George A. Romero
For me, tribalism and religion are basically the big reasons we're in trouble. Patriotism, tribalism, and religion.Collection: Patriotism
As great as Ed is, the wisdom out here is that he can't carry a movie. They'll pay him $3 million to be the second banana in Julia Roberts things. But they won't put up $3 million for an Ed Harris movie.Collection: Wisdom
'The Thing from Another World' was the first movie that really scared me. But the one that made me want to make movies was 'The Tales of Hoffman.' That's my favorite film of all time. It's a fantasy film. It's an opera. I never get tired of it.Collection: Movies
People called '28 Days' and '28 Weeks' zombie movies, and they're not! It's some sort of virus; they're not dead.Collection: Movies
My stories are about humans and how they react, or fail to react, or react stupidly. I'm pointing the finger at us, not at the zombies. I try to respect and sympathize with the zombies as much as possible.Collection: Respect
Nothing's ever real until it's real.
I liked the '28 Days Later' films, but they're not zombies; they're not dead. They're not using it in the same way.
I also have always liked the monster within idea. I like the zombies being us. Zombies are the blue-collar monsters.
A zombie film is not fun without a bunch of stupid people running around and observing how they fail to handle the situation.
If I fail, the film industry writes me off as another statistic. If I succeed, they pay me a million bucks to fly out to Hollywood and fart.
To me, the zombies have always just been zombies. They've always been a cigar. When I first made 'Night of the Living Dead,' it got analyzed and overanalyzed way out of proportion. The zombies were written about as if they represented Nixon's Silent Majority or whatever. But I never thought about it that way.
One thing about a film production is that it must run efficiently; there is no room for dead wood. So somebody that hangs around by the coffee wagon won't get hired again, but somebody who is dedicated and works hard and really puts out will get noticed by the people that matter around there and will get asked to come back again.
I'm like my zombies. I won't stay dead!
On the other side of that coin, and far outweighing it, is the fact that I've been able to use genre of Fantasy/Horror and express my opinion, talk a little about society, do a little bit of satire and that's been great, man. A lot of people don't have that platform.
The horror films that I've made have been satirical in one way or another or political, and I really think that's the purpose of horror. I don't see that happening very often.
I sit around listening to classical music. I don't play video games. I love to go to dinner, go on picnics, travel.
My zombies will never take over the world because I need the humans. The humans are the ones I dislike the most, and they're where the trouble really lies.
I sympathize with the zombies and am not even sure they are villains. To me they are this earth-changing thing. God or the devil changed the rules, and dead people are not staying dead.
I grew up in New York City. And I lived in the Bronx in a place called Parkchester.
The hardest thing when you're making a zombie movie is, 'How am I going to kill these zombies? I need a clever way to knock these guys off.'
I thought Godzilla was a mess, the monster had no character and the humans didn't either. They forgot to make the movie that went along with all these wonderful effects.
When you're shooting super-low-budget - we had 20 days to shoot 'Diary,' and a little over $2 - time is money.
I always thought of the zombies as being about revolution, one generation consuming the next.
If one horror film hits, everyone says, 'Let's go make a horror film.' It's the genre that never dies.
When you're working with a low budget, the most expensive time is the time spent on the set. The words of the day are, 'Get off the set as quickly as possible,' and so CG enables you to do that.
My film collection is all oldies.
My stuff is my stuff. I do it for my own reasons, using my own peculiar set of guidelines.
There are so many factors when you think of your own films. You think of the people you worked on it with, and somehow forget the movie. You can't forgive the movie for a long time. It takes a few years to look at it with any objectivity and forgive its flaws.
I like guys who are understandable and good guys who are flawed.
As a filmmaker you get typecast just as much as an actor does, so I'm trapped in a genre that I love, but I'm trapped in it!
I think you're only free if you're working on very low or huge money.
The most realistic blood I've seen is when Marlon Brando gets beat up in On The Waterfront.
I really believe that you could do horror very inexpensively. I don't think it has anything to do with the effects, the effects are not the most important parts.
The guy that made me wanna make movies... and this is off the wall-is a guy named Michael Pal, the British director.
I don't think you need to spend $40 million to be creepy. The best horror films are the ones that are much less endowed.
I'll never get sick of zombies. I just get sick of producers.
Zombies are always moving fast in video games. It makes sense if you think about it. Those games are all about hand-eye coordination and how quickly can you get them before they get you.
I really liked the helicopter pilot in 'Dawn of the Dead', when he gets bitten and comes out of the elevator. That guy was amazing. He did this incredible walk that we didn't even know about until we started shooting.
Movies are about escape.
First of all, in the old days, if you wanted to show someone getting shot on film, all you could do was place an effect in the original take. And if you wanted to brighten somebody's face and leave the rest of the room dark, that was a very expensive process.
I expect a zombie to show up on 'Sesame Street' soon, teaching kids to count.
I keep a little notebook of things that I can do to the zombies that might be silly and fun.
I grew up on the old EC comic books before the Comics Code in North American and with all sort of good-natured fun. I never had nightmares I think because all of the old horror stuff that I was exposed to was well meaning in a certain sense.
Horror will always be there, it always comes back, it's a familiar genre that some people, not everyone - it's sort of the cinema anchovies. You either like it or you don't.
Somehow I've been able to keep standing and stay in my little corner and do my little stuff and I'm not particularly affected by trends or I'm not dying to make a 3D movie or anything like that. I'm just sort of happy to still be around.
For a Catholic kid in parochial school, the only way to survive the beatings - by classmates, not the nuns - was to be the funny guy.
Ever since 'Lassie' and 'Old Yeller', I won't watch animal movies. Animals in movies always die.
I grew up on DC Comics, moral tales where the bad guys got their comeuppance. To me the gory panels or grotesque stuff just made me chuckle.
The two great things about computer CG stuff are I can now do gags I would never have dreamed of in the old day.
I don't like the new trends in horror. All this torture stuff seems really mean-spirited. People have forgotten how to laugh, and I don't see anybody who's using it as allegory.