John Dies at the End was the first film project determined by a robot. This is a true story.
Well before The Walking Dead became a cable TV juggernaut, I was a rabid fan of zombie fiction. It started back in the early nineties when I read a great short story anthology entitled Book of the Dead, which contained a brilliant story by Joe R. Lansdale entitled “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks.” This interest continued over the years and included the Walking Dead comic book series.
For a brief moment it seemed I had an opportunity to get involved with The Walking Dead. I emailed creator Robert Kirkman in 2008 to inquire about its availability for a television show. It turns out Robert was a Bubba Ho-tep fan and he said it looked like rights to TWD just might be available again in the next few days and his managers would call me. Well, those few days passed with no response and try as I might I was unable to get in contact with him again about it. I tried to recruit some director friends and every other month I would drop Robert another email trying to tantalize him, like “Stuart Gordon wants to get in on TWD,” or “I just ran into George Romero’s manager and he says George would love to get involved with TWD.” A few months later I read about AMC and Frank Darabont being involved and that was the end of that.
During my infatuation with zombie fiction I forced myself to treat it as a guilty pleasure and set a self-imposed limit of no more than a couple zombie novels per year. I think what appealed to me most about these books was that all of them were about survival in an unfamiliar landscape and the challenge of being alone in a depopulated world.
One day, completely unsolicited, I received an email from a bot at Amazon.com. This robotic A.I. email told me that if I liked that last zombie novel I had ordered, then I would love a new novel that Amazon was selling entitled John Dies at the End, written by first-time writer David Wong. This Amazon bot certainly got my attention. Just the title hooked me. Here was an author with the audacity and sheer balls to announce in the title how his book ends. At the same time his title felt like a challenge. Go ahead, read my book, I’m not afraid to tell you how it ends.
The bot’s description of the John Dies at the End storyline was even better:
It’s a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit. On the street they call it Soy Sauce, and users drift across time and dimensions. But some who come back are no longer human. Suddenly a silent otherworldly invasion is underway, and mankind needs a hero. What it gets instead is John and David, a pair of college dropouts who can barely hold down jobs. Can these two stop the oncoming horror in time to save humanity? No. No, they can’t.
David Wong and the kind folks at St. Martin’s Press have allowed me to quote the original hardcover edition’s dust jacket. That way, those of you who have not seen or read the book can get a flavor for John Dies at the End’s clever and subversive style.
STOP. You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don’t put it down. It’s too late. They’re watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you’ll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it’s too late. You touched the book. You’re in the game. You’re under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me.
The important thing is this: The drug is called Soy Sauce and it gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault.
I immediately ordered the book and counted the days in anticipation. Upon its arrival I started reading and was thrilled by the audacity of Theseus’s paradox, which was presented so uniquely in the prologue. Wong distilled the paradox thus: Hero chops off bad guy’s head with axe and while doing so breaks axe handle. Hero replaces axe handle with new one, then chips axe blade while killing a creature he finds in his kitchen. Hero replaces axe blade with a new one and then is confronted by reanimated bad guy who has stitched his head back on. Zombie dead guy sees hero brandishing axe and says, “That’s the axe that slayed me.” Hero is stumped as he ponders whether that statement is true.
In addition to elevating absurdity into an art form, Wong’s book is also hide-under-the-bed scary and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time. John Dies at the End introduced two great protagonists in slackers John and Dave, and as their supernatural adventure began, I could immediately see it as the basis for a badass film. That Amazon bot was right!
I learned that David Wong had started the book as a series of horror stories that he would release online every Halloween. By the time these stories reached novel-length, some seventy thousand people had read the entire book online. He already had a fan base! Oh, and David Wong was not his real name. Like the lead character in John Dies at the End, David Wong was a name the author assumed ostensibly to protect himself and his privacy. His real name was Jason Pargin. I wrote him an email explaining who I was, the films I had made, and how much I loved his book. I did not hear back. A couple of weeks later I wrote to him again.
After four long weeks a response finally popped up in my inbox. It started with, “I’m not ignoring your email, I’m just a little stunned. Assuming you are who you say you are, and if not, I’m equally stunned that someone would be bored enough to make up such a thing.” Jason went on to tell me how his mom had taken him to see Phantasm at a midnight show when he was a boy and it scared the shit out of him. We set up a phone call and started talking about how to make a movie of John Dies at the End. I told him that my typical process was to take the project out to major studios and producers I had relationships with and if none of them had interest, then I would try to figure out a way to make the film independently. A month or two later we signed an agreement.
Even though I had little hope of getting industry interest due to its edgy nature, once I had finished writing the screenplay adaptation, I felt compelled to submit it to the major producers and studio executives I was acquainted with. An indie filmmaker just cannot leave any rock unturned. Their polite rejections were not a surprise.
* * *
When I was younger, I took these rejections personally. But over time—after experiences with Phantasm, The Beastmaster, and Bubba Ho-tep, all of which ultimately proved to be highly valuable commodities that in retrospect only a fool would ignore—I now approached these rejections differently. Sure it stings. And sure it creates a helluva lot more work and risk when I have to go out and scrape up funding independently. But I finally came to the realization that the problem was not with me. It was with them. And that revelation was liberating.
Rejection is such a major part of the entertainment business. Competition is so intense. One needs to develop a very thick skin to it. Everyone wants to direct, write, or star in movies, and the harsh fact is that there are very few slots available. I think my basic nature is to bounce off rejection, like a bumper car at the arcade, and try to find a way around it. To try to just keep moving forward even if it’s not the exact path you imagined.
There are a lot of shortsighted, herd-mentality people out there whose only skill is in working their way politically up the studio executive ladders. Many of these “gatekeepers” control the movies and television shows we watch, and some are fairly clueless. So often their only concern is what their immediate boss thinks of them. (And by the way, if you are a film executive who has taken the time and effort to buy and read this book, you are different. You are one of the visionary few and I will be contacting you soon about a very cool new project I know you will love!)
* * *
My attempts to place my John Dies at the End screenplay with a traditional major studio or producer having failed, I headed back down that hard indie road. I had such faith in David Wong’s unique work that I was prepared to again sink a chunk of my own money into a film despite the risk. I needed two more things to make this work. I needed another chunk of investment and some star casting to make the project viable.
After my friend Brad Baruh had left E! Entertainment he joined forces with Andy Meyers and Roman Perez in a company called M3 Creative. Using Brad’s excellent marketing skills M3 quickly became one of the top boutique creative content production companies in Hollywood, with clients including Marvel and Disney. I told them about my plan to make a feature film of John Dies at the End and they eagerly offered to invest some money and, even more exciting, to put the resources of M3 at my disposal during production. This was a fantastic offer, as not only were they good friends and would be great to work with, but M3 could also provide all kinds of production assistance.
Bubba Nosferatu for the time being was dead in the water, so I reached out to Paul Giamatti to see what he thought of the screenplay. After reading the script, Paul told me it was one of the most insane things he had ever read and he generously volunteered to play anything in it I wanted him to. I told him that from the outset I had imagined him as playing the writer, Arnie Blondestone, who interviews our protagonist and propels the story with his questions. Paul agreed to join in with us and, as a bonus, to executive produce with his business partner Dan Carey.
I was extremely fortunate to land four other actors for key supporting roles in John Dies at the End. I had been a fan of Glynn Turman since he broke through decades previously in Cooley High, and was especially fond of his Emmy-winning performance in HBO’s In Treatment. We were so lucky to get Clancy Brown to portray the role of Dr. Albert Marconi. Clancy was an outstanding film actor and a great guy who had created so many memorable roles over the years in classic films such as The Shawshank Redemption, Starship Troopers, and Highlander.
Good friend and skilled actor Daniel Roebuck was offered the odd role of Largeman, a ringmaster from another world, with over a dozen pages of fascinating dialog. The downside was that this character wore a freakish mask at all times and Dan’s face would never be seen. Dan took one for the team and still created one of the most memorable characters in the film.
I was struggling over who to hire for the strange role of Roger North. He needed to be a unique and compelling actor who could believably manifest himself as a being from another dimension. A few years earlier at Crypticon, a horror convention in Seattle, I sat at an autograph table meeting fans, and actor Doug Jones was signing at a table across from me. I personally witnessed Doug as he interacted with his fans. There was always a long line of people waiting to meet him and Doug got up from his seat and hugged each and every fan. This genuine personal warmth and the fact that Doug always worked in heavy prosthetic makeup intrigued me. His signature creature roles in Guillermo del Toro films as aquatic man Abe Sapien in Hellboy and as the Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth showed what he could do with prosthetics, but what would Doug be like stripped of makeup? Doug kindly volunteered to read for the part and he was simply wonderful. I cast him on the spot. After finishing John Dies at the End, Doug went back to full creature makeup and anchored the cast as the Amphibian Man in Guillermo’s Oscar-winning Best Picture The Shape of Water.
With these four great actors on board, we now needed to solve the central conceit of this low-budget undertaking. Could we find two unknown actors who would be willing to work for minimum pay yet have the acting chops to creatively anchor an entire film? We could and did. Finding Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes was a complete blessing, and it was on the backs of these two actors’ talent that we were able to make a good film.
Chase had just graduated from college and had never appeared on-screen in anything. Literally. Can you believe that on Chase’s first day of shooting he found himself faced with performing six pages of dialog with one of the greatest actors on the planet in Paul Giamatti? As I arrived on production designer Todd Jeffery’s amazing Chinese restaurant set, I was mortified that Chase might wilt under the pressure. The kid was a champ and went toe-to-toe with Giamatti, and that day, those two created some of the best scenes in the film.
While Rob generated an easygoing charm, he also possessed a natural facility for comedy. His ability to channel John directly from the pages and to find and emphasize the absurd moments of humor was a great asset to our film. Best of all, both guys were hardworking, unflappable, and a joy to work with. These two actors were one of the key reasons we were able to pull off such an ambitious film for such an insanely low price and I will always be grateful to them.
* * *
Sometimes filmmaking involves surprisingly bizarre choices. An iconic sequence in the John Dies at the End book indicated that this unique story would be going places others never dared. In this scene our hapless protagonists John and Dave are trapped in a mysterious girl’s basement by a strange entity with a dark sense of humor. As John flees up the basement stairs and reaches for the basement doorknob, he stops dead in his tracks when the knob suddenly and shockingly morphs into a flaccid male penis. John instantly jerks his hand away. “THAT door cannot be opened!” he cries out.
I explained to Bob Kurtzman, our makeup effects supervisor, what I needed for the gag and he promised to ship out a prosthetic penis to the set for our shoot. When we were unwrapping the shipment from Kurtzman, boy did we find a surprise. Inside the box was a ten-inch prosthetic, only we were stunned to find that it was fully erect. In explaining my problem with it to Bob, it was a challenge to put into words my theories about why a flaccid dick was funny and a raging hard-on was not. Not the kind of philosophic queries one learns about in film school.
The effects got even more interesting as that sequence progressed. The boys hear a banging from a nearby chest freezer and suddenly dozens of slabs of meat come hurtling out of it onto the cement floor. The pieces of meat begin sliding together and assembling themselves until finally a towering creature made of meat parts stands and confronts our heroes. This was the Meat Monster, which would become a singular image from our film. David Hartman had created an early illustration of what the creature might look like that ultimately Bob Kurtzman refined and fabricated. Kurtzman’s Meat Monster suit was designed to fit the tall and slim frame of a friend of mine, Cesare Gagliardoni, whom I drafted to perform the role. Bob created an absolute work of art in this meat suit, and I am just so sorry that in the dark basement of the set some of the great detail in his design was never visible. One of the Meat Monster’s hands was made to look like an entire ham, with slices of pineapple sculpted into it. The surface texture on the suit came from all different shapes and sizes of meat parts including eight-packs of wieners, bacon strips, and even a whole trout.
To create the effect of the meat coming together, I went back to my roots and we did it the old-fashioned way. Over two full days, with just our cameraman Mike Gioulakis, producer Brad Baruh, and another crew member, we were on our hands and knees dragging and puppeting rubber meat pieces around the basement floor. Our go-to tool to animate these pieces of “meat” was trusty ol’ fishing line. We then enhanced the meat movements with various frame rates and shutter angles. Shooting this scene was ridiculous fun, but the finished sequence is marvelous.
* * *
Over the years I had learned a lot about making reasonably high-quality films on a tight budget. In the production of John Dies at the End I brought every one of these lessons to bear. For the aspiring filmmakers out there I am finally going to get down to brass tacks and list some of my tenets of indie filmmaking, in no particular order.