"Zombieland" director recalls first video on BART
See More Zombieland Publicity Still at IGN.com
Ruben Fleischer, director of the hit movie "Zombieland," is getting rave reviews for his wry take on the zombie genre. The Washington Post profiled him last weekend, explaining how "a smart, soft-spoken, self-described 'nerd' from D.C. with a bunch of webby-telly credits" got to his feature film debut.
Not so long ago (the early part of this decade), Fleischer was working as a busboy in San Francisco, then building websites during the dot-com boom.
One of his earliest film efforts was an amateur music video he made around 2001 with friends at various locations in San Francisco, including on a BART train. We asked Fleischer what it was like to make the video, featuring the song "I Come From San Francisco" by club/punk/house musician Gold Chains.
"We had no money for the video," Fleischer recalled. "Total budget was $50 actually, which included fare cards and D batteries for the record-playing boombox. We were very much amateurs, and basically just had a ton of our friends come and meet us at a certain BART stop. We all gathered and got on a train and had a Barty (Bart Party). There were some real passengers who were certainly taken aback by the crazy party scene on the train."
Performing on a train isn't actually allowed (see our story here with more about rules for musicians in BART stations, and info here about photography in the BART system) but their makeshift "Barty" film slipped through without notice at the time.
The video led to others, including a breakout video Fleischer made for British rapper DJ Format for the song "We Know Something You Don't Know," featuring dancers in furry animal costumes on the streets of Los Angeles. The music video popularity paved the way for work in commercials, and the rest, as they say, is history.
We asked Fleischer about his experiences on BART as a regular rider when he lived in the Bay Area, and he had a pithy -- even zombie-like? -- reply: "It is convenient public transportation."
We'll take endorsements however we can get 'em!
You can view Fleischer's BART video and the dancing furries video on his website http://www.ruben.fm (Warning: some lyrics NSFW).
