Matt & Tom talk GEORGE A. ROMERO during Halloween!

Pictures to come to fill out this article... I just wanted to get it up ASAP! OWF writer Tom Fallows and his co-author and good friend Curtis Owen have a new pocket essential book out on George A. Romero which I read last week, loved and reviewed it HERE. I was delighted to chat with Tom this week in regards to the book which is available now from for the bargain price of £3.74 at Amazon. Tom, Congratulations on your book, I devoured it last weekend. It really is a horror geek's dream, any fan of Romero will enjoy your refreshingly frank look at the artist and his work. I particularly enjoyed the first chapter AMERICAN MAVERICK, which does a terrific job of detailing how Romero rigorously worked outside of the system and almost single handedly changed horror at an important point in it's history.

Wow, thanks, Matt. That€™s the first real feedback we€™ve had so that€™s great.

Yeah, it's an interesting guide to the man who I'm sure probably many people know by name and know his films but don't know really who he is. Is it possible to under-estimate Romero's mark on cinema? Would we really be without JAWS and TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE without him?

Yeah, I think so. Look at it this way; there are really three horror movies that modernized the genre in the 1960s. There€™s PSYCHO, ROSEMARY€™S BABY and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. All of those films deal with horror coming into the modern world - into our world - and whilst ROSEMARY and PSYCHO are both masterpieces, they are also studio films and are only as dangerous as the studio allowed them to be. NIGHT had no such limitations. It was visceral, relentless and genuinely shocking. It pushed boundaries. Plus it was a real blue collar movie. These were working class people (making the film and staring in it) not stars like Janet Leigh or the bourgeois set from ROSEMARY. So it kind of felt for the first time that this stuff could happen to us. Both Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg picked up on this vibe and ran with it. NIGHT also gave horror a gritty sense of reality that has been assimilated by almost every single genre film since. Obviously this can be seen in films like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, but its there in JAWS too. On a more superficial level both JAWS and NIGHT are siege movies where the monster wants to eat people! So under-estimate Romero at your peril.

You mention with his first film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, that horror cinema finally grew up. How much of a step up was Romero's version of zombies from the kind of voodoo zombie that was present in the 40's and 50's?

His zombies are really different beasts. They€™re not impassive slaves like the voodoo zombies; there€™s no Bela Lugosi pulling the strings. Romero€™s creatures were uncontrollable, which kind of made them scarier. But maybe we were unfair to say with Night the horror movie finally grew up, because if you look at the stuff Val Lewton was doing in the 50s with CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, then you€™ll see some of the most adult horror movies out there. I think what we were talking about had to do with the presentation of the material. Like I said, NIGHT broke down all the boundaries and made it impossible to go back to the almost quaint style of filmmaking that preceded it. I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE is a great film and has a really eerie atmosphere, but you could happily watch it with your Nan on a Sunday afternoon. NIGHT is different. It€™s grim.

Oh I agree, I adore I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE... but NIGHT is on a whole different playing field though I'm not sure you could have one without the other. The same can be said with Richard Matheson's short story I AM LEGEND which heavily influenced NIGHT and many believe to be the best adaptation of the classic novel, though Romero of course took it in his own direction...

Absolutely! I AM LEGEND is one of my favorite books and Romero has openly stated that NIGHT was inspired by that novella. You€™re right too that it€™s probably the best film adaptation of Matheson€™s work. But NIGHT riffs off the book without ripping it off. The basic premise is the same but character wise and thematically it€™s totally unique. Did we mention Matheson in our book? I hope we did€

Yeah, you mentioned how his short story Anubis, which was a novel Romero had written in homage to Matheson, subsequently became the movie NIGHT OF THE FLESH EATERS and then later NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The whole Chapter on DEAD I found to be fascinating... you paint Romero to be a man of great enthusiasm, a young man with a big vision that had a story you felt like he had to tell. I'm a big believer of artists achieving great things with little resources, like the football team who has no money but has the team spirit and hard work mentality to dig themselves out of a hole. Like Welles on KANE... you find away around things, you use your initiative to make things work. Accentuate the positives, hide the negatives. Money is too often too easy to fall back on and you lose creativity. Do you believe that about Romero? Was his biggest strength back in the day that he had to find away around things, shoot methodically and not waste anything. In his later career as the budgets grew, did he loose some of his artistic ability?

I think that€™s partly true but it also has to do with a hunger these guys have to make films. I think if you look at Welles, John Carpenter and even Spielberg, then the best stuff they made was always right at the beginning, when they were hungry and young and fearless. I guess it€™s just a fact of life that with success comes some kind of comfort and complacency. You become part of the establishment and the edges get a bit dull. When Romero made THE DARK HALF in the early 90s it looked like this was happening to him. But instead Hollywood chewed him up and spat him out and he returned with the quite brilliant BRUISER. Romero€™s problem at the moment is he appears to be resting on his zombie laurels. Maybe the fights gone out of him to make anything else.

How do you think a George A. Romero would have coped if he was making his first movie today?

Good question, but I have no idea. I think he€™d be shooting digitally for one thing (which he did with last year€™s DIARY OF THE DEAD) doing it as cheap as he can. But he came from a totally different background than most of today€™s would-be filmmakers. Romero€™s generation actually had to learn their trade: to study editing and lighting and set ups. Today any bozo who€™s seen a film thinks he can grab a digital camera and make a great movie. I include myself when I say that.

I particularly enjoyed your chapter on MARTIN. Romero has gone on record saying it's the favourite of all his films. Do you agree that it's probably the most under-estimated in his canon and deserves more recognition?

They€™re all under-estimated! But yeah MARTIN€™s a masterpiece definitely. If you read any kind of book on horror or vampire cinema then MARTIN usually gets a mention. It€™s held in quite high regard by critics of the genre, but everyone else seems to have overlooked it. It never had a great release to begin with, and is perhaps a bit too down beat to achieve mainstream recognition. Alls I can say is if you love horror movies then check it out. You won€™t be disappointed.

How did the structure of the book come out and the choosing of what categories you were going to dissect each film into? I believe this is the usual kind of a Pocket Essential structure, I think I read one on Film Noir or Marty Scorsese that was done in the same way. Did you find that enjoyable or restrictive

Interestingly Pocket Essentials never came to us and said, €œWrite the book like this.€ We both just wanted to be respectful of the format. As a reference tool I like it because you can either read it front-to-back or just dip into a particular section. That€™s pretty much what I do anyway. It wasn€™t really restrictive either; it actually made it easier to focus on one element of a film at a time, like the production or the special effects. We enjoyed it.

8. How did the book come about... did you pitch the idea or were you approached to write it?

I went on to the Pocket Essentials website to see what new books they had coming out. Outrageously they had no books about Romero. On there is a chance to submit ideas and since they didn€™t have one on George I thought maybe I could have a crack.

Wow, as easy as that?

Yeah. Weirdly they said, €œYes.€

You co-authored the book with Curtis Owen. How did your working relationship come about and did you have set roles, i.e. did you divide the movies you watch?

I met Curtis in college and when we went off to University we lived quite close to each other. He€™s one of my best friends. It was always Curtis who was the Romero devotee and at University he just made me more aware of the great man€™s films. So, when Pocket Essentials green lit the book I knew I needed him onboard. He€™s methodical with his research and his enthusiasm is contagious. Plus he€™s a great writer. In regards to dividing the work, I wrote the first draft of some movies, while Curtis did the first draft on others. Then we brought everything together and edited it so the book had a consistent voice. We would have liked to have written everything together from scratch, but we live in separate parts of the UK so it wasn€™t easy. We got by though.

How many times do you think you watched each Romero movie? Did you take notes through each viewing, what did you enjoy most about this process?

Oh, man we watched each film so many times. It was crazy. Add to that the fact that if a DVD had a commentary on it, then we€™d have to watch it again with that playing. For example with DAWN OF THE DEAD I have a DVD that has three different versions of the film: The Theatrical Cut, The European Cut and the Extended Edition. And each version had a different commentary so that was six times watching DAWN but just to begin with. Then you go back and focus on certain scenes and certain lines of dialogue. It can be exhausting. It€™s a good job that we loved the films! My favourite part was sitting in the BFI Library getting access to all these old articles on Romero and his films. It was really exciting pouring through all that stuff. I guess you know you€™re a geek when you enjoy sitting in a library reading. I should get a life€

Oh no, I love doing that too. You sometimes feel like Morgan Freeman in SE7EN, looking for connections, things people missed, looking for motives behind things or that killer quote that so suits what you want to say.

Exactly!

How much of a travesty was it when Romero was turned down for the RESIDENT EVIL franchise? I remember being so excited, so in love with his trailer for that video game sequel and from the buzz of the script and the time away from the genre, it just seemed so right that he had to be the one to make that movie. Of course he didn't and we were all so drained by how Paul W.S. Anderson's final product turned out but what do you think a Romero RESIDENT EVIL movie would have been like?

Well, I suppose you can€™t get mad at a studio executive for behaving like a studio executive. They just played it safe like always is all. I guess you could even say they were savvy for seeing RESIDENT EVIL as a potential kiddie-friendly franchise and I€™m sure Paul Anderson made them a lot of money. But as a film fan, God it pissed me off. So, so dumb. Paul Anderson€™s one of those guys who makes awful, awful movies that always make a lot of money. It makes you lose faith in the general public. DEATH RACE was pretty bad too. I think we should hunt him down€

Could it have been an epic?

With Romero onboard it certainly would have been interesting. The script was great and contained a lot of the themes of his earlier zombie movies (like the outsider hero, corrupt government and corporations) without the baggage. But then (and I know I€™m in the minority here) I thought LAND OF THE DEAD was amazing. I€™m much happier that he made that instead of RESIDENT EVIL.

Compared to DIARY OF THE DEAD, LAND was amazing. That's for sure! Do you think the future is looking bright for fans of Romero? I believe he is currently working on ISLAND OF THE DEAD... a kind of LOST meets ZOMBIES tale in what could be his version of LORD OF THE FLIES. Although we don't know too much about it and what we do know at this point is just pure speculation, do you think he is onto a winner with that concept?

I wasn€™t looking forward to it until you just pitched it as, €œhis LORD OF THE FLIES.€ That sounds great! However as you know by reading the book, both Curtis and I really hated DIARY OF THE DEAD. I think he€™s kind of said all there is to say about zombies. I€™d love to see him make another none zombie film. One of the things we really tried to do with the book was say, €œthere€™s more to Romero than just zombies,€ but it looks like Romero€™s accepted that fate. It€™s a shame.

Do you agree that a DIARY OF THE DEAD 2 is something we really don't need to see? How big of shame do you think it was when Romero decided to go back to the night of the first attack with DIARY OF THE DEAD?

DIARY was a disappointment in so many ways, but the main one was that it was another zombie film. There was talk of him doing DIAMOND DEAD or THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON and I was really excited about that. Do we need DIARY OF THE DEAD 2? The simple answer is no. But Romero is still a great filmmaker and I think it€™s too early to write him off. The film could be great.

Do we have a new Romero out there?

This is going to sound odd, but the closest we€™ve got to Romero is actually the British director Shane Meadows. If you look past the horror angle then you can see that both are regional filmmakers who work outside the mainstream and have a fierce and unique voice. They both make the films they want to make and do it best when left alone. In terms of horror I can€™t think of anyone. A lot of these new guys, like Eli Roth and Zack Snyder, are frat boys with nothing to say. They just like to mess people up. Rob Zombie can€™t tell a story to save his life and revels in his own nihilism. It€™s depressing.

Oh God yeah, Meadows' DEAD MAN SHOES is so pure Romero. I've always been amazed... and you touch on his with your book... that the Romero and Stephen King collaboration CREEPSHOW which made money, $21 million and was a U.S. box office hit, well liked by the public but was still not good enough for them to greenlight THE STAND, a movie Romero desperately wanted to make.

Yeah, I would have loved to have seen Romero do THE STAND. I think it was probably just too expensive. And not only that but violent. No studio is going to finance a $20 million plus movie that could then get an X certificate. And for his part Romero has too much integrity to compromise. But then that€™s why we love him€

Which projects really got away from Romero's, the unfinished flicks that we as audience are worse off for them not being made? In other words, what is the greatest Romero movie never made?

Tough one. Well we mentioned THE STAND. I think that would have been the GONE WITH THE WIND of horror movies - epic. He€™s was going to do THE MUMMY at one point, before the Brendan Fraser one, and I think that would have been amazing. Also just after BRUISER he was going to make another vampire film called THE ILL. It was set to shoot in the UK and I would have loved to see what Romero€™s camera made of England. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. DIAMOND DEAD looked great too, a film about a rock band resurrected from the dead to play one last gig. It was going to star David Bowie so that gets my vote.

You clearly mention with great love the 204 page screenplay for Romero's original $7 million version of DAY OF THE DEAD. How much better was that from the dull and bleak (at least I think so), DAY OF THE DEAD movie we got in the mid 80's from half that budget?

(Laughing) Matt, shame on you! You don€™t like DAY? That€™s Curtis€™ favourite. The thing with DAY is that it€™s aged really, really well, a lot better than DAWN in my opinion. Not just the special effects, but the narrative and themes too. It€™s so claustrophobic and intense. Plus it has some really awesome dialogue. €œI€™m running this monkey farm now, Frankenstein!€ Plus great characters like Rhodes, Logan and Bub. Bub€™s a horror icon like Freddy and Jason! I think a lot of people were disappointed that DAY didn€™t have the same knockabout, action adventure quality as DAWN. The $7 million version definitely would have been in that vein. There was some really wonderful stuff in that script, and some of that even made its way into LAND. But, y€™know, I love DAY as it is. There€™s part of me that would have loved to have seen the $7 million version and then there€™s part of me that is grateful for the film we got.

Any hints at further books. Which actors do you have lined up for future Cult Actors articles... do you think they could ever be published in book form, they are a smashing read?

I€™d love to turn Cult Actors into a book. It€™s definitely something I€™d be up for doing. There are so many actors out there who are overlooked by serious critics but adored by fans. And not just in a campy, Bruce Campbell kind of way (sorry Bruce) but people who are genuinely brilliant performers. Although Bruce was amazing in BUBBA HO TEP so I take back my criticism. But yeah, when I put on a film and see names like Tom Atkins, Tracey Walter and Harry Dean Stanton in the supporting cast I get really excited. I just want to rant about how great they are so obsessedwithfilm has become a great outlet for my ravings. Coming up next I€™m working on Barbara Steele and Gary Busey. I love Busey, and I think maybe he€™s not as crazy as people make out. Great actor!

Tom's book is available now for the bargain price of £3.74 at Amazon.