Lessons Of Mass Destruction
Kevin Hamedani Looks into the Looking Glass
by Leone Fogle
Director Kevin Hamedani’s debut narrative feature, ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, screened to sold-out audiences at the 2009 Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and tied as third place runner-up for SIFF’s Best Film Golden Space Needle Audience award.
He might not know what lies in the depths of the human heart, but Kevin Hamedani has an inkling that something alien to human generosity lurks in small towns. He and producer John Sinno were location scouting north of Seattle when on a whim they drove into Port Gamble, WA, a beautifully restored historic lumber mill town. In its perfection it resembles a movie set, and something rang true for Hamedani. “Before the horror hits, the town is supposed to look artificial. Small towns are frightening; there are a lot of dark secrets.”
Hamedani should know. Although from all appearances he might easily have just jet-setted back from a Mediterranean seaside village, and he speaks only a few phrases of Farsi, when September 11 happened the entire weight of 4,000 years of Persian history and U.S.-Iranian tensions was on his back. Iranian-U.S. relations were still shaky years after the 1979 student-led revolutionary takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, but in 2001 there was no connection between Al Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center towers and Iranian dissidents. It didn’t matter; Hamedani is convinced his Edmonds neighbors were afraid of him. They stopped greeting him and he feels they should have known him better than that. When on an airplane he later found himself eyeing each Middle Eastern passenger with suspicion, he walked to the back of the plane and inadvertently looked at himself in the mirror. He had an epiphany: “I look exactly like the people I was staring at. You have to work against the tendency to discriminate,” he says.
At the University of Washington, where Hamedani earned a degree in comparative literature in 2005 with a focus in cinema studies, there was no discrimination. “I was a freshman at the time, and no one at the U. ‘Dub’ gave a shit.” But Hamedani still cared enough about his experience in 2002 to start writing a screenplay. “I saw Shaun of the Dead [classic comedic zombie flick by Edgar Wright] and got depressed. I thought, ‘someone’s already done it,’ and put it away for two or four years.” What emerged in 2006, when he had several shorts to his credit, is a portrait of a town so caught up in surviving that its townspeople are finding it literally impossible to remain human. It’s a portrait drenched in political satire.
In ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, overseas Islamic terrorists unleash a deadly virus in Port Gamble that turns its normally phlegmatic inhabitants into terrorizing, cannibalizing zombies. Within minutes the infected turn ashen and are driven to pursue, then rip and devour healthy flesh. One of the first close encounters with “undead” is with a middle-aged mother, played by Linda Jensen. Her gay son Tom is attempting to ‘come out’ to her. When Tom yells that he is gay and she stumbles back into the dining room ill, one cannot escape the disagreeable feeling that this is how Mrs. Hunt really feels about her homosexual son.
The film’s special effects enthrall the viewer to the screen in a horribly memorable way, and the victims’ disgusting transmutations are relevant to its underlying topic. (Hamedi refers to Tom Devlin and 1313fx, creator of ZMD’s remarkably detailed special effects, as “an amazing guy who took his time and bent over backwards to create these amazing effects for us.”) The viral zombie epidemic is an extended metaphor for the viciousness of small-mindedness, the tired bigotry that needs only an impetus like national disaster to tip it into bloodthirstiness. Survivors of the epidemic include two female and two male gay characters resistant to the conformist strictures of small town life. Hamedani philosophically says, “Humans tend to be zombies when they follow a certain routine.” His father, who in the film plays the father of young female protagonist Frida (and who with his accent lends a certain cinema verité to the film), worked 20 years as a restaurateur in Seattle. It’s not hard to discern that the younger Hamedani has been traumatized by his country’s lead up to military engagement in Iraq. “There was a lot of support for the war in the beginning. It was fear. There was too much, too fast, too soon, and people believe what they see on T.V. There was no reliable news.”
Hamedani’s inspirations for his film are the cinematic satires-Dr. Strangelove by director Stanley Kubrick and Election by director Alexander Payne. Kubrick is known to have been haunted by the nuclear arms build-up, and his objective was to hold his audience (with comedy) long enough so that it might give consideration to an unpleasant topic. Hamedani thought about Payne throughout his shoot. “The writing in Election is so good. [Payne] loves his characters and the comedy is respectful.” He adds, “Back in the day zombie films were scary. Now they’re often comedic, but not satirical.” He acknowledges that sophisticated moviegoers don’t warm to genre films, and he didn’t know how Seattle audiences would respond to ZMD– in spite of its political satire– so he was thrilled when it went over big. “The audience reacted exactly as I’d hoped.” And adds, “Seattle’s a very intellectual, highbrow town. Sometimes I get frustrated with elitism. It’s hurtful for young filmmakers to be surrounded by elitists who preach against genre films.”
Hamedani takes his cues from Francis Ford Coppola, and Francis Ford Coppola’s first feature film, Dementia 13, was a horror flick. The things he’s learned about filmmaking from Coppola have informed the most important decisions of his career. Godfather Part II is his favorite movie; he did his thesis on it. “I’m obsessed with storytelling, having two stories, cutting back and forth, and I got it from Godfather Part II.” Hamedani thinks horror is a great way to start, that the lighting is very cinematic, that it lends itself to great storytelling. Hamedani was able to talk to Coppola for a moment during the party after Tetro, which showcased at the 2009 SIFF festival, and tell him his first feature was horror. Coppola was supportive. Hamedani says that SIFF has been very good to him, and he calls Carl Spence, its artistic director “awesome.”
When Hamedani talks about encounters with others in the industry, those who have helped him and influenced him, he does so with gusto. His passion for and his appreciation of his particular cinematic journey are palpable. The influences on him are wide-ranging. He says:
“I like John Cassavetes, Kurosawa, Sam Raimi (Evil Dead). I like Kiarostami (A Taste of Cherry). I love Antonioni. I studied Fellini for a good year; I met his co-writer for Intervista. Tetro is a really good, simple, strange film; I could see Fellini the whole time. I like Scorcese, Herzog, Bergman. I like Czech new wave, Forman’s Loves of a Blonde. I like all (Judd) Apatow films, I’d like to work with him. Spielberg is so good with actors, the acting is so good in Munich (Hamedani thinks Munich is Spielberg’s most restrained, mature film). Young filmmakers focus too much on camera work– let’s actually care about the writing, care about the actors, the same way we would if they were in a drama [theatre piece].”
The dramatic arcs for each of the characters in ZMD were crafted with astute attention to story, genre and affect. John Sinno, producer of ZMD and 2007 Oscar-nominated documentary Iraq in Fragments, hired writer Ramon Isao to assist with the ‘fleshing out’ of the characters, but Sinno and Hamedani remained actively involved in reworking the story. Hamedani recounts, “At one point John said, ‘we need more horror, go write a horror scene.’ That’s when I wrote the scene with the little girl.” The film’s main protagonist is Frida, an Iranian-American college student home for un unspecified length of time. When Frida lends a hand to a terror-stricken girl, the expectation that a strong adult will protect this cute-as-a-button child and that they will go through the movie and survive this ordeal together is misleading. Hamedani refuses to be subdued by expectation or by what has worked in the past. “I don’t like safe films. That was my middle finger to the filmmakers who use cute kids to keep the audience invested.” Hamedani’s investment is to drop us into a kind of war-zone that very few Americans have ever experienced: one of uncertainty, carnage and mayhem.
The most disturbing scene in the film is the one in which quick-witted, good-natured Frida is tortured; her only crime is the misfortune of having Iranian antecedents. How did Hamedani know in 2006 the extent to which the CIA was involved in torturing terror suspects? “Abu Ghraib. I was going off what I’d heard about innocent people being taken and locked up in small rooms and tortured.” How did he know the audience could tolerate this excruciating scene, coming on the heels of 2009 disclosures about the extent of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used in Iraq and other places? “I hope the audience feels uneasy about torture. It’s supposed to take you out of the film. You’re laughing, ‘ha, ha,’ and then… ‘is this supposed to be funny?’” Sinno warned that putting a nail through the arch of Frida’s unblemished teenage foot was reminiscent of Jesus Christ being nailed to the cross, and that it might create an uncomfortable if not entirely unintentional parallel. Hamedani insists he isn’t in the business of making religious innuendos. Not consciously, anyway. Deliberate or not, the effect is chilling.
Frida, played by Janette Armand, is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill female horror protagonist, either, and hers was the most challenging character arc for the creators. Hamedani recounts, “Ramon [Isao] and I tried to give her some edge. She’s a pothead and says things that would get [her] killed in any other horror film.” The character has traits that feel true-to-life. Hamedani admits that he was very lucky to find an actress like Armand, who has so many distinctive and ultimately complementary features. “She had to be ethnic, all-American, a pothead, attractive, so many things at once.” Armand got a BA in Drama from the University of Washington in 2008, and ZMD is her first film. She displays vibrancy and openness, and fictional Frida displays so much common decency in the face of unimaginable brutality that watching her makes you pray if you were in her shoes you would be as decent and resourceful. Armand pulls you in directions that are surprising; you feel invested in her survival.
Another atypical element in the movie is its B-plot story involving two gay partners, Tom and Lance (played by Doug Fahl and Cooper Hopkins), who venture back to Port Gamble to relieve themselves of the stress of keeping their relationship under wraps, and who are ironically swept into the maelstrom of the epidemic. Tom’s ‘coming out’ to his mother is a come-out-again, go-back-into-the-closet-again ordeal for Lance and the audience, but a few seconds into the confessional scene the film gives us one of its moments of pure theatre. The dimension of absurdity is lobbed onto the screen. As Tom’s mother morphs into a dim-witted predator, her degradation is topped by the defensive action of her son’s partner Lance, who with a deft movement completely restricts her ability to move. Previously fearful Tom browses through the family photo album as though nothing unusual has just occurred. The scene leaves a nauseous aftertaste, not because of its graphic nature, but because it is unflinchingly funny as well as horrible. It is morally discomfiting. If there is anything that can illustrate the folly of trying to understand human activity, here it is. The unpredictability of the two characters, and indeed our own alliances as we watch the two men struggle with hate and love, are laid out bare. Tall, lanky, dressed in tight jeans and a white Panama hat, Kevin Hamedani does not appear to be the kind of young filmmaker you would expect to take on a gay theme, but he is unapologetic about tackling hypocrisy. He is suspicious of homophobic people; he wonders what it is they’re afraid of in themselves.
Frida’s fictional father, portrayed by Kevin’s biological father Ali Hamedani, succumbs to the epidemic. Although the character is inflexible and impossible to deal with from his teenager daughter’s point of view, he is true to his culture and he is authentic. After eight long years of real war waged in Iraq, one wants someone from the ancienne regime to survive, even if only in fiction, so his downfall comes as a blow. Cheryl Banks, a politically correct survivor drawn from Hamedani’s real-life middle school drama teacher and played by Cornelia Duryée Moore, swivels a full 180 degrees before the film draws to a close. When the scourge has finally fallen on itself in exhaustion, and daily life in ‘idyllic’ Port Gamble is returning to normalcy, she stands before her fellow citizens and exhorts them to be “vigilant against any future threat,” because “we can’t protect a island, or a country for that matter, on peace alone.” After everything that has happened, after witnessing a society steeped in barbarity, one silently begs: Ms. Banks, please concern yourself with preserving your civil rights and your humanity… never mind vigilance or future threats. It was Sinno’s idea to have Cheryl Banks abandon her idealism. Behind her, the camera zooms in on crayon drawings by fictional child survivors of the epidemic. An “I Hate Arabs” by-line accompanies a drawing. Hamedani pauses before commenting on the final moments of the film, on its nihilistic undertones. “The drawing next to the hate speech is a picture of me. It’s a self-portrait.” The real terror lies in realizing that the seeds of destruction are there all along, lying dormant beneath the glassy surface of neighborly coziness.
Leone Fogle edits and writes for onscreen magazine.