Appreciation: George A. Romero (1940-2017)

The first time I saw a flesh eating “living dead” zombie movie from director George A. Romero was not the black and white independently made horror classic, "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), but his second follow-up, "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) during the summer of 1984, about four survivors who take refuge in a shopping mall during the “zombie apocalypse”

I laughed at the way the zombies had a personality all their own. I never would have thought the undead would be funny which only made sense to have them exhibit human characteristics, since after all, they were living at one time.

Romero’s third installment, "Day of the Dead" (1985), featured a scientist (Richard Liberty) who trains an undead soldier named “Bub” how to load and shoot a handgun. When the zombies feasted on the tyrannical military captain (Joseph Pilato) near the film’s climax, “Bub” salutes him in mockery.

In "Dawn of the Dead", the zombies got excited upon hearing the mall music over the loudspeakers and fell upon each other the moment the escalators moved. One zombie sat in a water fountain picking up the many coins the living left to make wishes.

“I keep a little notebook of things that I can do with the zombies that might be silly and fun,” Romero said on the site, www.brainyquote.com.

I was too young back then to know that Night of the Living Dead (which I saw years later) and Dawn of the Dead, along with the four other installments Romero directed until 2009 each had a theme to go along with the era the films were released in.

“Each one spoke about a different decade and was stylistically different. After ‘"Land of the Dead" - 2005,’ I wanted to do something about emerging media and citizen journalism” hence…"Diary of the Dead" (2007) and "Survival of the Dead" (2009).

With the characters taking refuge in a shopping mall in "Dawn of the Dead", Romero poked fun at consumerism. I am not sure what theme "Day of the Dead" evoked as to this day I still don’t know whether to endorse or hate it because the film lacked characters worth rooting for. Something is wrong with a “living dead” movie when the viewer wants to see the zombies win. Perhaps that was Romero’s point.

“My stories are about humans and how they react, or fail to react, or react stupidly,” Romero said. “I'm pointing the finger at us, not at the zombies. I try to respect and sympathize with the zombies as much as possible. My zombies will never take over the world because I need the humans. The humans are the ones I dislike the most, and they're where the trouble really lies.”

Romero now resides with the zombies he created. The horror director died July 16 at age 77.

A post from Romero’s manager, Chris Roe, on Facebook read, that the director died while "listening to the score of "The Quiet Man", one of his all-time favorite films, with his wife, Suzanne Desrocher Romero, and daughter, Tina Romero, at his side. He died peacefully in his sleep following a brief but aggressive battle with lung cancer and leaves behind a loving family, many friends and a filmmaking legacy that has endured, and will continue to endure, the test of time."

Although Romero made several horror movies ("The Crazies" -1973, "Creepshow" - 1982, "Monkey Shines" - 1988) and an anthology television show in the tradition of "The Twilight Zone" (1959-1964) called "Tales from the Darkside" (1983-1988), it’s his flesh-eating zombie movies he’ll forever be known for.

His box office success of $30 million (which he didn’t see a dime of due to failing to secure the copyright when it was released in 1968), however, with "Night of the Living Dead" made on a budget of $114,000, joined the list of films to be preserved by the National Film Registry in 1999 and proved to future horror filmmakers such as Tobe Hooper ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" -1974), John Carpenter ("Halloween" - 1978) and Wes Craven ("A Nightmare on Elm Street" - 1984) that one does not need $50 million to make a successful horror movie. It is something that still continues to this day as proven by the success Daniel Myrick’s and Eduardo Sanchez’s The Blair Witch Project (1999), made on a budget of $60,000 and grossing $248 million, and Oren Peli’s "Paranormal Activity" (2007) with a budget of $15,000 and grossing $194 million.

It’s because of the unpredictable originality Romero gave to his zombie movies that is the reason I will not watch anything else dealing with the undead. Sure, shows like AMC’s "The Walking Dead" (2010-Present) and "Fear the Walking Dead" (2015-Present) owe everything to Romero. The problem is those shows, and other flesh-eating movies today only know how to play the notes, not the music.

Even at the time of his death, Romero was still planning another zombie follow-up called Road of the Dead, which he described as Fast and the Furious but with zombies according to moviepilot.com.

I am not sure what theme he would have had in mind other than to mock a long running car racing movie franchise but if anyone could pull it off, it would have been George A. Romero.

©7/19/17

Not the first time directors and studio heads sparred over creative differences

The cast and crew of Solo: A Star Wars Story

“I have a very bad feeling about this.”

Such is the line said by some character in every Star Wars movie when something bad is about to happen, with the exception of "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (2016), that it has become the franchise’s trademark. Up until June 20 that is when Disney/Lucasfilm fired directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller ("The Lego Movie" – 2014) from the untitled Star Wars standalone Han Solo prequel after four months of shooting. Still set for release in May 2018, Disney hired Oscar winning director Ron Howard ("A Beautiful Mind" – 2001) to finish the film. Now it seems that famous line now applies to what goes wrong during a Star Wars production.

A June 26 article in The Hollywood Reporter revealed disagreements between the directors and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy concerning the number of takes shot (Lord and Miller only used three setups versus the fifteen variations Kennedy expected). There were battles with the film’s screenwriter, Lawrence Kasdan, a Star Wars veteran whose previous screenplays included "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), "Return of the Jedi" (1983) and The Force Awakens (2015), who demands that every actor stick to the written word on the pages he writes, and the hiring of an acting coach for the film’s leading star, Alden Ehrenreich, who plays the younger Han Solo.

A statement from Lord and Miller following their dismissal said "Unfortunately, our vision and process weren't aligned with our partners (Disney/Lucasfilm) on this project. We normally aren't fans of the phrase 'creative differences' but for once this cliche is true.”

Directors Lord and Miller are not the only ones, nor will they be the last, to be fired from a movie due to “creative differences.” Director Richard Donner and producer Alexander Salkind sparred over the budget during the filming of "Superman: The Movie" (1978).

“The biggest problem I had was really with the producers, because instead of helping me, they were hurting me,” Donner told The Hollywood Reporter. “The thing [with the Salkinds] was always about money. They’d say, “You can’t do this,” but I would have no alternative, and they wouldn’t show me the budget. They kept saying, “You’re going over budget.” And I would say, “How am I going over budget if I don’t know what the budget is?” It got to the point where I just told them: “Don’t come on to set. You’re counterproductive.” And it became us against them. They were against the quality of the movie.”

Donner planned on using the seventy percent of footage he shot for "Superman: The Movie" for the sequel (1980) with the assumption he would be again directing. As a result of his battles with the producers, however, Donner was fired and replaced with director Richard Lester who scrapped most of what was already shot.

“I had almost bought a little Chevy van,” Donner said. “I was going to ship it to England because it was big enough that I could have a desk in it and the chairs would recline. Then I get a call from my agent, who said: “I just received a telegram from the Salkinds. You are no longer needed.” That was it.”



Director David Lynch ("Blue Velvet" – 1986) has nothing but nice things to say about the people he worked with on the set of "Dune" (1984) based on author Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel despite being both a commercial and critical disaster when released. Ask him how the shooting went and that’s another story.

“I wouldn’t be fair to say it was a total nightmare, but maybe 75 percent nightmare and the reason is I didn’t have final cut,” Lynch said in an interview years later. “I had such a great time in Mexico City (where Dune was filmed), the greatest crew, cast. It was beautiful. But when you don’t have final cut, total creative freedom, you stand to die the death…and died I did.”

“It’s no one’s fault but my own,” Lynch added. “I probably shouldn’t have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved, and this was the structure to do them in. There was so much room to create a world. But I got strong indications from [producers] Raffaella and Dino De Laurentis of what kind of film they expected, and I knew I didn’t have final cut. So that’s the big lesson. Don’t make a film if it can’t be the film you want to make. It’s a joke and it’s a sick joke and it will kill you.”



When director Paul Schrader submitted his cut of "Exorcist: The Beginning" (2004) to Morgan Creek Productions, the producers rejected Schrader’s vision firing him saying his “psychological thriller” approach was “commercially unmarketable” and was minus “the bloody violence the backers had wanted” according to IMDB.com.

“You have a company (Morgan Creek) that’s notorious for not letting directors have the final say,” Schrader said in an interview at theexorcistonline. “A deal breaker with Morgan Creek is always final cut. The films are re-edited, and the directors are shunted off. It’s a historical pattern. So what’s the upshot of all this? Making a thirty-five million dollar film and getting final cut for a company that doesn’t give final cut, which goes into the marketplace without any financial obligations. Nobody expects it to make money.”

And make money the film did not. Despite Morgan Creek’s commissioning a new screenplay with several roles recast, new characters added and a new director in the chair, Renny Harlin ("Die Hard 2" – 1990), Harlin’s version, like the studio that disowned Schrader’s before it, was rejected by audiences and critics. In an ironic twist, Morgan Creek released Schrader’s version titled, "Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist" (2005), a year later in limited release before bowing on DVD.

“What the studios want now is "risk-free" films but with any sort of art you have to take risks,” said Oscar winning director Francis Ford Coppola in a quote on IMDB.com, who butted heads with studio execs while working on his Vietnam war epic, "Apocalypse Now" (1979) and the gangster flop, "The Cotton Club" (1984). “Not taking risks in art is like not having sex and then expecting there to be children.”

There is probably not a single film made since the silent era where there was not some behind-the-scenes drama that went on during production. The one and only reason Miller and Lord’s dismissal made entertainment headlines is because this is a STAR WARS movie. 

Like Disney’s Marvel films and Warner Brothers DC comics superhero franchises, all eyes are on the Star Wars movies, from the powers-that-be eager to avoid bad press (the film was not mentioned at Disney’s D23 Expo earlier this month), the fans to the “Negative Nancys” who want nothing more than to see the upcoming installment fail at the box office, simply because either they personally hate themselves and want to make everyone else who looks forward to these films miserable, or they are jealous they didn’t think of the multi-million dollar franchise first.

Chicago film critic Gene Siskel always asked himself when viewing movies “Is the movie that I am watching as interesting as a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?”

In the cases of "Superman: The Movie", "Dune" and "Exorcist: The Beginning" and countless other costly troubled productions I’ve seen, these movies, yes, even the bad ones, were far more interesting than watching a documentary of the same actors having lunch together.

In the end, it won’t be what went on behind the scenes of the Han Solo production that determine whether the Millennium Falcon successfully makes the jump to light speed or if the hyperdrive system makes that familiar dying whine heard often in "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) every time Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and the gang tried to evade the Imperial fleet.

The ones who decide if the film flops will be audiences and fans.

At least I hope that is the case. So far, it seems I am the only one who isn’t uttering that familiar phrase numerous characters from that “galaxy far, far away” said in previous Star Wars movies past.

Well, me and Han Solo co-star Woody Harrelson who, when asked by The Hollywood Reporter in a July 12 interview whether the bad press will hurt the film, said, “I wouldn’t worry. The Force is still every much with it.”

©7/5/17