The Zombie Rights Campaign went to Chicago yesterday, well, the greater Chicago area (Schaumburg) for a DVD signing and release event by the ’3 Slices of Life’ cast.

But first we had to prepare our inducements for Zombie Friendly behavior in the future; delicious, homemade chocolate chip cookies.

(I was tempted to just make one enormous cookie but that would have been hard to share.)

We traveled south to Schaumburg and eventually made our way through the ridiculously enormous Streets of Woodfield mall, which is.. huge. I mean, wow. It’s an edifice to soulless capitalism, a stunning city of commerce in and of itself.

Which is my completely legitimate excuse for being late in finding the F.Y.E. for the signing. Yessir.

(It’s hard to find, ok?)

Once there however, we were able to speak with our Twitter pal, Deneen Melody, sometimes nemesis and Slices director Anthony Sumner, Jack Gulasta (who played the villanious Anti-Zombie lead in ‘W.O.R.M.’ but seems very nice in person) the very talented Toya Turner, whose sympathy for the Differently Animated comes across very well in ‘Amber Alert’, even though that’s more ghosts than Zombies. We were also able to hand out literature and generally get the message out about The Cause to a wide variety of skilled individuals and fans of the film; I chalk it up to the cookie bribes really.

A strange thing happened afterward for a protest, however; the ZRC was invited to dinner after the signing. Never ones to turn down outreach, we accepted, and talked about a lot of things, including our work, the controversy surrounding ‘A Serbian Film’ and more.

Now I have to disclose something; technically, the ZRC is in Mr. Sumner’s debt, as he craftily paid for our meal via secret communication with the wait-staff. It was clearly a calculated move to try and obtain leverage over the world’s most trusted Zombie Rights lobbying body, but by admitting our lapse in paranoia here in public I hope to avoid any future conflict of interest.

This dastardly and very friendly sort of villainy won’t work, Mr. Sumner. Although for the record, the meal was quite tasty.

I would call this both an object lesson in watching crafty film directors for unexpected acts of blackmail/charity, which is supposed to be our gig, and of course for outreach with the film community and horror fans of Illinois.

Tomorrow: The Zombie March.

Tags: Movies, Public Appearance, Social Justice

This entry was posted by John Sears on Saturday, June 11th, 2011 at 12:29 am and is filed under Zombie Media, ZRC News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.