Here’s a little treat – back in 2004, Mazinga and I interviewed actor Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead, The X-Files, The Devil’s Rejects) at GenCon 2004 in Indianapolis. It’s truly one of the best things that’s ever come from running the site – Mr. Foree was a gracious and charming interviewee, and I was happy to have stumbled across it while digging through our archives to get started on the new Ghost in the Shell Episode Guide. One note…when we conducted the intervew, we were still called Destroy-All-Monsters.com, so you’re not confused with all the “DAM” stuff.

I also don’t have the photos we took with Mr. Foree handy, but the interview is still a worthy read. Enjoy!

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One of the most pleasant surprises of the recent GenCon gaming convention was the opportunity to meet actor Ken Foree, perhaps best known for his memorable role as Peter, the level-headed SWAT officer in George A. Romero’s seminal 1978 horror flick Dawn of the Dead. Foree’s role as the cool, collected officer at the center of the chaotic rampage of the undead is among the most impressive performances in horror films, and serves as an emotional anchor for the other characters. (He also makes a cameo on the recent remake, and has maintained an active career of TV and movie roles.) Foree was among the celebrities on hand to meet the fans and sign autographs (Mazinga picked up a handsome 8×10 glossy signed by Foree in silver ink).

A commanding presence at 6’5″ and with a shaved head and neat goatee, Foree proved to be an expansive and charming fellow who obviously enjoyed meeting and talking with his fans. He’s a confirmed genre film fan, as well, who displayed considerable knowledge about horror flicks both old and new. It turns out that he’s an Indianapolis native as well, and took advantage of his GenCon appearance to visit family. We were delighted that he kindly consented to an interview.

We arranged to meet after the con wrapped up in the lobby bar of the hotel where Foree was staying, conveniently located across the street from the convention center. When we arrived, the joint was deserted – after all, liquor sales are prohibited on Sunday. After mutual commiseration about Indianapolis’ blue laws, we settled for some bottled water and sat down for the interview.

DAM: Gregory Harris and Alex Mayo are talking to…is it For-ee?

Ken Foree: For-ee…For-ay. Depending on which side of the family you’re talking to. (Laughs)

DAM: …okay! Peter from Dawn of the Dead and many other roles. Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre…

Ken Foree: Yes…Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, From Beyond, Phantom of the Mall, X-Files, Babylon 5. That’s some of the more Sci-Fi stuff that I’ve done.

DAM: Yes, well…I, as many of you well-know I live right here in Indianapolis. Being an Indianapolis native, what’s it like being home?

Ken: Wonderful. I am a true Hoosier. I love anything about Indiana basketball, the athletics, certainly the academic accomplishments of IU. My uncle was the editor of IU’s newspaper when he was at IU. My brother played football at Indiana University. I have aunts and cousins who also graduated from IU. My cousin’s son went to Jackson State and is now going to the IU school of journalism next year. And I think I may have one or two others who are going to IU (laughs). We’re an IU family…! Anything that has to do with IU, I’m for.

DAM: You obviously still have a lot of ties here then.

Ken: Oh, absolutely. I have a very large family here. In the range of about 300 people I would imagine. Cousins and second cousins and third cousins…down the line.

DAM: You just completed a long appearance here at GenCon. We talked earlier and you mentioned you had done several other cons…Comicon I believe in San Diego. How did this con compare to some of the other cons you did earlier this year, or some of the experiences you’ve had on the road?

Ken: It’s one of the few gaming cons I’ve done. I have three favorites…and I obviously shouldn’t say that because somebody’s gonna get mad! (laughing) Let’s say that Horror-Thon in Baltimore…great con. San Diego Comicon is one of my favorites. The Chiller in New York is a favorite, and Cinema Wasteland in Cleveland. Those are favorite cons because they treat me so well. They kinda take care of me. I go to San Diego and I get cookies, sandwiches, fruit brought to me…and some of the actors will say ‘How do you get this?’ and I say ‘Never mind! It’s my secret!’

[At this point Ken Foree points out a gentleman standing at the other side of the lobby]

Ken: That’s my little brother there…

[Introductions are made and greetings exchanged.]

DAM: I see the resemblance.

Ken: Yeah. A lot of people mistake him for me. He runs the dining car on a commuter train line. All the time people come by ‘Aren’t you the actor…?’ ‘No…that’s my BROTHER!’ [laughs] We have a running joke about that. I’m sorry…where were we?

Oh yes…the promoters at those cons are friends. They take real good care of me; I have a great time there. And I can add one more to that list…and that’s Gen Con. From Johnny Edwards all the way down to Patty, all the way down to Brian and Mike who were the volunteers, the people from Kansas City, Alicia and those people…they’re one group who have made my stay here that much more enjoyable. It’s become a favorite con. They treated me very well, I like the way they organized. They really have their act together, and I’ve had a great time. It’s a short list and they’re on it.

DAM: Well, one of the things they did being so prepared: they’ve got a bio of you in the con booklet they publish, and I hadn’t known that you were working in New York City when you auditioned for the role of Peter in Dawn of the Dead. So tell us a little bit about the experience of landing that role.

Ken: Well, I was working Off-Broadway doing plays and I appeared as a guest star in an episodic. I did a Universal film called The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars & Motor Kings and then went back to NY for my off-Broadway thing and I was doing a play in a theater called the WPA Theater. That was four doors down from CBGB’s. I was doing a play and one of the actors said ‘They’re auditoning for a character that you might…you might fit this role. So why don’t you go up and take a look.’ So he gave me the address, and I called, went up and looked in the office and I said ‘Oh, Eraserhead! I like that movie…’ There were posters. ‘Oh, and Night of the Living Dead! My favorite movies!’ I’m saying this basically to myself as I’m walking down this corridor. I go in and I audtion with David [Emge], Scott {Reiniger], and Gaylen [Ross] first. And then they called me back to audition the next day or the day after with three other actors. And then they called me a few days later and said ‘We’re on.’ And I said ‘Great!’ That’s how it started.

DAM: Then you went to Monroeville, of course…

Ken: Pitsburgh…yes indeed!

DAM: …and shot the movie.

Ken: Iron City Beer, baby! Iron City Beer [laughs] Great oyster house right downtown. Had a great time in Pittsburgh.

DAM: I was actually born in Pennsylvania. My dad was at Penn State, but went into the army right after so we left. But for eight days, I lived in Pennsylvania.

Ken: [laughing] Great!

DAM: What did George Romero indicate to you that he wanted and how did you use that to prepare for the role?

Ken: I read the script, and I knew I was going to be a S.W.A.T. officer and there would be a lot of action in the picture, and blood and gore. I knew several policemen, and I knew how to shoot a rifle. I did some hunting in my time. So I knew how to handle a firearm, and I was always athletic so I kinda saw where we were going. George really didn’t talk that much about the character because we didn’t have any time for rehearsal. In fact, we didn’t rehearse at all. We just went down there and got down to it. But, as George will tell you know, we were shooting a Western. We were out there having a good time…load ‘em up and shoot ‘em down! That’s basically what we did. We improvised here and there. If we thought of a great idea and George liked it we went with it. He was easy about that kind of thing. It was a fun experience doing the film. There were very few challenges that we couldn’t overcome. It had that kind of…well, it was really low budget. I guess, now it would be…I think most pictures now are five million, six million right now. We were at about one million or two million.

DAM: That really is low-budget, comparatively speaking.

Ken: Absolutely. It was fun. We knew that we didn’t have a lot of money to spend but we were all very dedicated and the crew was excited, motivated, and committed to making a great film and they gave everything they had…and I have a great affection for crews who are non-Union, who are just coming out of college who don’t have a union card, who haven’t established themselves yet but they’re willing to work on a film, work long hours, get it done and get experience. So I have a great affection for those people that lasted throughout my career because of my experience on Dawn of the Dead.

DAM: What was it like working with Tom Savini as part of the crew?

Ken: Tom Savini? [laughs] My boy! Tom was a wild man. He is a great special effects artist, as you know. He was always excited. You know, special effects guys. They always get excited about blowing up something. [gesticulates wildly] ‘Oh, we’re gonna blow this up, we’re gonna have guts coming out, we’re gonna chop this head off…!

And I was like ‘Ooookaaay…’ [laughs] And I started to go along with it! I got excited and said ‘Let me see this!’ And so I saw a few of those effects I and I said ‘Wow!’ like everyone else. So…it was very early in my career, and I was really a very raw actor at that point. I hadn’t done that much. So it started to grow on me, the excitement of watching special-effects, seeing it done, and of course, Tom and some of the other people that was their niche. Any special effect that goes right they’re very happy and excited about, and I’m sitting there going ‘ I have nothing to do with this, but wonderful!’ But it was fun. It was really fun. And they were fun.

DAM: I have to say how surprised I was, I checked the Internet Movie Database and I was really surprised to see how early that was in your film career. You mentioned your experience and whatnot…hunting. You defintely come across as…’Peter is definitely cool with that firearm…he’s drilling them with the one shot’. It’s obviously part of his charater.

Ken: Well, I knew that as I read the script that I was the one that, I was the voice of reason. I was the one who held it all together, the four of us. Also you find role models, as a method actor you look for something to bring in if you don’t have anything that is your personal experience…something that you have seen, or something that someone else that you notice or observe and you can bring that to your character. I have several role models that were policeman, or that just were legendary heroes of unity who always had a certain demeanor that demanded respect and carried that throughout their lives. There was one guy particularly here in Indianapolis by the name of Bruiser Gaines…

DAM: What a great name…

Ken: Yeah, Bruiser Gaines. He’s dead now. But he was responsible for a lot of men who went to Crispus Attucks High School and those athletes of great basketball championship years, the Globetrotters, before they got to Attucks they were trained by Bruiser about doing the right thing, and being punched-up if they didn’t. He was a very tough individual, and a very good individual. But he had that certain demeanor, nothing shook him. Nothing rattled him…and you didn’t play with him. And I kind of took a little Bruiser and a little bit of a few other guys and a little of some of my own experiences, and I created the character.

DAM: And the rest, as they say, is history. When I saw the trailer for ‘Dawn of the Dead’, I was…gosh…I was very young…

Ken: So was I…I was only two when I made the film [laughs ensue]

DAM:…well, and it made an incredible impression on me. I never forgot the impression the trailer for that movie made. And you know, one of the things was ‘No one under 17 will be admitted’….I was like, ‘Oh well, darn…I won’t be able to see it for a while’. That struck me as unusual, though, at the time. I was wondering what you remember about the way the movie was received.

Ken: When I read it, I said ‘My God, this will not play well…because of the gore. I just didn’t think that the censors would let it in. And largely I was right, because they had a lot of problems getting a rating for this thing. I think it came out with no rating or an ‘X’ rating…I’m not quite sure, I don’t remember. I think it wasn’t rated at all.

DAM: I think it wasn’t rated.

Ken: It wasn’t rated…yes. And so I…the surprising thing for me was, at the time I was doing plays at a place called the Hazel Bryant theater, and that was around the corner from Lincoln Center in New York. It was a small place, a theater with a dance studio on top of it, ballet…so it was a small space. But we were doing plays. Jackee Harry from 227, of course, Sister, Sister, Loretta Divine, Jim Pickens Jr., Khandi…I can’t remember her name…I think she was on News Radio [a quick check on the IMDB reveals this to be Khandi Alexander]. We were all doing plays for $63 a week. And Jackee and I were rehearsing for one of the shows, but they had a rehearsal spot that they had rented or were using down on 42nd street. It was one of the old bus terminals that were abandoned. And there was about two inches of water on the floor…[laughing] so we were rehearsing in the water! And we finished rehearsals and we walked up and visited Ken Page and Nell Carter backstage in the dressing rooms and they were doing Ain’t Misbehaving or something like that and spent a little time with them and went around to see Richard Pryor in his Sunset Strip thing that had just come out.

We had run out of money, we got into Richard Pryor’s show because we knew somebody at the door. So we went backstage with Nell Carter and those guys. And so we’re walking up Broadway, or wherever the Winter Garden theater is…and there it is! Dawn of the Dead! And there are pictures of me everywhere. And Jackee says ‘Ken, my God…you’re a star!’ And I said ‘Jackee…we’re walking because we can’t afford to take a BUS!’ [laughter] So what does that mean?!?’ So we laughed and kept walking. I was surprised at how many theaters it opened in. You’d think it would open in those smaller theaters on 42nd street, or a local theater. I had no idea it would be distributed to major theaters all over the country. It was at the Embassy on 62nd street, the Winter Garden on 57th street, 7th avenue, you’re talking some major theaters. And the whole city was like that.

I left New York on my way to California, and I came to Indiana, and it was playing in theaters here, drive-ins, I did interviews here on the news, on PBS. Everyone was interviewing me, I had to see it like four or five times with family members. I just said, ‘This is crazy!’ I had no idea that it would be as big as it is. I didn’t know that it would be as popular, of course I was a fan of ‘Night of the Living Dead’ because I was a friend of Duane Jones. Duane and I were in the same activist theater group in New York called the Barbara Ann Tear theater in Harlem. And there’s a street named after her…she’s still alive…they’ve got this large complex there. Duane and I were part of that.

I was walking down 101st street, and they had a theater there, and I saw it was playing there [Night of the Living Dead]. So I ran three blocks down, ran up the stairs to our theater, and I said “Duane! You’re in the movie! Night of the Living Dead!’ Duane looked at me and said ‘Shhh’. See Duane was a classicly trained actor, he wasn’t really into this zombie thing.

DAM: So he was trying to downplay his participation?

Ken: Exactly. A little bit…a little bit. I think a year later, or shortly after that Ganja and Hess came out. And this was a romantic story between a man and a woman. And Duane was the star of that, and it played major theaters also. Back then, a movie could not do so well, for two weeks, or three weeks and they’d keep it in the theater. Now if you don’t do well in one week or two, you’re outta there buddy. And it played for a while. It didn’t do so well financially, but that was what Duane was interested in at that point in his career. So, just to go back to Dawn of the Dead…I didn’t think it would have the legs it has now. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know until 1998 that there were so many fans…

DAM: Really?

Ken: Yeah, I had no idea. I did Fangoria in like 1996 in New York, then I headlined for them in Chicago and L.A. They brought me in and I would sign autographs, do 40 minutes on the stage, you know talk to the audience. But I had no idea that there was a market for this thing out there. But a few years later Scott Reiniger called me and said, ‘They’re doing this thing called Chiller.’ And I said, ‘Chiller…what’s that.’ ‘It’s in New Jersey, a sci-fi, horror kinda thing. They’d like you to come. You interested in coming?’ I said, ‘Okay’ They flew me in…I saw June Lockhart, I saw Karen Black, I saw Robert Vaughan was next to me. I thought, ‘My God…what’s going on here?’ I had lousy product because I wasn’t too prepared [laughing] I had a few 8×10′s, a few pictures. So I’m selling autographs and thinking ‘this is pretty darn good!’ Probably some of this stuff I was giving it away.

And then began to slowly see what was going on, and I’m just now getting really into what the whole craze…the fan-worship and idolizing the genre. I’ve been around the country, and around the world, and I’ve been quite surprised at how many people love me and how many lives I’ve affected and changed, and in some ways it’s comforting and it’s a responsibilty that I take very seriously. I’ve met so many fans who just say, ‘Hey…we really love you!’ and how can you not respond to that, how can you not be gracious about that. And if you’re not gracious about that, and if you’re not humbled by that, there’s something wrong with you.

DAM: I think now with 28 Days Later, and of course the remake of Dawn of the Dead, that zombie films have just gotten insanely popular over the last couple of years. I’m sure you’ve noticed that as well.

Ken: Oh my God, yes…! Resident Evil, all these have come out, and I had no idea. I read about Resident Evil…and I thought, ‘Well, that’s not like this [Dawn] and they’re just distilling things, and this is a reference to Dawn.’ And I said, ‘Okay, I have no idea what’s going on…’ I didn’t know it was so popular that they were considering a remake. In fact, I was doing San Diego doing a con, a guy came up…I had four or five people in my booth. I don’t know why, everyone wants to party with me! I don’t mind, I have a good time with them.So I have four or five people in the booth and the guy comes up and says, ‘Listen…they’re gonna remake Dawn of the Dead…expect a call…’ and walks away. And everyone in the booth was like ‘Don’t listen to this guy, he’s some kind of nut. He’s a flake. We don’t know him, but he’s some kind of crazy.’ A year later, I get a call…they’re remaking it and they want me to do a cameo. Since the remake, and Resident Evil, and Resident Evil 2, George just got greenlighted for Land of the Dead. I’ve heard at least three or four other zombie movies in production, or getting steam at this point. I’ve even heard about one an hour ago…somebody said they’ve got the director…

DAM: You heard about it here?

Ken: Here at GenCon! On the floor! I said ‘Where are these people?’ They came over and said they couldn’t talk about it. And I’m writing something along the same lines, right now.

DAM: A script?

Ken: I wrote a treatment and had it registered. Now I’m starting to write the script. I have to write the script before I go any further. But I was working on the script when I was on my way to Baltimore, which was two-weeks ago.

DAM: So, would you be directing this?

Ken: I’ve committed to Jeff Byrd directing…but I’d almost like to direct it. [leans into microphone] Jeff, I don’t know baby…things might change Jeffy! [says jokingly and laughs] So I’ve had some meetings with people yesterday who want to do some horror films, financiers, and that kind of thing so we’ll see…we’ll see what happens. I certainly would like to do one. I might do one where I’m in front of the camera and have something to do with the producton and that stuff, distribution, advertising and those monsters.

DAM: Well, and in addition to Resident Evil, and parenthetically when I reviewed Resident Evil I said one of the things that would make people who read our site like the movie better because you’ll recognize the references to Dawn of the Dead. They’re in there. Guys like us who read the site, they’ll say ‘Yep, that right there…that’s where that came from.’ You’ll see a little Ken Foree in some of this stuff going on. And then there’s, earlier this year they released a DVD of the Dawn of the Dead and there’s a four disc set coming out.

Ken: The four disc set is coming out next week, or two weeks from now…and I’ll have it at KenForee.US! Look for the toy store [laughs]. I will have it…you can get it autographed from me. The remake director’s cut will be out in October, and I’ll have that also. And look for Shaun of the Dead, it is funny…hilarious, well-done and a tribute to us. And I’m a big fan and a big promoter of that film. And Simon Pegg and Edgar are wonderful people. I’m very much behind them.

DAM: Well, I just want to thank you very much for taking the time out to speak with us.

Ken: Thank you…and good luck!