Press junkets are fun. Often, you get to talk to people you really admire, and other times, you spend long hours transcribing something Teri Hatcher said. Everyone, however, is looking for that "exclusive." The our-site-only chat with a director or writer or actor that brings the hits.
George Romero is doing the media rounds for Survival of the Dead, and while at first I was disappointed that we couldn't get an interview, I'm coming to realize that sometimes "exclusive" means "the same as everybody else but in a different way."
Example. Here's Romero talking to CHUD:
All of a sudden Diary, because it was so inexpensive to produce, ended up making lots of money. Artfire and everybody said 'Let's go again.' Then I got the idea to do something that I've never been able to do, because the first four films each one of them is owned and controlled by somebody else. I couldn't cross-collateralize, I couldn't repeat characters, I couldn't use themes. So I said what if we contemplate making three more films, all based out of Diary, taking characters out of Diary and following them, and I could create this collage of what the world is like. I could have ideas cross and I could have characters cross, which was something I'd really like to do. I don't know whether that's going to happen or not.
Sounds good, particularly when I read it in Express:
Because [Diary] was such an inexpensive film to produce, even though it had a limited release, it wound up making a lot of money worldwide, with video and all that. Because the first four films are all owned and controlled by different people, I've never been able to cross-collateralize my characters or my stories. So I've never been able to do Stephen King's trick of taking a town like Castle Rock and really painting a portrait of it. When I first sat down and wrote this series of films, I came up with that idea. I have two more stories ready to go. I'd like to do a set of these films and paint a picture of the world three months in, then six months in, and look at it from different people's perspectives.
But wait a minute, didn't Express get a Stephen King/Castle Rock exclusive? Oh, man, that;s true, that is new — if I didn't read that in another Romero interview from October of last year! Here's what he said:
All those films are owned by different people; it's too confusing. I can't even use the characters. At one point I had this idea of doing this Steve King thing, like his Castle Rock — he's got all these books about people who live in Castle Rock. I'd look to have this broad mythology where the characters recur, but I can't get permission. I can't get the rights. It's far too complicated.
Starting to see what I mean? Every interview is about his use of CGI, his desire to do two more Dead movies, etc. So here's a few things I found that are interesting.
Romero, again, is asked about CGI by MoviesOnline, but adds a interesting what-could-have-been scenarios for Land of the Dead.
A couple of ones that we tried to do practically even in Land of the Dead didn’t work so we wound up having to use CG anyway and the reset time just cost you too much. You have to get off the set. I’d much prefer to do it all mechanically and of course (Gregory) Nicotero would too and Tom [Savini], if anybody would ever let me hire Tom again. He started a school and he’s very interested in acting now and he works with [Quentin] Tarantino, [Robert] Rodriguez, that group a lot and he’s not that interested anymore. But Universal wouldn’t let me hire him. I mean, I thought it was a great idea. And [John] Carpenter wanted to do the music for that film but Universal said “Nah, yesterday’s pizza.” Fans would have gone fucking nuts for it. Go figure.
FAIL, Universal. Back with CHUD, Romero explains how he auditions zombies:
When I audition zombies for lead zombie roles, I always ask them 'Here's a phone, you sort of recognize it, but you don't quite remember what to do with it.' I let them improv it. They're like infants at a certain stage of development. It makes them cuter, in a way, or more sympathetic.
Romero told Express what he thinks of the remakes of his movies:
My ex partner was trying to capitalize on Dawn and did the remake of it. Then he sold the rights to a company called Taurus, and they did a couple of awful remakes. I don't quite get it. I think Zack Snyder is a good filmmaker, and I think he did a good job with the remake [of Dawn in 2004]. I thought the first 20 minutes were really hot, but it became more of a video game than a movie. It certainly lost a lot of the meaning that I think was there in my film. Same The Crazies. We made that at an angry time. One of the points of my version was that you didn't know who was crazy, but when they have pustules all over their faces and glowing red eyes, it's hard to mistake them for anything else.
Finally, and this is covered in other interviews, Romero explains how he came to stop working with studios to MoviesOnline.
My partner and I were out here 6-1/2 years and we made all that money doing development in development hell and never made a movie. It was big stuff – The Mummy, Goosebumps, big projects – but for one reason or another all of them blew up. I just got fed up and said forget it. I’ll go back to the $2 betting window. So that’s what I did. I wrote this little script for a film called Bruiser. We financed it in France through Canal Plus before they got swallowed up in merger hell. That was one of the first films I did in Canada and I worked with the same people that worked on this film. I love working with this group family of collaborators. So I think I will stick with at least this scale.
I'm sure there will be more conversations with Romero, even post-Survival. They just may end up all sounding the same. That's just the breaks when you've been making zombie films since the late '60s. A lot of junkets and a lot of the same questions over and over again.
