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Hollywood has lost one of its most iconic horror innovators with the death of George A. Romero, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 77. “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,” his manager, Chris Roe, said in a statement.
Though he rose to prominence as the master of zombie flicks, beginning with Night of the Living Dead, Romero honed his filmmaking skills on a far less frightening set: shooting bits for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
“I still joke that 'Mr. Rogers Gets a Tonsillectomy' is the scariest film I’ve ever made,” Romero once said. “What I really mean is that I was scared sh*tless while I was trying to pull it off.” (Rogers returned the favor by being a longtime champion of Romero’s work—and even called Dawn of the Dead “a lot of fun.”)
It’s that high-spirited sense of fun that made Romero’s work so iconic—and kept the New York City native busy for nearly 50 years. To celebrate his life and career, here are 15 of his most memorable quotes on everything from the humanity of zombies to the horror of Hollywood producers.
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A SENSE OF HUMOR
“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.”
ON THE HOLLYWOOD WAY
“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.”
ON BEING PIGEONHOLED
“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!”
ON ZOMBIES AS A METAPHOR
“I also have always liked the monster within idea. I like the zombies being us. Zombies are the blue-collar monsters.”
ON FINDING OBJECTIVITY AS A FILMMAKER
“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.”
ON THE REAL VALUE OF THE INTERNET
“What the Internet's value is that you have access to information but you also have access to every lunatic that's out there that wants to throw up a blog.”
ON THE HORROR OF DEALING WITH PRODUCERS
“I'll never get sick of zombies. I just get sick of producers.”
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF COLLABORATION
“Collaborate, don’t dictate.”
ON THE BEAUTY OF LOW-BUDGET MOVIEMAKING
“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.”
ON HUMANS BEING THE REAL VILLAINS
“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.”
ON BEING IMMUNE TO TRENDS
“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 3-D movie or anything like that. I'm just sort of happy to still be around.”
ON THE HUMANITY OF HORROR
“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.”
ON THE ENDURING APPEAL OF HORROR
“If one horror film hits, everyone says, 'Let's go make a horror film.' It's the genre that never dies.”
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF SURROUNDING ZOMBIES WITH STUPID PEOPLE
“A zombie film is not fun without a bunch of stupid people running around and observing how they fail to handle the situation.”
ON LIFE AFTER DEATH
“I'm like my zombies. I won't stay dead!”