PARK CITY, Utah – Let it be known. If you get a group of Class A comedians and comedic actors around a table, add a little booze, and start asking about things like zombie sex, things are going to get weird. When that group are the stars of the horror-comedy Life After Beth and it's the end of a day of interviews at the Sundance Film Festival when everyone has a bit of cabin fever, it's only going to get weirder.
After the Sundance unveiling of the film, WIRED sat down with writer/director Jeff Baena and some of his cast to discuss the dark rom-com where a young man named Zach (Dane DeHaan) finds out that his girlfriend (Aubrey Plaza) has miraculously come back from the dead. The catch? Despite initially looking as alive as ever, she's actually a zombie.
Be warned, these aren't George A. Romero's walking dead – or *The Walking Dead'*s walking dead, for that matter. The undead in Baena's film transform slowly, instead of emerging from the ground ravenous for braaaaaiiiins and can also be lulled into submission with smooth jazz. They still need to be shot in the head to be exterminated, but they also remain capable of boot-knockin' after they're reanimated. Basically it's a big ol' remix of zombie lore with hilarious results.
At a lodge in Park City, Plaza and Baena -- along with Paul Reiser (Zach's father), Cheryl Hines (his mother), Matthew Gray Gubler (his brother), and Molly Shannon (Beth's mother) -- came ready to dish about zombie sex, the blue collar undead and the games Plaza likes to play with herself. The chat was entertaining but a little all over the place; read on to see how far they went off the rails -- in a good way.
WIRED: Jeff, how much were you trying to play with zombie tropes in this film?
Jeff Baena: I was super conscious about not employing too many of the tropes and trying to maintain a sort of newness. That way it feels genuine as opposed to staid and familiar. You know, the shooting in the head and the coming back from the dead were two things you kind of can't avoid. But I think the other subtle nuances of the zombies – for instance the [love of] smooth jazz and attics and the fact that they're pretty sentient when they first come back. That was all designed to maximize the emotional impact of the person you love returning and being integrated back into their life.
Matthew Gray Gubler: I hope that goes on forever, the smooth jazz thing, and becomes part of the genre forever. That would be so rad.
Molly Shannon: I know!
>I hope the smooth jazz thing becomes part of the \[zombie\] genre forever.
Matthew Gray Gubler
WIRED: Aubrey, was it fun to play with the idea of zombie tropes?
Aubrey Plaza: [Holding a hot toddy.] I had a lot of fun. I had not really seen -- I'm not like a big zombie fan. I like zombie movies, but I haven't seen all of them or anything so I didn't have a really specific thing in my mind of what I was doing. Um…
Cheryl Hines: That's what you call a trail off. You just… trailed… right… off.
Baena: It's hot toddy time.
Shannon: Ooh, that's the best! Whiskey and tea.
Plaza: I'll get you one, Mol. What do you want?
Shannon: I'll wait until dinnertime.
WIRED: Back to zombies. This script actually got shelved for nearly a decade and during that time we've had a lot of zombie movies like World War Z and TV shows like The Walking Dead. Did that influence the approach at all?
Baena: It was created in a vacuum. This was even before Shaun of the Dead. It just is authentic to what it is. Luckily, no one came out with anything that was identical. There have been zombie relationship movies like Warm Bodies, but for the most part it was created in a vacuum so none of that really influenced it... For me this was never a zombie movie, it just ended up having zombies, so I sort of downplayed that element and focused on the interpersonal dynamics.
WIRED: And that leads to -- and I don't think I've ever seen this before -- pseudo-zombie sex.
Baena: I guess that's probably transgressive. I just thought in addition to the sort of higher spiritual and emotional connection you can have to somebody, there's obviously a physical connection. So Dane's character Zach is yearning for all of those. Yet he keeps getting cock-blocked [by] her parents so eventually it's this massive release that he wants all over her.
Plaza: Jesus, man!
Gubler: Tone it down, dude!
Hines: Crank it up!
Shannon: I like that. But in all honesty, you feel that desire in this movie.
Hines: Well, the thing is that Aubrey is so -- [puts hand in Plaza's face] I'm going to talk about her like she's not here -- beautiful. So even when Zach sees that her leg is [fatally snake-bitten] he still wants her. It's the allure of a beautiful girl.
Paul Reiser: [Putting away cellphone] What'd I miss? Did I miss anything? I took a text.
WIRED: Nah. What were some of your favorite scenes or lines?
>I liked being covered in blood. I liked the way it felt.
Aubrey Plaza
Reiser: The scene where sort of all hell breaks loose and my father – played by Garry Marshall – comes back [as a zombie] and the neighbors are coming back. It had this great Marx Brothers feel. Doors ringing, people coming in... That middle-class understanding of the zombie world was even funnier. You know, [the former residents of the house] coming back and saying, "Hey, I paid $28,000 for this house." And Garry Marshall trying to catch up on the last six years since he died like, "How's Frankie? Is he still dead?" That was a fun night.
Gubler: I liked being in my underwear with Dane. I don't know why; it seemed slightly homoerotic. But it was brotherly.
WIRED: Aubrey, what did you like about becoming a zombie?
Plaza: Um... I liked being covered in blood. I liked the way it felt.
Hines: Like on your mouth and on your face? Oh gosh. I think your hot toddy is kicking in.
Plaza: I just liked the challenge of all the weird physical things that I had to keep in mind and then putting them all together. Like a puzzle. I like that. It was like a weird little game that I got to play with myself. And I love playing games with myself.
Gubler: What kind of games do you play with yourself?
Plaza: Just touching…
Hines: Spin the bottle.
Gubler: Butthole? What did Cheryl say? "Touching the butthole"?
WIRED: Those are very different games.
Hines: I don't know what's happening.
WIRED: Aubrey, how was it to fight onscreen with Anna Kendrick?
Plaza: I love that scene. She's a good friend of mine, so that was really fun for us to go at each other.
WIRED: So, this is random, but I noticed that something about zombification made Aubrey's hair better -- like more voluminous and curly...
Reiser: What are you saying?
WIRED: No, I mean, I like your hair!
Gubler: Oh, shit! Shit is about to get so real right now.
Plaza: That is not all my hair, I had a little help with that hair. But the idea was that she's all done up in her coffin and she digs herself out. She's still in the dress that her mom put her in and her hair is all like, curled. It gets more wild. That was a conscious thing, like we talked about that. Like as I get crazier, and also I've been like rolling around in blood. That's a little hair detail.
