Director Jay Lee sat down with our own Tyler Shainline to explain how an artsy, independent filmmaker interested in exploring existentialism came to make a horror flick entitled Zombie Strippers. Sure it was to finally make money off a film, but there was more to it than just the payday, there’s a message hidden behind those big fake tits covered in blood, a message of girl power!

Tyler Shainline: I’m here with Jay Lee talking about his newest film Zombie Strippers. It’s a great title for a surprisingly fun movie, where did the idea come from?

Jay Lee: My sister and I have a production that does meaningful independent films, we were in Sundance and all of that but we weren’t making the best living at it. So we decided to make a marketing move and do a horror movie. It was a very shamelessly marketable film. We were hitting all the stereotypes, hitting all of the proper scenes, we were basically just making a product to sell. I made a joke, “At least we’re not making a movie called Zombie Strippers.” It got a laugh, I looked up Zombie Strippers to see if anyone had done it yet and I was very surprised to see that nobody had. I thought why not do it, the title will sell itself, it’ll be marketable and over the top but at the same time hide all that messages and sub text we were doing with our other independent films. Do what we want to do, sell it and hopefully make a career at it.

Tyler: is it true that the plot of Zombie Strippers is loosely based of absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco’s 1959 play Rhinoceros?

Jay: Yeah, because the term Zombie Strippers and the concept is so absurd is why I went to the absurd existentialist to get more ideas. Rhinoceros seemed to be the closest parallel to the statement I wanted to make with Zombie Strippers that’s why I used the basic plot of Rhinoceros. Just having fun with it myself I named Ian after Ionesco and Rhino’s the strip club, a few other characters are referenced, that’s just me keeping myself busy during the writing process. Rhinoceros was definitely the source I went to the most to develop my own ideas and to go from there.

Tyler: Rhinoceros was Ionesco’s response to the fascist times following World War 2, is Zombie Strippers your response to G. W. Bush’s fascist regime?

Jay: It’s not necessarily about the term fascism but more about the conformity of people in the country. At least fifty percent of this country just conformed to what this guy was saying and believing it. I would say that that the Bush Administration was a fairly brutal regime and so many people were able to just ignore it. The basis of Rhinoceros was that there is all this brutality going on and everyone was just ignoring it and just letting it happen and eventually it destroyed the town in the play. That was my statement with Zombie Strippers was that people seem to be ignoring what’s going on and accepting it as if it were the norm suddenly. With the film I also wanted to give an American twist to it and put the capitalism in it, not only can you ignore the brutality but you can also make a buck off it.

Tyler: There are a lot of clear potshots at the outgoing administration, did Sony have any problem with that leftist slant being in the film?

Jay: Actually no they didn’t, which was great! Although there were a few scenes along with some of Ian’s dialogue that were cut out because Sony found it kind of offense. It was a play on how racist and ignorant people are, it was like over the top South Park humor. A couple of the hardcore political statements were cut out unfortunately, including Paco’s more noble comment about being an immigrant in this country, but they’re all on the extended scenes on the DVD. You can see the original intent of the political statement I wanted to make, it was kind of shaved down but it defiantly wasn’t eliminated completely.

Tyler: Speaking of Paco, Joey Medina was hilarious in that role and a definite highlight of Zombie Strippers. Where did you find him at?

Jay: Out producing partners have a management company that works with a lot of standup comedians they were the ones that knew Joey would be perfect for this. He had not read the script and when I met him and we were right in the middle of casting, we were weeks away from shooting and I was very stressed out. Joey didn’t find me funny, he said I was a little stale and cold and he wasn’t sure how the script could be funny if I wrote it. But then he read it and he really loved the script, the more we worked together the more fun we had. Joey actually added a lot to the film, he was constantly bringing more and more into it, improving ideas he had for what he wanted to do with Paco.

Tyler: He was great, his scene with the donkey had me laughing ass off, no pun intended.

Jay: Yeah, I have to give Joey credit for the donkey, but the rest of the scene was mine. He was the one who wanted a donkey in there and I have to thank Joey for that because it’s one of the biggest laughs we get in the film.

Tyler: With Zombie Strippers originally being made independently how did you manage to get Jenna Jameson attached to the project?

Jay: My sister, Angela Lee was the original Producer when Zombie Strippers was a tiny independent film. I had seen a DVD that had Jenna on the cover but she was only in the film for like five or ten minutes. I was thinking that she was the perfect person to go to that could help us sell this, or at least help us get the money for it. If people are using her on the cover of the DVDs when she’s such a minor character in the film then she must bear some weight. The part was defiantly catered towards her, I’d like to say it was written for her but that wasn’t the case because we never thought we’d actually get Jenna Jameson. But then Angela just chiseled away at “the machine” and eventually got the script Jenna. It wasn’t easy, it took awhile but as soon as Jenna read the script she got back to us and said it had everything she wanted to do in it. It had horror, she wants to be a scream queen but it also had the humor, she’s a very funny woman and she loved the political content. I had one phone conversation with her about throwing the hypocrisy of society in their face, and she said that’s what she’s all about and she said she’d do it. A few months later Sony Pictures heard about Zombie Strippers starring Jenna Jameson and dollar signs went off in their eyes and they picked up the film.

Tyler: Her sharp sense of humor genuinely comes through in the film. I’m more familiar with Jenna’s pornography work which doesn’t really allow her much in the way of showing off her funny side. I was really surprised to see how funny she can be.

Jay: Me too, especially in the editing room, I’d be watching her performances and every time I would see something new. There are so many tiny details to her performance; she’s really funny and into parodying herself. She was having such a great time doing it that it really comes across as authentic. So many people look at Jenna Jameson as an ex-porn star but there’s just so much more to her. There was never a moment during filming that she wasn’t in on the joke with us. She got everything about it which is why he was able to deliver.

Tyler: I believe the horror film with Jenna on the cover but on a few minutes on screen that you mentioned was titled Evilbreed. I remember being disappointed by the lack of screen time in the film and I was expecting a similar role for her in Zombie Strippers. But she’s on camera for an abundance of the film’s runtime, which is great because it really gave her a chance to prove herself and in turn changed my perspective of her.

Jay: I hope it does that for a lot of people, I want them to realize that Jenna Jameson is actually not only an American icon but a force to be reckoned with. She is probably one of the most talented people I’ve ever met in my life, she seems to be able to do almost anything. She just needs to get past the last ten years of what she’s done and prove herself to society at large. She has no regrets about what she did, I’m really hoping that people are willing to embrace her for what she is, a remarkable talent and she has so much to offer to the arts community too.

Tyler: I think that this may be the starting point for that turn in her career. How did you go about casting the rest of the Zombie Strippers?

Jay: There were two we actively went after, Jennifer Holland and Roxy Saint. Those were two we had meetings with when were still an independent film and asked if they’d consider doing a role. The entire “Z-Squad” is the cast of the other horror movie we did, The Slaughter. Those people busted their asses for a week on that shoot and they worked for free. So when Zombie Strippers came around I wrote those parts for them so they would have another role and be able to move up to a studio film. Shamron who plays Jeannie, she came and read for Kat, it was little bit darker but we liked her presence so we had her read for Jeannie and never looked again for anybody else. Penny Drake who plays Sox, she actually worked for free for a day on our last film and when were finally affiliated with Sony we were able to have some castings and Whitney Anderson and Jeannette Sousa nailed their roles.

Tyler: Outside of Jameson had any of the girls stripped before?

Jay: It was the first time for all of them, we didn’t cast any strippers, only actors. Instead of having a choreographer work with the girls we had each of them do their own thing. Roxy Saint’s a rock star so I just said be Roxy Saint onstage, it was a mix of her dark brooding performance and her crazy over the top head snapping one. We let Shamron do her thing, she used a little bit of direction as in the dance needed to be a little bit desperate as opposed to fun. Jennifer had a pole at her house so she was working on her performance. Penny Drake put a strip pole up in her apartment and was working on it for months. She had the most moves and she’s six feet tall as it so it’s a crazy visual watching her do her pole tricks because you had to stand back about ten feet so you wouldn’t get hit by her stripper shoes.

Tyler: Zombie strippers is a major departure from your feature directorial debut, the conspiracy film Noon Blue Apples. I caught it at the Another Hole in the Head film festival a few years back and I remember being surprised to see Montel Williams show up in a role. How did that connection come about?

Jay: At the time, my sister Angela was working with Montel. He read the script, liked the concept and he got himself involved in it. A lot of people don’t know this about Montel but he was top level spy when he was in the Navy, he was a cryptographer on a submarine. He not only knows a lot of that conspiracy stuff but I think he believes it too.

Tyler: You’ve mentioned your second feature The Slaughter a few times, besides getting a portion of the cast for Zombie Strippers from it where their any memorable moments on that shoot?

Jay: That’s the shamelessly marketable film that we did when we needed to sell something for our production company to get a sale under our belt. After Noon Blue Apples didn’t sell immediately after Sundance we needed a sale to prove to the people that we were working with that we can sell a movie. We shot for a week with twenty five thousand dollars it ended up being a blast. Everybody involved kinda of has a soft spot in their hearts for that film, we were trying to make an intentionally bad horror movie by parodying horror movies. The people who got the joke, seemed to have a really good time with it.

Tyler: Besides all the great nudity in the film there’s an abundance of brilliant crafted gore to be found as well. The effects were far beyond what I was expecting from a film entitled Zombie Strippers.

Jay: Patrick Magee did all the makeup effects, we worked with him on The Slaughter. A friend of a friend came up with his business card, we met him and we saw his website and we were blown away by it. We asked if he took credit cards, he did so we blew half of our budget for The Slaughter right there but never regretted it. We always intended to use him for Zombie Strippers.

Tyler: Any concern that the title Zombie Strippers might turn some people off from watching the film?

Jay: Here’s the thing, the audience we made the film for are going to watch a movie called Zombie Strippers. The people who are cautious of something with this title are not going to enjoy the film. If you read a lot of the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, a lot of these people are going into the film just to hate it for what it is. They hate the fact that these schlocky horrible over the top trashy films are being made, just for the sake of hating them. Which is fine, we knew we were going to get that, the film is an offensive piece of trash. That’s what we made. But there’s a huge audience that can appreciate that and it’s not just thirteen year old boys sitting in their basement. An amount of highbrow filmgoers love the exploitation, grindhouse films and the fact that these bad films exist just as a social statement. I’ve spent a lot of time with the community of filmmakers here in L.A. at The New Beverly and Dead Channels up in San Francisco and they are very intelligent filmmakers and they love films like this. It was more about thinking of the people who would enjoy and appreciate this film and try and ignore the people who would not get this film. I mean after all its called Zombie Strippers.

Tyler: To be honest, that title was what perked my intrest in the project inn the first place and I never expected to enjoy the movie as much as I did.

Jay: There is a large percentage of the film elite who are going to have to hate Zombie Strippers just to keep their tenure in the film reviewing community. That’s something we had to ignore and just make the film we wanted to make for the audience we wanted to show it to.

Tyler: I’ve watched Zombie Strippers with two different groups of friends and both times the women in the audience seemed to like it just as much as the men, but for different reasons entirely. They claimed to see an underlying theme of female empowerment throughout the flick, was this intentional?

Jay: Actually, it was. I was trying to make a low budget film called Twelve Weeks it was about single women who found themselves in unplanned pregnancies. It was the film that was closet to my heart but I was never able to do it, so I used a lot of that in Zombie Strippers. That’s why I show the women as flawed and weak and making the choice about giving in to this. I didn’t want to make too much of a statement about the irreversibility about plastic surgery and the cult of beauty because I knew that some of our actresses are unfortunately very, very deep in to that process. There was one review I read of it online that called “Zombie Strippers” a feminist masterpiece which was very flattering.

Tyler: What’s Jay Lee working on now? Now that you’ve gotten your payday are you headed back to artsy independent films or has horror sunk it’s claws into you?

Jay: We’re kind of knee deep in the horror world, that’s what I think we’re going to peruse right now. We do have interest in a few projects, one of which is a horror comedy that takes place at a convention involving scream queens. Unfortunately with the past writers strike and the upcoming actor’s strike not a lot is happing in town when it comes to the studios. So we’re going back to some of the lower budget stuff we have, we’ve been talking to independent investors so we’re going to be going back to the exploitation well. We don’t want to top Zombie Strippers, we just want to do another film with different aspects of the horror genre. The one we think we will be done with by the end of the year is about snuff films, so its really dark and really disturbing. Sort of the opposite of what we did with Zombie Strippers.

Tyler: So what’s the chance of a sequel to Zombie Strippers?

Jay: Here’s the deal, due to the political statement of the film we wanted to get it out while the politics were still relevant. While it did get a theatrical release I think the politics will be relevant for only five days from when the DVD hits. The deal we did with Sony to get Zombie Strippers made basically had us give up all our rights to the movie. We said sure, here the movie’s yours we just want to get the thing made. So everything is dependant upon Sony. The unfortunate thing about studios these days is that there isn’t a whole lot of filmmaking going on. It’s more about number crunching than anything. So Sony will plug their numbers into their formulas and if it comes out favorable they will make a film. There doesn’t seem to be anyone interested in the films or their messages, its all about the numbers. So we’ll see how big of a hit the DVD is and if the numbers make sense then they might be interested in making a sequel. And if they want to include us in then great, I have an idea I’d love to do so hopefully sometime soon I’ll be able to sit down with Sony and talk to them about it.