An Interview With The Villain
When I first met Joe Pilato on the set of "Day of the Dead," we immediately got off on the left foot. When John Harrison introduced us, all I knew about the man was that he'd appeared in the Harrison-produced film "Effects," and that, in "Day of the Dead," he played Rhodes (whoever Rhodes was; the preliminary notes I'd received didn't say).
So, in the course of a stilted conversation that I recall as a typical exchange between disinterested strangers, I made no move to turn on my tape recorder. It was much later that I learned my mistake, when, seeing the finished film, I realized that, as Rhodes, Pilato portrays the most colorful of the human characters in the Romero film.
Part of this misunderstanding came from the fact that, based just on Pilato's physical appearance (and perhaps aided by the fact that he was immersed in the role of a very unsavory character), I was entertaining the notion that this tense, dark man wasn't really an actor, but a mob hitman amusing himself among movie people between contracts. He didn't seem to radiate sensitivity, as so many actors do; and he certainly didn't strike me as the type of person with whom I might argue the worth of Herzog's "Nosferatu," as we did during the interview (I liked it, he didn't. The argument was resolved when we realized we were talking about two different films--he had seen the English language version, I had seen the very different version shot simultaniously in German.)
Coming from an Italian background myself, I know that acting is not the sort of thing encouraged by the Italian ideal of maleness. So it wasn't a huge surprise to learn that Pilato's taste for public performance was discovered by accident, when he became an alter boy.
"I go back as far as the days where, if you were getting Communion and the priest dropped the Host, everything stopped," Pilato recalls. "He'd have to get a special cloth to pick it up and the floor would be marked where the Host had fallen; after the Mass there'd be a special cleaning ceremony and cleaning prayer...all of that eloborate ritual, which is very theater-like. It goes back to that, really."
"Even so, when I went to college, I didn't have a thought about acting. I was going to be a lawyer--F. Lee Baily was hotshit, man, and that's what I wanted to be. But it was the late 60s and for an Italian boy...I mean, I didn't meet a Jew or a black until I went to college--'You mean there are other people out there?'--so when I got to college my whole life took a complete turn around, and I thought, why would I want to be a lawyer? My only reference points for law were E.G. Marshall and Perry Mason; courtroom drama, right? I realized then that I didn't want to be a lawyer, I wanted to be the guy who plays the lawyer. So I started taking some acting classes. It was religion and law that got me started on this track though...so if I ever get cast as a priest or a lawyer, I'll be ready."
The incident that left three Kent State University students dead in 1970 is credited by Pilato as the motivating factor behind his early departure from Suffolk University.
"I decided that this wasn't a healthy environment," he says. "I started apprenticing with an experimental theater company--which my parents just loved, their son running around in tights, doing a version of Oedipus Rex with no sets or costumes. But it was good training, a very physical kind of training."
The Boston-bred actor first came to Pittsburgh to take an acting workshop with Polish stage director Jerzy Grotowski.
"I really liked the city and came back in '75 and in '77 to study with the same director, the second time for a six-month workshop. That's when I decided I wanted to stay, and I got a job with a theater company here, the City Players. When auditions for "Dawn of the Dead" came up, I went in and was cast as one of the renegade cops on the loading dock; a nice role in a scene that is much longer in the 2 hour and 20 minute version, but got cut down to a bit in the U.S. release. So I got a couple of days work doing the film, and then I got another couple of days doing make-up with Savini--the zombies for that one were much simpler, we'd just slap gray grease paint on 'em."
On his first encounter with the director of "Night of the Living Dead," Pilato confesses his surprise. "I didn't expect to meet such a tall person...I didn't expect to meet such a gentle person, either. I expected to see something like the 'demon-flash' you get from Savini every once in a while. From George, you don't get that, you get more of a gleeful delight...'Boy, that was a great ripping-off of that head, there. Boy, that's just great!'"
Pilato's third billed role in "Day of the Dead" is by far the meatiest role he's tackled in films thus far. "I've had problems in the past with casting," he explains, "because of my physical type. I'm not really tall, and I'm more wiry than fleshed out. I think that hurt me when I was hoping for more substantial roles in both "Dawn of the Dead," and "Knightriders." So about a year before "Day of the Dead" I started working out a lot, hitting the weights, and I invested in a nice pair of lifts--working on these cosmetic things that, whether you like it or not, are very much part of the business. So when it came time to audition, I went in looking a lot stronger than I had been looking, more substantial because I'd put on a couple of inches, and taller because of the lifts I'd thrown into my cowboy boots. I read for Rhodes and then they went up to New York to read a few other people. Then a certain amount of time passed, and I was thinking, gee, that was nice of George to read me--maybe I'll get a couple of days extra work out of it anyway. Then there was a message on my phone to call George at a hotel in New York. I called and George says, 'Hi, Joe...Look, I'm sorry man, that it took so long for me to get back to you,' and I'm thinking, how many directors are there nice enough to call you personally to tell you thanks for reading, but no thanks? You don't even get a postcard from a lot of these people. He says 'I'm sorry, things have been crazy, we've been really busy...I want you to do it.' I said 'What?' 'I want you to do it.' I said 'Rhodes?' He said 'Yeah!' I said 'Good shit!'"
"I then immediately set about trying to get myself written into the Florida scenes. Never made it, so no trip to Florida."
When Rhodes was cast, Romero had already tossed aside the original, big-budget "Day" script.
"I never saw it," says Pilato. "I've been wanting to read it; I understand Rhodes was kind of a global arch-villain in it. It never was available, though. I don't think George wanted me to plug into that Rhodes because it was an entirely different thing."
In "Day of the Dead," the portrayal of the military as "bad guys" in unequivical. The only Army man who is not passive or evil is Miguel (Antone DiLeo, Jr.), and his fatal flaw is weakness. If I were pressed for something negative to say about the film, it would be the simplistic portrayal of cartoon-evil military.
"You have to realize, though, that these guys are the leftovers of the Army; guys who got caught in the crossfire of all that's happened," Pilato says. "They went into the Army before any of this happened. What they have become since then is the result of three or four years spent underground. And even as the military are portrayed as being 'out there,' all the points of view are pretty much out there. Richard Liberty [Dr. Logan] with the scientific point of view, the Rastafarian point of view through Terry Alexander [John]...and also, I don't mind the military being portrayed as a cartoon, because to my mind they are a cartoon!"
Pilato's last statement, along with his previously stated sensitivity regarding the Kent State incident, runs entirely counter to his screen image in "Day of the Dead."
"As a villain," he says, "you have to defend the point of view of your character. I found myself agreeing with Rhodes all the time--I mean, shoot those mother-fuckers in the head. Keeping them around is ridiculous--even though I know it's the sort of attitude that's gonna get us into World War III."
"One thing I wanted to do was get Rhodes a little more out of uniform, get more of a guerrilla fighter look to help in the portrayal of the psychosis--for instance, I suggested a green beret for him. But George thought that might be pushing it a little bit. Working with George on things like that, developing the character, went very well. If I didn't feel comfortable, he would listen. If he didn't feel comfortable, I would listen. And there was a lot of that sort of character work happening on the set."
Rhodes' spectacular demise was convincingly painful. It may be noted here that Pilato's obvious discomfort on screen was not just a good acting job. "I was locked into this hole in the false floor for six hours," he recalls. "It came up to my armpits, leaving my arms and head free, and underneath there was padding I was lying on. The effects guys were a big help, telling me they were gonna put laxative in my coffee--when I came in that morning, someone had put a toilet seat over the hole--it said 'Pilato's Potty' on it. When I climbed in, it looked like Gus Grissom climbing into his capsule, or something. So I was buried in this thing; they had padding underneath for me to lie on, but it was still a long day. First they attached the fake body to my shoulders, then they loaded it with guts. I was retching. They had pig intestines and stuff in a refrigerator, which broke down. By the time they got to the guts they just smelled horrendous. I had a ventilating mask on during the set up, they were spraying perfume...it was revolting. Once they sealed the chest cavity, it wasn't quite so bad. Then they shot it."
"I had talked to George before, and told him that Rhodes is such a bastard, if he's gonna go down, he's gonna have something to say about it. What I wanted to tell these fuckers that, that while they're dragging my legs down the hall, I wanted to tell them to go choke on 'em. He loved it. I told Savini that, after they tear the guts and come in for a close-up, he should hit me with some blood--no guts, please--which I would spit out of my mouth while I deliver this line. We did the guts tearing--got it in one take, fortunately--and when they did that the smell came back in full force. The blood was dripping into the hole, down to my knees...Savini put some blood in my mouth, they came in for the close-up. I spat out the blood and took in a breath to deliver my line...and the smell--I was literally gagging and dry heaving; luckily my stomach was empty, but I was literally retching as I delivered the line."
The zombies whose job it was to handle the decaying meat by-products were members of G-Force, the Pennsylvania power pop group formerly known as the Grenadi Brothers. "I had asked for the Grenadi Brothers to be up front," says Pilato. "Because they had already done a lot of extra work, so I knew they had some idea of what to do, and they'd be less likely to create a situation that would require re-takes."
One naturally wonders whether Pilato, as an experienced stage actor, minds playing a supporting role in a film that, in the final analysis, stars its grisly special effects. "Not at all," he says. "This is what it is. It's a George Romero movie with special effects by Tom Savini. The effects are the main course--not to say that George didn't take a lot of time and thought with these characters. A lot more time and study was put into these characters than had been put into the characters for "Night" or "Dawn" and George did spend a lot of time with the actors on the set."
"A few people have asked me about 'gratuitous violence,' and I have to say, listen, I'm not just defending this movie because I'm in it. It's not a slasher movie. It is without a doubt a gorefest, but there's a lot going on."
Pilato was planning to take a month off this summer to join his family on a sentimental journey to Italy; a visit to the Old Country. It was a very difficult decision for him to cancel that trip in order to pay full attention to his acting career now that he has a very visible role in what is likely to be a very successful film.
"Right now is no time to take myself out of the race," he says. "Especially since I can't count on a role in the sequel...unless I play a stump."
