The 'Girliest' Zombie Flick Ever
After making a film about her ubiquitous name, Grace Lee sinks her teeth into a fictional documentary about Zombies in L.A.
They have a problem with rotting flesh and body odor, but they still have feelings. In Grace Lee's "American Zombie," the undead wield political power, hold full-time jobs and go to therapy. These aren't your parents' zombies, so haters please step back.
They're Zombie-Americans, perhaps one of the most marginalized minority groups in history. Some were scattered in the audience of the sold-out screening at the recent VC Film Festival in Los Angeles where Lee climbed onstage and asked if they were any zombies out there. A few hoots sounded out.
"They're shy," said the filmmaker.
If you're wondering why her name sounds familiar, you've either known a Grace Lee or you've seen the 2005 documentary "The Grace Lee Project" where Grace Lee, the filmmaker, tracks down and profiles Asian Pacific American women with the same name.
So how does this Grace Lee go from a film about APA women to one about zombies?
The seed was planted the way most horror movies start out - in the dead of the night when Lee's friend Rebecca Sonnenshine (who co-wrote the script) said she was being persecuted in her sleep.
"If you meet her, she looks like a schoolteacher - very mild mannered," said Lee. "She said, 'I can't sleep. I have insomnia.' Every time she went to sleep she would dream of something trying to kill her or bite her. She told me about this little girl zombie who would chase her. I said, 'Well maybe you're part zombie.'"
The Makings of a Filmmaker
Maybe there's a zombie in all of us. If Lee were one, she said she would be like Judy (Suzy Nakamura), one of the film's undead who frantically chronicles her life in colorful scrapbooks including one dedicated to her trips to the supermarket. Underneath her putrid flesh, Judy grapples with her own shame of being, well, a walking corpse.
"We knew we wanted an Asian zombie. She's just so funny the stuff she says like, 'I'm definitely going to marry a human,'" said Lee.
Lee didn't always know she wanted to become a filmmaker, but she's always been a storyteller. In high school, the Missouri native worked on the school newspaper and was working towards a journalism degree at the University of Missouri, but then switched her major to history.
After college, Lee's parents decided to move to Korea and she decided to go along to reconnect with her roots. It was there that she discovered the visual medium. She started making "Camp Arirang," a documentary about U.S. military prostitution in South Korea. It was then that Grace Lee the filmmaker found her calling.
She came back to the U.S. to enroll in the Master's program at the University of California, Los Angeles Film School and started a project about women who share her same name.
Suddenly Lee became a household name and not just because there are currently 188 Grace Lees listed in the phone book (so far). The film struck a chord with APAs who wanted to see and hear more from the filmmaker. She recently accepted an award for "The Grace Lee Project" and found herself fielding a question about last month's tragedy at Virginia Tech where a Korean American gunman killed 32 people before turning the gun on himself. She shirks from the idea of speaking for an entire community.
"I'm just as much a spokesperson as anyone else."
Redefining the Zombie
"This is the girliest zombie movie ever," said Lee, who currently heads her own film production company in Los Angeles. "You really feel for them ... or do you?"
The four main zombies in the film have personalities big enough to rally anyone into their corners as they struggle for social acceptance. But hovering above the witticism, scrapbooks and quirks is the dangerous potential for it to go completely wrong - and it does.
To research, Lee watched classical zombie movies and read up on zombie lore, but for the most part they had to create their own zombie world, complete with fictional zombie-related non-profits like the Zombie Advocacy Group and the Center for the Study of the Living Deceased.
Fans have flocked to the "American Zombie" MySpace to leave messages of support and camaraderie, but some real-life zombie culture purists have balked at the idea of redefining their beloved living dead.
"I love zombie flicks, but I have mixed feelings after watching the trailer. Zombies should be the mindless dead not activists. They are no longer your family, friends or loved ones, they are the living impaired and they will eat you," wrote Trinutcyclops, a Salt Lake City-based indie band.
For the most part, Lee isn't interested in serious blood and gore.
"I'm not a big fan of horror films. I'm more into psychological horror and personal horror," she said.
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