Max Brooks
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Max Brooks, hardened survivalist and the Leading Western student in the Afro-Caribbean martial art of Mkunga-Lalem is here to warn the SuicideGirls community. Board your windows, destroy your staircases, store away supplies and consult your Zombie Survival Guide which is available now from Three Rivers Press.

But seriously folks, who isn’t sick of those stupid guides that have come out in the wake of September? We have been hit with dozens, nay hundreds of these stupid books from The Worst-Case Scenario books to the NY Survival Guide. Brooks’ book has come along at a great time. Now, it’s not a joke on every page but an honest to god book which details how to kill zombies.

Please be warned: movies are fiction, the book is real. Please consult the book before attacking any zombies because these zombies don’t want your brain, recognize their cousins and can only be killed by destroying their brain.

The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead is very funny but I wouldn’t expect any less from a talented writer like Brooks. He wrote for Saturday Night Live for the last two seasons and is the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. But dammit, I forgot to ask him for Producers tickets. Oh whatever, let the tourists be eaten because Times Square is just a buffet for the undead.

Daniel Robert Epstein: In my research I found many interviews where you are talking as a real zombie survivalist. Will I be talking to that guy or someone who wrote a funny book?

Max Brooks: Depends on what you are looking for.

DRE: This seems like this could be a really easy book to write or a really tough one.

MB: For me it was the easiest book in the world to write because it’s something I was thinking about anyway.

DRE: Are you one of those guys that whenever you’re in a house and you see lots of glass windows you think that would be a bad place to fight off zombies?

MB: Oh yeah, and without intending to. I didn’t sit down to write this book. It’s been writing itself in my head for years. So it was just a question of typing it all out.

DRE: New York City is not a very safe place.

MB: No it’s not a safe place at all. You’ve got a lot of people packed into one tiny little island with not a lot of ways off it. Especially now in winter, that water is freezing, you can’t just swim across it.

DRE: Staten Island might be safer.

MB: Staten Island is greener with not as many people. There’s a big dump you could hide in.

DRE: There are long plains where you could shoot zombies in the head.

MB: Staten Island is much more defensible.

DRE: But who wants to live there?

MB: People who want to be safe.

DRE: Was there any one book that you modeled this after?

MB: Not really. It all started with Y2K. When that fear was happening all these survival guides were coming out and they were just getting more and more detailed and crazier and crazier. It was when people that I knew that were totally sane with social lives and good jobs were saying stuff like “I’m buying some land in Northern California to pitch a tent on.” They were talking about getting out of the city and what to pack your Humvee with. I was like, where’s my zombie book. I looked for it first because I would rather read this thing than write it but I couldn’t find one so I figured someone should write it.

DRE: Are you a horror geek?

MB: Oh yeah. I was one those kids who when I came back from the movies with my friends the first fifteen minutes you’re all talking and saying stuff like “Oh man I can’t believe they did that. I would have done this.” Right about the time the conversation is switching to “where do you want to go for dinner?” There is that kid that keeps going, “no you don’t understand see this wouldn’t work what you need to do is that.” That was pretty much me.

DRE: How old are you?

MB: I’m 31.

DRE: So the main zombie films you grew up on were the [George] Romero ones.

MB: I think so and some of the crazy Italian ones. Those ones are insane.

DRE: Like Fulci.

MB: Definitely. They make no pretense about being good.

DRE: Or making sense.

MB: I think I saw one where they open a fridge and a zombie head flies out and bits some guy. They stray way into what my friend calls "the oh, come on! factor.”

DRE: Did you have to rewatch anything?

MB: Oh no the fear was already there. The research I did for the book is real. I discuss what gun to use. All the gun and survival stuff is real. I get a lot of flack for that. There is apparently a very strong fringe group that is supportive of the M-16 while being very against the AK-47. They like to bust my chops about that.

More than once I’ve looked on the web and they write stuff like “I love Brooks’ book except for that piece on the AK-47.

DRE: Are you a gun nut too?

MB: No I don’t even own one but I do know about them. I know the M-16 jams like a motherfucker. Anyone who has ever used one will tell you that.

When I was in ROTC mine jammed every time so I wouldn’t want one.

DRE: What was ROTC like?

MB: It was a worthy cause but I was an idiot. I did it out of a stupid idealistic crusade. I was like, its 1990 Saddam's invaded Kuwait. Why should all these poor kids have to do their part, the rich kids don’t so I’m going to do my part. Everyone else in my unit was like, "you’re a fucking idiot. We’re just trying to get through college and this will pay for it you fucking dorkmo.”

DRE: Once again you were the one kid who took it too far.

MB: That’s right. And then God stepped in and said your knees point in different directions so I’m going to make you aware of that when your spine gives out.

DRE: Ouch.

MB: Yeah I had major back problems because I didn’t realize that one knee pointed north and one pointed south. So I had bad knees and back which I didn’t know that until one day I just collapsed. Maybe I should have ran track in high school before I tried this.

DRE: So you were just a movie nerd in high school.

MB: Yeah then I was rappelling off towers SWAT team style, jumping out of helicopters and running two miles a day. You can’t just go from 0 to 60 eventually your body will rebel. As a result I still can’t run.

DRE: I guess you could pick the zombies off from a tower.

MB: Nope I just have to make sure I have good orthopedic pads in my shoes which I didn’t know about at the time.

DRE: They’ll be free because the drug stores will be empty due to zombie attacks.

MB: Yep I’m ready.

DRE: So did you have a book deal and this is what you came up with?

MB: No I wrote this like I said a few years ago and it sat on the shelf for two years. I didn’t even think it would get published, I wrote it to keep myself sane. Those were my struggle years when I was writing one screenplay after another. I was trying to feed the marketplace, to try to figure out what was hip and what people wanted. Of course nobody wanted it and I was going crazy. So I had to write something on my spare time. Years later a book agent read it and loved it.

DRE: How is the book doing?

MB: Very well. It’s in its fifth printing.

DRE: I put it into Google and a lot of info came up on it.

MB: Yeah I didn’t expect this at all. I never thought there were that many people who thought like me.

DRE: Did you work very much with, Max Werner, who did the diagrams in the book?

MB: He’s wonderful. Random House was totally cool with the book. They thought it was a farce and a great take on what’s happening in the country right now. They said that must be why I wrote it. I was like, yeah I’m really that smart and in touch with the current political trends. But I told them in the beginning that I didn’t want to put any jokes in it and make it overtly funny. I want it to be a real survival guide as if zombies were really there right down to the illustrations.

Not only were they into it they pushed even farther. My editor, Annik Lafarge, didn’t have many notes but the notes she had were like this “On this page you have a tool kit. How big is it and what kind of tools? You mention rope, how long and what tensile strength?” I ended up putting in an extra twenty pages. We had to find an illustrator and the guy we had was too good. They kept coming back and they were these awesome anime illustrations. I kept saying you don’t get, they’re supposed to look hacky, maybe one step above a road sign. Don’t think like an artist, think like a government employee or an army artist sitting at some base somewhere. He couldn’t be bad. We had to let him go and we hired someone within Random House.

DRE: Like a graphics guy?

MB: Yeah and he’s just great. I never even met him face to face. We just communicated by email. He would look at army manuals and I would send him pictures and drawings.

DRE: I used to work for a corporation and one thing in their manual was the proper way to pick up a box. It was three pictures detailing a man lifting a box.

MB: [laughs] That’s exactly it. The original artist sent me this image of how to destroy a staircase and it was beautiful. Max Werner drew a guy backing up the staircase with an arrow. An arrow, an axe and a two dimensional staircase. I was like “Aw genius.”

DRE: Has anyone taken the book seriously?

MB: I think some people have. I did a lecture in Denver and I was terrified.

DRE: What were you lecturing on?

MB: How to kill zombies.

I told the people in Denver that they’re not getting standup of the dead. I’m not doing a comedy show. I’m coming in there with weapons, photographs and tactics. We’re really going to have a self defense lecture on what to do. They were like, come on down. I also think they were fighting among themselves about whether I believed it or not.

I came in and played it straight. In order to get the photos I went to a gun store in LA and asked them if I could take pictures of the people in there holding their best assault weapons. I brought kids up onstage and practiced with a katana and a machete. They loved it.

I even made a short film for the lecture.

DRE: What was that about?

MB: It was a short two and a half minute Soviet propaganda film from the 1940’s, how to protect the Motherland from zombies.

DRE: What is their main focus?

MB: We showed Comrade Stalin speaking, rifles being handed out and showing citizens how to shoot zombies in the head. The symbol of the Soviet revolution, the farmer’s sickle, is very important for decapitating zombies. I did not expect the amount of laughs I got. They laughed at Stalin.

DRE: Is Mkunga-Lalem real?

MB: It’s…uh…no. But you figure if there was a culture to know how to deal with zombies it would be Afro-Caribbean. I know a little bit about them because I lived in the Caribbean then in Africa for a while.

DRE: Wow I read a bio of you but I thought that part was fake.

MB: See that’s the funny part. All that stuff is real.

DRE: You’re a very interesting person.

MB: That’s a nice way of saying weird.

DRE: Yeah.

Did you mail a copy of the book to Romero?

MB: I did and I was very honest with him. I sent a letter with the book saying “Mr. Romero obviously I am a huge fan. While this book is in the humor section it is nothing short of a control freak’s attempt to deal with a childhood fear.” Which is exactly what it is. I hope he likes it but I haven’t heard back.

DRE: Is your humor always this deadpan?

MB: Sometimes. It depends on what the idea is. If a fart joke is funny I’m laughing. I find nothing funnier than the brown noise in the South Park episode.

DRE: What was the book tour like?

MB: We did a signing over at Book Soup in LA. That blew me away because the line was out the door and it was sold out. I didn’t expect this and that’s not being humble. That’s being shocked.

DRE: Did you help set up the cool website for the book?

MB: No. Can you believe that was Random House’s idea?

DRE: It’s very funny.

MB: All the questions on the website are real. I did not intend this book to be a Rorschach test. My motives are pure, I’m just a guy who is into zombies.

DRE: What did you think of 28 Days Later?

MB: It was great but those weren’t zombies. They were crazies. I think that’s the scientific name for them.

DRE: What were the best 80’s zombie movies besides Day of the Dead?

MB: Good question. The Return of the Living Dead movies never did it for me.

DRE: They were like big budget Troma films.

MB: Yeah they were also zombie exploitative. Romero’s movies are not really zombie movies. They were about people and how real people would react. The thing about skeletons saying “more brains” I always thought, oh you have no lungs, no diaphragm, no vocal cords yet you can say more brains.

I have read more zombie fiction and more zombie movies since this book has come out. It only took me one or two zombie movies to get freaked out when I was a kid and I carried it with me ever since. I didn’t know that much about the zombie genre until the book came out. My research was all into how to stop them.

DRE: Is your building safe?

MB: If the elevator were stopped, yeah. But my staircase is cinderblock concrete steps. That’s going to be tough to destroy, you’d need a good sledgehammer.

DRE: My building is pretty safe.

MB: Is it defensible is what I always say. You really hit the nail on the head when you asked if I had the kind of mindset about how to protect yourself. I drove to the Florida Keys a couple of years with my girlfriend. I was looking at all these houses that were up on stilts. I was thinking “You’re set. You just roll up that wooden staircase and just fish right off the terrace. Wow.

DRE: What about changing zombie lore? Like adding certain things that weren’t in the Romero movies.

MB: It’s funny. I can’t believe I’m actually saying this but I followed my heart. Aw now I’ve said it. This sounds better, I followed my fear. I thought about zombies and what would scare me the most. So I did change the idea of zombies having memories and going to a mall. I think for fiction that’s better but it doesn’t scare me as much. The less intelligent and human something is the more I’m afraid of it.

DRE: Have you heard about the remake of Dawn of the Dead?

MB: I have. I’m going to be very curious to see how they pull it off. I’m not going to pass judgment on it. Hey it’s a zombie movie.

DRE: I know you used to write for Saturday Night Live. Any sketches I would remember?

MB: The Robert De Niro episode had one of mine in it. It was the U.N. weapons inspectors sketch.

DRE: That was a good one.

Harry Shearer told me that every single person involved with SNL secretly hates it.

MB: My problem is that I was never good at fitting in. If there is a cool group anywhere you’re not going to find me there. I’m sure there are people that hate it but there must be people that love it as well.

DRE: Did you feel extra pressure to be funny because of being Mel Brooks’ son?

MB: Not on SNL because there is so much pressure on that show that there is enough to go around.

DRE: What about in general?

MB: Not really. I think the advantage of growing up with my Pops being who he is I learned at an early age who he was and who I am in relation to that. I had to get over it at a young age because you start getting shit for it when you’re really young.

DRE: Is SNL still filled with Harvard writers?

MB: There is a very strong Harvard crowd there. But there are also people from The Groundlings and others like that.

DRE: Slovin and Allen were there when you were.

MB: Eric Slovin called me the nerdiest guy he knows. I’m even nerdier than Leo Allen.

DRE: A movie that my entire family loves is Fatso [starring Dom DeLuise] and your mother directed it. Have you met that fat uncle?

MB: On my mother’s side we come from a very Italian family. It’s like a different world. There’s not a lot of fat. I don’t know where she got the fat stuff from. They’re all pretty darn skinny.

DRE: Did you go to regular school?

MB: I went to Crossroads High School with Maya Rudolph and Jack Black. Its kind of art school but my grades were so bad I couldn’t be in the school plays.

DRE: My brother and I are big comedy fans. So we imagine that you growing up would be like “Time for dinner and here’s Sid Caesar and Woody Allen.”

MB: Sid and Woody didn’t show up for dinner that often. People were around though when I was a kid. It was like people from the cast of Cannonball Run. I knew those people.

DRE: What was that like?

MB: It was very different from comedians of today. They came from poverty and were as stunned with their success as their public was. They would throw jokes at each other and a lot of times they would lapse into World War 2 stories or stories from the Depression. They loved to one up each other with Depression stories. Who grew up poorer? One guy would throw out they used to grind up chalk and put it in a water bottle to put outside so people would think they had milk delivered.

DRE: Does all that help make you funny?

MB: I don’t know makes people funny. You can take people who have been through different experiences and they’ll be funny. They might be different in their humor. But I laugh as hard as the rest of them. SNL had people from everywhere and I laughed at all of them.

DRE: What were you like growing up?

MB: I was an outsider like always. When you grow up with those parents you can never be just one of the gang. I grew up in the Blazing Saddles period. He wrote that movie because my mom was pregnant with me and we needed money. He had a divorce that wiped him and his ex-wife’s lawyer said not to ask for alimony and just take him for everything now. My mom supported him and bought our first two houses.

DRE: Did kids beat you up?

MB: No you’ve got to remember I went to an art school. What were they going to hit me with their spec scripts?

Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Max+Brooks/