106 Miles to Chicago

Gaiman and Gorillaz

Neil Gaiman interviews the brains behind Gorillaz.

You also seem inspired by horror movie imagery. Why are there so many zombies in your videos?

ALBARN: Well, because everybody on TV's a fucking zombie, right? I mean, watch a 50 Cent video where he's in the middle of a club, and he's just surrounded by zombies. The Gorillaz cartoons seem more real to me than the actual people on TV. Because at least you know that there's some intelligence behind the cartoons, and there's a lot of work that's gone into it, so it can't all be just a lie.

HEWLETT: Yeah, I'm much more at home with Daffy Duck than I am with a real person. But the whole zombie thing is an obsession of mine. I love zombie films. Once, I looked out the window where I work and realized that everybody was walking around in circles with their mobile phones attached to their heads - it reminded me of that scene from Dawn of the Dead in the car lot. That was a big inspiration.

ALBARN: These are the seeds of the future, aren't they? You need to identify them.