Chris: Let me just say, that as a kid, I always thought life would be
just like the movies, you know?
Wayne: Actually, it is. Except it's less like a John Hughes movie, and
more like one by George A. Romero.
"The Last Resort" (1999)
I love Horror, as you know (you'd better know it by now, don't make me come
over there). Tonight, I was able to get together with a group of people who also love
Horror, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, and listen to George Romero speak about my
favourite genre. I went to film school, but it was something of a restricted curriculum,
with instructors constantly walking on eggshells, and certain subjects explicitly forbidden.
In my years there, they only showed two movies that were definitely Horror (The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Innocents) and one that was questionable
(Faust), and it was a genre that was rarely mentioned, and if so, always in a
negative sense. Tonight, I caught a glimpse of what the first day of a film class solely
devoted to Horror would be like. And I liked it.
Every year or so, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents "The George Pal Lecture on Fantasy In Film." This year's speaker was George A. Romero, and I decided to go to it. A friend of mine met me there, and we got a very good seat (albeit on the wrong side). Horror celebrities John Landis, Adrienne Barbeau, Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Wes Craven were in attendance, as well as many friends and family of George's. George (he's just not the kind of guy you refer to as "Mr. Romero") spoke for more than an hour, starting with the beginnings of Horror (referring to the idea that cavemen probably spoke with awe and trepidation about fire and monsters and the unknown) and why people enjoy the genre (it enables us to feel the rush that danger/peril/death gives us, but in a safe environment). He spoke a little bit about his youth and a recurring dream he had growing up in New York (it involved the realization of the threat of an atomic bomb being dropped on the city, and the concentric circles of devastation predicted by scientists). He quoted at length from Stephen King's Danse Macabre, treating King not as a hack or heretic (as had been done at my college), but as an educated and experienced man who considered the genre thoughtfully and expressed them eloquently. He spoke about majoring in Art in college, getting into acting instead, then how he got into filmmaking, and finally, on how Night of the Flesh Eaters was made, how it was cast, why it was made ("Zombies are your neighbors," he explained, "And the neighbors are scarier than any monster"), why it was shot in Black & White (they thought it would be cheaper, but when they found out it wasn't, they had already a week's worth of shooting done), and how come it's in the public domain now (when the distributor changed the title to "Night of the Living Dead," he removed the copyright from the title card). He spoke of the political messages in the films ("People thought that I had weaved subtle comments on society, the military, race, and consumerism into my movies. It wasn't subtle, it was right there in the open!"), the reaction it got with critics and audiences, and sort of lamented that he never had another success like that (even though he makes nothing from it now).
Then he showed clips from movies that were influential to him, and wow, I was blown away, just because they were on the big screen, in the dark, being discussed with reverence and depth. We saw part of Diabolique (1955) and Cat People (1942), and the power of those clips really surprised me, as they would any audience who saw them in a theater today, rather than on a television, where nothing is larger than life and the most shocking and intense scene is but a remote control click from obscurity. He also showed clips from The Thing From Another World, Touch of Evil, and Repulsion (the film he considers to be the scariest he's ever seen), as well as clips from his own films, Night of the Living Dead, The Dark Half, Martin, and Day of the Dead. Those clips resonated with us, simply because of the environment we watched them in, and Day of the Dead, considered unanimously the weakest installment of the trilogy, was amazingly compelling (we watched the great opening sequence). Well, I must say that there's a chance I was uniquely inspired, because I noticed Wes Craven kept nodding off a few rows back (kinda cute to see one of my heroes being human). Last, George showed a clip from the movie that most influenced him, 1951's Tales of Hoffman. This I didn't get at all. It was an opera (but sung in English) with a Fantasy setting, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it, even though Romero said it inspired both him and Martin Scorsese equally in their youths.
Then the lecture was over. The topic had been "The State of Horror," but it wasn't really addressed, except during the fairly-unsuccessful question and answer session that followed. This had mostly been one man's views and life, and as we rose and went our separate ways, I thought it would have certainly been a good first meeting of an Intro To Horror course. I think that would be the first class I'd never be late for, and I'd certainly try to participate in discussions. I wonder if I could teach something like that somewhere, if I lived long enough. Hmmm.
Rish Outfield
October 17, 2002