A zombie film is not fun without a bunch of stupid people running around and observing how they fail to handle the situation.
— George A. Romero
Ever since 'Lassie' and 'Old Yeller', I won't watch animal movies. Animals in movies always die.
Horror will always be there, it always comes back, it's a familiar genre that some people, not everyone - it's sort of the cinema anchovies. You either like it or you don't.
I expect a zombie to show up on 'Sesame Street' soon, teaching kids to count.
People called '28 Days' and '28 Weeks' zombie movies, and they're not! It's some sort of virus; they're not dead.
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.
I always thought of the zombies as being about revolution, one generation consuming the next.
I also have always liked the monster within idea. I like the zombies being us. Zombies are the blue-collar monsters.
The most realistic blood I've seen is when Marlon Brando gets beat up in On The Waterfront.
As a filmmaker you get typecast just as much as an actor does, so I'm trapped in a genre that I love, but I'm trapped in it!
There are so many factors when you think of your own films. You think of the people you worked on it with, and somehow forget the movie. You can't forgive the movie for a long time. It takes a few years to look at it with any objectivity and forgive its flaws.
I sympathize with the zombies and am not even sure they are villains. To me they are this earth-changing thing. God or the devil changed the rules, and dead people are not staying dead.
For a Catholic kid in parochial school, the only way to survive the beatings - by classmates, not the nuns - was to be the funny guy.
I grew up on the old EC comic books before the Comics Code in North American and with all sort of good-natured fun. I never had nightmares I think because all of the old horror stuff that I was exposed to was well meaning in a certain sense.
First of all, in the old days, if you wanted to show someone getting shot on film, all you could do was place an effect in the original take. And if you wanted to brighten somebody's face and leave the rest of the room dark, that was a very expensive process.
Movies are about escape.
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.
I don't think you need to spend $40 million to be creepy. The best horror films are the ones that are much less endowed.
The guy that made me wanna make movies... and this is off the wall-is a guy named Michael Pal, the British director.
I think you're only free if you're working on very low or huge money.
I like guys who are understandable and good guys who are flawed.
If one horror film hits, everyone says, 'Let's go make a horror film.' It's the genre that never dies.
I grew up on DC Comics, moral tales where the bad guys got their comeuppance. To me the gory panels or grotesque stuff just made me chuckle.
Somehow I've been able to keep standing and stay in my little corner and do my little stuff and I'm not particularly affected by trends or I'm not dying to make a 3D movie or anything like that. I'm just sort of happy to still be around.
I keep a little notebook of things that I can do to the zombies that might be silly and fun.
Nothing's ever real until it's real.
I really liked the helicopter pilot in 'Dawn of the Dead', when he gets bitten and comes out of the elevator. That guy was amazing. He did this incredible walk that we didn't even know about until we started shooting.
I'll never get sick of zombies. I just get sick of producers.
I'm like my zombies. I won't stay dead!
I really believe that you could do horror very inexpensively. I don't think it has anything to do with the effects, the effects are not the most important parts.
I thought Godzilla was a mess, the monster had no character and the humans didn't either. They forgot to make the movie that went along with all these wonderful effects.
As great as Ed is, the wisdom out here is that he can't carry a movie. They'll pay him $3 million to be the second banana in Julia Roberts things. But they won't put up $3 million for an Ed Harris movie.
If I fail, the film industry writes me off as another statistic. If I succeed, they pay me a million bucks to fly out to Hollywood and fart.
