George A. Romero

I go to conventions and universities and talk to young filmmakers and everybody's making a zombie movie! It's because it's easy to get the neighbors to come out, put some ketchup on them.

Because of 'World War Z' and 'The Walking Dead,' I can't pitch a modest little zombie film which is meant to be sociopolitical.

I've always felt that the real horror is next door to us, that the scariest monsters are our neighbors.

My films, I've tried to put a message into them. It's not about the gore; it's not about the horror element that are in them. It's more about the message, for me. That's what it is, and I'm using this platform to be able to show my feelings of what I think.

I'm more alarmed by people reacting violently to the violence in my films than I am by the violence in films.

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.

There aren't that many monsters. It's very hard to create a new monster.

As movie monsters go, zombies are the most human. They were human at one time. So we are confronted with ourselves in a way, which is much more frightening and disturbing.

To me, the zombies have always just been zombies. They've always been a cigar. When I first made 'Night of the Living Dead,' it got analyzed and overanalyzed way out of proportion. The zombies were written about as if they represented Nixon's Silent Majority or whatever. But I never thought about it that way.

If one horror film hits, everyone says, 'Let's go make a horror film.' It's the genre that never dies.

One thing about a film production is that it must run efficiently; there is no room for dead wood. So somebody that hangs around by the coffee wagon won't get hired again, but somebody who is dedicated and works hard and really puts out will get noticed by the people that matter around there and will get asked to come back again.

People say you're trapped in this genre. You're a horror guy. I say wait a minute - I'm able to say exactly what I think. I'm able to talk about, comment about, take snapshots of what's going on at the time. I don't feel trapped. I feel like this is my way of being able to express myself.

When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.