George A Romero's Land of the Dead Interview George A Romero (Writer / Director) INTERVIEWER You have been called the Godfather of Horror and the Sultan of Zombie Splatter. Do those titles amuse or bemuse you? GEORGE A ROMERO I guess you never feel that important! All the praise for what I've done in the past still takes me by surprise. I'm having a good time doing what I want to do and I guess it's flattering. But no, you never see yourself as any kind of genre legend. It's strange as I still don't think I've done anything that scary. Maybe Night of the Living Dead (1968), but I never set out to specifically do that because I never wanted to typecast myself. That's why I deliberately chose to direct films away from the genre in its wake - i.e. The Crazies (1973) - although I try to put social satire into everything I've done . INTERVIEWER What was your reaction when Night of the Living Dead became a confirmed cultural classic after being put on the Library of Congress' prestigious National Film Registry? GEORGE A ROMERO How can you not be honored? Feel humble but grateful. But it's so hard for me to look at that movie now. I always see the 101 basic mistakes I made. So it's difficult for me to think of it as this great masterpiece. We were well intentioned. That's all I can say. INTERVIEWER Do you look back at the rash of gory zombie movies that came in the wake of Dawn of the Dead (1978) with a shake of the head or with influential pride? GEORGE A ROMERO Pride? I don't know, they aren't anything to do with me really. I categorize mine in my own mind as something else entirely. I've directed fifteen movies now and the zombie films are what I perceive as just my platform, a pulpit. They have given me an opportunity to at least, not necessarily express opinions or criticize, but observe what's going on in society. That puts a bit more intellectual juice into the plot instead of just having a guy in a hockey mask with a knife. INTERVIEWER Why the sudden glut of zombie movies in the past two years, including the remake of your own Dawn of the Dead? Their success obviously helped finance Land of the Dead? GEORGE A ROMERO I'm cynical enough that I don't think there's any particular reason or social zeitgeist that brings people to this material. One movie becomes a hit and everyone says let's go make a zombie film. I do think the “Resident Evil” video games woke everyone up to the undead idea that had been lying dormant for a while. Then 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead added fuel to the flames. Those plus the Dawn of the Dead remake certainly helped the Land of the Dead deal. We were in negotiations with Fox Searchlight over the original script idea for Land of the Dead, entitled Dead Reckoning, even before they released 28 Days Later, so creatively we weren't influenced by the zombie regeneration. But it was definitely the success of the Dawn of the Dead remake that got producer Mark Canton and his Atmosphere production company interested. They were able to put a deal together with Universal Pictures very quickly as a result. INTERVIEWER You once said you could make a zombie movie for each decade as a sort of a commentary. Is that why you initially set Land of the Dead in the 90s? GEORGE A ROMERO Well in the beginning I had this conceit between Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead. In this instance the movie is set roughly three years after the zombie phenomenon has started. Of course, the movies themselves are four decades apart. I like the idea that this is a continuing saga but nothing period-wise, like the cars, dates them. Yet I like the idea of trying to reflect a little bit about the decade. That's why I originally set Land of the Dead in the Nineties because I missed out on them in filmic terms. INTERVIEWER You wrote the first draft of Land of the Dead under the title of Dead Reckoning in the pre-9/11 days. What did you change in the post-9/11 era? GEORGE A ROMERO The first drafts were more of an AIDS allegory than anything else, but it was still about ignoring a social problem. Then I made it more political, more about what was turning into America's `new normal'. You know a government that had felt it was protected by water. My script is about a city that's protected on all sides by rivers.  They are able to defend it by putting a barricade along the base of the triangle and try and carry on. The folly being the `new normal' is not really normal at all. Is the fortified city of opportunists making money out of being surrounded by zombies an allegory for America living with terrorism and trying to keep the threat at bay? That isn't exactly what my story is about because here the whole world knows the dead have come back to life. This particular group in the Fiddler's Green enclave led by Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) has tried to set up a society that ignores the fundamental problem. INTERVIEWER What is the underlying theme of Land of the Dead? GEORGE A ROMERO Land of the Dead is not really about the zombies as they are just sort of walking through all of this. It's about the humans, their attitudes, the same theme of people not communicating, things falling apart internally, not dealing with issues. Everybody is still working to their own agendas, not willing to give up life as it was, as they wanted it to be. That's sort of the overall theme that runs all the way through it. And this has more of that concept than anything in the past trilogy; the idea of trying to build a society on glass, and not caring about what's going on, like a blind man wearing blinkers to the problem. Next		Home Interviews Antoine Fuqua Interview King Arthur Interview Arv Grewal Interview Asia Argento Interview Behind the Scenes of "War of the Worlds" Bernie Goldmann Interview Clive Owen Interview Dakota Fanning Interview Dennis Hopper Interview George A Romero Interview Greg Nicotero Interview The Hulk Press Conference Ang Lee Press Conference Ioan Gruffudd Interview John Leguizamo Interview Kathleen Kennedy Interview Keira Knightley Interview