Films Set In Department Stores

"[to Thurman] Thank you for giving that letter to the cops. I forgot I asked you to do it, but it's a good thing you did, or 'Santa's Little Helper' would have plugged his ass. And now the cops know I wrote it, which is gonna keep my ass out of jail. That, plus everyone agreeing that the Phoenix police department shooting an unarmed Santa was even more fucked up than Rodney King. Cops are treating me like fucking royalty, which is new in my experience. They're making me a sensitivity counselor so that tragedies like this would never again embarrass the department. Meanwhile, I told the cops that you had no one to take the fuck care of you. So they set it up with Mrs. Santa's sister until your dad gets out in one year and three months. They made her a guardian pro-temp. As for my little helper, I'm sorry to tell you that he and his prune faced, mail order wife are going to be exploring mountains with your dad. I just hope your dad doesn't go sucking shit from them like I did."

"Wish in one hand, shit in the other and see which one fills up first."

"[to Thurman] Jesus, kid. When I was your age, I didn't need no fucking gorilla. And I wasn't as big as one of your legs. Four kids beat me up one time and I went crying home to my daddy. You know what he did? He kicked my ass. You know why? It's because he was a mean, drunk son of a bitch. And when he wasn't busy busting my ass, he was putting cigarettes out on my neck. The world ain't fair. You've gotta take what you need when you can get it. You've gotta learn to stand up for yourself. You gonna have to quit being a pussy and kick these kids in the balls or something...or don't. Shit. I don't care. Just leave me the hell out of it."

"[to his boss] I'm fired, pick up my paycheck on the way out, never come back..."

"Mother, there's got to be a better way. Please, gods. Please help me find it."

"[introducing herself] My name is Ema Hesire, but you can call me Emmy."

"[to Jonathan, coming to life] When you were making me, didn't you feel a certain inspiration? Almost like your hands were moved by force not of this world? You made this body so that I could come to life!"

"Tonight, we're gonna do something special, something that this store has never seen before!"

"You've got good hands. I liked the way they felt when you were putting me together."

"[looking at a stereo system playing] Where do they hide all the musicians?"

"[seeing Mannequin Emmy in a store window] It's you! I wanted to take you home, but they wouldn't let me. You know you're the first thing I've created in a really long time that made me feel like an artist."

"I must be losing my mind. I guess all artists fall in love with their work, but you just seem so special."

"[on the phone] Mom, lemme ask you, did I ever do anything really strange as a child? Is there any history of insanity in the family?"

"Why don't we stick to good old-fashioned hand tools for the time being, okay?"

"I'm not the same guy I used to be. I finally found a place where I belong."

"[introducing himself] Hollywood. Hollywood Montrose. Ooh! Doesn't it just sing!"

"[to Jonathan] At least, she'll never tell you that your hips are too fat."

"Diets don't work! It's those jelly doughnuts. They call to me in the middle of the night: "Hollywood! Hollywood! Come and get me, Hollywood!" I can't stay away from them. It's like you and women's dressing rooms."

"Rumor Control has it that the board wants to fire your little behind. You let me in there at those so-and-sos. I'll straighten them out, tout de suite. How can they think of firing you?"

"It's obvious to this country girl that you're an A-number one creative freak. Imagine pretending you're a stock boy when you're a major artiste. I am so jealous."

"You know I would never bother you when you're getting a piece of wood, but this is muy importante. Your Hollywood needs help. I need your creative muse."

"[to Jonathan] Please. Listen, I pride myself on being able to size up a job applicant and see just what kind of executive potential he has. I have just the job for you."

"[at the board room] We would all love to know what possessed Switcher to create such a window display. Did you see those crowds gaping on the sidewalks? It's an embarrassment!"

"What arrogance! That worm of a stock boy has created an affront to the dignity of this store. I'll have it taken down immediately and make sure that lunatic never works in this town again."

"Well, you must lead a charmed life. It was all I could do to save your skin in there. No thanks are necessary, Switcher!"

"[to Felix] You people that work at night scare me."

"[to himself] I've put my future in the hands of a vegetable."

"Claire Timkin: Mr. Richards, this store has never been more successful, and it's all due to Jonathan Switcher. I don't care if he puts a rubber glove on his head and runs naked around the store screaming: "Hi, I'm a squid!""

"Roxie Shield: [notices Jonathan with Emmy, suddenly surprised] Jonathan, you're riding around town with a mannequin on the back of your motorcycle! What is wrong with this picture?!"

"Captain Felix Maxwell: [after Emmy, as a mannequin, has flipped off him and Mr. Richards] Enough of this surveillance crap! Captain Felix Maxwell takes this from no mannequin!"

"Jonathan Switcher loved talking to his work, but he never expected it to talk back. Now his life's heading in a different direction."

"Sometimes life is strange and wonderful... he's strange and she's wonderful. She may be a mannequin, but he's no dummy."

"Just because Jonathan Switcher has fallen in love with a piece of wood, it doesn't make him a dummy."

"Some guys have all the luck!"

"When she comes to life, anything can happen!"

""Dawn" is a carefully crafted work that shouldn't be confused with run-of-the-mill horror exploitation films. If we can survive the gruesome imagery and see beyond the obligatory scenes of the horror genre, Romero gives us a savagely satiric vision of America that's not easy to forget. This is both a very difficult film and a very good one."

"I found that this film actually did something a lot of modern zombie movies fail to do - surprise me; The characters had been so well established that I found myself saying "They won't kill him, he's too important." I felt this emphasized the point Romero himself says he tries to make in most of these films, which is that they are films about people and how they cope in tough situations, not zombies."

"A few weeks later, George finally decided which ending to use (we’re keeping it a secret) and he had worked up a beginning, which had worried him greatly. He was criticized in Night for having a deux ex machina – in that case a radioactive satellite – activate the zombies. Dawn will begin with a TV newscast – with the film’s credits over – just announcing that the zombies are out and about. I called him up to suggest that recombinant DNA would be a good cause, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “I want it to be unexplained because the zombies really just come out of to rather than a third party. It just happens.”"

"“The sellouts,” he finally continued, “the scientific community is saying, ‘Let’s feed ’em. They’re wasteful. They eat only five percent of a body and then the body’s intact enough to revive and it comes back as a zombie. The government says we should feed them and control that pattern – which seems probably what those cats would do. So if someone has died in your family, cut them into meal-size bits.” He was roaring with laughter and the businessmen at breakfast around us began throwing odd looks toward our table. George wiped tears of laughter from his eyes and went on: “That’s probably the way it would go. My idea to take it further is to actually have human operatives that are trying to preserve their own kind of operative situation and in fact using the zombies initially, training them to serve their own needs. There are beginnings of that in Dawn. I show a few flashes of intelligence or at least a learning capability in the zombies. If there are human sellouts that first start teaching them to do things so that they become really operative, then it’s over. But that is also what’s happening to us, those kinds of monsters, our corporate monsters that prey on us more as we fear them less. I mean, that’s this whole false security concept of the mall, being funneled into it, the temple to consumerism, the mall. And being perfectly happy, you know, absolutely lulled by it and yet eaten by it like that.”"

"Despite Romero’s avowal that he’s just making “comic books,” I reminded him, he gets very close to a message when he talks about “human sellouts” and “operatives” versus the “alternate society.”"

"I mentioned to him that I liked the mall better at night, that the zombies seemed to have more purpose than the shoppers. “That’s how I got the idea!” he said. “I know the people who own it and I went through the mall, empty, one time and I said, ‘Holy shit! That’s the perfect place for the fulcral episode where we can show the false security of the whole consumer America trip. That’s why this is in color – Night was black and white – because of the mall. So I wrote a little sketch about it and then put it in a drawer while I did some other things I’m really surprised no one else picked up on the idea, because now there are these shopping developments where you can live on top and work and shop down below and never have to leave the building. That’s a trip. In this film, the mall becomes the cause. The four heroes get in there to get some Civil Defense water and food and then they rack out and this consumerism, it’s too tempting for them to resist. They arm themselves heavily, they become banditos fighting for all that stuff.” Are the bikers then supposed to be an antidote for them or are they actually an exaggeration of that; racing through the mall at l00 miles an hour and scooping up color TVs? “I think they’re the ultimate of what the heroes are becoming, fighting for control of the Mothership. In fact, when they first see the raiders, the bikers coming over the hill, Peter takes off his new watch and all his other shit and that’s a flash toward realization. The raiders are consumerism at its extreme and they just storm in there and go bananas and then of course that causes the downfall. But the heroes, even though Roger is dying at that point, he still has his candies and radios and shit … and that’s why they’re so extreme in their garb during the attack scenes, all the crossed gun belts, fighting over microwave ovens, I mean…” He doubled over with laughter. Romero has a weird slant on the world, to say the least. With Night and Dawn he has filmed some of the most explicit violence imaginable and yet he can argue, convincingly, that it’s detached violence because it’s directed at things rather than people; that the zombies become merely so many insects to be swatted aside. At the same time, he’s starting to make the zombies smarter and more sympathetic because he genuinely likes them. On a set, he resembles a giant, bearded shepherd with his poor dead flock shuffling after him. Sometimes he refers to his zombies as “sharks,” which is a startling but dead-on comparison."

"“This is beginning to feel like Dachau,” a man beside me was saying later as we watched a zombie get his hand – very bloodily – cut off in a door. “This is far beyond Sam Peckinpah.” The man speaking was Gary Zellet, who supplied the weapons for the film and handled explosives and breakaway special effects. Among many other projects, he worked on both Godfather films. He is one of the few crew members not acting in the film. “I didn’t want to,” he said, “this is getting depressing. Twenty gallons of blood used, animal intestines for the zombies to eat – this morning I was eating a corned barf sandwich and somebody said, ‘Hey that’s a prop.’ We use corned beef in some of the artificial arms. Real amputees volunteered, makes it look real. I’ve rigged over 500 bullet squibs. We kill ’em every possible way, burn ’em, shoot ’em blow their heads off. It’s good there’s some comic relief now and then because this movie runs like a machine gun."

"Sharon Ceccatti, the nurse zombie, came up to congratulate me as I caught my breath. “Is it always like this?” I asked. “You bet,” she said. “Most mornings I go home and I shake. I can’t sleep.”"

"I stationed myself in the Pup-A-Go-Go stand and the minute Romero yelled “action” something remarkable happened: my eyes went out of focus, my hands clenched grotesquely, and I developed a lurching gait as I went after that motorcycle. I wanted that food and I almost got it. By the time the scene was shot twice – once with a mannequin that is beheaded – I was our of breath and my pulse was pounding."

"As I listened to the dialogue in the scene in front of Penney’s, I caught one line that began to offer an explanation. The four heroes are trying to figure out what’s going on, and one of them says, “It’s something my granddaddy, who used to practice macumba in Trinidad, told me: ‘When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.'” “George,” I asked, “where did you get that line?” He laughed: “I just made that up. Truly. On a drunken night when I was really crashing to finish the script and I thought that was kind of nice. It was from something Dario Argento [the Italian director of Suspiria, who’s doing the sound effects and score for Dawn] told me. My family is Cuban and Dario said, ‘Well you have a Caribbean background and that’s why you’re into the zombie thing; zombies originated in Haiti.’ I said, well, all right, and I just figured that’s something a voodoo priest might say. Whee! I’m just having fun, man.”"

"“Maybe the bad guys win here,” he said, “and I like the switch – but I’m not sure the zombies are the bad guys because we can’t help being zombies. I love zombies.”"

"Hill was carrying a Thompson submachine gun as we walked. A retired Air Force officer, he’s the film’s weapons coordinator, but he really likes being a zombie. “This is supposed to be a horror movie,” he said, “but it’s also an action thriller It’s a whiz-bang. We’ve fired thousands of rounds of blanks; every type of weapon available. “Now, let me tell you about being a zombie, When you go into your zomb, you’re in a fantasy. I go into the role feeling I am the living dead, I can’t focus on things, I can’t get it together. I researched it in books – the wide-open eyes, the clutching hands, the slow movements. Then I made my own zombie. I asked George and he said, ‘Be your own zombie.’ I intend to be the best zombie there ever was. I want people to come away from this movie saying, ‘Wow, he was a good zombie.’ Sharon, the nurse zombie, got into her zomb so heavily the other night, she made herself sick. We’ve got some good zombies. When we were shooting the exteriors and it was zero degrees, there was this 300-pound guy showed up every night in a bathing suit. He said, ‘I’m not cold. I love it.'”"

"With 'Dawn,' I wanted the slick look, I wanted to bring out the nature of the shopping center, the retail displays, the mannequins. There are times when maybe you reflect that the mannequins are more attractive but less real - less sympathetic, even - than the zombies. Put those kinds of images side by side, and you raise all sorts of questions."

"Some audience members at Dallas complained that the film never offers any rational explanation for the sudden plague of zombies. But of course not. No explanation would be rational, and any explanation would undercut the creepiness of the danger. What the film does do is raise sneaky questions in our minds. It's impossible, for example, to watch the zombies marching through a shopping mall, accompanied by Muzak, and not find a satiric statement on the mildly trance-like state Muzak is supposed to inspire in shoppers. It's disturbing to see images of horror juxtaposed with the gaudy artifacts of a lawn furniture display. And it's difficult to make up our minds about the endless violence inflicted on the zombies. They are shotgunned, run over, hacked to bits, decapitated by helicopter blades . . . and after a while we notice that our reaction to this mayhem is curiously complex. On the one hand, the violence isn't as disturbing as it would be against "real" human beings: Since the victims are without intelligence or personalities (and, for that matter, are already dead), their fates are less compelling. And yet, at the same time, we feel a sympathy for them: It is not their fault that they're zombies, and their activities aren't deliberately anti-social. It's just in their nature to eat human flesh."

"[On a TV set, Dr. Millard Rausch argues with a TV reporter about doomsday scenarios] It's really all over...isn't it?"