Would you eventually revisit that timeline?

GR: I don't think so. I don't know where to go with it. I don't know what to do with the zombies. I don't want to do Beyond the Planet of the Apes. I don't want a zombie society. I don't want to go that far. I've had ideas in that direction but it's not really what I want to do. I'm now happy that I've started over and I have a whole other thing that I can probably milk until I die and I never have to get to that point. I never have to end it because I don't know exactly how to end it.

Could they maybe intersect at some point?

GR: Maybe, they could, and I've thought about that too but I doubt it. I think I just want to have this new line now and I'll stick with that and not worry about what happens at the end. It's so hard to end. What happens? Either the zombies take over or the humans win. I don't like either of those and I don't like some kind of d'etant. The end of Land is that sort of "let 'em be." So I came close enough I guess to that idea of live and let live.

Would you ever explain the cause of this phenomenon, or always leave it a mystery?

GR: I hope not. I don't care what the cause is. I've forever been trying to live down, in Night of the Living Dead, we shot actually three explanations. We wound up having to cut six minutes out of the film in order for the distributor to want to distribute it. We cut out a radio thing and a TV thing because we thought it's just boring, we're sitting in the house, same old thing. We left in the one that we shot in Washington, D.C. because we thought, "Production value, man. We actually went to D.C. and shot it with the capitol in the background." So we left that in. Next thing you know, even every TV Guide blurb said, "A returning Venus probe causes the dead to come back to life." Starting with the second film, I went with that sort of voodoo explanation, "When there's no more room in hell…" I don't care. I don't give a f**k why it happened. That's part of the whole thing to me is that there's this change. The world has changed. Somebody has changed some kind of a rule and it's different. The stories are about how people respond to it, don't respond, respond incorrectly, stupidly, whatever. That's really all that matters to me.




George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

What zombie films from other filmmakers do you enjoy?

GR: I love Shaun. Love it. I like a movie called Fido. Great, Billy Connolly, great. I just thought it was gas.

Have you seen Flight of the Living Dead?

GR: I haven't, no. I haven't seen it.

Those are all still recent. Are there any classic zombie movies besides yours?

GR: Oh, classic? Different zombies, man. That's the Caribbean boys. Classic films, I don't know. Carnival of Souls. Is that a zombie movie? I don't know if it is.

How about the Italian ones?

GR: I love a couple of Fulci things. I just had a gas watching them. It's not what I would do but I loved watching them. They were fun. And the oldies, man, I Walk With a Zombie, White Zombie and that stuff. Different zombies. They're not the neighborhood zombies.

Which of your non-zombie films would you love for fans to rediscover?

GR: My two favorite films of mine are sort of semi-vampire; it's not a vampire, it's called Martin. And a film I made called Knightriders which is probably my most personal or autobiographical film in a way. So those two.


George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead is out in limited release today.