Director Zack Snyder banned chairs and sitting on the set of his zombie heist film Army of the Dead.
Snyder explained his on-set ban while appearing on The Playlist's The Fourth Wall Podcast. He opened up about his process serving as director, cinematographer and camera operator on the upcoming Netflix film. "There's no sitting down, like, I banned chairs from the set," Snyder shared. "But the nice thing is, it's really intimate. I can just talk to the actors right there, I'm not back in a monitor across the room. It was definitely the most purely engaged I’ve been making a movie."
Snyder's strict ban seemed to contrast Army of the Dead star Dave Bautista's response when he was asked who was the more demanding director between Snyder and Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. "James is a control freak…which I don't mind because he’s a great director," Bautista claimed. "Zack just seems to be willing to give you much more freedom and flexibility."
Bautista also shared that he signed on to be in Army of the Dead so that he could learn directing tricks from Snyder. "I wanted to work with him for years and it's really just so I can steal all his shit," Bautista admitted. "I want to steal his stuff. I want to watch him work, cause he's great. Like visually, he's a visual master, and I wanted to get in and learn from him and steal his stuff. So I could go on and direct my films and take credit for his work. I'll steal all his stuff and my films will look like his films." Bautista cited Snyder's leadership, use of natural lighting and background focus as some of the filmmaking tricks he has picked up while working on Army of the Dead.
Last year, Tenet director Christopher Nolan was the subject of controversy when one of his frequent collaborators, Anne Hathaway, said that Nolan banned chairs from the Dark Knight Rises set during an interview with actor Hugh Jackman, who worked with Nolan in The Prestige. "He doesn't allow chairs, and his reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they're sitting, they're not working," Hathaway revealed. However, a representative of Nolan's clarified Hathaway's comments shortly after, saying that only cell phones and cigarettes were banned on his sets. "The chairs Anne was referring to are the directors chairs clustered around the video monitor, allocated on the basis of hierarchy not physical need," she explained.
Directed and co-written by Zack Snyder, Army of the Dead stars Dave Bautista, Garret Dillahunt, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Raul Castillo, Tig Notaro, Theo Rossi and Ana de la Reguera. The film is now in theaters and is streaming on Netflix.
Source: The Playlist