I didn't much care for the 'Dawn' remake. It was a well-made action movie but really wasn't anything like my 'Dawn Of The Dead.'
I don't like the new trends in horror. All this torture stuff seems really mean-spirited. People have forgotten how to laugh, and I don't see anybody who's using it as allegory.
I like to use horror as allegory.
To me, the zombies have always just been zombies. They've always been a cigar. When I first made 'Night of the Living Dead,' it got analyzed and overanalyzed way out of proportion. The zombies were written about as if they represented Nixon's Silent Majority or whatever. But I never thought about it that way.
I remember when John Cameron Swayze over the television told me personally that the Russians now had the atomic bomb; then I knew that we were goners.
The only advice you can give is, 'Don't let the bad stuff keep you down.'
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.
The very fact that you thought of it means that, somewhere in your mind, it's believable to you. All you have to do is convince your audience that it's possible.
When I was old enough to go to movies alone, I got to see 'Frankenstein' and 'Dracula' on the big screen. I just fell in love with them.
I saw 'Dracula,' 'Frankenstein,' 'The Wolf Man,' 'The Invisible Man.' I saw all those guys on the big screen at RKO in the Bronx. I just always loved that stuff. I loved other stuff, too. That's the thing. That wasn't all I wanted to be.
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.
When we made 'Night of the Living Dead,' we got riddled. There was this famous article Roger Ebert wrote just blasting the film because he had gone to see it at some screening where there were all these kids in the audience. I don't know why that happened. We didn't make the movie for kids.
I also have always liked the monster within idea. I like the zombies being us. Zombies are the blue-collar monsters.
I used to be able to pitch them on the basis of the zombie action, and I could hide the message inside that. Now, you can't. The moment you mention the word 'zombie,' it's got to be, 'Hey, Brad Pitt paid $400 million to do that.'
The most realistic blood I've seen is when Marlon Brando gets beat up in On The Waterfront.
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.
I grew up on EC comic books and 'Tales From the Crypt,' which were all loaded with humor, bad jokes, and puns. I can have that kind of fun and make these comic book movies but, at the same time, talk about things I want to talk about - whether it's consumerism or the Bush administration or war.
A lot of my friends are people who do horror films: Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Stephen King.
I can't really make fun of zombies. They're not liars. They're not cheats.
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.
