By Kristin Crawford-Ellis
Staff Writer

With makeup done by Ballard’s Novelty and Party Shop, Beau Watscheke, Shaun Skeldon, Kendra Hartman and Scott Hopkins came dressed for flesh. (Mirror/Kristin Crawford-Ellis)

To legions of the undead, he is no stranger. George A. Romero is the master of the zombie movie. Since his debut in 1968, “Night of The Living Dead,” his name has been synonymous with horror.

The Red River Theatres, a group working diligently to bring an independent film theater to Concord, and Ballard's Novelty and Party Shop presented “An Evening with George Romero” at The Capital Center for the Arts last Saturday night.

Romero, 66, spent time with fans signing autographs, answering questions and presenting two of his films, “The Dark Half” (1993), based on a novel by Stephen King, and “Creepshow” (1982), based on short stories written by King and Romero.

Loving movies from childhood, Romero always thought you had to be royalty to make films. In college, he studied painting and design for three years and hated it. He moved into the theater department but hated that, too.

“The speech instructor didn't like the way I spoke my T’s,” he said with emphasis on the T.

So Romero and some friends decided they wanted to make movies. They started a small company creating beer commercials and industrial films. Within a few years, they were successful enough to get some equipment and felt able to say, “Let’s make a movie.”

The most influential film that helped him believe he could make movies was “The Tales of Hoffmann” (1951), an opera mixed with ballet and fantasy, by director Michael Powell.

“It is the most beautiful film you'll ever see. Anyone interested in this media should see it. I saw it when it first came out around the age of 12. It's a complete fantasy about a guy who falls in love with a mechanical doll and then with a vampire,” Romero said.

“Back then there was no CG (computer graphics). He had no money, so he used transparent techniques, reversing the film or double exposing and I thought, ‘Hey, I can do that.’ “

When Romero started his film career, he found it difficult and expensive to create movies because they had to record on 16mm or 35mm film. Then it was difficult getting a movie theater to play it. However, he did have the luck to be able to show “Night of the Living Dead” in neighborhood theaters; whereas now, unless you have a big-budget movie such as the “Superman” franchise, you cannot get a screen.

“All the independent theaters and distributors have been swallowed up by big business corporations,” Romero said. “Technology has made it easier and less expensive to make films but in the old days it was easier to get your films shown. Now, what's left of the neighborhood theaters are reserved for B-movies.”

His goal on the set as a director is to encourage collaboration between everyone from the actors to the set dressers. He also makes an effort to not be a “tyrant.”

“No group of people in any endeavour do their best under any sort of tyranny,” he said. “Any human effort that requires more than one person requires a collaborative effort, and that's really been my objective. You have to try to be Madeleine Albright should a feud come up.”

His inspiration for new movies, he said jokingly, comes to him in the shower.

“Actually it’s mostly politics, newspapers. I don’t try to dream up guys with hockey masks or knives. Mostly real life stuff, ya know, what’s going on in the world today. That is scary because it's coming from the world. Maybe if I had known that shark was going to be that scary it would be a different story.”

With strong political opinions that can be seen in movies of his own conception, “Night of the Living Dead” created controversy that he never recognized.

“The fact that Duane Jones,” the lead character, Ben, “was a black man was this big notable thing. Actually, he was the best actor in our group of friends. He was the only guy in the whole entire crew that felt that there was going to be controversy,” Romero said.

“He came to me one day and said, ‘I’m gonna have to slug this white woman. Ya know what’s going to happen to me on the streets?”

Looking back now, Romero feels there were some opportunities that were missed. He said he felt it could have been more powerful if they had referred to race in the movie.

“It’s the idea of a minority person seeing things more clearly than the majority but certain things less clearly and with more anger, therefore more problems, to make more mistakes. That character (Ben) makes mistakes and it should have been the result of that anger, and we completely missed that. It would have been strong if we had done that,” he said.

Romero believes that his last release, “Land of the Dead,” was more of a political statement than “Night of the Living Dead,” as he made his strong views more obvious.

During a question-and-answer session, Romero did not want the audience to think the film industry was all glitz and glamour. He gave a peek into the real, and most times unglamourous, side of the industry.

Reflecting on the difficulty of getting money out of the big studios, he said you have to have a big name that can’t be ignored.

"Unless you are Bruce Willis, because they know they'll need you for another film, you won't see a nickel,” he said.

To date, Romero's 2005 film, “Land of the Dead,” has made more than $80 million and he has not seen any profits from that.

Not wanting to leave aspiring filmmakers discouraged, he gave his best advice and wisdom for breaking into the industry.

“Get on the set, volunteer, go to work. If you are sincere and have something tooffer, contribute, you are dedicated and there when needed… The next time, I’m gonna say, ‘Hey, what about this person. Let’s give them a call,’ “ he said. “With so many phonies who say they want to get into the ‘biz,’ it’s the people who care and contribute that get the call.”

Romero is currently in pre-production for “Diary of the Dead,” set to be released in 2007. Because of copyright issues with “Night of the Living Dead,” he learned his lesson from the early mistake of not protecting his property and is starting the “Dead” franchise over.

“We are trying to re-establish a new franchise because we never had one. We don't own it,” he said. “It’s like everyone in the world is making zombie movies except me.”

Romero was excited to give the audience some insight into what “Diary” will be.

“Basically, we’re going back to the beginning, the first night when the dead start coming back to life, with a new cast of characters,” Romero said. “It's about some college students who are shooting their own little horror film on the night the dead begin to rise.”

An audience member asked if he has any plans for retirement. He chuckled and said no.

“I am doing a film right now and maybe doing one or two more.”