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6-27-05
 Move aside George Lucas, another George is in town. This George’s name is Romero and yeah, you might have written a little space opera called STAR WARS, and yeah, you might have made a bit of a cultural impact in the land of sci-fi, but hell, in the land of horror, this guy made the modern landscape what it is today! A land of rip-offs and parodies and remakes and sequels and sequels to remakes and even sequels to sequels of remakes (got that?), and it all started in Pittsburgh 40 years ago with a bunch of chocolate syrup and leftover goodies from the local butcher shop and a certain little line of dialogue… Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. No matter how freaking old you are now or when you first heard that immortal line, whether it was a Drive-in in the 60’s, a revival house in the 70’s, a rented video in the 80’s or a netflick last week, that line is to horror freaks what “Luke, I am your father” is to sci-fi geeks. But NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD has a full ten years on the STAR WARS legacy, and one would be hard pressed to think of another genre series that has lasted this long, let alone bringing forth a new chapter in all but one decade since its first entry. (Ah, one wonders what a 90’s George Romero LIVING DEAD movie would have been like. Think of it, a mid 90’s Clinton-era zombie parable, sandwiched between the alternative grunge of the early 90’s and the boy band pop of the later 90’s). This summer is Nirvana. Not only have we finally seen Anarkin become Darth, but we are finally seeing the maestro play comeback kid on the long side of 60, showing all his moviemaking protégés how the mentor does it. The grandfather of the modern horror film is back kiddies, and Grandpa can shock and roll with the best of them, maybe even better than us all. Pay attention, cuz this is how it is done. With thoughtfulness and storytelling and craft and characterization. Oh, yeah, and did I mention blood and guts and chopped off hands and stomped heads and imploding entrails? This is George Romero supersized. Widescreen for the first time, a bigger budget than previous zombie efforts, but with his independent spirit and unique flavor intact and as potent as ever. Along for the ride with Grandpa Zombie is one of his ‘grandkids”, make-up impresario Greg Nicotero, a fanboy FX assistant 20 years ago on DAY OF THE DEAD, now, with partner Howard Berger of KNB, in charge of the entire special make-up effects army so integral to Romero’s world. Greg is proof in the pudding that one can go from apprentice to colleague, so aim high, zombie kids. Here now, is a double feature for y’all, straight up from the LAND OF THE DEAD. After all these years, “They’re STILL coming to get you…” 1 OF 2: GEORGE ROMERO I gotta tell you, George, I was at the press screening the other night with Greg Nicotero, and man, I haven’t felt that kind of glee at a horror flick since, I gotta be honest with you, since maybe DAWN OF THE DEAD. I’ve always said, you know, I grew up watching the black and white Universal horror movies when I was eight, nine, ten, and then at thirteen, DAWN came along and it was like a Goregasm. That was when my adolescence set in and suddenly my world went from black and white to color. Absolutely. All right. I’ll credit you. DAWN OF THE DEAD was a goregasm for us horror fans, but it also had that undercurrent of social commentary of consumerism and conformity. What social issues were in your head while writing LAND OF THE DEAD? I started something with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD that I couldn’t possibly have foreseen. Since then, what I’ve tried to do is reflect on the socio-political climate of the different eras. The stories are similar, but they are set in different decades. It’s an unusual conceit, but I like being able to make the film current, politically speaking, even though the story is continuous. With LAND, I actually had to change the political issues. When I initially finished the first draft of the script, it was before 9/11, actually just a few days before, and after that, everybody just wanted to make soft, fuzzy friendly, movies, and it was impossible to get a deal on this. So I waited, and then about a year later, I guess it was right before the invasion of Iraq, everybody was worried, “Are they gonna hit us again?”, so I went for that. There’s nothing in the film that clobbers you over the head, but the idea of the high rise tower being the financial center and the idea of the administration trying to convince people that everyone’s okay. Little ideas like, you know, being protected by water, that if we’re surrounded by water they can’t get us. Just the image of these big, armored vehicles going through towns and mowing people down, well, in this case they’re zombies, but then, you What percent of the audience do you think gets those allusions? I don’t track that kind of thing. It’s pretty hard to say. But my suspicion would be that most of the people in a bar in Pittsburgh would be, “Whaddya mean? Whaddya talkin’ about?” I know that people that write about film and people that think a bit get it. The one sort of ‘on the nose’ thing is when Dennis Hopper says, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists”. That’s it right there. That line a great response the other night. I think there was a lot of people, myself included, that put the face of Bush on Hopper’s character, and was quite gleeful when he finally got his. You know, I think probably if you even showed the film at the White House they wouldn’t get it. They might be a little upset that we burned money (laughs). What’s it like directing all those zombies? You can’t tell zombies how to move. If I did, I’d get 100 people moving and groaning in So what differentiates a George Romero zombie from any other zombie? I guess the number one differentiation everyone talks about, or at least asks me about is, “Do your zombies run?” And no, they don’t. I figure if they take off running their ankles would probably snap. My line about this has been that my zombies would probably take out library cards before they’d join a health club. (laughs) I find it more threatening, you know, I grew up on FRANKENSTEIN and THE MUMMY and all that, and I just find it more threatening when there’s these big, lumbering things inexorably coming at you and you’ve got to find the way to stop them. You’ve got to find the Achilles’ heel. The argument is, “Well, you can just run away from them if they’re walking”, and I’ve actually used that. In the mall I’ve had guys run right through them, you know, but then all of a sudden, you get trapped in a situation and you’re in trouble. I just prefer to keep it that way. If I had to answer that I would say George Romero zombies have true character. Well, yes, and in this one there are several zombies that are lead players, actually. I try to do that as much as possible, even with wardrobe. I know in the I would also say your zombies have incredible pathos. Obviously, that’s the idea. You’re supposed to feel for these particular zombies, like when they push through into the city and you see all these other helpless zombies hanging with targets painted on them… I’m trying to do that. I’m trying to make the zombies more and more sympathetic while the humans are sort of disintegrating as we go. LAND is set in a devastated world. There’s no electricity except for places inside the city where people are trying to live normal lives. That is their terror… it goes back to the idea of ignoring terrorism and other societal problems outside your own door. They think, ‘If we ignore it, it’ll be okay” That’s the core of what the movie is about. The protagonists are the ones that have to go out into the dark side of the world. Do you foresee a world of the dead where the humans literally have become the bad guys, say, like Vincent Price’s character in LAST MAN ON EARTH where in a world of vampires, the vampire hunter is the evil one? Maybe. Maybe. I don’t know, man. I hope not. I don’t think I really want to go there. That gets a little too PLANET OF THE APES for me. One of the occurring themes in your films is the notion that things are not going to get better. Normalcy will not be restored. Well, my problem with most traditional horror films is that you upset the apple cart only to restore it again. That’s sort of the standard formula. In the end, everything’s going to be okay. We’re back to normal. Well, who wants to be back to normal? My films are not at all traditional horror films, slashers Good for you, man. It’s nice to have that. It must be nice to have a little bit more money, too. You’ve got to do some of your most epic zombie kills yet. It was cool, but we weren’t rich, man. The DAWN remake had, I don’t know. We had twenty million, and I think the DAWN remake was thirty two, thirty three. So, we weren’t rich, and the scope of the film is huge. We had forty days for the whole thing, they had forty days just for second unit. And it was grueling. Sub zero temperatures some nights, and it was all at night. All outdoors. But, man, everybody just came to play. Everybody put 120% into it. I Everybody wants to be a zombie in a George Romero movie! I know you had Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg from SHAUN OF THE DEAD in there. Yeah, we got those guys in there, and Savini’s in there. Yep. He got a big cheer at the screening. Tom’s the man. So this year we fanboys had the two George’s, Lucas and Romero, returning to their most famous stories. We got a final chapter in the STAR WARS legacy and another chapter in the LIVING DEAD series. Is LAND OF THE DEAD the end of your saga? Or a new beginning? I don’t think it’s either. I like to say it’s the fourth of ten. I won’t be alive that long… But I don’t know. If the movie does well, there will be a sequel and we’ll have to do it quickly. In that case, I would make it almost Part Two of this movie. If that doesn’t happen, I think I’ll wait for some sort of political change, or sociological change and try and do Well, maybe you can create that political situation just so you could have fodder for your next zombie film! There you go. That’s a premise for you. Maybe I’ll just phone in a bomb scare to the White House! We’re going on 40 years since NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. You really are the guy who initiated what I consider modern horror. Being that guy, how would you say the landscape of horror films 2005 differs most from horror films 1967? I’ve always considered myself this guy who happens to be a filmmaker who lives in Pittsburgh. I’m grateful that there is ongoing interest in what I do. I guess, to my fans, I’m sort of a Pancho Villa kind of figure, always just under the radar. stuff has had an extraordinary shelf life and I can’t explain why. Partly, I guess, because I am this rogue guy, but also because some people find what I do interesting- there’s something there, something underneath it all. And I think that back in 1967, there were a lot more innovative things going on back then. There were a lot of cats working at the time like Tobe and Wes, Sean Cunnigham… There were just a lot of people doing some really hard ass stuff. But I don’t see a lot of stuff now that has any real equal depth. I don’t see too much of that now. It’s either big Hollywood special effects or things like THE RING or THE GRUDGE. A bunch of Japanese knock-offs that scare you for the sake of scaring you with some very thin premise such as, “You watch this video you’re gonna die.” I mean, who believes that? But people are willing to go and get scared by it, so what do I know? |
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“They’re coming to get you, Barbara…”
Man! Geez, that’s a great word! Goregasm. Can I use it?
know, wondering why they don’t like us? So there are a lot of those allusions. They’re not up front. The kids don’t have to worry about that, they can just take the ride.
same way. I basically say, “Okay, you’re dead, you’re stiff.” And I ask them to use their imaginations. Then I end up with some amazing interpretations. Some are a bit over the top, but the variety is great for the cameras.
DAWN remake it was just a gang of zombies in clothes from the Gap. And I try to give them personality, you know, ball players and nuns.
or anything. I just think of them as stories, basically- people stories underneath it all. The early horror films were about a crisis that could possibly destroy the world; it was all about restoring order. The real horror in my films is that order is never going to be restored. And that’s one of the things that I’ve tried to do with the LIVING DEAD series particularly. It bothers me when I can’t. I did a movie called MONKEY SHINES and the hero sort of got healed in the end which disturbed the hell out of me. The studio insisted on it. Now, on the other had, these guys at Universal have been fabulous. No bullshit. There are a couple of execs here who are real fans of this genre and ‘get it’, and man, it’s the best experience I’ve had.
another one then!