Birth of the Living Dead Page #7

before we ever cast Duane.

And that was

the only time for me,

I, I put a racial thing to it.

You know, like, they saw him,

he didn't yell out,

he was a black man,

and they shot him.

My favorite scene was when,

probably when

the African man got shot,

when he wasn't even a zombie.

I thought they should know

if he's a zombie or not,

because if they knew he was

a zombie, they would have,

the zombie would have

attacked them already

and walked toward them.

But all he did was stand

up and they just shot him.

A lot of people talked

about that as a lynching

and saw a political

thread in it.

I think it's more of a shock

in terms of the way it violates

your sense of narrative

expectation than,

uh, politically.

When our protagonist does get

shot, utterly arbitrarily,

I think that's way

beyond a racist issue,

that's Romero just

speaking from the times

about a bleakness that

the culture was suffering.

If he had survived,

it would have been dishonest.

I mean, even as a kid

and I was, you know,

propping my eyes open

with toothpicks

trying to sleep a couple

of nights after.

It felt like that was the most

honest thing to do.

You know, it's a tradition

in films that you can escape.

There's always the idea

you can escape.

You might leave your past if

you were involved with the mob,

you would leave and you'd

have a new beginning.

It's a tradition all

the way back to Homer!

The new beginning.

You go home

and you start again.

You refresh

and you start again.

But, of course,

the apocalyptic filmmakers

take that away from you.

No.

Tomorrow may not come

the way you're planning on it.

You may not have

another chance.

The only reason to do

the fantasy film

or the horror film

is to sort of upset the order,

upset the balance of things.

And it seems to me, seemed to me

that the formula was always

to restore order, you know?

Put it back the way it was,

which seems, you know,

counterproductive to what

you're doing initially.

And, which is why it

made sense to me to have,

you know, "Night

of the Living Dead"

have this sort of tragic

and ironic ending.

The credits roll seconds

after Ben's death.

It's shockingly blas

and detached.

It's as businesslike

as anything else in the film.

It may be the most emotionless

horror film of all time.

If it had been Sidney Poitier

in the movie,

he would have done that thing

and wave to everybody,

thrown his trench coat

over his shoulder,

and walked off

into the distance

as the haunting love theme

by Loulou piped into theaters

reminding us of the feat

he accomplished.

Um, and you know, that's,

it just felt so right.

It was the thing that was

probably more exciting

to everybody, when I

finally called the people

who did see it,

"Wasn't it great

that he does everything

and then gets shot?

Not only gets shot,

but right in the head!

So it's not like

you miss it."

It's completely terrifying

and the perfect ending.

Randy, light these

torches over here.

You really offered no comforts

to the audience at all.

No. But there's always

the refreshment stand!

Principal photography for

"Night of the Living Dead"

wrapped in November of 1967.

As Romero edited, the search

for investors continued.

And at first people

had no faith that we could

actually make a movie.

And it was only

when we were able

to actually show some dailies

and people saw that lips

were in sync

with the sound, um,

and they were able to say,

"It looks like a movie!"

And we'd say, "That's what

we're trying to tell ya!

One of these days it's gonna

grow up to be a movie!"

And, uh, you know,

so money dribbled in,

over the course

of several months.

And we were never certain

that we were ever

going to get enough

to finish it.

We didn't have money

for the sound mix.

So Russ Streiner

challenged the guy

who owns the lab

to a chess match,

and at stake was the sound mix.

And Russ beat the guy!

And won the sound mix!

So this was the kind of sh*t

that we were going through, man.

In January, 1968,

Vietnamese Revolutionary Forces

mounted a coordinated attack

on over 100 South Vietnamese

cities and towns, including

the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

It was called the Tet Offensive

and it brought

some of the most disturbing

images to date

to prime time television.

For many, the war

seemed more dangerous

and pointless than ever.

Still, it would

continue until 1975.

President Lyndon B. Johnson

seemed better at facing facts

when it came

to domestic policy.

He commissioned a study

to investigate the causes

of the nation's race riots.

An unflinching wake-up call,

the Kerner Commission Report

warned that,

Regarding the ghetto,

it stated:

And while "black militancy"

may have added fuel

to the riots,

the primary cause was:

We are moving toward two

societies, separate and unequal

and if something isn't

done to stop this

in a very determined manner

things can really get worse.

A few days later

"Night of the Living Dead"

was finally completed.

Image 10 still needed

a distributor for the film.

With the hope of finding

one in New York City,

Romero and Streiner

pick up the first finished

print from the lab.

Threw it in the trunk

of the car.

Finished answer print,

drove it to New York

to see if anybody

wanted to show it.

And Russ and I are

driving to New York

and we hear on the radio

that Martin Luther King

had been assassinated.

And you know, of course we

have this sort of angry film

that, you know, has

this 60s stuff in it,

we had a black lead,

Duane, and, you know...

Several distributors

considered the film.

It did not ignite

a bidding war.

I think Romero was working

against all kinds of prejudices

against what he

was trying to do.

A, if you've never made a film,

you can't make a film.

You've got to have a whole

succession of films

in order to make a film.

Uh, I think he was working

against the fact of you have

to have millions of dollars

to make a feature film.

Well, you don't.

The movie only cost $114,000.

Um, that's a very,

very low budget now.

It was also a very,

very low budget then.

I think in '67,

the average studio movie

probably cost about three

or 3.5 million dollars.

So $114,000 is nothing.

The movie's in black

and white at a moment

when just about

everything in movies

had switched over to color.

A black and white movie

in 1968 was less playable.

Theaters were less

interested in booking it.

Um, of course he was working

with a cast of unknowns.

That adds up to a very tough

set of circumstances,

especially when you're

effectively rebooting a genre

that hasn't done much

for the last several years.

Columbia, I think, was

the first place we went to

and they actually held

it for a little while

and it looked as if they were

really seriously thinking

about releasing it.

Columbia turned it down.

American International Pictures,

known for low budget biker,

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