Doc of the Dead: An Examination of Zombie Culture

If the title Doc of the Dead has you thinking Frankenstein, you’re on the wrong track. That’s doc as in documentary, and dead as in walking around moaning for brains. Doc of the Dead is the new movie currently in production by Exhibit A Pictures – the guys who brought us The People vs. George Lucas and The Life and Times of Paul the Psychic Octopus. You may be thinking, “But how can they make a documentary about zombies? I mean, they’re not real, right?” Doc of the Dead film makers Alexandre O. Philippe et al. will examine elements of zombie culture including media, fandom and speculation about a zombie apocalypse.

Zombies have become so mainstream that you can even watch The Walking Dead,a show based on Robert Kirkman’s graphic novel series with the same name, on basic cable television. Zombie movies have been around for a good long time,George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) being one of the most well-known classics, though not the first zombie movie ever. We've even seen zombies evolve from the slow-moving, rotting, shuffling corpses tofast and vicious viral cannibals, as in 28 Days Later and its sequel 28 Weeks Later. You can battle zombies first hand in video games like Resident Evil, and read novels ranging from funny, like Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, to seriousliterature, like Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. 

The zombie inundation is not limited to the inanimate; fans have brought it to the streets with the zombie walk – an underground organized parade through thecity in which the participants are costumed and behave like zombies. The earliest recorded events were in Sacramento, California (2002) and Toronto,Ontario (2003) and have since spread like the Rage virus – a kinder, more amiable Rage virus. Fans of The Walking Dead and zombies ingeneral can run from, shamble as or gawk at zombies in the Walking Dead Escape obstacle course.

Exhibit A Pictures will give full exposure of zombie culture and fandom through interviews with authors, artists, directors, organizers – the creators of the zombie merchandise, media and events we love – and crowd sourced fan videos, for which the submission guidelines are found at the official website. With the help of Jonathan London of Geekscape and Mr. Plinkett of Red Letter Media,they’ll also conduct a thorough investigation of the possibility of a zombie apocalypse and what it would be like if it were to occur. At this time they've conducted some of the interviews they plan to include, and they've made a teaser trailer. Among the talks they've already recorded are big names like George Romero, Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) and Matt Mogk (Head of the Zombie Research Society), and they will be co-producing a zombie town hall meeting with George Romero, Max Brooks (World War Z) and Steven Schlozman (The Zombie Autopsies) as a Denver Film Festival special event on November 7. In order to retain rights to distribute the film as they choose,they’re hosting a fund raiser which you can contribute to through Kickstarter. After the fund raising even they plan to continue conducting interviews, and they hope for a summer of 2014 release date.