“Look daddy, clowns!” shouted the little kid to his dad as John and I shambled past them outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Sigh. And we’d spent a good hour slathering on our makeup.
Of course, the kid – had a point. Our faces were a dessicated white with red goo smeared around, and we were wearing very silly 70’s style leisure suits. I was also wearing my signature propeller beanie. We actually did look very clown-like.
Waiting for lunch
But I guess that’s the risk you take when you go out in public in zombie makeup.
It was December 31, 2011. It was an uncharacteristically warm day, and John and I had decided we wanted to film some new zombie hijinks. Rather than doing so from the safety of our houses and makeshift studios, we were grabbing the bull by the horns and going on location in Philly. After our prior unplanned foray into public zombie appearances, we figured at worst we’d have a bunch of fun.
For our project we wanted to film zombies shambling by well known Philadelphia landmarks. It being a nice day, and a holiday, we figured there would be plenty of tourists to watch us make a spectacle of ourselves. Our friend Lee agreed to tag along and act as our production crew.
Our first stop was a Wawa to pick up gas and hoagies, not necessarily in that order. True to our “Best Buy” experience, people wanted absolutely nothing to do with us.
From there, we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art where we recreated the famous scene from Rocky where Sylvester Stallone runs up the steps of the museum. We, of course, were moving much slower and kept tripping on the stairs – the bane of all zombies. There were plenty of tourists, but they were very nice and more or less stayed out of our way as we filmed ourselves shambling about and making fools out of ourselves.
Shambling in Stallone’s footsteps
From there we went to Ben Franklin Parkway so we could play in traffic, attracting a number of honking cars and an errant rollerblader.
Playing in traffic
We then hit Center City, visiting the “Love” statue and several other landmarks. We even behaved ourselves and waited in line to take our shots just like everyone else.
Out for chinese…
All in all, this outing was incredibly fun. Trust me, we weren’t the only ones filming ourselves when we were goofing off around the landmarks. We also had a number of people ask us to take photos with them and we were happy to oblige. Sometimes it’s good to be a zombie!