Max Brooks News
October 5, 2006
Max's latest novel is a huge hit, in case you haven't been paying attention -- this week at number 11 on the NY Times Best Hardcover Fiction list. TCS Daily has another in-depth discussion of World War Z... excerpt below, much more at the link.
The latest and greatest blend of zombie and doomsday is Max Brooks' wildly entertaining World War Z, which purports to be an oral history of mankind's war against zombies. Set a few years in the future, Brooks depicts a world in which a mysterious plague rises out of China (perhaps due to the deliberate flooding of a holy city?) and soon spreads to every corner of the world, borne on a wave of totalitarian dishonesty, human desperation, and Western indifference. The plague causes the infected to die and reanimate as nigh-indestructible zombies ("Zack," as the survivors call them), seeking to eat the flesh of the living.
Brooks tells his tale through a shifting array of narrators, each relating their experience of societal collapse as the zombie plague crushes civilization. While George A. Romero lovingly portrayed his cinematic zombies with distinctive faces and unforgettably garish costumes in order to explore themes of class differences and social alienation, Brooks' zombies are faceless monsters that interest him little; his novel's satirical guns are pointed at the rotten level of disaster preparedness throughout the world. Bureaucrats fumble and dither while journalists spread rumors and half-truths, even as the zombie menace invades middle-class America - and the world.
Yet another excellent -- and quite recent -- interview with Max, this time from Revenant: The Premiere Zombie Magazine. Original link is here, the forever version is here.
I dug up this incredible online chat with Max from 2003 that I wanted to share here. It's still very timely, particularly this close to Halloween! Original link is here, the forever version is here.
November 14-18, the Barbican is hosting the "Max Brooks Festival of the (Living!) Dead":
A gore-tastic film season of flesh tearing, gut-wrenching zombie horrors, hand picked by author and undead expert, Max Brooks.
Max is the author of 2004’s best-seller The Zombie Survival Guide and his much anticipated new book World War Z recently sparked a bidding war between Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio's production companies (Plan B and Appian Way respectively) for the film rights. Plan B won and will be producing the film.
Max, son of director Mel Brooks and actress Anne Bancroft, is also an Emmy award winning writer for Saturday Night Live. He lives in New York.
World War Z will be published in September by Duckworth.
We are delighted that Max will be joining us for a ScreenTalk to open the season, and will be introducing some of his chosen films.
Book your tickets and check out the events schedule here.
Excellent photos from London's Z-Day here -- not for the faint-hearted!
WORLD WAR Z audiobook with celeb cast
Random House has announced that it will release an audiobook version of WORLD WAR Z on September 12, to tie in with the publication of Max Brooks’ book under the Crown imprint the same day. Brooks’ novel, a follow-up to his popular ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE, is a “first-hand account” of a Zombie War that decimates mankind, as told by both civilian and military survivors who recount their varied battles with hordes of the walking dead. The author himself voices The Interviewer in the five-CD, six-hour adaptation, which also features a number of major actors lending their vocal talents. Among them are John Turturro and Jurgen Prochnow, who have genre experience from FEAR X and HOUSE OF THE DEAD respectively; other contributors include Henry (WRONG TURN 2) Rollins, Mark Hamill, Alan Alda, Carl and Rob Reiner (!) and many others. The WORLD WAR Z audiobook will retail for $29.95; see Fango #257, on sale in mid-September, for an interview with Brooks about the novel. And catch Brooks at the East Coast Fango con (see www.creationent.com for details). —Michael Gingold
source
You might want to bookmark the imdb page for the WWZ film here, set for 2008. There's a forum at the bottom loaded with anxious fans, fun to read!
September 18, 2006
WWZ was featured nicely at USA Today here, namely:
Once you've read Max Brooks' World War Z, it will be crystal clear why Brad Pitt's development company paid seven figures for the film rights. Written by the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, this tale of how a zombie virus almost obliterates the human race possesses more creativity and zip than entire crates of other new fiction titles.
Think Mad Max meets The Hot Zone. Brooks' clever premise is that a virus has turned people into the undead. Hordes of flesh-devouring zombies roam the earth, hunting down and infecting the living. Governments, armies, doctors, economies collapse in turn. It's Apocalypse Now, pandemic-style. Creepy but fascinating.
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WWZ is also available as an abridged audio CD, an abridged downloadable audiobook, and an eBook. Read an extensive description of the book, quotes and reviews at Max's spotlight page at Random House of Canada, here.
One of my favs:
“‘Shock and Awe’? Perfect name. . . . But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!” —Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers
A very nice, extensive interview with Mel from 2004 here. Excerpt:
Mel Brooks: My son with Anne, who’s thirty now, his name is Maximilian, Max Brooks, he wrote a book, the book is called 'The Zombie Survival Guide'. I don’t know whether it’s hit Australia yet, it’s all about zombies, it’s a survival guide, if you run into a zombie you need this book. This book will teach you how to defend yourself, where to go, where to hide, how to avoid them, what they do, what they eat late at night. It’s just the craziest book and it’s going to be a film, they want to make a film of it.
Andrew Denton: Because he wrote for awhile for Saturday Night Live?
Mel Brooks: He wrote for two years for Saturday Night Live.
Andrew Denton: Now how was it for him having a master of comedy for a dad?
Mel Brooks: Yeah.
Andrew Denton: Tough?
Mel Brooks: Well it was tough, it was tough. He had a tough road to hoe, but he did it. He never complained, he was his own man, ever since he was fifteen, and he’s just a great, great kid, and you know, I’m very proud of him.
Andrew Denton: That father son thing, did he ever look to you for a critique?
Mel Brooks: Oh yeah, he’d send me rough drafts of stuff that he wrote. You’ve got to be smart as a father, you can see a lot of wrong things, but you only pick one or two that can be corrected, you’ve got to be very encouraging, and little by little his work got better and better and better, and now he really doesn’t need me anymore. And I would never write anything about zombies, so he’s gone in a whole other direction.
OK, click
here for an .avi
version of Max's zombie interview from KUTV earlier this year. I'll keep trying different things, to offer you as many options
as possible, but this is a must-see! This does not often stream well, so
it may be better to save it to your hard drive before attempting to play
it.
Tremendous thanks to Trisha J. for this file!
August 14, 2006
Nice quickie interview from Publishers Weekly (link):
Three Answers
August 7, 2006
by Dick DonahueThree Answers today are from Max Brooks, whose novel, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, will be published by Crown Books on September 12.
PW: You’ve gone from The Zombie Survival Guide to this novel about the zombie war. So what’s with you and zombies?
MB: They continually fascinate me. I think it’s because of their mindlessness. Mindlessness terrifies me more than anything else—lack of reason, lack of rationality. And I think at this point we’re pretty much living in an irrational time. You read the newspapers every morning and you think, OK: more human beings are acting inhuman. It seems that reason and logic are in even less supply nowadays than crude oil. Even when I was a little kid zombies scared me, and it was exactly that mindlessness. Other monsters didn’t scare me. I mean, even predators have a basic intelligence; a predator knows not to over hunt. Zombies are almost like a virus; a virus doesn’t know that if it kills the host it’s going to die too.
PW: Your dad is Mel Brooks. Do you think some of his wacky sense of humor has rubbed off on you?
MB: Ironically it’s the other side that no one ever sees that has rubbed off on me. He has a whole other side that’s a very sensitive, very intelligent, very well educated soul. But people don’t want to see that; they want to see cowboys farting around the campfire. He’s also the man who produced [very serious movies like] Frances and The Elephant Man. Even when I was a kid, I’d ask him, why don’t you direct movies like this? He’d say that people would expect a Mel Brooks comedy and so I have to be very careful to keep my name off these movies so I don’t ruin them. You’d never think that his favorite book would be Walden. On one level I think that he’s thrilled I have a job. He’s just so relieved. He’s a dad: he calls me and says, Do you need money? I say, No dad I’m fine. I think he’s stunned that I’d do this on my own without his prodding. He’s a powerful man and he’s not used to things getting done without him. He had a crazy moment when Random House bought the book; he said, Look, when you go into that meeting with them you’ve got to make sure they play down the fact that I’m your father. And I said, Dad, I hate to break this to you, but they don’t care. Now if you were George Romero and you were my dad that’d be a whole different thing.
PW: Have you experienced any zombie backlash?
MB: I haven’t experienced a backlash from zombies, but from zombie supporters. I do self-defense zombie lectures; I go to colleges around the country and tell the students how to fight zombies. And at one of these lectures a zombie rights protesting group showed up—really.
And those of
you who would like to help promote the launch of his second book, World
War Z: An Oral History, in the UK on September 14th should check here
to find out how you can become a zombie for a day and wander the streets
of London. Link also has more info about the book, which will be available
in the US slightly earlier on September 12th.
August
13, 2006:
Kind of neat
to see Max's book mentioned in a video game review here.
In Max
Brooks's The Zombie Survival Guide, the author asks, "What
will you do — end your existence in passive acceptance, or stand up
and shout, 'I will not be their victim! I will survive!'" You'll
need that kind of tough-minded, Gloria Gaynor-endurance philosophy to
deal with DEAD RISING for the Xbox 360.
August
4, 2006
Here
is something interesting: Comedy Central has a slate of items in
development for its Motherload internet channel which includes...
"The
Watch List," a series devoted to stand-up acts and sketches from
Middle Eastern, Arabic and Jewish comedians. The show is produced by
Dean Obeidallah (co-founder of the Arab-American Comedy Festival) and
Max Brooks ("Saturday Night Live").
More here.
June
24, 2006
Max will
be a guest presenter at Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors convention,
presented by Anchor Bay Entertainment, to be held September 29 to October
1 at the Meadowlands Crowne Plaza Hotel (2 Harmon Plaza, Secaucus, New
Jersey). More
June
15, 2006
Pitt bags
Zombie movie Brad Pitt has beaten
Leonardo DiCaprio in a bidding war for the film rights to zombie book
World War Z, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The BBC reports that
Pitt's production company Plan B and studio Paramount Pictures competed
with DiCaprio's firm Applan Way, backed by Warner Bros. Max Brooks's novel is set
10 years after a global zombie epidemic and is due to be published later
this year. In 2003, Brooks wrote
Zombie Survival Guide, which explained in great deadpan detail how to
survive a supposedly impending zombie apocalypse. The book went on to
become a surprise cult hit. and this one:
Brad beats Leo in
bidding war After a battle of the
numbers, the Aviator found defeat at the hands of the “Fight Club“
star. Hollywood's latest
high-profile bidding war saw two A-list actors fighting over film rights
-- through their production companies. In the end, Brad Pitt's
Plan B company acquired the rights to produce a film adaptation of the
upcoming Max Brooks novel "World War Z." Plan B won over
Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way with a reported six-figure bid. Paramount, representing
Plan B, and Warner Bros., the parent studio of Appian Way, engaged in
the bidding process Tuesday. Plan B was announced Wednesday as the owner
of the film rights. "World War Z"
is Max Brooks' follow-up to the 2003 cult hit "The Zombie Survival
Guide." The story takes place 10 years after most of the planet has
been transformed into carnivorous zombies by an epidemic. Brooks' novel
will be released in the fall. June 1,
2006
According to this
blog from late
March '06, Max is apparently working on a companion piece to his
successful "Zombie Survival
Guide", this
one entitled "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War."
Max Brooks
says that post Sept. 11 anxieties contributed to the growing popularity
of zombies. "People have apocalypse on the brain right now. It's
from terrorism, the war, natural disasters like Katrina ... They go hand
in hand with apocalyptic scenarios. You can't have one zombie. You've
got to have millions of them. Society has to be breaking down. And
zombies aren't in conventional horror settings. Zombies find you. The
sun comes up, and they're still there. You call the cops, and they're
still there. They create a chain reaction of societal collapse."
Make
sure you watch this
terrific interview with Max before it's gone. If you have trouble, try
this
one. Or try this
one using iTunes. Viva La Zombies! New York City writer Max
Brooks never expected to be standing on a Salt Lake City street corner
helping a television reporter pick zombies out of the crowd. Peter: Is that guy a
zombie? Max: No, because he would be coming for us and trying to eat us. Brooks wrote "The
Zombie Survival Guide." Just for fun. The kind of thing you'd
expect of a former Saturday Night Live writer and the son of Mel
Brooks (Blazing Saddles, The Producers, Young Frankenstein) and
the late, great Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker, The Graduate). Peter: Is that guy a
zombie? Max: No, because he's waiting patiently to cross the street
instead of trying to eat us. That's your litmus test. "I sat down and
wrote this really for me," Brooks said, "I never expected it
to be published and really, logically, why would you? It's a book about
how to realistically fight something that isn't real." (more) Check
out Max's
page at Greater
Talent Network, which provides him representation for his zombie speaking
engagements.
After working for the
B.B.C. in Great Britain and East Africa, Brooks began writing The Zombie
Survival Guide. A former writer for Saturday Night Live, he lives in New
York City with his wife, Michelle and his miniature dachshund, Maizey. Mel Brooks on
his son's success with "Zombies": "My son Max, Max
Brooks. For the last couple of years he's been writing [a book]. He's
32, he's struggled all his life as a writer, voice-overs etc. He's
always wanted to make his own money. He was in a movie that my wife Anne
Bancroft and I did, called To Be or Not to Be. He was nine years
old and played a little Jewish boy hiding in the basement. Good-looking
kid." He takes a theatrical breath and continues. "So now, Max
Brooks, he finishes the book and I said, 'Max, this is an exercise in
futility! I admire your panache, but this is never going to get
published.' The book he was writing was called the Zombie Survival
Guide: a military manual. Dense. DENSE! With instructions and
precautions about what you do when you run into a zombie." He
shakes his head. "And my God, it got published and is now in its
seventh edition." Did he apologise to his
son for doubting him? "I
said, Max, Max! You taught me a great lesson; a lesson I knew already,
but I never really nailed it. And that lesson is, if you write something
that you know well, from your heart and your soul, it will live,
somehow. It may not live in your lifetime, but it will survive, if you
write it from your heart and your soul. And you have a brushstroke of
talent. It will live. You gotta read this book! It'd be nice if you
mentioned it. Max Brooks; Maximilian Brooks." There's an
excellent, extensive interview with Max here. From the Fall 2002 "Pitzer
Participant" campus magazine
June 15, 2006
source
June 15, 2006
by Kevin Manahan
source
by Peter Rosen
Feb 1, 2006 11:17 am
He is, at present, the
leading Western student in the Afro-Caribbean martial art of
Mkunga-Lalem, the world's oldest and most effective anti-ghoul fighting
skill.
source
Forever version is here.
(Pitzer is a liberal arts college in Claremont, CA):
Class of '94
Produces Two Emmy Award Winners
Two Pitzer College alumni from the Class of '94 were among the Emmy
winners toasted before a national audience during the award show's 54th
annual broadcast on Sept. 14.
Max Brooks and Jennifer Winston earned unrelated trophies for their
contributions to two very separate projects. Brooks is among the
"Saturday Night Live" writing team members that won an Emmy
for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Program. Winston
earned hers as a field producer for the CBS special, "9/11,“ in
the category of Outstanding Non-fiction Special....
Brooks, meanwhile, says that he hasn‘t had much time to ponder the
future direction of his own career. "I feel like I‘ve barely
scratched the surface,“ Brooks said after winning the Emmy.
"Right now I‘m more concerned about where I‘ll be at 11:30 this
Saturday night.“ Brooks calls himself "lucky“ to have
joined ship with SNL at "this special time in the show‘s
history.“ Recalling the evening of the Emmy‘s, he says he remembers
kissing his fiancée, Michelle, when the award was announced, and then
"stumbling up the stage and then staring blankly into the
spotlight. As I exited, I think I remembered to thank Lorne (Michaels,
SNL creator and executive producer).“ The best part about tapping into
the show‘s collaboration of writers is feeling challenged and
surrounded by some of the "greatest minds in comedy today, all of
them pushing to be smarter, sharper and funnier than they were last
week,“ Brooks says. "It's the greatest education I could
ask for.“
Winston ’94, Brooks ’94
