they represented a
different way of living, of likesurvival on the road and just
taking what you need and keepinggoing yeah, I also noticed an
interesting thing too that Inever really thought about is
like how, um, inside the mall,they're kind of isolating
themselves from the outsideworld and they have all of the

(01:02:05):
comforts, and that is slowlyeroding their selves Mentally.
It's eroding them and makingthem complacent and causing lots
of depression and anxiety.
Yeah, whereas the raiders areon the outside and they're the
exact opposite, where they'refully exposed to all the

(01:02:29):
elements all the time andthey're fully.
They don't have homes, they'reon the road and that's how they
live now, and they're fullaggression and it's almost like
they hate that the people insidethe mall are existing in this
way.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yeah, it's, it's a an ideological battle at this
point well, it's also a have andhave not battle because, like,
again, four people have hoardedan entire mall, yeah, and now
you have a bunch of people whohave been surviving and,
honestly, um, are probably muchmore resilient and able to
handle zombies than the folkswho've been stuck in the mall
for so long.
And again, I don't know why,for me, octavia Butler's book

(01:03:11):
just keeps coming back as we'retalking about this.
But there's a very similarmessage in Parable of the Sower,
because it's about the in thebeginning, anyways, it's about
these gated communities stillsurviving.
But then you have the people onthe outside that are trying to
take what's theirs because theydidn't have that, um, and so
it's kind of a question of likeis is anybody actually right?
Like, are the raidersthemselves evil or are they just

(01:03:34):
also trying to survive?

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
I don't know um, I, I think it's both.
I think.
I think the way that theyconduct themselves is not that
which makes them on the goodside.
If they just smashed in, wentin, took what they needed and
left, that'd be one thing.
But they almost relished thisfight and they wanted to have a

(01:04:01):
fight and they wanted to causedestruction and chaos that's
true, and violence is often theonly language left to the
oppressed.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Yeah, and if you take a, if you look at it from like
a class metaphor, they're just,they're mocking this idea of
security and the only reasonthose four people have them all
is luck and privilege.
Not, and you know, yes, theydid also work for it, but the
raiders did work for it too.
I'm not saying I'm team raider,I'm saying it's more
complicated than I think I sawit at first.

(01:04:29):
And it's again because of theamazing octavia butler, like I
just see and hear a lot of veryparallel moments in that story
that demonstrate this problem ofclass and haves and have-nots
and hoarding wealth, thateverybody thinks the solution is
to take what they want.
Uh, it's just that in this casethe raiders uh, that's their

(01:04:50):
only way of surviving, whereasthese four folks just got used
to having everything they neededand again sort of became
zombified by just having thiscornucopia of bullshit around
them to try on and wear yeah,let's I.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
I love cornucopia of bullshit.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
Let's have one isn't that our society, cornucopia of
bullshit, yeah, um, so yeah, Idon't think it's.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
It's easily one way or the other.
Like even the people inside themall, I can't side with them
entirely, because they had theopportunity to just allow the
raiders to take what they wanted, smash what they wanted and
then leave.
They had a really good hidingplace.
They drywalled up the onlyplace that you could get to
where they were staying.
They wouldn't have found them,yeah, and then eventually they

(01:05:37):
would have left because theydon't want to be inside the mall
, they want to be on theirmotorcycles outside the mall.
But Flyboy was was like thisstuff is ours, you can't take it
.
He's, he's the one that firedthe first shot.
Fly boy, the uh angry man, theinsecure alpha male who's just

(01:05:58):
uh cracking at the seams, is theone who fired the first shot
and then that left peter to haveto, to have to finish the fight
yeah, I don't think there'sanother alternative in reality
in this movie, because of therealities of capitalism, that
the entire concept of a mall isgirdered by, like the raiders
had.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
the raiders got a raid and the hoarders got a
hoard and you're you're put in aposition where you got to keep
your stuff and so you have tofight.
Yeah, so even though I say liketheoretically there's this
alternative, I don't think thatthat idea would have occurred to
anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
That should be a new question that we ask people Are
you a raider or a hoarder?

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
I'm definitely a hoarder, yeah, yeah, because I
do inherently have this ideathat raiding is less moral.
But if I was on the side whereI needed to raid to survive,
would I feel that way?
Like I think about my grandpa'sstories of going into
neighbor's gardens at night andstealing their food so that he
could feed his brothers becausehis dad had been murdered.
Oh, your grandpa was a raider.

(01:06:57):
He was, yeah, so it's like it'sjust it's interesting to think
about.
He was a tomato raider.
Yeah, he mostly talked aboutpotatoes potatoes.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a little bit harder to
notice as they're underground Idon't know you're digging.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
Wouldn't they notice like the dug up potato, put the
dirt back.
You know, I never asked him.
If he ever got caught doingthis, I should have missed
opportunity.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Rip grandpa yeah, um, yeah, I think I'm hoarder, but
you know, if it comes to raiding, I think that there's like a
lot of different moral barriersthat you have to think about
when you're in an apocalypticsituation, Like, yeah, okay, I'm

(01:07:39):
going to go raid the neighbor'shouse because they're already
dead, they don't need that stuff.
I'm going to go raid it.
Yeah, yeah and then add it to myhorde, uh.
But then there's like do I, doI attack other aggressive
raiders and take their stuff,and that's that's a.
That's a moral barrier byitself.
And then it's like do I attackinnocent people?

(01:08:00):
That's another moral barrier.
So it's like, how many moralbarriers are you, are you
willing down?

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
Well, you know, are they fully innocent?
They could have seen if therewas anybody else alive that
could have shared that with them.
They had a fucking helicopter.
They literally could have goneup and been like do we see any
other survivors that we couldbuild a community with?
And they didn't.
But again, I think it's aboutthe limitation of imagination
when you grow up in a systemthat tells you that you should
just take what you want and thatthere's, there's one way that's

(01:08:28):
more appropriate quote unquoteto do that than others.
Like it just didn't even occurto anybody in this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
That could have been an interesting story too,
because I feel, like Peter wouldhave, would have wanted to find
trustworthy people to to help,to help build something bigger,
whereas fly boy would have beenlike, no, then we have to share
our stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
Yeah, I'll give a real life example right now.
You know I was hoping to pushfor community solar in our HOA
and because of uh, because Iwanted that community resiliency
.
Then, um, I had a series ofevents happen where I realized I
don't think I have thepolitical sway to make that
happen in our little community.
It's go back to the hoa episode.

(01:09:10):
You'll get a sense of why.
And then I realized I don'thave the time to make this
happen, because the 30 taxwrite-offs that are available
right now thanks to theinflation reduction act that
make things like going solar andgetting storage and heat pumps
affordable for your averageperson because it just replaces
your power bill, is going toprobably be gone by the end of

(01:09:31):
this year if the federaladministration and Congress on
the right side of things and byright I mean the political right
get what they want, which meansI don't have time to convince
my neighbors.
So in that moment I'm justfocused right now on trying to
get us as much solar as I canbefore we can't have it.
But I tell myself that I'm agood person because it's okay

(01:09:53):
that I'm not being moreaggressive with my neighbors and
saying, hey, we got to get thisdone now.
We got to work on this now.
We got to get a plan nowBecause in my mind I'm like well
, if we lose power, they cancome to our house.
But I guess I'm saying it'sreally easy to start to think
about yourself and not otherswhen things feel like they're in
a crisis mode, and I just wantto own that.
I'm doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Yeah, you know what Moral barriers in each direction
.
Yeah, how much more moral areyou willing to go at the
sacrifice of yourself?
You willing to go at thesacrifice of yourself?

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Well, I think the lesson in this example, like my
solar example, is I should havedone more work before it was
crisis.
I should have done more work tobuild the community willpower
to get it done before.
We were at a point where I havesix months before the probably
I mean it's not said and doneyet but probably before the tax

(01:10:44):
credits are gone.
So that's my regret.
I just want to be as real withyou all about the ways that we
fail so that you don't thinkthat we're just over here being
like the most amazing communitycontributors ever.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
So this leads to the end, and if you haven't seen the
movie yet, this is big spoilerterritory.
But fly boy dies.
Fly boy, uh, he gets shot in anelevator shaft and because he's
shot in the arm he can't climbout of the elevator escape hatch

(01:11:19):
.
And zombies come into theelevator when the door opens and
just they, they just eat them.
They just eat them a lot.
And uh, and because he'd spentso much time in this mall, his
zombie self knew that he had toget back to their little safe
house, and he knew exactly wherethat was.

(01:11:40):
And because flyboy turned intoa zombie and needed to go back
to the safe house, he broke downthe drywall facade wall that
goes straight to their, to theirsafe house, and brings all the
zombies with them.
And uh, peter and Fran have toescape.
Um, there's this whole thingabout Peter being like I want to

(01:12:01):
stay behind, and then he's likeholding a Derringer to his head
and he's about to blow hisbrains out.
But then he's peter being likeI want to stay behind, and then
he's like holding a derringer tohis head and he's about to blow
his brains out.
But then he's like no, I wantto live.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
And then he climbs the ladder and escapes I'm glad
he did, because now there's apotential relationship between
fran and peter and um, andthat's that's where the, the
movie ends.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
And it's like this ambiguous moment where it's like
, well, well, what happens next?
And it's just this moment ofhope, even though they're like,
well, we have almost no food, wehave very little ammunition,
very little fuel in ourhelicopter, very little fuel in
the helicopter, we can't go veryfar.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
But Fran can fly it.
Now, fran can fly it.
Fran can fly.
That's like so overt of ametaphor.
Fran the fly girl, yeah, francan get her own credit card.
Metaphor.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
Fran, the fly girl.

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
Yeah, fran can get her own credit card.
Now Fran can fly.
Yeah, granted, she's a whitewoman, and it's probably still a
lot harder for everybody elsewho's not a white woman, but
Fran can do it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
Fran can do it.
Yeah, yeah, and that's kind ofwhere it leaves off is just like
what will happen next.
We'll never know.
They might have a happily everafter.
They might make it to one ofthose islands that the cops in
the beginning of the movie weretalking about.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
I realize we forgot to talk about a really important
part of this movie that alsospeaks to the feminism of the
era, which is abortion rights,oh yeah, and finding out that
Fran is pregnant, and it's Peter, I think, who?

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
asks her if she wants to keep the baby.
He's talking with fly boy androger in the other room oh,
they're talking about it withouther yeah, I forgot that.
And he's like do you want tokeep it?
And uh and fly boy's like Idon't know, and he's good.
And uh and peter's like becauseI know how to do it, I can do
it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
Um, very handy guy well, I think the fact that he
knows how to do it indicates, uh, the reality of the time, which
is hold on.
When does roe v wade?
It's right around there, isn't?

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
it 74 1973.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
Oh, so this is so five years after the supreme
court decision that allowsabortion as a right.
Um, this is happening, so youcan imagine somebody like peter
coming from a black communitywhere, already, health services
are probably not as available asthey should be in a world where
abortion is not okay, seemslike the kind of guy who would
help a woman out.
Yeah, it's interesting, um,though, that they point that out

(01:14:16):
and that they presented as anoption.
That is okay and was probablypretty bold of romero yeah, yeah
it was.
It was definitely bold, becausethis was not a conversation that
was happening yeah um in inmainstream film anyways the
reason it came up for me isbecause I was imagining a world
where, like maybe, peter israising fran and steven's baby

(01:14:40):
as his own yeah or maybe theyhave their own babies yeah, I
mean he might be helping franraise his child, or maybe fran
doesn't make it and peter has toraise it himself.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Yeah, that's a whole different movie that is.
And uh, yeah, I, I kind of wishthat people threw more money at
george romero in the 70s,because I feel like he could
have made so many movies, somany sequels and spinoffs with
the already existing storiesthat he wove.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
The more that I think about his work, the more I want
to know more about him and whatwent behind his decisions to
make these movies, because therereally is so much more than
meets the surface eye.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
And I've got a deep appreciation for that.
So I think we should do a wayback playback right now and give
donna, the dead from 1978, somezeds oh, I mean, how, how could
you not give it 10?

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
I feel like it's like , like it would be like
sacrilege to not.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
I feel like you're setting me up to not be allowed
to give it 10, which is which isthreatening my autonomy, dan I
didn't say anything.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
You just said you're, I'm not allowed.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
Uh, it depends on your religion, I suppose is your
religion romero, yeah, romerois god romeroism um, I don't
think I'd give it a 10 because Igave night of the living dead a
10 and I didn't enjoy it asmuch.
It's a good movie.
Having thought about it, Iappreciate it even more.
Um, but I think I'd give it asolid eight.
Yeah, just because my attentionspan, like it, was a two hour

(01:16:09):
two and a half hour long movie,something like that, definitely
over two hours, and thebeginning was really interesting
, but there was, I think, the abig part of the first act could
have been cut and we still wouldhave had a good movie at like
90 minutes I mean, I liked allthat stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25):
I think, where I would, I would uh take off
points and I mean you're notallowed to take off points,
that's right because I'm aromeroist, um, but uh, you know
it is 1978 so I give it some, uh, some, some leeway.
But like the sound, the soundquality was awful, yes, um the
sound effects quality, likegunshots and things like that

(01:16:48):
were also terrible.
Uh, visual effects were, um,not great.
A lot of the, a lot of the cutsare really hard.
A lot of the editing is is isrough.
Um, the makeup, the makeup someof the acting of, of the, you
know, of some of the actors likeuh, the police officers that

(01:17:10):
they meet on the airport runwaywhen they're making their first
escape, fucking awful, likehowdy duty level fucking cops,
where they're like, like whereare you heading?
And they're like and fly waslike straight up and the guy
like looks like a, like healmost like crosses his eyes
because he's trying to act sostupid and he's like, oh, okay

(01:17:31):
I'm gonna go somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
I think the entire scene of them interacting with
those cops who decide to go tothe boat could have been cut.
That could have been cut, yeahand the book.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
It was written a lot better, um, and it seemed a lot
more, a lot more menacing.
The book came after the movie,right yeah, it's a novelization.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
So somebody was like I'm gonna fix this.
Yes, george romero fixed it.
Judge merrill wrote it, georgeromero wrote yeah, okay, you're
going to keep that because Isaid it so fast.
Yeah, yeah, well, everybody, Ithink that's it for today.
I hope you enjoyed the show andthat maybe we get to see you at
living dead weekend yeah, maybe, yeah, come to living dead

(01:18:08):
weekend.
Um, that's where we're gonna be,we'll be living and we're
living dead dead it's true, I'llbe dead I have so many zombie
stickers, somebody come buy themyeah, who wants a zombie
sticker?

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
I do.
Who wants a zombie?

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
shirt well, I'm gonna be wearing those.
I do.
Who wants a zombie shirt?
Well, I'm going to be wearingthose.
Yeah yeah, I also have aunicorn shirt that says eat the
rich.
It's got a unicorn and arainbow and I saw it online.
I was like this is made for me.
I got to spend money todemonstrate how much I'm against
consumerism and capitalism.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
Yeah, and we'll go to a mall.

Speaker 2 (01:18:44):
Although it was from a company that I I believe in.
But, yeah, let's go to the mall.
Let's go to the mall.
This will be our first time ina mall in like oh yeah, seven,
eight years for me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
For me, I think the last time I was in a mall was
like 2011, I think 2018 for me.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
Yeah, that'll be an experience.
Thanks everybody for joiningzombie book club.
Yeah, you can support us?

Speaker 1 (01:18:59):
yeah, you can support us.
We love your support.
Yeah, we eat it right up.
Yeah, um, you could, you cansupport us.
We love your support.
Yeah, we eat it right up.
Yeah, you could give us areview?
Five stars, please.
Love it.
Love having five stars.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
Yeah, and if you don't want to give us five stars
, you can just give us a review.
Yeah, you can just go away,because the little tiny points
really make a difference withpeople who do want to find us
and listen it does.

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
It's one of the only ways that we can find new
listeners is by having a ratingand reviews.
Yeah, that's how people find us.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
Yeah, also instagram, which you can kind of find the
zany book club podcast oninstagram.

Speaker 1 (01:19:34):
Yeah, also you could send us a voicemail.
That's what I was gonna sayyeah, where are they gonna send
it to?

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
614-699-0006.
That is officially memorized.
Yeah, I think it's one of thefew phone numbers other than
yours and mine and my mother'sthat I know.
I don't know my mom's I'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
You can sign up for our newsletter.
Um, I'm I haven't actually putout an actual newsletter yet,
but you can sign up for it andyou will get it when I send it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
It's a good way for us to stay in touch in case all
of our social media platformsdisappear, which is a very
likely scenario.
Yep, because, speaking ofstability, the idea that
Instagram is always going to bewhere we are or where anybody is
is an illusion.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Yeah, we might be pushed out of Instagram and
forced to go to a safe zone.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
Yeah, I will say briefly that I rediscovered an
author that we had been talkingto from like seven months ago
and they hadn't shown me asingle thing of hers on
Instagram in seven months, wow.
And then I was going throughour DMs and I was like, oh yeah,
what are we up to?
And then I saw they literallyhad a book coming out soon.

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
Wow.
So yeah, Instagram sucks thealgorithm clearly sucks, because
I want to talk to this person.
They must have had someopinions that meta didn't agree
with.
Must have.
Yeah, um, you can also join thebrain munchers collective
discord.
Uh, all the links.
They're in the description.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
There's a description down below, and don't forget,
check out jason strutz, thereturn, all of those things are
there.
It's a free, every bi-weeklygraphic novel that you can get
straight to your inbox wow,bi-weekly yeah, wow yeah, I
gotta give a shout out to thereturned and days worth living
for providing free zombiecontent.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
We love y'all yeah, I love, I love free.
That's my favorite price um.
But thanks for listeningeveryone.
The end is very, very nigh.

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
I won't sing the song .

Speaker 1 (01:21:24):
Bye-bye, bye-bye-bye.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
Dan did it Bye-bye-bye.
Don't die, don't die.

All Episodes

Dawn of the Dead (1978) | Zombie Book Club Ep 97

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Crime Junkie

24/7 News: The Latest

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Dawn of the Dead (1978) | Zombie Book Club Ep 97