Horror films are the anchovies of the cinema. Either you like them, or you don't.
I really believe that you could do horror very inexpensively. I don't think it has anything to do with the effects, the effects are not the most important parts.
If you look to the few films that have been really successful, 'Insidious,' 'Paranormal Activity,' it's all basically the old monsters.
The zombie was just an intriguing character; it is a sympathetic character.
I'd love to make a film like 'Pan's Labyrinth.'
Ever since 'Lassie' and 'Old Yeller', I won't watch animal movies. Animals in movies always die.
My zombie films were all sort of satirical, with political messages. So I was doing them inexpensively and quietly off in left field somewhere.
I wanted 'Night of the Living Dead' to look naturalistic, but we weren't able to do it because we were shooting with a blimped 35mm camera, which is automatically static.
I keep a little notebook of things that I can do to the zombies that might be silly and fun.
Nursery rhymes were political when they were first written! To me, that's what it's about: it's about using it to say something more than just what the story is.
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.
My film collection is all oldies.
The guy that made me wanna make movies... and this is off the wall-is a guy named Michael Pal, the British director.
I sit around listening to classical music. I don't play video games. I love to go to dinner, go on picnics, travel.
If I go to a movie and it's particularly violent, and people are leaving the theatre ready to vomit, we're sitting there with our popcorn just chuckling.
There is something about the sameness people like. And what I've tried to do with all the zombie films is purposely make them different. That may be part of why it takes so long for people to see what it's intended to be.
I have a very quiet life. There's nothing weird.
I'm more alarmed by people reacting violently to the violence in my films than I am by the violence in films.
Comic books and radio were my escape. I even remember 3-D comic books where you put on the red-and-green glasses and Mighty Mouse would punch you in the face. It was the literature of the day for kids my age who were too bored with listening to 'Peter and the Wolf' on the record player.
You just wish you could lobotomize yourself and just do a thing that's really on instinct. There's always a certain self-consciousness. And you worry about that.
