A Different Kind of Zombie Flick: Meera Menon, Kiran Deol and George Basil on Didn’t Die
Early in our Sundance journey this year, we discovered one of the experiences that would be one of our favorite of the entire fest – Meera Menon’s zombie flick Didn’t Die. It’s got its fair share of exciting chases, grisly zombie killings, and harrowing situations, but it’s also got some things that many zombie films don’t. The human drama feels real and lived-in, and the tone shifts nimbly from dramatic, to comedic, to adrenaline-fueled and back. It’s an impressive achievement for Menon and her actors, and we sat down to talk to the director flanked by two of those actors, Kiran Deol Sunnyside) and George Basil (Crashing).
Paste Magazine: I think we’ve seen 10 Sundance films so far, and Didn’t Die is our number one favorite, so far, of everything we’ve seen. It’s not even my genre, you know. So I definitely have questions that I wanna wanna ask each of you. Meera, I’d love to to start out with you because one of the things that I really loved about the movie was the way you very deftly handle tonal shifts and some sort of wildly different tones that somehow still work and feel believable and feel natural in the movie. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that?
Meera Menon: I’m so glad you feel that way. I’m expecting some people to be like, why wasn’t it just one thing? It couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. But to me, it’s because I like all of it, you know. The editor and I would always talk about humor, heart and horror. Those were the three things we were looking for in the movie. And actually heart, humor, horror would be the order of importance for me really. It was a very heart-driven endeavor from the gate. And and for me, yeah, I really wanted to make a zombie movie for people that weren’t necessarily tuned into the genre to begin with, and to really explore the emotionality around it.
And I’ll say in terms of the kind of confidence to be able to execute on something like that, it’s very challenging. I didn’t even know we had done it until the composer stepped in. And he really cohered the movie and all the different things we were doing, whether it’s John Carpenter or “Beautiful Dreamer.” All the different kinds of sonic references in the movie really helped bring that to a place where I was like, ‘oh I think this is actually riding that kind of middle ground that we were really looking for between all of those feelings.’
Paste: In a lot of horror movies when the characters are in crisis the entire time, I find it’s hard for me to to get there and fully identify with them and get in their shoes, because I’ve never been in life threatening crisis 24 hours a day. And I guess because Didn’t Die doesn’t take place right after the zombie outbreak happened, there’s been some time for the characters to get used to it. There’s this really weird sort of pushing up together of kind of an almost normal feeling life with this incredibly horrible thing that’s happening. Insert whatever political metaphor you want here about how we’re all living our lives … And I thought that really showed in both of your performances, the two actors we have here. We’d love to ask you some questions about those performances as well.
George, one of the things that struck me was when we see you come into the meeting place for the podcast meeting. And you just look super shell shocked, which I mean, obviously, everybody is a little bit because of everything that’s going on. But you’re extra shell shocked because of what you just experienced, and you kind of tell the audience about that. And I just loved how you visibly exuded “Holy crap. This crazy thing just happened. And now I’m holding a baby, and I don’t know what to do.” And you’re sort of like looking for help with all of these people who are also in their own states of panic. For some it’s at the surface, you know, for others under the surface, maybe at this point. But everybody doesn’t know what to do. And then you’re just like, let me just give you this baby. I was just curious what you were sort of pulling from for that particular performance, because it really resonated with me.
George Basil: I mean, I exist in that place. I mean moment to moment. You don’t know shit so. It’s life, you know? And in terms of what I used as an actor to get in there, I knew that character Vincent, was all by himself, and I knew he, like everyone else, had dealt with a very traumatic loss, and I thought of him being in that attic, and living alone, and kind of just waiting for whatever comes. And you know, arming yourself and having all these like external defense mechanisms. But in the end you’re just a soft, gooey mess, and we’re all just the same vulnerable thing.
But then, in addition to that, I’m holding this absolutely totally vulnerable thing, this baby. You know, I have a child. I have a 16 year old kid. She’s not a little one anymore, but I remember the feeling of walking across the street and holding her, and being like, my senses, everything, just my alertness, things heightened in a way that I didn’t expect. I didn’t plan. I didn’t learn it. It just falls on you, and you know I tapped right into it, and it wasn’t hard whether it was a baby, the actual baby that I held, or even when it was the weighted dummy. It was real. It was all real. It was always something it was a package to protect. And so yeah, walking in and feeling that sort of tension, and vulnerability was already kind of built in, wasn’t it? I didn’t have to find a motivation. It was in my hands.
Paste: Kiran, your performance in Didn’t Die is such a coming out party for you. I mean, I don’t wanna … I don’t want to call it a breakthrough, because obviously you’re already a successful actor. But wow, it’s just a star-making turn for you. I think I was so impressed with your performance, how in such an unnatural situation, at how natural it was. I never for a second felt like it was a performance. It really just felt like I was watching this character go through this stuff, you know, and it wasn’t even until after the movie that I said, ‘Oh, my God! That was a great performance.’ One of the things that I thought as I was looking back at it was, you know, the whole movie hinges, I think, on your relationship with each character. We’re primarily concerned with the other characters inasmuch as they relate to you, and you relate to them. Always, a lot falls on every lead character’s shoulders, but especially on yours in this film, because you also carry the weight of sort of bringing all those other characters to us. And you have very different feelings about each of those characters. I’m wondering how you kept that straight in your mind, these very complicated backstories with each of these people, very emotionally fraught backstories with each of these people that the whole movie hinges on us believing.
Kiran Deol: Yeah, that’s a great question, and a very astute question. And thank you. Thank you so much. That’s so kind. I think you can only play an arc if you are given an opportunity to get to play a character that you see from the beginning, middle and end. So it felt like a really big privilege to get to exercise that muscle. And I think, because Meera and I have collaborated before and done an independent film before, it was easier. That’s an advantage when you’re a small movie is that everyone’s so down to work, everyone wants to be there. And the one thing you really have control over – you don’t have the budget, you don’t have whatever – is the relationships, and how you can build the relationships with each individual character. So that’s something process-wise I take very seriously before we ever start filming.
So in the lead up, we were doing a ton of outline work. With the baby brother I was in New York, and he lives there, and so we spent a good solid weekend together, and like build moments so something like the jacket thing happened in my hotel room. And we were able to start to pull little pieces into it, to get a sense of what our dynamic is together. He came out to Los Angeles for a week, so that we could spend time together, which I think helped to build what our specific dynamic can feel and look like in terms of our rhythm together. So that when we go into the shoot, which is very short, we can kind of hit the ground running. I did the same thing with George. We met up a bunch of times in Los Angeles and kicked it and went to a theater performance of his. You know, if you really dated somebody, you would have this entire backstory of like, how they’re annoying and what they did to you, and how they’re funny and how they’re charming–all the things. So it’s how can you try to give yourself the gift of experience so that you’re bringing in something that feels natural and rich and will just be present.
And there on camera with Samrat, I was a lot less worried because I’ve just known him for years. We worked together on a little independent movie that was very improv based, also horror. We played siblings there. I knew that one would be there because it has always been kind of like a big brother vibe. And then I didn’t spend any time with Katie because I wasn’t supposed to like her. And so, you know, don’t work on that.
I remember making a documentary in Nepal. It really struck me when I was there that like, this is not the BBC. You know, bombs aren’t always coming down, or the war isn’t always happening. What it is, is that there’s high stakes, and you don’t know when a moment of violence is going to happen. And that’s what makes the environment so tense is that it’s always humming in the background, and that’s what it feels like to live through Covid or to, you know, experience the fires, or whatever it is, it’s that tension in the in the background that exists while you have an internal conflict or trying to trying to keep things normal and move forward hopefully without losing the sense of your own spirit and agency.
Paste: Yeah.
Menon: I just wanted to say, this is such a great question, because it’s so interesting to hear you guys talk about your process. I wanted them across from each other because she’s an incredible standup, and he’s an incredible improviser. And as comedians, that was just interesting, what those two schools of comedy would look like together. And I think you kind of hear through the way they’re talking about, like the way George talks about how the baby gave him so much, and how Kiran has this whole kind of preparation going into this. It’s just interesting to kind of see that play out. Because that was the intention to put these two people that might have these two different approaches together.
Paste: The pacing of Didn’t Die is so nice, and I always say that that’s one of the great things about working with comedians and musicians. Comedians and musicians both have such a sense of rhythm and a sense of timing that I find that usually in my own edits, in those conversations I don’t have a lot of fine tuning to do, because they’ve already found the pace that that conversation needs to be. I’m curious if you found the same.
Menon: I was interested in using improvising in a dramatic context. They weren’t making an out and out comedy, though there’s comedy in the movie. With actors in general, like the exercise of paraphrasing, or like kind of going through a scene and using your own language. I like doing that with actors. To begin with, the TV writers I work with don’t like when I do that. But I think that’s a way to make it feel real to begin with.
Deol: The one really nice thing about working with George and knowing that he was an improviser. Like the scene in the field, it was set that Vincent and Vanita are in a field, and they’re talking, and then they get attacked. So there wasn’t a scene in that one, you know what I mean? So it’s like, but because it’s him. It’s like, there’s a very – you can do it when you do it five times and each time it’s a different conversation, each time we can try something different. And you feel comfortable and safe to take risks. I know if I throw something at George, he’s going to respond in a way that is very different than what I would have written, and I think that’s very cool when someone has their own comedic timing. That’s different than what you would have written, because then it’s surprising, and it’s very fun. And it forces you to be so, so present. And that’s a really dynamic way to work.
Paste: That’s beautiful. Well, I would watch a five hour movie that was just about these two characters talking.
Menon: It’s funny when you say that, because, these guys were like, what references should we be watching? But prior to going into it, I didn’t tell them zombie movies. I told them the Before Sunrise trilogy. That’s the movie I wanted them to be living in, even though I was gonna be externally making a zombie film.
Paste: In most zombie movies, typically there are either slow zombies or fast zombies. I love how the zombies of Didn’t Die evolved. They started out one way, and everybody got comfortable and complacent, and they’re like, it’s only at night that we need to be afraid. During the day we’re safe. And I love that someone says “I saw one in the day” and the reaction is “No, you didn’t, you didn’t.” Everybody is afraid to accept that, because their safety that they found is now threatened. And so I just wondered, is that something that you wanted to bring in because you didn’t see it in other types of horror movies. Just that idea of them evolving.
Menon: With more recent movies, the fast zombie thing is more in vogue. But I think for us we were really looking for this movie to also be an examination of our lived experience of Covid and really this concept of like mutation and evolution kind of came from that. We’ve never really entered a post-Covid world; we’re just dealing with that. We’re just living with it and as it changes, we also have to change our behavior. Also, we wanted to just talk about how grief and loss and these kind of catastrophes never conclude. They keep going in various ways. They just have different chapters, and it’s a good metaphor for this idea of finding safety. You know what I mean? You find safety in a moment, and then the bar changes, which is how so much of an environmental disaster or any kind of disaster feels, like we are all looking for a sense of internal safety. And it’s great that the bar keeps moving in this movie, because I think that’s how living feels a lot of the time, too.
Paste: Absolutely. Yeah.
Menon: It speaks how we’re kind of, you know, exploring so many different tones. I think my movie is primarily about grief, and I don’t think grief has one tone. I think you’re swinging wildly between moments of laughter and sadness, and when you’re dealing with real loss in this world.
Paste: Absolutely. You can’t process all the grief at once, so you do it little by little.
Deol: And the will to want to find the joke or laugh, or like joy, is an act of rebellion in the face of that grief. You know? It’s a way to stick your middle finger up at that grief, you know. And say, I get to re-own this experience, no matter what happens to me.
Paste: That’s really beautiful, Kiran. I love that.