I expect a zombie to show up on 'Sesame Street' soon, teaching kids to count.
With CG, I can do more and be sillier. In 'Diary,' there's a scene where they hit a guy with acid, and the camera is never off him, and you see it gradually eat through his skull and get all the way through his brain. That's fun, too.
At the time we did 'Night,' I was a director of television commercials. Some of them cost a lot more than our whole movie. They were very slick, sophisticated... we wanted the opposite look for 'Night.' We wanted it to look like a newsreel.
With 'Dawn,' I wanted the slick look; I wanted to bring out the nature of the shopping center, the retail displays, the mannequins. There are times when maybe you reflect that the mannequins are more attractive but less real - less sympathetic, even - than the zombies. Put those kinds of images side by side, and you raise all sorts of questions.
I have a soft spot in my heart for the zombies.
A zombie film is not fun without a bunch of stupid people running around and observing how they fail to handle the situation.
'Night of the Living Dead,' then 'Dawn of the Dead' is a few weeks later, 'Day of the Dead' months later, and 'Land of the Dead' is three years later. Each one spoke about a different decade and was stylistically different.
My stories are about humans and how they react, or fail to react, or react stupidly. I'm pointing the finger at us, not at the zombies. I try to respect and sympathize with the zombies as much as possible.
When you're shooting super-low-budget - we had 20 days to shoot 'Diary,' and a little over $2 - time is money.
Anybody who tunes into Rush Limabaugh already knows what he's going to say and is already inclined to agree. So it winds up creating tribes.
As a filmmaker you get typecast just as much as an actor does, so I'm trapped in a genre that I love, but I'm trapped in it!
I won't say I'm uncompromising, but I won't compromise just for the hell of it.
The main thing people took from 'Night of the Living Dead' was that it was a racial statement movie, and that was completely unintended.
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 seen so many young filmmakers - even professional filmmakers who get a Hollywood deal - they don't quite know where to begin, where to end, and they'll waste a lot of time making this perfect shot, an establishing shot, and then there's no time left to shoot the dialogue.
People called '28 Days' and '28 Weeks' zombie movies, and they're not! It's some sort of virus; they're not dead.
I've made six zombie films; I've tried consciously to make each one different from the next.
I don't want to do 'Beyond the Planet of the Apes.' I don't want a zombie society. I don't want to go that far.
I'm like my zombies. I won't stay dead!
I always thought of the zombies as being about revolution, one generation consuming the next.
