Zack Snyder Had To Fight The Studio For Dawn Of The Dead's Best Needle Drop
Just like in George A. Romero's 1978 original, the bulk of Zack Snyder's 2004 remake of "Dawn of the Dead" takes place in a shopping mall. In both films, a group of still-living people take refuge while scads of the undead shamble up against the walls outside. The commentary, of course, is that even after zombification, people still want to worship at consumerism's most powerful megachurch: the modern mall. All their memories and humanity have been erased by zombie-ism, but shopping remains one of their basest instincts. It's hardly a nuanced or complex theme, but it does make both films slightly more interesting.
Snyder's film is more energetic and playful than Romero's, an odd thing to say, given how turgid, humorless, and self-important the bulk of Snyder's films tend to be. One might credit the film's levity to the notoriously jocular screenwriter James Gunn, the director of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" movies. One might also imagine conversations between Snyder and Gunn about what pop songs should be included on the "Dawn of the Dead" soundtrack; Gunn is a huge fan of the band Old 97's and his films tend to feature noticeable needle drops. The Jim Carroll Band's raucous track "People Who Died" showed up in both "Dawn of the Dead" and Gunn's 2021 film "The Suicide Squad."
Partway through "Dawn of the Dead," as the characters idly waste time in the mall holed up from the zombie menace outside, comedic lounge singer Richard Cheese's rendition of the 2000 nu-metal hit "Down with the Sickness," originally by the band Disturbed, serenades the audience. It's a silly, jaunty moment in an otherwise intense movie. According to an interview in the latest issue of Total Film Magazine, Snyder butted heads with the studios over the Richard Cheese version.
Open up your hate and let it flow into me
For those who weren't paying attention to novelty music in the late '90s and early '00s, Richard Cheese & Lounge Against the Machine (actually Mark Jonathan Davis) was a snarky comedy band, born in the shadow of the swing and only-somewhat-kitschy lounge revivals that crept into the pop culture periphery at the time. This was a time when bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy received a great deal of mainstream radio airplay, and Capitol Records could market an 18-volume set of Ultra-Lounge CDs.
Richard Cheese covered pop hits of the day but in the style of a boozy Vegas lounge singer. He shared a shtick with Toby Huss, who sometimes performed similarly as lounge lizard Rudy Casoni, notably in a series of 1994 MTV promos. The clash of Disturbed's ultra-angry music with Richard Cheese's lounge vocals was perfect for the scene, as Snyder saw it. It seems, however, that Universal wanted the filmmaker to use the original version. A compromise needed to be struck. Snyder said:
"[I]n the middle of the movie [...] we use the Richard Cheese version of 'Down with the Sickness.' The studio really wanted me to use the Disturbed version. 'Why the Richard Cheese version?' They couldn't understand. I had a take on the music for 'Dawn of the Dead.' Immediately, when I got the script, I was thinking about all these different songs. 'People Who Died.' I really love that [opening chords of 'People Who Died'] DANG! DANG! DANG, DANG, DANG! I thought that it was cool as a way to end the movie because it's so dark. It's a bleak ending, in a cool way."
Richard Cheese also sang "Viva Las Vegas" on the soundtrack to Snyder's 2021 film "Army of the Dead."
Snyder's whims
Later in the Total Film interview, Snyder noted why he's willing to fight for his own peculiar aesthetics. Snyder seems to see himself as an auteur who happens to work in broadly commercial movies. As such, he is willing to fight for whatever "quirk" or visions he may have to set his movies apart. Some of the man's weirdly passionate fans have even gone so far as to call him thoughtful. More than anything, Snyder's "visions" leave him arguing with studio heads a lot, insisting that his decisions be respected and not altered.
He noted that many recent movies are released in theaters with one cut, but then would make their way to home video as a "director's cut." He doesn't cite any specific examples, but one would do well to recall the kerfuffle over "the Snyder Cut" of "Justice League," released in two dramatically different versions in 2017 and 2021.
"Let's agree that I work in very mass-consumer genres. It's the thing that has demanded all these director's cuts, because I choose to work in genres that are traditionally very commercial, and where the committee makes a lot of decisions. The issue is, of course, that I'm not really a committee filmmaker. A lot of times I have to take the note, because the studio needs the movie to be successful, because it costs a lot of money, it's protecting a giant IP — blah, blah, blah. That's why you end up with the director's cut, because, in the end, I'm like, 'I think my original idea was better.'"
Snyder's films are hardly complex, but one cannot argue that he's not an auteur with a recognizable aesthetic. And when he wants a silly novelty song in his zombie movie, he's willing to put his foot down.