Set of the day

George Romero is an icon among horror movie fans. His iconic 1968 film Night of the Living Dead created a new genre in the form of the apocalyptic zombie movie, spawning five sequels and an almost uncountable number of imitators. His 1973 movie The Crazies (which was recently remade pretty well by Breck... more

George Romero is an icon among horror movie fans. His iconic 1968 film Night of the Living Dead created a new genre in the form of the apocalyptic zombie movie, spawning five sequels and an almost uncountable number of imitators. His 1973 movie The Crazies (which was recently remade pretty well by Breck Eisner) unleashed a kind of government-caused-outbreak paranoia that was the antecedent of what Stephen King would later exploit in The Stand. Romero and King would collaborate on a celebration of 1950s EC comics horror publications in Creepshow. He totally rewrote the vampire myth as a young man's psychosis in Martin. Outside of horror, Romero made the intensely personal Arthurian parable Knightriders. SG talked to Romero in Boston, while he was promoting his latest zombie movie Survival of the Dead. Survival of the Dead, available now on Video on Demand and opening theatrically on May 28, concerns a rag-tag band of survivors of the zombie holocaust who find themselves on an island off the coast of Delaware, embroiled in an intergenerational feud between two clans of Irish settlers.

Michael Marano: You used zombies as a critique of consumer culture in Dawn of the Dead. In the years since then, zombies have themselves become commercial commodities. There are scores of video games, movies, and Simon and Schuster has a line devoted specifically to apocalyptic zombie novels. Any thoughts on the ways that zombies have become the very kinds of consumerist products that you used zombies that you poked fun at thirty years ago?

George Romero: Well, it's surprising. First of all, I do think it was video games that popularized the creature. I guess they [zombies] are perfect targets for first-person shooters. And I really think it was the video games, and after that the graphic novels, that have made them popular. I don't think it was so much the movies, because if you think about it, Zombieland is the only one that really was a blockbuster, or any kind of huge hit. As far as this question about them becoming a consumer item, I don't know how popular it [the zombie genre] is. I guess they're popular enough! (Laughs.) It's hard for me to even get a sense of that. I'm sort of still doing my own thing. My zombies are still sort of shuffling around slowly and they're almost just a minor annoyance. My stories have always been about people, and how they deal with the problem, how they fail to deal with the problem, and how stupidly they deal with it. To me, it has been a perfect vehicle for socio-political criticism. It's just been fun that way! So, that's the way I think of them (zombies). And people say, 'Jeeze! You created all of this!' And maybe I did, somehow! I didn't even call them 'zombies' in the first film. They were 'flesh eaters' or 'ghouls.' I never thought of them as 'zombies,' because when we made that film (1968's Night of the Living Dead), 'zombies' to me were still the guys in the Caribbean doing wetwork for Lugosi (in White Zombie). I just wanted some sort of strange phenomenon that would be a game changer so that people, my characters, would fail observe that and hoist themselves on their own petard.


MM: I want to talk about "game changers" and sort of "society changers." You started out cutting news footage, back in the Medium Cool days when they still used motorcycle couriers and actual--what that stuff they used to use?

GR: Film?

MM: Yeah! That's the stuff! Film! It was like YouTube with sprockets.

GR: It had little holes in it! They never let me actually cut it. I was a courier. I was Haskell Wexler!

MM: You were?

GR: Yeah, I just ran the stuff around. I learned how to edit at one of those labs. But they never actually let me work on the news footage. It was too precious!

MM: That sort of news-based reality behind how you cut your teeth learning how to cut film, did that news paradigm affect the way that you chose to depict societies falling apart?

GR: I think it more affected stylistically the original film [Night of the Living Dead] than anything else. And even though it's only in the last 20 minutes of the film, people always write about that film and how it's got this 'vérité style' when really it doesn't. I mean we were shooting with a sound blimp. It's just very static. Until I can finally get the camera out of the blimp in the last twenty minutes of the film and the camera, once out of the blimp, was really portable, and I intentionally tried to make that stuff look like news footage and tried to cut it with that same sort of chop that the guys used to use back in the lab. From Dawn of the Dead on, I guess, I've had this conceit that if there's something I wanna talk about, or whatever, I can bring zombies out of the closet and get to make a film, and get it financed.

MM: Now, with using zombies as social commentary and always having them on hand for that, I couldn't help but notice that with Survival of the Dead you seem to be reapplying your satire not just to society, but you seem to be taking on other genres. Like, a little bit of western...

GR: Oh, yeah! [Laughs]

MM: ... and little bit of the "Irish land dramas," like The Field. I kept thinking of Ryan's Daughter.

GR: Really?!

MM: Yeah. I wanted Sarah Miles to be eaten. I wanted that. And I know from Creepshow that you're an old school EC Comics fan. Did old Mad Magazine (originally an EC comic book) approaches to critiquing films and film genres inform how you approached satirizing other movies in Survival of the Dead?

GR: I think it probably does! It's waaaay in the background, somewhere in here (gesturing to his medulla) in the bottom part of my brain. I wanted to do something stylistically different with (Survival of the Dead). I knew I was going to do some Looney Tunes kind of moments with it, and that comes from old comics I guess. I'll go to see horror film with a friend, I'll go to see a horror film with Steve King, and we're sittin' there, the only ones giggling and everyone else is hiding their eyes or running to gag. And we chuckle! And for anybody who grew up on the old EC comics, they were just filled with bad puns and terrible jokes. And it was humor all the way, and it just made you chuckle. So, I just can't resist that! And then I just wanted to completely change (my approach to zombies in Survival). It's a lot more fun to me, for me, to say, 'Hey, man! Let's just do something completely different!' And once I had the idea of the feud, I remembered the old William Wyler film called The Big Country, and I said, 'Let's model it after that! And let's have fun! And let's sort of make a quasi-western out of this.' We went with 2.35 [aspect ratio]. We didn't mute the colors. It was just a choice. All of a sudden, all the department heads got together and said, 'Wow! That would be really fun, to do that!' So that was just, 'Hey! Let's have a picnic, here!'

MM: To me, a lot of the headshots in Survival of the Dead really reminded me of (EC Comics artists known for their ghoulish humor) Jolly Jack Davis and Ghastly Graham Ingles.

GR: Yeah! Those boys!

MM: Now, I don't want to ruin anything for people who haven't seen Survival of the Dead yet, so I'll just speak a

MM: I want to jump back to what you were talking about earlier about using zombies as a template to create character-based drama. You tend to create apocalypses, not just in your zombie movies, that are very small scale. A farmhouse (in Night of the Living Dead). A TV Station where order is breaking down (in the opening of Dawn of the Dead). A bunker (Day of the Dead). In your 1973 movie The Crazies the enemy seemed to be Ma Bell, the phone company. Even Martin, Bruiser and Knightriders, seem to be about intensely personal apocalypses. Do you want to comment on that? Maybe in comparison to large scale apocalypses, like Michael Bay's and Roland Emmerich's?

GR: Well, first of all, I would never tackle one of those! I wouldn't know how! And I don't quite know what's the purpose. Because... it's much more likely that we'll face these little more minor apocalypses, be it family, or school or a job or whatever. And that's always just connected to me, somehow. Just was my characters don't deal with the looming threat of the zombies, they continue to just deal with each other on a superficial and a ridiculous level. And they create their own problems.

MM: In the Cold War days, your zombie apocalypses were total and complete breakdowns of world order. There's no TV, no communication. It's all just done. In your post-9/11 zombie movies, the end of the world seems like a chore. Just another goddam thing to deal with. Was this conscious on your part?

GR: With these last two (Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead) I sort of went back to the beginning of (the zombie plague). I didn't know where to go after Land of the Dead. I didn't want to go Beyond Thunderdome. But that was a pretty apocalyptic world. I didn't want to go further than that. I just didn't know where to go. Do the zombies take over? I'm not interested in that. There was another reason for us starting over [bringing the narrative back to the start of the zombie apocalypse]. I always wanted to sort of do what Steve King does with the town of Castle Rock. You know, create this sort of collage. This is happening here, while this is happening here, and this character recurs. I've never been able to do that, because the copyrights on the first four films are all owned by different people, and I can't get 'em to come together on a deal, here! So, that was another reason why my current partner and I wanted to start over with this, and start fresh. These two (recent zombie movies) actually connect; Survival uses a minor character from Diary. I actually have two more ideas (for further zombie movies). This movie wouldn't exist if Diary hadn't made a lot of dough. I mean, it cost so little that, even with a limited theatrical release it made a lot of money for the producers. If the same thing happens with this film, I'm standing by! I got two more minor characters from Diary, and I would love it to have this little set of movies that go together.

MM: Do you have any non-zombie movies planned?

GR: I'm working on one! I don't know if it will happen. At my age, man, I don't want to go out and do the pitch again. Peter Grunwald (my business partner) and I--we were out there for almost six and a half years almost and never made a movie. We got all these huge development deals. And I made more money than I've ever made in my life, but I never made a movie. For one reason or another, all the deals blew up. And I just don't want to do that anymore. And I found a lovely place to work, in Canada. And I work with now, again, the same family of people. The guy that shot my first movie up there shot this movie. The same wardrobe people and everything. I love the collaborative process of making films. And I hate the deal making. We have an idea that we would love to do. If it gets too nuts, the development aspect of it, then I don't know. I do have another horror movie idea, which is non-zombie. Which I'm sure we can finance. But if this film does well, I think I'll do another one of these (zombie movies). Hey, I'd be happy if did two more of these that that was it. I love doing them!