George Romero Quotations

When I grew up, there was no such thing as videotape, TV was B&W.

So many execs don't get or understand the horror genre, they're used to being involved with story or plot, and when they're in a genre that they don't get or have affection for, it gets difficult.

My first move is always to try to get a production into Pittsburgh, but I don't know if that's going to happen anymore.

Obviously, we don't have the bucks for big stars, so I'll be saved from having to worry about that. There are a couple of people I'd love to get, Asia Argento being first and foremost. If I could get a couple people like that, I'd be thrilled.

Monkeys are ornery and hard to work with.

I didn't like Scream too much. I thought Scream 2 was better.

I'd like to just stick to the game and try to make a really good action film.

I don't know of any TV series that I was so in love with that I'd like to do a remake of except for the Ernie Kovacs show. But, we'd have to go dig him up and see if he's still funny.

If I tried to make money for a Jane Austen movie, I'd get laughed out of the office.

There are still some wonderful child actors out there.

It costs so damn much to distribute a film now. That's the problem. Nobody wants to take that risk. It's very, very frustrating. There's almost no such thing as a little movie.

I think today's audiences, the audiences that make the big money for a studio, are out for whatever the latest event picture is, or the must-see stuff. I think it's a different crowd.

I think the monsters today are all CG and look beautiful and move perfectly... I don't think that they've lost it, I just think they're bigger and more grotesque, the bugs in Starship Troopers or Godzilla, whatever.

Pictures that test great go out and go in the toilet. And pictures that test poorly, all of a sudden they'll come out of the pack and people like them, but they don't get a chance because a studio won't really get behind it if it tests poorly. It's a mess. I mean, it's really a mess.

I was the spic kid who was getting beat up by the golden guineas in the Bronx. I had to be past the gang on my way home from school. You feel like a faceless member of society.

I was very into Arthurian myth. I had always read all the White stuff, devour the stuff.

I think people that love the genre giggle at it. I don't get grossed out, I giggle.

I was mugged once, which really scared me, and we had a manually controlled elevator in the building. This guy jumped me, he had broken the door... the glass of the street door and he had a big sliver of that and held it to my throat. That was the scariest thing that ever happened to me. He just wanted my credit cards.

Most of the European money now is off TV, and they're having a hard time now with anything that pushes the envelope.

We're also doing a 3D Imax... which is really great fun... it's a ghost story that involves movies, and some of the movie monsters come to life. So, that's exciting, too, but in 3D! Something I've always wanted to do.

We have two kids, so our family life is very sort of mundane... take the kids to school, ballet, baseball and all of that. I like to go see movies, travel... but I love being with the family... going to Disney or something like that.

We lived in the Bronx, didn't have a lot of dough and it was quiet until I went away to go to school. Cut the bonds and went crazy. Studied painting and design for three years at Carnegie Mellon and transferred to the drama department and decided that I WAS Orson Welles. I'd actually go around in a cape and do things like that.

I've been in development hell. I've got about four projects out there now, all with studios. They keep paying me to rewrite and do this and that. It's literally all the sad tales you hear about development. It's awful.

The studios aren't going to credit the genre as much as they are, you know, the marketing of an individual thing, or whatever it was. They'll try to imitate it. They want something that has the same things-young stars from TV. They think they have the formula worked out. I just think it's a fool's game.

People go to those screenings, and you don't get honest answers. You get wise-aleck answers, and you get this whole array of different personalities and people having something to say about what you should do.

A real program called Helping Hands... real monkeys are put in homes with handicapped or disabled people. They can get you your lunch, answer the door, turn the TV or music on... like having a little helper. They're raised on Discovery Island at Disney World, and you can adopt them!

Young audiences today have seen a lot of those movies but only on video, there haven't been any new stuff.

A lot of people say my work borrows from Hitchcock, but I think if I've stolen... of COURSE I've stolen, this is a parasitic medium... but if I'm parasitic of anyone it's Welles, and Michael Pal and Kazan... those are my guys. The James Whale stuff... I LOVE the old B&W movies, like classic paintings.

It's a lot harder to do anything that's that edgy 'cause the execs don't wanna hear about it... but we're trying to raise some European money and see if we can get a low budget together.

It's a pretty frustrating biz right now, with all of the expansion and the companies taking other companies over, and all that. It's a bigger business than it ever was, and everybody's shooting for the moon. There's almost no such thing as a middle-ground movie anymore.

It's basically always been the same, you know? It's just on a different level. You used to be able to at least stand a chance with a little film if it was handled well.

It's gotta be scary, obviously, but I don't want to go crazy with it. I don't want to make another zombie film. I'd rather make a good action film involving zombies.

It's still hard for me to get past the idea that the zombie were running around. They are supposed to be dead and all messed up.

Everybody says it's hard to release an unrated thing now. It's the same story.

The big tickets come from a much younger audience and a different audience base. The midnight moviegoers were, like, movie fans: people who were either into films or into particular films, and into them in either a sophisticated or a kind of quirky way.

It's very hard to find The Exorcist or Jaws that will really get under your skin... Psycho... make you afraid to get in the shower. Those ideas are few and far between, rare.

There's this Hollywood mentality that we have to compete or have effects or have a star... it's hard to get past that stuff.

I hung out at a local film lab and learned how to use the tools. I grew up in B&W... all serious, meaningful things were in B&W! If you trace TV, the serious dramas were in B&W, and I think it's a holdover from those of us who were working then who think B&W was good.

I like having to use ingenuity... When I'm pitching ideas, I say hey guys, the real scary stuff doesn't need the big bucks... things that go bump in the night... you can scare someone without spending a lot of money.

I never liked the Friday The 13th movies, or any of that. It's just not my bag. It's a genre that I guess current audiences haven't seen in a while, or haven't seen at all. I have a 14-year-old daughter, and the first one of those she ever watched, she only watched because of peer pressure.

I'm not wild and crazy, there's nothing going on here, if the Steelers were playing we'd go to a football game, or otherwise watch movies.

I like the idea that the monster is in us... somewhere in there. That's why I think I prefer all this sort of transformation monsters, that grow out of humans rather than beasts that are spawned in a septic tank. But, I suppose in a way that'd be human waste, too.

If you can keep it together, you can find a way. I've had a tremendous amount of luck, despite all the frustration... I've been able to stay at home, raise a family and live fairly comfortably, not wealthy by any means.

In the horror genre, it's hard to find topics that'll really be scary for everyone... to get that suspension of disbelief.

I love the islands, South Pacific and all that. But I think my favorite place is probably France. I love the diversity of the country, the food, just love to be there.

I really don't know what people want to do these days. It's so hard to read those tea leaves.

I didn't play practical jokes at home. I had a strict upbringing, which is part of my rebellion. I was raised Catholic and went to parochial school, which is why priests and nuns appear in my movies a lot, and I don't have very much nice to say about them.

I don't like all the deferential humor, I think it detracts. Laugh with it, not at it.

The idea of living with terrorism - I've tried to make it more applicable to the concerns Americans are going through now.

A good character is always slightly unexpected, or a character that makes a turn or where you can see the character arc and watch he/she develop... not obvious... obviously a good guy or bad guy.

All of a sudden, Pittsburgh became one of the places where all the movies were being shot... a lot of them. So, now I can't escape Pittsburgh. I can't get out of this town!