Bong of the Dead North American Premiere
For the past year I have been following the hype around Thomas Newman’s Bong Of The Dead. All I kept hearing about was this epic $5000 zombie movie soon to be “cult hit”, made by one man in his basement. If you’re a die-hard zombie fanatic then you’ve probably already heard about this up and coming visionary first time director. According to Thomas Newman he has been paving the road to his own success one single digital frame at a time, with his scope set on busting into Hollywood. The filmmaker claims he had literally locked himself away for over 3 years working vigorously holding hours suitable only for the undead.
His journey began back in 2008 when he had apparently only written 7 pages of a script, with no title, and had only shot a single sequence involving 3 zombies ascending from a dark tunnel. The whole sequence was beautifully orchestrated to Darren Arinofskys “Requiem for a Dream” sound track and was gory enough to make you squirm and scream for more. The sequence had mass appeal and production value due to the realistic gore and zombie make-up provided by Mike fields. Newman pitched Mike Fields on the concept for his film then sealed the deal by offering him a co-producer position. It was impressive to see what Thomas Newman had achieved for zero dollars and proof enough that perhaps he would be able to pull off an entire feature length movie of the same caliber with only $5000.
The mini sequence or “Hook”, as he called it, worked according to his plans because he was able to quickly attract a cast and crew consisting of friends, family and local talent recruited from Craigslist. Once he had assembled his team and secured the locations he set out to shoot the entire movie in an ambitious 15 days. He was also determined to shoot the whole movie on a single borrowed HD cam which in his words, “some people laughed at” at the time. The result is a very stylistic polished film that one would not expect given the circumstances and equipment or lack there of. That said, now that the film is finally complete and out there, the praises are pouring in from fans, critics and major festivals from around the world.
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