Thursday, June 13, 2013 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com PRAMOUP In a conference call, director Marc Forster elaborated on his inspiration for a film that looks to innovate the zombie genre. Zombies reinvented Forster discusses artistic vision of 'World War Z' By SEAN CZARNECKI Daily Film Editor "World War Z" crashes into the- aters amid the zombie fascination gripping millions across the globe. Since the sauntering swarms of George A. Romero's 1968 "Night of the Living Dead," we've had fast- running zombies, manic, red-eyed zombies and - who could forget - Nazi zombies. And after all these memorable riffs on the flesh-eating walking dead, the director of this apocalyptic picture starring Brad Pitt ("Killing Them Softly"), Marc Forster ("Quantum Solace"), thin] there remain new and excitit ways to tell a good zombie story. Forster believes he has a ne cinematic vision, details of whi he was willing to share through conference call the Michigan Dai joined. "I looked at all the zombie mo ies - especially 'Dawn of the Dea and '28 Days Later' " Forster sai "I knew I needed to create some- thing that differentiates itself from those movies. I saw what was cre- ated before and then sort of cre- ated my own language visually and emotionally of where I wanted this film to go to." In effect, Forster had to decide what his zombies could and couldn't do, what their defining features are and what makes them compelling enough to warrant a big-budget film - a zombie rule- book of sorts. "I knew that I wanted to set it all as very real. I didn't want them to be superhuman and just grounded all biology," Forster said. "I was involved in every step of the way NT because it was important to the foundation of my vision." But these zombies don't move as we've seen them before. They aren't the jerking fiends of "28 Days Later" or the gnawing, hungover corpses of the Romero-breed. There's a particularly memorable ks sequence in "World War Z" 's trail- ng er that Forster shed some light on: "The human pyramid is a very w frightening image. I haven't seen ch it in any zombie movie, and as a a filmmaker you're always trying to ly create something new - which in this case is a tsunami of zombies v- coming towards you with no way to d' escape them." d. Forster further elaborated on the inspiration of what he believes to be a zombie innovation: "As a child, I once witnessed masses of people at a soccer stadi- um in Europe as they were trying to leave after the game, trampling on top of each other," he said. "I sat there watching it; frightened from a child's point of view, realizing how scary this could be." Committing himself to this veri- similitude, in creating a new cin- ematic experience of this oft-seen apocalyptic favorite, Forster also understood another level of depth should be added to his version of zombiedom. "I have often been fascinated by zombies because they're, as you just mentioned, a great metaphor, going back to Romero in the '70s where they were a take on consumerism," Forster said. "We're living in a time of change and I think every time the world's been through such a transformation, zombies have been very, very popular." As many filmmakers and writ- ers before him have done, Forster opened his film up to the possibility of the zombies carrying allegorical weight. "At some point our planet won't be able to sustain the amount of people there are on it," he said. "So overpopulation becomes more and more of a concern with fewer and fewer resources, and if you're look- ing all around in regards to politics and economics, it seems like we are all going after the last resources. There is almost a mindlessness to it and I thought that would be a great metaphor." Still, the pure spectacle of the terror and the rush of action of such an event wasn't lost on For- ster: "World War Z" is still a sum- mer blockbuster. "The ultimate thing is that the film is a ride from beginning to end, but it also has another level to it; which is what I really enjoy about this film because movies that accomplish both these things are sometimes hard to come by - sto- ries or scripts for summer block- busters which can provide you with those fun-ride experiences." For many directors, that combi- nation of crowd-pleasing and intel- ligent storytelling proves difficult to balance. Even Forster admits he had to face the possibility of com- promise. "Sometimes when you're sur- rounded by these massive scenes and you're involved in this incred- ible time pressure and money pressure and so one, it can be a challenge to stick to your vision." Still, the director appears to be satisfied with the result. "I've been lucky enough to say I've walked away at the end of the films I've made with the thought, 'Yes my vision was there.' I think that's the most important thing." THERE'S AN ART TO AN ARTS REVIEW. And we're looking for artists. APPLY TODAY! Email arts@ michigandailycom got 99 problems and they all case files. Why? Because I'm an intern. More specifically, a summer intern at an intellectual property law firm in Chicago. My first day I walk in wearing a J. Crew origami dress in brilliant NATASHA berry paired with ERTZBISCHOFF a skinny black pat- ent leather belt and matching kitten heels. Very chic business casual. I meet my workaholic boss who has a little too much unruly chest hair sticking out of his oxford. He introduces me to all the partners, paralegals, secretaries and even Tony the mailroom guy. Everyone seems very nice. Then he shows me my office. It seems very nice. I think to myself I was silly for being so nervous. Wrong- O. I was in for quite a rude awakening. The boss man gives me my first assignment: to look through 6,003 trademark patents to see if there are any that are similar to his client's trademark. Three hours later, after my fingers have paper cuts that would make a grown man cry, I receive my second assignment: to print 1,046 e-mails (including attachments) on a Dell computer (a Dell desktop to be pre- cise). The last time I used one of those was in the fourth grade to gossip about N*SYNC on AOL Instant Messenger. Oh, the woes of doing grunt work that you will later glorify on your resu- me. By e-mail number 100, my brain is comatose and I feel my University edu- cation oozing out of my ears as I drool on the keyboard pressing CTRL + P. It's at this point you start to think of some pretty inventive ways to kill yourself - material that would be good enough for an episode of "Law and Order: Criminal Intent." But then you think no, killing yourself is counterproductive. Then another thought slowly creeps in - maybe flipping patties at Mickey D's wouldn't be so bad. Then ... bam. "NATASHA!" A scream from your boss jerks you out of your grease-filled delusions and you realize that the McDonald's fire truck red and banana yellow uniform doesn't go well with your skin tone. So you collect yourself, knock back a dou- ble espresso shot and get back to filing. But I'm being dramatic - it's not all bad. There are some silver linings and saving graces. One of which is what I like to call your workplace guard- ian angel, a god-sent mentor that will take you under their tailored-suit wing. Mine's name is Raquel and she's a saint. With Lucy Liu looks and the gumption of Hilary Clinton she's basi- cally adorbs. Not only does she sit with me at lunch so I don't look like Cady from "Mean Girls" on her first day of school, she also gives me tips on how to not piss off my boss. Another perk is that if you work hard enough, people, important people, will start to notice you're a go-getter. Then you start get- ting invited to do things like sit in on Federal Court cases with a partner. Oh, the woes of doing grunt work. But all silver linings aside, I still couldn't help but wonder, "Why the hell am I even doing this?" So I can write, "handles outstanding bills and attorneys fees, reports office actions and files documents" on my resume? So I can appease graduate schools? The truth is as an intern you really don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it most of the time. But that's the point. Interning teaches you how to be resourceful, how to think on your feet, how to network and honestly, just how to think better. All things that a university can't teach you but are prerequisites for registering for the ultimate course called Life. So my advice to all the unsuspecting bushy-tailed, wide-eyed 20-something-year-olds out there is this: keep filing, keep working your ass off and keep your chin up. Be proud that you've landed the ever-coveted internship position. You may be on the bottom of the corporate food chain and (to paraphrase more Jay-Z) you're far from being god, but you work goddamn hard. And that's something to be proud of. -Natasha Ertzbischoff can be reached at nmertz@umich.edu. marks a departure from our youthful days spent nurs- ing wounded animals back to health just in time for big karate matches against the rich team to BEN GLOGER 99 problems or most University stu- dents, I know the sum- mer in between classes save the town, getting the girl and teaching the world about the hazards of unchecked greed and squandered love. Instead, we busy ourselves withvariousjobsandinternships, beginning our slow dance with that she-devil known as the real world, listening to her sweet nothings about uncooperative Excel spreadsheets as she sinks her claws deeper into our flesh at the rate of commuter traffic - all while she gobbles up graduating seniors like Amanda Bynes does crazy pills. We can't escape the fact that we are all aboard this one-way public transportation destined for the real-world and the only stops planned are for equipment failure. Thus, having a total of one summer and two weeks of internship experience under my belt, and being held back a year, I wanted to share the scariest, most pant-leg-soiling facet of real world life I've encountered yet: our complete obsession with perfection - and the dread of failure it instills in us. We live in a world consumed with conformity, and when any notion of perceived failure knocks at our doorstep we cringe in fear, quickly closing the blinds as we mutter under our breath about the neighborhood's loss of character. To accommodate this fear we Learning to fail saturate our lives with external mediums of support. Self-help books routinely top bestseller lists, and even a cursory perusal of the Internet yields just as much degradation of human inti- macy as it yields lists compiled to guarantee a better you. We crave change regardless of if it's truly needed, quickly adding a prob- lem to the 99 we already got in order to accommodate any pro- posed solution that seems able to mitigate our dread of failure. Yet are we truly so funda- mentally flawed as to necessitate such constant assistance? Do we really need such an abundance of knowledge advocating the "Five Best Ways to Commit Genocide on Stomach Fat"? I think not - instead we are more than capable individuals who have simply become ter- rified of experimentation and potential failure. As a society we can't accept ourselves, and are thus always searching for the next update, software or tidbit of wisdom guaranteed to finally add that extra thing we've man- aged to live without for our entire tenure as organisms, yet some- how necessitate immediately. This obsession is both self- perpetuating and compounding - it's in our unbridled pursuit of perfection that we continually render ourselves imperfect, always searching for problems to fix and inhibiting true self-realization. Our foundational ideology touts that it's not your fault you haven't written the next great American novel, created that successful startup or realized your dream of seeing how many nights in a row you can order the late night special milkshake before throwing it up only a few hours later - you just didn't have the right tools. In this validation we accommodate our imperfections, ignoring reality and regulating the Thursday, June 13, 2013 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no. -Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, responding to criticism stemming from remarks he made in March asserting that the NSA does not collect Americans' information. blame elsewhere so that we may continue our day satisfied yet unchanged and still just as naive. As a society we can't accept ourselves. This standard simplifies our dreams to finite quips, further enhancing our self-dissatisfac- tion and enabling our self-help addiction like a heroin-addict- ed fat kid locked in a heroin- dealing candy shop. Ultimately, if you read enough factoids or books promising personal nir- vana, you start to unconscious- ly believe that nirvana is truly achieved through such means. In solving this dilemma, I won't pretend to know that The Cure is anything other than a band, and that the only Answer I know is , a phenom- enal basketball player ruined by ego. I also won't lampoon you, faithful reader (Hi Mom), with the irony of a self-help article detailing the fallacies of a self-help addicted society. What I will say is that the most introspective moments I've had in life have been after colossal failures. Times when I've acted without thinking or regard for expectations, left completely leveled and with no choice but to rebuild my Cheeto-encrusted self, Lego piece by piece. This summer, remember that the entire purpose of falling is to learn how we individually get back up. For only then will we rise up, capable of truly defending Gotham - or maybe just doing that thing with the milkshake. -BenGloger can be reached at bgloger@umich.edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor. Letters should be fewer than 300 words and must include the writer's full name and University affiliation. We do not print anonymous letters. Send letters to tothedaily@michigandaily.com.