SXSW 2008 offered a decent crop of genre-style movies, but the (seemingly) unanimous choice from the Midnight selection was Gregg Bishop's Dance of the Dead. Hell, I know some pretty demanding critic / blogger-types who went to see the flick TWICE! (It didn't hurt that the movie was playing at the Alamo Drafthouse, which means one can enjoy beer and cheese fries with their zombies and prom queens.) You've already seen our official review of Dance of the Dead, but I definitely wanted to grab a little chat-time with some of the filmmakers. So we sat down for a relatively informal conversation that went a little like ... this!

By Scott Weinberg

How did 'Dance' get rolling? You'd already done The Other Side, which got good buzz on the fest circuit...

(Writer/director) Gregg Bishop: I read the script, told him (old pal / screenwriter Joe Ballarini) I wanted to make it, told him "find the money if you can." We took it around, nobody wanted to take a chance on the film. It was like the planets had to align to get the film made! Then I had to spend $15K of my own money to make The Other Side.

Were you sort of making that as a calling card movie?

Bishop: Absolutely. I think it's easier to make a calling card movie, spend your money on that. After the other film came out, it was like, "what's next, what're you doing now, kid?"

(Screenwriter) Joe Ballarini: We had a lot of meetings with those kind of guys with big cigars, but nothing really happened. Then we met with the guys from Bleiberg...

Bishop: They were great, very solid. They also had a lot of great input on the script.

A lot of times filmmakers get tips from "on high." Did they "convince" you of anything?

(Actor / casting director) Jon Spencer: Hahaa. NO suits on set!

Bishop: They were actually great, very supportive. You hear horror stories: they made me cut that scene, etc. But not on this movie.

So if you met some up and comers, you'd say they were a good company to work with?

Bishop: Yes, absolutely. They didn't demand things, nor did they give us the money and run off, but yes, they were great.

For obvious reasons, like you said at the Q&A last night, you don't ask a woman her weight and you don't ask an indie filmmaker what their budget was, but with a relatively small budget, how could you afford this caliber of talent? How hard was it to cast this big ensemble thing, get people who had skill -- but also find a few new faces?

Bishop: 80% of the directing for me is the cast; the cast has to have chemistry, be interesting to watch, be of a certain age.

It's refreshing in this film that they looked the part, they looked like real kids on the street.

Spencer: Oh, also: we ended up with 37 hours of audition footage.

So what's the deciding factor if you have like ten kids who would all be good for one role?

Spencer: I'd throw the heavy stuff at them to see if they could handle it.

Ballarini: And John would mess with their heads, too, really throw stuff at them!

Spencer: If they can handle the heavy stuff, they can handle the rest. Like with casting Grayson -- we had some L.A. actresses come in to audition, and they just couldn't have done the part.

Turning the conversation towards actors Justin Welborn and Grayson Chadwick; Horror fans?

Welborn: I'm a huge horror fan, yeah. You wanna get your movie out there in front of people, it's your calling card. And there's so much room for the imagination, so much room to maneuver.

Chadwick: I'm more of a rom-com person, but this film had that too, it had the romance, and the horror stuff as well.

How does your role here compare to your stuff in Buried Alive?

Chadwick: I did Buried Alive for Sony TV, it was a little weird being buried in a coffin for so long! But on Dance I really liked the character, she was really sweet. I think I auditioned for the cheerleader, though.

Spencer: We auditioned actors and read them for every role, to see how wide their range was.

Is it better to start as an actor and then become a casting director, or to become a casting director and then just cast yourself?

Bishop: We actually cast another Mr. Hammond and it fell through, and then Spencer stepped up, he knew the part because he'd been reading it with all the kids.

Spencer: Was great for me because my brain had been for six months, on casting. Then I got a call from Gregg, we have an idea we want to talk to you about...

But as entertaining as the adults are, it's really about the kids...

Spencer: We'd end up with the casting, we'd be auditioning all day, we'd get tired of it, so sometimes we'd be like, let's you and me read the geeky kid roles. Which was great because we had some freedom to play around with it.

Joe, the most basic question you could ask a screenwriter -- what were the films that most inspired you? Dance has pieces of several different films...

Ballarini: Monster Squad, Goonies, Return of the Living Dead. The Jenson character was based on that kid in high school I knew who like disappeared for three days at a time and dropped acid, he was the only kid in school who smoked pot ... I had such a cool time in high school, it was all pre-Columbine. The first draft of the script was actually written before Columbine.

Did you want them to be archetypal / iconic high school characters?

Ballarini: In an ensemble like this you need distinct characters. The cheerleaders I knew in high school were sweet like that. And I was like the guy with the video camera, who would have loved to get the girl.

The horror freaks are going to love the bathroom stall scene -- it works on a variety of levels, it's strangely sweet. But my favorite shot was this long tracking shot in the graveyard. It's stuff like that, which I also saw in The Other Side... That's hard to do, I know how much prep it takes to do that. Can you talk a bit about that?

Bishop: That was one thing that I really got attached to: the zombies launching out of the ground. That's one of the things we looked at -- should we cut that? It would be easier if they just crawled out of the ground, but I really wanted that. Moviemaking is all about compromise, but it's also about holding onto those things you really want.

Welborn: When we needed to punch through a car windshield, we really learned how to punch car windshields. When you get there that day and it's 10AM and you're digging real graves, man ... we had three people holding onto a rope and pulling them to launch the zombies OUT of the graves!

The gore factor for the actors. What was that like?

Chadwick: The first day was awesome, running down the hallway covered in gore.

Welborn: Day 23 you get tired of it.

Spencer: Toby Sells, our makeup guy -- the first thing he showed me was four foam molds of me. The first time I got in the chair, it was 4.5 hours!

To the lovely Ms. Chadwick, how long did it take with your makeup?

Chadwick: I got my blood from the one scene with Jim where we cut this guy's head off. It became sticky at the end, it dries, and my arms would get stuck.

How about you, Justin?

Welborn: I love it -- it's all part of the wonderful process. When you get into those intense scenes, the blood really helps you get into it, it's a fascinating place to be. And then you go to waffle house dressed just like that!

How close is the final project to what you envisioned 2-3 years ago?

Bishop: It's a weird thing, you have your vision of it. I heard someone say that once you hire the actors they bring more to the script, they flesh it out. It's different in some ways -- the $200 million version of it is what I had in my head, but I'm happy with it.

Would you say you can make a good genre film without exorbitant amounts of cash?

Bishop: The passion makes it, you don't have to have tons of money.

Welborn: I think it's talent. Without that actual spark of "something more" filling in the pages of the script, it's nothing. I could do more as a actor because of what all of these people brought to the project.

Chadwick: It started out with Joe and Gregg, the passion they brought to the project filtered to everyone on the set. The last day of shooting we shot for like 23 hours. But we wanted to do it, we wanted that scene.

Whenever someone comes out with a film that advances the genre, I'm interested in that - these zombies run, they drive, they're ... affected by music. What would you say to the zombie purists who don't like the new ideas?

Welborn: Unfortunate that their imaginations can't expand a little.

Bishop: I didn't want to do what's already been done before.

Spencer: Dance is an active verb -- dance of the dead.

Ballarini: You still have to hit them in the brain, they're still the zombies we know and love. I'd tell the purists if you want zombies that way, you make your movie. We made our movie, and we love it.