Isaac Marion: Warm Bodies
Tags: Zombie, zombies, Warm Bodies, Isaac Marion
Warm Bodies is a new zombie movie in production with Teresa Palmer and Nicolas Hoult. It is based on the book by Isaac Marion, told from the point of view of a zombie named R (Hoult.) Summit Entertainment is really putting their weight behind up and coming authors. Bodies is one of three new books they green lit as movies, along with Veronica Roth’s Divergent and Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. Bodies even has a quote from Twilight author Stephenie Meyer endorsing it on the cover.
Marion got a taste of the big time when he joined Summit’s panel of authors at San Diego Comic-Con. With his first book published, he got to face press and fans curious about the latest story in the zombie apocalypse genre. We got to sit down with Marion, and as a die hard apocalypse fan, I had some very probing questions before I devote my kindle space to Warm Bodies.
SuicideGirls: My favorite part of zombie apocalypses is when the survivors have to find supplies in whatever is left. Since you focus on the zombie, do we get any of that scavenging?
Isaac Marion: Yeah, the main character is a zombie but in the second half of the book, he infiltrates the human world and you see their society and systems they have set up. The main job people have other than building walls and defending themselves is to go out in the cities and salvage supplies and materials. So there’s a lot of talk about that, how medical supplies are running out and things that are perishable are becoming more and more scarce.
SG:
Even for a zombie, aren’t the supplies more bodies to find?
IM:
Right, yeah. They have their own supplies. They go on hunting trips. Like usual, they eat people but in this story, they have a little bit more of the ghost of a society of their own. They have a city and they bring the leftovers back to the old ones that can’t hunt or the ones that are busy in other areas.
SG:
As an author, you can use English prose to describe anything about R’s point of view. In a movie when it’s Nicolas Hoult’s job, have you set up an impossible job for an actor?
IM:
Well, I’ve wondered how exactly they’re going to do the delivery of the dialogue because in the book he does speak a little bit, but it’s very limited. He kind of learns more speech abilities as he goes, but in the beginning it’s like four syllables at a time is his personal record. So it’s an extremely silent role and lots of awkward pauses between words, just trying to get it out slowly. I’ve been told he did great in his tests of a way to deliver that in a way that doesn’t sound corny, so I hope for the best.
SG:
Where was the zombie movement when you started writing?
IM:
I actually didn’t realize that there was a movement at the time. I knew zombies had always been around in my lifetime as a pop cultural element. You’ve certainly seen some zombie movies and you’ve seen them in video games and what not. I didn’t really realize until late in the process, people would tell me how does it feel to be part of this whole trend? I was like wait, there’s a trend? At the time it wasn’t as publicized. As I was writing it, all these new articles came out saying: “New trend – zombies” and I was kind of scared. I was like oh shit, I accidentally jumped on a bandwagon and I didn’t even realize it. It’s definitely gotten more and more into pop culture since then. I’ve just been hoping that my book doesn’t get buried in the flood.
SG:
Had Zombieland or World War Z not come out yet?
IM:
Zombieland hadn’t. World War Z, the book was out there but I think it was relatively early. I just heard it mentioned a couple of times but it wasn’t a phenomenon yet. That was the only zombie book that I’d ever heard of at the time. Now there’s thousands of books.
SG:
What got you thinking about zombies as a narrative?
IM:
Well, at the time when I first started writing it, I wasn’t extremely well versed. I was familiar with the whole mythology just from things I’d seen here and there and just general awareness. I wasn’t really in that [world.] My hobby wasn’t exploring zombie things so as I was just deciding to write the book, I did my research and just brushed up. Most of it was fairly familiar. Everyone knows the zombie clichés. They eat brains, they walk around and stumble. All the basic stuff was there.
SG:
Actually, only one franchise has them eat brains.
IM:
Yeah, which is that exactly?
SG:
RETURN of the Living Dead.
IM:
I wondered about that because that seems pretty universal. Everyone knows that zombies eat your brains, but I haven’t really seen it in the actual movies. However it got in there, it kind of became one of the stereotypes. I just gathered from all sources the general consensus of what a zombie is and I tried to use all the classic tropes of the genre, but then turn them inside out.
SG:
I read on your website that one of your odd jobs was delivering hospice beds?
IM:
Yeah, I had a job where I delivered home medical equipment. It was mostly hospital beds or optical equipment for people who were about to die basically and go into their houses, deliver the stuff, they’d sign off it. Then I’d come back a week later when they’re dead and pick it up, wash it off and make their grieving family members sign more forms. It was pretty grim. I’ve had a series of really grim jobs and I don’t know why exactly.
SG:
Did that get you thinking more about death?
IM:
Yeah, I’m sure it did, between that and my last job which was supervising visits with kids in foster care and their parents, which are usually really grim situations as well. There were a lot of dark themes on my mind at the time I guess, death and society problems in general. It seemed like that led directly to post-apocalyptic world where everything sucks.
SG:
Was it as specific as “What if some of these old folks come back?”
IM:
I don’t know if that thought actually crossed my mind. There was one time where I walked in to pick up the bed and the body was still on it. That was very awkward. I had to wait outside in my van while the coroners came and picked him up and then walked in while the bed was still warm from this guy. I had to spray it down, disinfect it and load it into my van. That was one of the closest brushes with death that I’ve had. It was weird. I would take the mats and pads and all the stuff back to the office every time. There was juices on them I’d have to clean off, pretty grotesque.
SG:
And the whole time you were thinking “Some day I’ll have a movie deal?”
IM:
That was far from my mind at the time. I went through a couple jobs after that one actually before it got to this point. They were all equally depressing.
SG:
What was your process as a writer? Did you outline and write a certain number of pages per day?
IM:
I don’t really make a traditional outline but I’ll map out the basic flow of the story from beginning to end, figure out what’s going to happen and what the major beats are and then just start writing. I usually try to do it every day. I’ll get up in the morning and go to a coffee shop and get some caffeine in my bloodstream and start writing while I’m still sort of semi-conscious. The faster I do it before I start to engage with the real world the better. Once I start thinking about things like paying bills or real world concerns, it kind of pulls the air out of it.
SG:
That’s admirable, because except for adrenaline rush days, I’m not a morning person.
IM:
I’m not really either socially, but I found I used to write late at night. It was my tradition. The earlier stuff I wrote, I would do it after dark because there would be less distractions. Somehow I figured out that if I was still halfway in my unconscious and then I woke up my functional brain with coffee, it would flow much smoother because I wasn’t thinking about anything else at the time.
SG:
Summit may want to pitch this as Twilight with Zombies.
IM:
Yeah, it already has been many times. That’s kind of the battle that I’m waging to erase that. It’s either that or Twilight meets Shaun of the Dead, which is more accurate but I still think not accurate at all. No disrespect to either of those movies or franchises but it’s just not really like that. I guess understandable associations because of Summit and because Stephenie Meyer’s quote is on the cover, but it’s just not that accurate. It’s a very different feel. I have to kind of manually tell people that because it’s hard to convey the tone of the book. When you try to just sum up the premise, it sounds like it would be Twilight meets Shaun of the Dead.
SG:
Well, those are high class problems.
IM:
Yeah, I don’t consider it a problem. It’s just something I have to figure out how to explain to people.
Warm Bodiesis now available in stores. The film is currently in production.
Warm Bodiesis now available in stores. The film is currently in production.
Featured Interviews
All interviews
