By CLARK COLLIS (1984 Publishing; 2021)
The conception, filming and reception of the 2004 British made zombie comedy SHAUN OF THE DEAD are covered with admirable thoroughness in this beautifully designed (complete with red-gilded pages) 400-plus page book by a senior Entertainment Weekly editor. Clark Collis does about as good a job as can be expected, answering every conceivable question you might have about SHAUN, and doing so in smooth and undemanding prose; SHAUN OF THE DEAD may be a terrific film, but it isn’t anyone’s idea of high art, and this book understands that.
SHAUN OF THE DEAD may be a terrific film, but it isn’t anyone’s idea of high art, and this book understands that.
Collis begins by sketching the backgrounds of the film’s main players: director Edgar Wright and co-writer/star Simon Pegg. Both hail from South-West England and both, unsurprisingly, are huge fans of George Romero’s zombie trilogy (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD and DAY OF THE DEAD). Following his 1995 feature film debut A FISTFUL OF FINGERS, Wright met Pegg (through a mutual friend, the comedian-musician-children’s book author David Walliams), and after Pegg was directed by Wright in a TV show episode the two became inseparable, creating the iconic “slack-com” SPACED, followed by the film under discussion.
The most surprising aspect of SHAUN OF THE DEAD, as revealed by this book, is that it was not the scrappy no-budget production it’s often made out to be. Its budget was a reported £4 million, which by British cinema standards in the early aughts qualified as a healthy sum. It came about after a torturous fundraising process, which was followed by a comparatively smooth shoot boasting hundreds of zombie extras (who worked for free) and some elaborate special effects. Virtually everyone who worked on SHAUN OF THE DEAD is heard from, including cinematographer David M. Dunlap, whose fraught relationship with Wright provided the only real tension, as Dunlap wasn’t being nearly as passionate about the project as its director.
The most surprising aspect of SHAUN OF THE DEAD, as revealed by this book, is that it was not the scrappy no-budget production it’s often made out to be.
How the film fared in the marketplace is well known. It wasn’t the massive hit everyone was predicting, but SHAUN, bolstered by enthusiastic blurbs from several filmmaking icons (including Romero, Peter Jackson and Quentin Tarantino), did well. I think Collis overstates the film’s subsequent impact, which if this book is to be believed is akin to that of its George Romero directed antecedents, but it has become iconic among horror buffs, being one of the screen’s most successful meldings of horror and hilarity (a combo that isn’t as nearly easy to pull off as it might seem).
We also get some info on Wright and Pegg’s subsequent exploits in the screen trade, with the pair following up SHAUN with two like-minded efforts, SUPER FUZZ and THE WORLD’S END, before going their separate ways on the new STAR TREK films (Pegg) and 2021’s LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (Wright). They’re back together, though, as interviewees in this terrific book, and for that we can all be grateful.