CraveOnline: Obviously you came up with this idea before Cloverfield, so what was your inspiration?
George A Romero: Actually before we shot Land of the Dead, I had this idea that I wanted to do something about emerging media. I thought, "Well, that's a way to get back and do something really inexpensive and simple and see if I have the chops and the stamina to go back and make another little guerilla movie and relate back again to the origins of the thing." That's where it came from. I had this idea that I could use film students out shooting a school project when zombies begin to walk, and they document it. I wanted to do the subjective camera thing. This is before I knew that anybody else was working on it. I didn't know about De Palma, I didn't know about Cloverfield or anything else. I thought we were going to be the first guys out there with one of these.
CraveOnline: The style is built into the story of why they're filming things, how we see things. How carefully did you construct that in the story?
George A Romero: It wasn't so much constructing the story as it was constructing the shots. People have said, "Boy, it must be nice to just be able to turn the camera on and shoot." It was hell, man. We were shooting 360 around the room. We were doing eight page shots and it really needed to be choreographed down to the shoelaces. In that sense, it was tough. It was really, really tough. The DP did a great job making it seem very off handed but it wasn't at all. It required more discipline than anything in Land of the Dead or anything else I've ever done.
CraveOnline: How difficult is it to balance social commentary and straight out zombies?
George A Romero: I don't think it's difficult. I think you just have to set out to do it. A lot of these films, the ideas for them have come from the world. Once you know, "Okay, I'm going to make a movie about this," you can glue zombies on it easily. So it's not that difficult. It's not difficult at all. You just have to have that idea. I think a lot of people don't. I go to conventions and universities and talk to young filmmakers. Everybody's making a zombie movie, but all it is is because it's easy to get the neighbors to come out and put ketchup on them. You don't need a rubber suit, you don't need a monster effect. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of substance behind most of it. It's just splatter. That's all it is. I think you have to go a little deeper. I always tell these young filmmakers, "Get an idea. Get an idea. Forget story." Everybody mistakes that for story. I'm a terrible pitchman. If I'm pitching something out here to an executive, they always want to know what the story is and I say, "It's not the story. I could give you 50 stories. Okay, the guy's black, maybe not, maybe he's white, maybe it's a woman." You could do it 50 different ways. It has to be about something. But you walk in there and you try to pitch that and say, "Okay, this is about mistrust." You get a lot of head nods, "All right, so what's the story?"
CraveOnline: Have you perfected the head injury and how do you come up with new ones?
George A Romero: I had one early on in life.
CraveOnline: You never make it redundant though. How do you keep it fresh?
George A Romero: Boy, a lot of it seems that way to me. It's all ideas that come to you in the shower, man. I don't even know what else to say about it but that is the challenge. Every time you set out to do one of these, well, how am I going to kill these guys? How am I going to get rid of that brain? I don't know. Anyone with ideas, please write 'em down. If I have to do another one, I don't know, man. I'm sort of running out of stuff.
CraveOnline: What do you think of the spoofs like Shaun of the Dead?
George A Romero: Well, man, I just flipped for Shaun. And it was funny because those guys, when it was going to get North American distribution, I was living in Florida or had a place in Florida at the time and I was living on this little island called Santa Bell with one little theater where the projector had a 40 watt bulb. I get this message from these guys, I didn't know who they were. Some cat named Edgar Wright. "I made this movie, I hope you like it." So next thing I know, some cat from Universal shows up, like the guy with the bomb suitcase. F***ing print is chained to him and he says, "I'm going to show you this movie at the local theater. We arranged it." So this funky little drunkard comes down to open up the theater doors and turn on the projector. I see this movie a little too dark but hilarious and it's just me in the theater and this cat from Universal back there just waiting to get the print back. And I flipped for it. It came with their phone numbers and I called them up immediately right after I saw it and I said, "Guys…" And they just said, "Oh, we just wanted to know that you weren't going to slap us down." I said, "How could anybody slap you down for this? This was just so loving." We're still buddies. They came out to be zombies in Land, both Edgar and Simon. Simon does a voice in Diary of the Dead. He does one of those voice tracks and we're still good buds. Happy to know them. They are the cleverest really. They're really cool. They could be the new Monty Python. They could take over. I don't think that's what they're shooting for though. Simon is the new Scotty.
CraveOnline: In the film you never actually use the word zombie.
George A Romero: No. They don’t know that they’re zombies.
CraveOnline: Is this set in a world where they've never seen a zombie film?
George A Romero: They haven’t. When I did the first film, I didn’t call them zombies. When I did Night of the Living Dead, I called them ghouls, flesh eaters. I didn’t think they were. Back then zombies were still those boys in the Caribbean doing the wet work for Lugosi. So I never thought of them as zombies. I thought they were just back from the dead. I ripped off the idea for the first film from a Matheson novel called I Am Legend which is now back with us after a couple of incarnations prior. I thought I Am Legend was about revolution. I mean, this is a 60s guy sitting there [pretends to take a toke, laughs] and I said if you’re going to do something about revolution, you should start at the beginning. Richard starts his book with one man left. Everybody in the world has become a vampire and I said no man, we gotta start at the beginning and tweak it up a little bit and I couldn’t use vampires because he did so I wanted something that would be an earth shaking change, something that was forever, like this awful sh*t, something that was really at the heart of it. I said what if the dead stop staying dead. Again it’s just an idea that comes to you. And I just never thought of them as zombies in the first place. This film goes back theoretically to that first night. I mean I didn’t use the word until the second film and that’s only because people who were writing about the first film called them zombies and I said maybe they are in a way, but to me zombies were Serpent And The Rainbow. I mean they were not even undead. You brew this sh*t up with blowfish powder which would put someone in a state of suspended animation and then you get them to do your chores for you. I just thought it was completely different. Because this film goes back to that first night, nobody knows what to call them yet. By the time of Land of the Dead, they had this slang already, stenches they called them. But I felt this is just too early for anybody to know what they were or to have any sort of identifying moniker for them. They didn’t know what to call them. "Those things" which is always a good fall back position.
CraveOnline: So much of the film is about communication and the media, what are your views aside from the zombie world on how we share information?
George A Romero: Is it information or is it opinion and perspective and all that? I wish it was pure information. What the internet’s value is you have access to information, but you also have access to every lunatic that’s out there that wants to throw up a blog and anybody with a radical idea, if it sounds half way reasonable, is all of a sudden going to get millions of followers and that’s the thing that’s scary to me. If Hitler was alive today, he wouldn’t have to go into the town square ever. Throw up a blog. Bing, he’s got it. If he sounds half way reasonable, forget about it. People are so used to trusting what comes over that box whether it was the old console TV, now it’s the telephone, wherever it comes from. I think people are so used to listening to that sh*t and they would rather have someone tell them how to think than do their homework and figure out what they really think about whatever the topic is and that to me is the scary thing. It’s always easy for people to be influenced. I guess if I were to indict anyone, it’s us, it’s us out here for not paying enough attention, not doing homework and just being willy nillies. It’s easier to look up from your beer and say ‘oh, you hear what that guy said? I happen to agree with that.’ Anybody who tunes into Rush Limbaugh already knows what he’s going to say and are already inclined to agree. So it winds up creating tribes. To me, tribalism and religion are basically the big reasons that we’re in trouble. Like patriotism, tribalism and religion.
CraveOnline: In the movie it seems positive though. It’s how people share information about how you destroy these things.
George A Romero: But is it information? It’s not information. It’s an opinion or it’s a certain perspective on it. I mean, in the old days there were three networks and all of a sudden Walter Cronkite is the most trusted man in America. Everybody believes what he says, not even thinking. In those days we didn’t even know it was being spun. We were very willing to just sort of listen to it and go along with it. I think the same thing is happening today. The problem is we’re going along not with Cronkite, not with these three guys anymore, we’re going along with 500 of them, a thousand, thousands of people, Arianna Huffington. It’s bad enough I have to listen to her instead of Joe Blow from Cincinnati. Listen, Joe Blow may have exactly the right idea but there are undoubtedly a lot of people out there who don’t. So I don’t know, man. Was it? I would almost and I don’t know about this, but I’d almost rather be unknowingly manipulated, at least if the information is being managed, than just be subjected to this absolute confusion which just turns into noise. It just bothers me that way. I mean I wish that it was truthful but it’s not because people are not truthful. They weren’t truthful when they ran the three networks and not necessarily everybody is being truthful now.
CraveOnline: In Diary of the Dead you’re saying you can’t trust the news because the news footage is being edited and you can’t necessarily trust bloggers either, then you’re implying that there‘s no reliable source of news anywhere ever.
George A Romero: I don’t think there is.
CraveOnline: And even your characters manipulate the filmmaking in their "document," so are you saying there's no difference between journalism and filmmaking?
George A Romero: No, I’m not sure there is. I’m not trying to answer this question. I’m trying to ask a question. Obviously he gets out there and all of a sudden he says, "Oh, walk through that door again. I didn’t get it." Is he distorting the reality? Of course! Everybody does and you don’t know, man. It’s all opinion. His argument about we might be able to save some lives here. Is he just trying to be a super star? I don’t know. I view a lot of this stuff, a lot of these blogs that are out there, a lot of this sh*t that’s on the internet, it’s replaced graffiti. I wish somebody would do a study to see if the incidence of paintings on highway walls has gone down since people have the internet now. "I don’t need to do that sh*t, man. I can make my name for myself right here." I don’t know. That’s the way it strikes me. It just feels that people are out there tooting their own horn or saying their own thing. Maybe some of them are really well motivated, maybe some of them are really trying to help cut through the garbage, but you know I’m sitting there and I don’t know who to listen to. I have no idea who to listen to. I’d rather not listen to any of it and try to get some facts. There’s no sort of library where you can go to just get pure facts and make up your own mind about it. Is the planet warming or not? What have we gotten from any media source about that? Don’t you think we should be able to figure that out and come up with a definite answer?
CraveOnline: The film ends with the suggesting of continuing the project. Are you developing a second film in this series?
George A Romero: It had nothing to do with that. This ending had nothing to do with that. Actually, ever since Dawn of the Dead, I mean, Night of the Living Dead, everybody died. When I set out to make Dawn, in fact my original script everybody died. I said, "I've got to make a sequel here." I decided sort of halfway through the shoot on that film that I could leave the world upset. I don't have to restore order in the world but I could save a couple of these characters. So I've always done that. Dawn, Day, Land and now this film, it's always there. Everybody always says, "Oh, it's wide open for a sequel." That's not the reason. The reason isn't to make a sequel. It's just I wanted to save a couple of those people that I liked.
CraveOnline: You're so identified with zombie movies, are you happy about it or does it haunt you?
George A Romero: Of course it haunts you. I'd love to be able to go in and pitch another kind of film and be taken seriously, but I'm generally not taken seriously. If I were to walk in there with a little romantic comedy, they'd say, "What?" So that's a bit frustrating because you don't grow up wanting to be a horror filmmaker. You grow up wanting to be a filmmaker and I wish I had a wider range. And I tried early on to do several films that were not genre and nine people saw them, so I don't have the credentials in that regard. There's a bit of frustration there but on the other side of that coin, and far outweighing it is the fact that I've been able to use genre fantasy horror and be able to talk a little bit about- - express my opinion, talk a little bit about society, do a little bit of satire and that's been great, man. A lot of people don't have that platform. So I don't know. I joke and say maybe I'm the Michael Moore of horror but it's wonderful to have that ability. It's sort of my niche. I can go in and do what I want to do.
CraveOnline: Are you working on Diamond Dead?
George A Romero: Diamond Dead, I would love to make that movie. I love the old script. It was an Australian producer. We had Ridley Scott behind it. It looked like it was really going to happen and nobody got it. We pitched it with Ridley and everybody said, "What is this?" It's like Phantom of the Paradise if you remember that movie, the old De Palma thing which I love. They didn't get this. It's about a dead rock band. Nobody got it. So it sort of blew away. Right before I came out here on this trip, I got a call from this guy who said, "We have a new script and I'd really like you to read it." I haven't read it yet, he said he would e-mail it to me but I'm not home right now, so. Maybe it'll come back, I don't know. You never know, man. I can't tell you, there's so much sh*t that goes down on the internet. "Oh, George is doing this. Steve King, Buick 8, boom, all these projects." Some of them you work on. Steve wrote a book called The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. I loved it. Again, you couldn't sell it for beanstalk beans because it's about a little girl. They said, "Well, how do you put a star in here? It's a little girl." Then all of a sudden Dakota Fanning appears on the scene and then wow, man. Dakota actually said, or her mother or whoever it was, actually no. I went in to take the meeting at Ben Franks which is Dakota's favorite place. I met with her. Her mother and her agent went and they sat outside. I go in and I'm sitting at this table with this little girl going, "Guys, I'm not…" And took this very sort of serious meeting with her and she liked it. She was mostly concerned "Do I really have to get bitten by those mosquitoes." No, no, we can fake that sh*t. Even then, it wasn't enough to get it financed. When I say relatively big budget, meaning 20-22, something like that in order to do all the effects, nobody wanted to risk it on a little girl. So that movie's never been made, may never be made. Maybe once Steve stopped writing or gets hit by another van or something and they need a Steve King thing.
CraveOnline: Do you ever see yourself returning to comic books like Toe Tags?
George A Romero: Well, I'd love to write another comic book. I told those guys, "Man, just call me up again and I'll do it again." I actually was hoping that that would turn into a movie but again, it's just too big. I did a comic book, in case some of you don't know, I wrote a comic book and the wonderful illustrator, Bernie Wrightson did the covers and Tommy Castillo did the stories. You don't have to worry about how am I going to shoot this. You mean somebody's just going to draw this? I don't have to sweat that stuff. So that was fast. Unfortunately, I made it too big to convert it into [a movie]. I had cities in devastation and this guy with a pet elephant, not the kind of sh*t you can do very easy on film. I loved doing it, would love to do another one. I would love to do another one. I actually have a couple of ideas. I sent them into Shrek. This guy's name is Shrek. Just ain't been invited yet.
