The Untold Truth Of Rob Zombie

There's nobody else in the entertainment industry quite like Rob Zombie. First of all, he's a man of many passions and pursuits. The bearded and dreadlocked singer rose to public prominence in the early '90s as the frontman for White Zombie, a nontraditional heavy metal band that scored a bunch of huge rock hits like "Thunder Kiss '65," "Black Sunshine," "More Human Than Human," and "I'm Your Boogie Man." Then he went solo and was even more successful, with his horror-inflected and retro stage show and recordings like "Living Dead Girl," "Dragula," and "Foxy, Foxy." Just after the turn of the new millennium, Zombie brought that singular sensibility — campy, gory, and edgy — to filmmaking and became a highly regarded horror director, helming his own works like "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects" while also successfully rebooting the "Halloween" franchise.

Zombie is an interesting guy with a huge volume of work and a lot to say. Here's a look into the fascinating (and not too frightening) life of Rob Zombie.

At age 18, Rob Zombie left home in Massachusetts for New York City to attend the prestigious Parsons School of Design. He dropped out after a short time and then worked a succession of odd jobs. "I was working as a bike messenger in New York City, which is the worst job ever, as far as I'm concerned," he told Metal Hammer. "It keeps you in shape, but otherwise it sucks." He also put his design skills to good use, performing graphic and layout on adult magazines. "I just had to make sure everything was straight. Nobody was really concerned with it looking pleasing." For example, he ensured that staples didn't obscure pictorials in titles such as Tail End and Over 40. 

Everybody has to start somewhere, and for future entertainment machine Rob Zombie, it was as a teenage low-level production assistant on a TV show. Fortunately, it was one of the most visually stimulating TV shows ever: "Pee Wee's Playhouse," the surreal, cartoonish Saturday-morning series starring Paul Reubens as his man-child character, Pee Wee Herman. "It was a cool job to have. But I was probably nineteen years old. It was everything from delivering stuff to doing little crap work around the set. I don't even know if I was a P.A. Whatever is just below a P.A.," Zombie told Westword. "There were all kinds of people I really liked on the show. So it was pretty exciting.

White Zombie is what made Rob Zombie famous. The band's unique sound, a mixture of metal riffs, thunderous drums, sound clips of old movies, a groove you could dance to, and Zombie's growly vocals, took a while to shake out. According to a Zombie interview with Metal Hammer, the group started in 1985 as "a bunch of people who could only play our instruments a bit" and were part of New York's Sonic Youth-led art rock scene. While it played regular gigs at the famous CBGB club, White Zombie struggled to fit in — they were too metal for art rock, but then when they aligned with that scene, they were considered too off-the-wall. "We got gigs opening for other bands like Danzig and Anthrax and Megadeth, and the crowds were looking at us, like 'What the f*** is this?'" on account of their sound and look, which involved beards and dreadlocks. "And then when grunge hit, we were too metal to be grunge and not alternative enough to be alternative!"

White Zombie trudged along, releasing three albums and several EPs on smaller labels to little notice before getting signed to the large Geffen Records. Not until well after the release of 1992's "La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1" did the band have any success. "Before that no one gave a sh*t," Zombie said. Before that, the band members were "broke and touring in a van and playing clubs to basically nobody."

In 1993, Rob Zombie was introduced to dancer and DJ Sheri Moon (now Sheri Moon Zombie) by a mutual friend (per Girls and Corpses), and they had their first date at a New Haven, Connecticut, club called Toad's Place, according to the New York Post. While Moon says she was "kinda mean" on that first encounter, they hit it off over pizza, and a month later, they'd moved in together out in California. Zombie also incorporated Moon into White Zombie, hiring her to act in videos, including "Feed the Gods." The romantic partners soon became frequent collaborators as a result. "When he went solo he always wanted to have dancers on tour. So I just became involved with that and choreographed the numbers. I found the girls, and made the costumes," Moon recalled. When Zombie moved into directing films, he brought Moon along. He hasn't directed a movie that Moon didn't star in, and she has only acted in one film (the 2004 horror flick "Toolbox Murders") that Zombie didn't helm.

In 2002, Zombie and Moon made their relationship official, deciding to get married after nine years together. Then, just before their planned November wedding, they decided to elope and got hitched, realizing that they'd done the deed on Halloween. "It sounds like we're trying to be all spooky and weird, but that really wasn't the plan," Zombie said.

Tom Papa is a mainstream stand-up comedian, a guy who tells jokes about relationships and who regularly opens for Jerry Seinfeld. Rob Zombie is a metal star and horror filmmaker. But who cares? These guys are pals and collaborators. According to Splitsider (via Zombie's website), they met when a mutual acquaintance brought Zombie to one of Papa's shows. Then they wound up at a destination wedding together and "hung out the whole weekend and became really good friends." When Zombie made the animated feature "The Haunted World of El Superbeasto," he thought it would be funny if a low-key guy like Papa voiced the title character, a hulking wrestler. Papa took the gig and then wound up co-writing the script. When it came time to plan his first special, "Tom Papa: Live in New York City," Zombie offered his directing services, and Papa hired him.

Horror lover Zombie is actually a huge consumer of comedy. He discovered Marx Brothers movies as a kid and wound up named as the director of an upcoming Groucho Marx biographical film, and he casts his favorite comics in his movies — Chris Hardwick in "House of 1000 Corpses" and Brian Posehn in "The Devil's Rejects," for example. Zombie even has a special affinity for a reliable CBS laugh track-laden sitcom. "I watch 'The King of Queens' and go, 'This show is f***ing genius,'" he told Thrillist. "It's so f***ing funny, man, I love that show. Kevin James is a f***ing genius."

While he still tours and records music, in the 21st century, Rob Zombie is primarily known as a writer and director. That transition didn't come without some resistance from Hollywood. Zombie's feature directorial debut was a horror film he wrote himself: "House of 1000 Corpses," a sleazy, extremely violent, and scary movie for Universal about a family of murderers who torture and kill some lost travelers. "I told them that I wanted to make a drive-in movie, something very gritty and nasty and weird. And they were all like, 'Okay, great, great great,'" Zombie told AV Club. "Maybe they just didn't know what I meant by that." 

After the film was completely finished in 2000, executives balked at releasing it. "Universal, like a lot of the other major studios, had been pulled in front of Congress to testify about marketing violent movies to children, because the Columbine High School shooting had just happened," Zombie explained. "And I just think that our movie seemed like too big of a publicity risk for the studio." Universal allowed Zombie to shop the movie around to other distributors, and it finally hit theaters in 2003, three years after production wrapped.

Rob Zombie is very particular about the films he makes. Since 2000, he's directed eight feature films, all of which he wrote or co-wrote, including "The Lords of Salem," "The Haunted World of El Superbeasto," two "Halloween" movies, and "House of 1000 Corpses." They all fall safely into the genre of horror, and the filmmaker stays behind the camera, choosing not to appear onscreen in his own films. 

This isn't to say that Zombie isn't a versatile and agile filmmaker. He's quietly made and appeared in several projects that aren't the typical Zombie fare. In 2010, he directed "L.A.," a very special episode of "CSI: Miami" set in Los Angeles. A year later, per The Washington Post, Zombie helmed a short mock-horror movie — a 30-second ad for Woolite.

Zombie has also lent his voice to several movies and TV projects. He portrayed two different offscreen Ravagers in both "Guardians of the Galaxy" movies, the voice of God in the dark superhero movie "Super," and a "Vegan Leader" in the Adult Swim cartoon "Mr. Pickles."

Video games are as popular and viable an entertainment as film or comic books, particularly for someone like Rob Zombie who creates action-heavy fare. He's used video games as a natural outlet and extension for his work as both a filmmaker and musician. In 2014, he teamed up with "The Walking Dead" co-creator Tony Moore to make a cinematic-style trailer (which debuted at San Diego Comic-Con, per Rolling Stone) for the French Revolution-set Ubisoft game "Assassin's Creed: Unity." "I thought it was interesting because I never work in the medium of video games, so it was a new thing to do," he said, adding that he aimed for historical accuracy in the miniature digital film.

But even as far back as the '90s, Zombie contributed to major video game releases. At a time when games were just becoming technologically advanced enough to include fully produced songs on their soundtracks, Zombie got in on the emerging tech, contributing songs to "Gran Turismo 2," "Twisted Metal III," and "Quake II."

Between making movies, comic books, video games, cartoons, and music, Rob Zombie's business is the creation of fun, but it's a job he doesn't take lightly. He personally oversees most aspects of his elaborate, effects-heavy, thoroughly-choreographed stage concert spectaculars, and he takes pride in a strong and strict work ethic and leading by example for the large crew. "They're only going to work as hard and be as organized as you are. And I have to run everything super organized and make it work," Zombie told Westworld. "And if the people that work with me don't care about it, I replace them with someone that does."

His stated goal, one which he demands every team member share: to put on a great concert for the benefit of paying customers, which means there's little to no room for offstage rock star partying and shenanigans. "To me, nothing matters but the show," Zombie said. "Nobody pays fifty bucks so you can have fun backstage."