George Romero - Hollywood Icon

George Romero director of the legendary cult favorite, "Night of the Living Dead" recently turned 68, showing definite signs of life by releasing his latest in the zombie milieu that he created 40 years ago. "Night of the Living Dead" was a boon for the horror and independent film industry. Made for approximately $100,000, it returned infinitely more on the original investment.

At an age when most people look forward to slowing down, Romero decided to revisit his groundbreaking "Night of the Living Dead" anthology. He left the action movie feel of the subsequent "Dead" pictures to return to the original film's cutting-edge approach, where things start happening on what seems like a typical day. Romero always uses some sort of social commentary as a backdrop to justify the appearance of zombies at a certain time and place. This time around Romero is concerned with the impact of technology on society. In an interview with Metromix Romero said, "I was captured by the blogosphere. You get a blog, and if you have any kind of charisma you can suddenly have three million followers. It strikes me as being quite dangerous." In this "Dead" installment, Romero uses film students as the catalyst to propel the zombie movie forward.

Romero credits his work on a tonsillectomy segment with TV's "Mister Rodgers" as his inspiration to branch out into horror. The latest zombie fest comments on how the all-invasive media of today affects our lives. Romero sees the down side of what the 24/7 media coverage by the average Joe has done to our society and uses this as the basis for the backdrop in his latest zombie release.

When a director of Romero's status decides to take on a project, especially a new addition to his zombie franchise, he usually has financing and distribution in place. Romero decided to go back in time and revisit his first zombie experience. He wanted to literally do it all himself. He wanted to raise the money and shoot at a small Florida film school without studio execs breathing down his neck. He didn't care if it went straight to video; he just wanted to return to his low-budget roots.

He started to do exactly that when Artfire Films stepped up and said they'd bankroll the project, and if he could keep the budget down they'd give him complete control. The only caveat; keep the shooting schedule to 20 days. That kind of time constraint would normally be disconcerting to a director of Romero's status, but he welcomed the challenge. In fact, he told Fangoria Magazine, "It was wonderful. It was like flashing back. There was so much nostalgia involved in it. The characters reminded me of us when we made "Night of the Living Dead." We had complete control over it-to the point we had 20 days to shoot-so, man, we raced against the clock but we did it."

Romero has no intention of kicking back and taking it easy. He has already announced two more projects, one of which is the sequel to "Diary of the Dead". He has no idea why the undead theme won't 'die' but he's not complaining.