Greg Nicotero – Creepshow – SDCC 2019

By: Matthew Pepe

Greg: I have another job. Yeah, this is my fun job. Not that that one is not fun. That didn’t come out right.

Q) How does that work for you?

Greg: We were developing the stories for “Creepshow” during the end of last season of “The Walking Dead.” So, by the time we went into pre-production, we had all the scripts written in January and then we just went right and shot February/March. And then I had like three days off only because I threw my back out and then went right back to Georgia.

Q) What attracted you to this project? I mean, you have your choice of projects. Why “Creepshow?”

Greg: Well, listen, I grew up in Pittsburgh. My uncle’s an actor. It wasn’t happening and he was in The Crazies. And so we were on a family vacation and went into a restaurant in Georgia. George Romero was sitting there. This was before Dawn of the Dead was even made and I went over to him and said, “Hey, uh, you know, my uncle was in The Crazies,” and he said, “Oh sure! Sam! How’s it going?” And so that was kind of like, we sort of struck up a friendship. I was fifteen years old and then later he was like, “Oh, I’m doing this movie Creepshow. You want to come visit?” Wow! I could go visit a movie set. Like I’d never been on a movie set before. So, I get in my car and I drive out and I’ll never forget it was an abandoned high school. So, the gymnasium was here and then the school was up and I didn’t know where to go because I was like walking around. Like I walked into the gymnasium and I remember there was like all the raw wood. Like the set was built for them, being outside of the set. And I turned the corner and I walked in and it was the set from The Crate or The Creature Was Under the Steps, like the university set. And I’ll never forget. I was like, “Wait a minute. If I step out, it’s like a movie set.” And I stepped in and I was transported into a different world. I was so fascinated with the idea that there were technicians and people that were involved in building these worlds. Like those guys with the hammer. So, I was supposed to be a f**king doctor. My dad’s like, “You’re gonna take over my practice.” And I’m like, “Okay, sure. Whatever. And so that was how George and I became friends. So, when Day of the Dead came about and they were like, “Hey, we just got a green light on Day of the Dead.” And I went to my folks. I’m like, “Hey, you know that doctor thing? I’m going to take a semester off of school and we’re going to work on this movie. And I’ll go back. I swear I’ll go back.” I’m still having like reoccurring nightmares of like, “I gotta go finish college.”

Q) I think you are all right. You did OK for yourself.

Greg: I still have those dreams. I swear to God. So, this is just an amazing, amazing experience for me to be able to pay tribute to George’s legacy and be able to work with Joe Hill and Stephen King and Joe Lansdale and man. And all these writers and David Bruckner and Roxanne Benjamin. I feel like I’m having this amazing opportunity to work with like the best in the business and some are veterans and some are sort of up and coming. I mean, to me that’s the coolest. Like I was geeking out when I hired Bruckner. I’m like, “You directed The Ritual.” I love that movie. I watch with my kids and there was so much great stuff about it that I’ve felt like…I don’t think I told him I was geeking out, but I was geeking out a little bit.

Q) I noticed that John Harrison is directing with you. Is it possible he may be doing the soundtrack at all?

Greg: We talked about re-imagining the theme. And at one point we were like, “Oh, he can use the original tracks and remix it.” But it got sort of entangled in some legal stuff. But you know, the thing with the thing with John is that John’s a great writer and is a great director. So, I wanted him to come in and direct and there were days on set when he would be like, “George would be so fucking proud dude.” Like because he was there, he was the first AD on the original picture and then when Tom Savini was there and so John was one of the first calls that I made and said, “Would you come do this with me?” And he did a great job. Um, and I was super proud. I mean, I’ve known him. He was the first AD on Day of the Dead. So, I mean I’ve known John since like 1983. So, he was kinda my ace in the hole because I knew that he had my back.

Q) What about the choice of stories?

Greg: Well, I remember when Mick Garris did Masters of Horror his deal was, “We’ll find the greatest writers and the greatest directors and pair it together.” And I, ironically, most of those writers are all friends of mine. And like I would think about Joe Lansdale. I love Drive-In. And then Joe and I had talked about trying to make a movie version of Drive-In for a long time. So, between him and Dave Schow and Steve King and Joe…Hell, I love short stories.

I mean, I always felt like when you work as much as I do, sitting in reading an entire book, it’s like I’ll get halfway through it and then it sits there for a while and then I’m like, what the fuck was the first half about? You get little bite size morsels and that’s kind of how “Creepshow” came about. I was doing press in Australia for “The Walking Dead.: I was getting ready to get on a plane and fly home and I’m like, “I need a book to read and need something and I just want little bite size.” So, a book called Nights of the Living Dead and I read the tag line. It’s a series of short stories that all would have taken place on the same night that Night of the Living Dead took place. And I was like, “How fucking cool is that!” Right? Yeah. So, I buy the books and Joe Lansdale has a story in it. There’s like a bunch of great writers and I get to this one story written by a guy named Craig Engler who happens to work at Shudder. And I love the story. It was so creepy and so great. And I said, “I want to shoot this.” I didn’t want to make any money. I just wanted to tell them. I just thought it was so cool. So, they reached out and they were like, “He works at Shudder, you know? He works at the same company that you work at AMC.” Like how weird is that? Yeah. And then I have a meeting with him and he’s like, “Hey, we’re securing the rights for ‘Creepshow’” and I’m like, “Wait MY Creepshow? Like Creepshow, Creepshow? Like when I was a little kid? Yeah.” And he said, “What would you think about being the showrunner, being the creative on it?” So, it was like, well it’s like a Hollywood story. You are just walking through the door at that right exact moment. And the funny thing is I love his story and I was like, “I want to shoot it as well.” He was like, “Ah, I don’t know. Would it be a conflict?” And I just feel weird about it so he wouldn’t let me shoot it, but I’m going to break him of that. But that’s how it happened. And the beauty is thirty years in the business and the relationships and the friendships that I’ve made. The one thing is like every single person when I reached out, they all picked up the phone. I was talking to Aaron Paul and I was talking to Simon Pegg and I was talking to Josh Brolin and they all were like, “Dude, f**k really?” And even like Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Norman Reedus. They were like, “How come you didn’t ask us to be in ‘Creepshow?’” Because I knew while we work our asses off, the last thing I want to do after working for seven months is go, “Hey come, let’s go do something else.” And Jeffrey was like, “You are an idiot. I would have done it in the second.” And I’m like “Ooh.” But I mean that warmed my heart. I called Giancarlo [Esposito] and he was like, “Sure.” And he had three and a half days per story. So, it was like the day was the day we shot Giancarlo, Tobin [Bell] and Adrienne [Barbeau] because they’re in “Gray Matter.” We shot twelve pages in a day and they were like, “Is it always like this?” And I’m like, “I don’t know how else it would be because I got three and a half days and you watch the stories, there’s no ways you’ll be like, oh yeah, three and a half days.” You’d never believe.

Q) What surprised you of the difference of running a show that is episodic versus running a show where each episode is one and done?

Greg: First of all, I had no idea what I was getting myself into because my original plan was, “Okay, we’ve got six episodes we are going to do three stories per episode.” But I love like “Night Gallery.” And I was like, there’s like “Night Gallery” episodes. There were like three minutes. I’m like, how great would it be? I wanted it to feel like some could be three minutes, some could be ten minutes and some could be twenty minutes. So, I’m like, we need eighteen stories. So, we developed eighteen. We optioned eighteen stories, but then there were like, “You have no idea how hard this will be.” And I am like, “We could do it.” Great. And then we got the budget and the realities and they’re like, “Never again. You’re insane.” Okay, so we’ll do twelve stories. So, then it was, “Well, how are we gonna connect them?” Like we have the comic book pages, we flip the page and we go from one story to another…Like I would wake up in the middle of the night going, how are we going to do them? And somebody, I wish I could remember who said to me, they’re like, “Listen, if you’re not waking up in the middle of the night having a panic attack, then you’re not reaching high enough.” And I went then I reached really f**king high. But you know, listen, as the episodes came together and now that I stepped back and I look and I realized that where we are on set, my production designer, Rob Draper, my DP, um, everybody that worked on the show, man, they were there because they love the idea. They would read the scripts and be like, “This is fucking great. How are we going to do it? I’m like, “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.” And on the day I’m like, “Oh fuck! How are we going to do this?” And then watching the cuts…One of the funniest things with AMC when they watched the first cut and I’m like, “This is way better than we thought it was going to be,” and I’m like, “I’ll take that.” That’s the best compliment that you can get. No time and no money. And we were really ambitious and every three days it was with a new cast and new sets and new locations, like on “The Walking Dead.” It’s like, “Oh, we’re at the Hilltop today. Oh we’re in the prison today and you know the cast at the same time.” So I came to be very respectful of that and also of understanding, how intense the showrunner’s job is and it’s because they have to juggle five hundred things. I told Angela Kang when we came back for Season 10 on “The Walking Dead,” I’m like, “I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you deal with eighteen series regulars and the whole thing because it’s really, you can never ever explain to anybody. Just the sheer volume of stuff.” And Julia, who’s my producer, who’s over there, she saved my life and like fifty times because I had people around me that just loved it and wanted it to be great. And now the trailers out there. So, I pray everybody likes it as much as we do.