Terrors of the Dead

From:SHIVERS
Date:May 2005 issue #120
Posted Pam

Simon Baker talks about his roles in Hideo Nakata's THE RING 2 and
George Romero's forthcoming zombie extravaganza LAND OF THE DEAD

Simon Baker is getting the hang of this genre stuff. A few
years back he co-starred with Val Kilmer and Carrie-Anne Moss
in RED PLANET. And now, the Aussie actor can be found making
back-to-back turns in THE RING 2 and LAND OF THE DEAD.
"It's just a coincidence that I've done two of these in a row,"
Baker says. "It was just two straight projects I couldn't
turn down."

[snip RING 2 synopsis]

"I loved the first movie," enthuses Baker, who's probably best
known to the masses for his three-year stint on the American
television series THE GUARDIAN. "I loved it. It was very well
made, very sophisticated in its execution. I thought it was
intriguing. And it was scary. I enjoyed people's reactions to it.
It took me a while to see it. I hadn't seen it immediately.
When I saw people were like, 'Oh my God!' So it was a real
experience to see it with an audience. After I saw Gore
Verbinski's version of THE RING I went out and rented the
original Japanese version. It was interesting. Some scenes
were almost exactly the same and then the remake shifted and
changed some things around. Visually, the Japanese film has a
different cinematic style to it. If you look at Hideo's films
they tend to have a real eeriness about them. THE RING 2
certainly does. He sort of hangs on a shot for a reasonably
long period of time. You feel like something's going to happen.
A lot of the time nothing happens at all, but it creeps you
out anyway. Like I said, this was one of those films I
couldn't turn down. I wanted to work with Naomi, who I knew,
and she was everything I hoped she'd be. David is a good
kid and a talented actor. And I loved watching Hideo work."

LAND OF THE DEAD

As for LAND OF THE DEAD, that one stars Asia Argento, Dennis
Hopper, John Leguizamo and Baker, who all signed on for the
opportunity to take direction from zombie movie maestro George
A. Romero. "That could be classified in the Horror genre,
but it shouldn't, really," Baker insists. "George Romero is
a genre [unto] himself. I'd heard about Romero films before
I did this, but I'd never really taken the time to watch most
of them. I had an experience with one when I was a kitchen
hand in a restaurant. I was about 17. After work I went back
to another kitchen hand's house to watch a Romero movie and it
blew my mind. When I watched it -- it was the one in the mall,
DAWN OF THE DEAD -- I couldn't believe it and I couldn't get
over it. I remember that vividly, but I hadn't revisited them
until my manager sent me the script for LAND OF THE DEAD.
My manager was a massive fan of the DEAD films and he said,
'You've gotta meet with George. He wants to meet with you.
You've got to meet with him.' I said 'OK' and I met
with George, and he was just fantastic. I just loved
the guy immediately. I thought, 'This guy is great.
He's really cool.' He's such the antithesis of what
you'd imagine. I liked the guy so much I went home,
watched all of his films and then I said, 'Sure, I'm in.'"

SURROUNDED BY ZOMBIES!

Baker found himself surrounded by zombies, lots and lots of
zombies. And he loved every minute of it. If he wasn't shooting
a scene with the oozing, bleeding creatures, the actor notes,
he actually sought the buggers out. "It's fantastic,"
he says. "It's fantastic. You start getting really into it.
During the show, the crew split into two units. We had one unit
that was always constantly setting up, and we called them the
'splatter unit.' They were always doing little effects shots
and stuff like that, with lots of blood, the blood and guts sort
of shots. So George was trying to get between the two sets,
going backward and forward. I'd be doing the drama stuff mostly,
but whenever I had a minute I was off to the splatter unit
because you just get so into the makeup effects and stuff.
I never thought I would, but I got into it. And it gets gory.
It gets as gory as it can get, as [gory as it's] allowed to get.
It's a Romero film. And I guarantee you the DVD will be even
gorier than the cinema version."

[snip RED PLANET synopsis]

"That was madness," Baker recalls.
"That was madness, that film. We shot in Jordan. We shot in
the desert that Lawrence of Arabia crossed. We shot there
and we shot in the outback of Australia. And we [shot] at
a studio in Sydney. That was a pretty bizarre experience.
It was rather tough to shoot in 110-degree heat... in
our spacesuits. Our fingers were poaching like sausages.

"That was an experience," he adds. "Mark Canton produced that
film and I just worked with him again on LAND OF THE DEAD, and
we had a lot of laughs talking about those times on RED PLANET.
It was a tough movie. It was a tough movie. But I lived
through the experience. And that's what I remember. That's
what I remember about any film. The results of the film and
how it turned out are secondary. When I watch a film I think
about what happened that day we shot a scene. So RED PLANET
was a good experience. They're all good experiences."

Next up for Baker is 42.4 PERCENT, a dramatic romance in which
he shares the screen with Sanaa Lathan of ALIEN VS PREDATOR fame.
In the film, Baker and Lathan play a couple in an interracial
relationship. And after that? Baker doesn't know what,
precisely, is following 42.4 PERCENT, but the future looks bright.
"You know, I'm always happy when I'm able to keep working and
doing thing[s] that challenge me," he says. "I went from THE
RING 2 onto LAND OF THE DEAD, which will come out the week
before Hallowe'en. And I'm about to start on this interracial
love story. I'm really happy with the way my career is going.
A year ago I was on a television show. I got THE RING 2 while I
was still doing the show. It was my hiatus movie. But I found
out on my first day of shooting RING 2 that my show had been
cancelled, and it was no longer my hiatus movie. So I just
want to keep moving forward and do the best work I can do."

From Shivers #120