In the process of writing the belated birthday greeting the ZRC gave Creepshow maestro and, err, Father of the Modern Anti-Zombie Film George Romero, google yielded an interview from last year with Vanity Fair that I missed, and there’s some fascinating, and disturbing, stuff in there:

Eric Spitznagel: To paraphrase Freud, sometimes things have symbolism and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Are the zombies in your movies always a metaphor, or are they sometimes just bloodthirsty walking corpses?

George Romero: 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. 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. (Laughs.)

You really do. Sympathizing with zombies is a big theme of Survival of the Dead.

These characters are questioning whether we should be so quick to dispose of zombies. Because what if you shoot Grandma in the head and next week there’s a cure for zombism? (Laughs.) I guess that’s the Catholic in me.

It’s this dualism that we find so disturbing, and unsettling, here at the ZRC. Mr. Romero claims he sympathizes with Zombies, but he holds so many negative stereotypes of them! How far can that sympathy really go?

Romero discussed the ‘Braaaaains’ thing too:

brains. What is it about being undead that makes somebody so ravenous?

First of all, why does everybody say that zombies eat brains?

Because… it’s true?

I’ve never had a zombie eat a brain! I don’t know where that comes from. Who says zombies eat brains?

I remember brains being a big zombie menu item in Return of the Living Dead back in the mid-80s, but I’m not sure if that’s where it started.

Whenever I sign autographs, they always ask me, “Write ‘Eat Brains’!” I don’t understand what that means. I’ve never had a zombie eat a brain. But it’s become this landmark thing.

It’s always worth noting that the ‘Braaaaaains’ thing is from Return of the Living Dead, which came out in 1985; before that? This meme did not exist. At all.

Then there’s what Mr. Romero had to say about ‘fast’ Zombies, and whether they relate to cutting-edge, modern, hyper-trendy concerns like some overwrought academics have stated (*cough*Jeffrey Mantz*cough*):

Your zombies have always walked with a meandering shuffle, but modern zombies seem to be becoming more aerobic. Why is that?

I think it’s video games, man. 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. So the zombies have to keep coming at you, crawling over the walls and across the ceiling. Zombies are perfect for a first-person shooter game, because they exist to be damaged.

You don’t think it has anything to do with our fast-paced society? If a zombie doesn’t keep up, he’s going to be replaced by a computer.

No, no, it’s just the influence of video games. I don’t think there’s anything deeper to it than that. Filmmakers saw what was happening in video games and started thinking, “Well, we’ve got to keep pace and make our zombies fast too.” I still don’t agree with it. If zombies are dead, how can they move fast? My guys don’t run. They never have and they never will. They’re just lumbering oafs that are easy to dispose of unless you make a mistake. Those are the rules, and I’ll stick with what I’ve got.

This is a very insightful outsider perspective on videogames, actually; Romero judges them by their impact on film, but as someone who has been playing games for decades now (god I’m old), it’s absolutely true. The kinetic-aspect of games, and the first person shooter in particular, has been cranking up higher and higher over time. Doom was stodgy and incredibly slowwwwww compared to, say, Bulletstorm; and have any of you out there tried Wolfenstein, the *original* Wolfenstein, as an adult revisiting the game? It’s amazing; there’s a ton of tension in just being unable to turn around.

Romero also dished on Max Brooks, who is jockeying hard for ZRC Public Enemy #2 slot:

You don’t think civilization is going to be destroyed someday by an army of the undead?

Max Brooks wrote this great book called The Zombie Survival Guide, and it’s good fun. But I think Max in the back of his mind thinks it could possibly happen. He does these lectures and he brings all these weapons onstage and explains the best way to kill a zombie. I keep saying to him, “Max, none of this is real! It’s not gonna happen! Believe me, it’s not gonna happen!” (Laughs.) But maybe he’s right and I’m wrong and I’ll get hoisted on my own petard.

Poor Max Brooks. I suppose he can be comforted by sleeping on his sacks of lucre, but it must be hard living such a paranoid life, afraid of every Zombie around every corner.

Tragic.

Finally, this bit will be visiting me in my nightmares again and again:

There’ve been a lot of successful Broadway musicals based on movies. Have you ever been tempted to make Night of the Living Dead: the Musical?

Well, I’m not tempted. But it looks like it could happen. There are some people who’ve been nibbling around the idea. Me and the rest of the people involved in the original Night of the Living Dead—there were 28 of us who made the movie, and 26 of us are still alive—we just got pitched by somebody who wants to do a Broadway version. They put on a big presentation for us. Most of the music has already been written and it’s pretty good. I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but we’ll see. I have no problem with somebody doing it, I just don’t want to be involved. (Laughs.)

I literally cannot imagine that on stage. The original movie takes place in almost real time, over what, a couple of hours? What are the songs going to be about? Boarding up windows? Finding the gas pump key?

Anyway, go read the whole interview for some really useful, and disturbing, insights from the mind of the single most influential Anti-Zombie filmmaker of all time.

Tags: Books, Journamalism, Mainstream Media, Movies, Romero

This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, February 8th, 2011 at 12:30 am and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.