HILE ITS TITLE IS AN OBVIOUS NOD TO SHAUN OF THE DEAD, WHICH IS ITSELF AN HOMAGE TO GEORGE A. ROMERO’S DAWN OF THE DEAD, director Alejandro Brugués says the biggest influence on his much-anticipated Cuban zom-com Juan of the Dead (which was recently picked up by Outsider Pictures and will begin a
limited theatrical run this month) was in fact the adventurous life of his older brother Juan. In fact, Juan Brugués, now a Miami resident, returned to Havana for the first time in a decade during the film’s eight-week shoot in late 2010 to visit his little brother’s film set.
“He was hanging around, saying he was the
real Juan,” Brugués says with a laugh. Rue Morgue spoke to the filmmaker last Sep-
ROME
tember during the Toronto International Film Fes- tival, where Juan of the Dead had its world premiere. It stars the lanky Alexis Díaz de Ville- gas as Juan, a carefree Havana fisherman whose lazy life is jeopardized when the dead rise. To- gether with his best friend Lazaro (Jorge Molina), Juan, in the tradition of his countrymen, makes the best of a bad situation and creates a business out of disposing of his neigh- bours’ zombie problems. Limited access to for-
CINEMACABRE FEATURES
eign horror films means most Cubans are unfamil- iar with modern-day movie zombies. This gives rise to much of Juan’s comedy, including one scene where our hero and his neighbours won- der if an infected resident is a vampire or a werewolf, eventually bashing the unfortunate flesh-eater in the head with a cross to kill it. Soon enough, though, the Cuban government
RM34
has identified the problem: the zombies are in fact “dissidents” in the employ of the American government. “We Cubans don’t know much about zom-
bies,” affirms Brugués, “and I mixed it with the fact that television blames everything on the United States.” While it is tempting to interpret
Juan as political allegory, Brugués in- sists that he is primarily interested in using the zombie film to comment on the challenges of everyday Cuban life. “So I get to do a zombie film, which
is an idea that I really love, and I get to talk about stuff that bothers me or that interests me.” Indeed, the harsh realities of
NINTH CIRCLE
day-to-day existence in his home- land inform much of Juan of the Dead. For instance, neighbours bitten by zombies are treated with expired drugs; Juan and his
companions try to make their getaway from the encroaching undead in an old
Fishing With Juan: Alexis Díaz de Villegas as Juan adrift on his raft, and (top) on a pile of zombie casualties.
DREADLINES
Lada, a notoriously unreliable Russian car; and Havana residents flee their overrun city for the shores of Miami on improvised boats and rafts, an illegal emigration strategy that real Cubans employ all the time. “I had to leave so much outside of that be-
cause the Cuban reality is so rich,” Brugués says. “So many weird things happen that I would probably need two or three films to get it all in.” Given all the deprivations the country’s people
have endured since Fidel Castro took office in 1959 – especially in the wake of the ongoing American trade embargo – one wonders if Cubans would react like Juan if faced with a real zombie apocalypse. “Things happen to us and we keep living like
nothing happened,” says Brugués of his fellow citizens. “It’s just something that adds to our daily lives. So I thought, ‘If this happens, what would we do?’ So [my goal was] to show how we Cubans react to problems, but only the next step was zombies. Putting zombies in there and just behaving like nothing was happen- ing and going on with their lives trying to do business, which is what Cubans do. When things get tough, we all leave in the raft!”