George A. Romero on Survival of the Dead, Gore Fatigue and Dreams of a Zombie Noir

George A. Romero may not be the father of the zombie film, but there can be no denying his status as its patron saint. More than four decades after his still-searing Night of the Living Dead put the "gory" in "allegory," Romero returns today with Survival of the Dead -- a grisly, pitch-black satire about the ordeal of an increasingly polarized society. Except this time it's the living facing each other as two families -- the O'Flynns and the Muldoons -- battle for control of an island where zombies co-exist like pets. Hungry pets, sure, but maybe even trainable. This could change everything.

The 70-year-old auteur sat down with Movieline recently to discuss what ideas made the Survival cut, his William Wyler influence, his second thoughts about having revolutionized gore, and just how hard it is to find those signature eyeglass frames.

How are you?

Fine. [Pauses]

I'll take your word for it.

Obviously, this is not my favorite part of the process. I'd rather be off shooting. But, uh... hello!

Well! On that note: After 40 years do you just run out of ways to explain what this genre -- this particular franchise -- means?

I don't know. I made the second film, and it was only then that I thought, "I can have fun with this. I can talk about other things, I can poke fun at society." The first film was angry, and it seemed to be about more than it was actually about, in a way. It's been overanalyzed to death. But I actually got this conceit that I could do this every once in a while and have fun. I could talk about things I like to talk about, express myself and give my opinions on things. And bring the zombies out. It's easy to get it financed. I don't know. Maybe I'm the Michael Moore of horror. That's what it's been for me. But it's just great fun. I grew up on EC Comics; I love doing this stuff. I can't get enough of it. They're really fun to do -- except for the weather. That'll bite you in the ass.

You've said your films "need to be about something." Themes I picked up from Survival are war, class warfare, immigration, gender roles... Is there one message in particular that you wanted to assign more weight than the others?

I think enmities that don't die. Is it Ireland? Is it the Middle East? Is it the Senate? It's just that: People can't disagree without being disagreeable. It's more universal. It's not necessarily about today. I mean, it is -- I think all of North America could use an anger management course right now. But that's not what spawned it, in a certain sense. It needed to be a more universal theme. It basically exists because Diary of the Dead made a lot of money, and so it was, "Pick a topic." I do have this conceit to do a couple more; I'd like to do this as a set of films. I planted a couple seeds in there that I'd like to keep working on.

Anything you can elaborate on?

No. But they do eat a horse!

Well, yeah, I was going to say -- without giving too much away -- the implication here is that the series is winding down. Are you in your endgame?

Oh, no. I don't know. End it? No. I don't know. Of course at some point I'm going to stop, so at least my films will stop. But no. I never want to go to the point where the zombies rule the world or anything like that, or go beyond Thunderdome. The stories are really people stories. They're classified as zombie films, but the zombies are really just, like, mosquitoes. "There are a lot of mosquitoes out tonight!"

Those are some nasty mosquitoes.

An annoyance, you know? But my stories have always been people stories -- how they respond, how they fail to respond. That's the most fun for me. I would never want to leave that or do the last man on Earth or anything like that.

I read that you were inspired here by the Western The Big Country.

"Inspired by"? No. Well, yes: Once we had the idea of the Hatfields and the McCoys, I remembered the big country. So I got my department heads together -- my production designer, the D.P. and everybody -- and we all sat down and watched The Big Country. It was just an added bit of fun to almost work in a different genre. We did it widescreen, didn't mute the colors, and tried to make it look like William Wyler. Like I say, that's just fun. I'd love to try it again, though I don't know where we'd go. Noir, maybe. That would be great, wouldn't it?

Oh my God. Black and white! Zombies in the shadows!

Maybe I could pull a [Frank] Darabont. I don't think anyone would let me shoot it in black-and-white, but maybe I can make a black-and-white print like with The Mist.

Some less-responsible horror filmmakers these days tend to hide behind metaphor when trying to explain away the more exploitative elements of their films. Are you aware of this, and as someone who is idea-driven, do you resent it?

Hide behind it? I don't know; I haven't seen any ideas. Maybe ideas are hiding behind the guy with the knife.

Well, let's take Eli Roth, who's attempted to explain Hostel away as a commentary on inhumanity, or... something.

Oh, well, God. OK.

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