Film Historian Tom Fallows On George Romero As An Indie Auteur
Brandon Wetherbee
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George Romero is the godfather of zombie films. His place in horror film lore is cemented. But he’s more than just scares. A new series at AFI Silver, George A. Romero’s Independent Cinema, is attempting to secure Romero’s status as one of indie cinemas’ most valuable creators.
We spoke with the author of George A. Romero’s Independent Cinema: Horror, Industry, Economics, Dr. Tom Fallows about Dawn of the Dead and Romero’s role in indie cinema.
Dread Central: Why do you think Dawn of the Dead is in this specific place in horror culture?
Tom Fallows: I think the reason Dawn of the Dead has kind of lasted is it’s this wonderful balance of entertainment and engagement. When you first watch Dawn of the Dead it’s really fun. It’s this really scary comic book horror movie, really over the top, has these great special effects, this great scenario that we put ourselves into, what would I do if I was trapped in that mall, how would I survive? It’s really entertaining. But it also has this level that’s not that far beneath the surface of our political and social engagement.
Romero said the film was all about people ignoring the problem. It’s about how we cope in the face of catastrophe, or trauma, whether something that we’re experiencing or something people see on the news. How much do we engage with the problem? Or how much do we kind of hide away from it? I think Romero is really sympathetic to this idea. He sees the allure of just hiding in a shopping mall and letting the world just pass you by. But I think ultimately you have to contribute, you have to engage. Whether it’s a global pandemic that we’re all experiencing, or it’s things we’re seeing on the news from North Americans’ perspective, whether it’s Ukraine or Israel and Palestine, it’s all about what do I do? How do I engage? And I think those key themes of Dawn of the Dead were relevant then and they’re still really relevant now.
Dread Central: Do you find it ironic that there are now Dawn of the Dead action figures and lots of ephemera you could buy for a film that is a very hardcore critique of capitalism?
TF: Yeah, it’s an in-your-face, on-the-surface critique of capitalism.
That’s a really good point. I guess there’s an irony to it. There’s that surface-level entertainment and it’s probably natural for fans of a particular film, or franchise, or whatever it is to want to engage in those kinds of ways.
One of the threads of the events we’re doing at AFI Silver is Romero as an independent filmmaker. He was kind of always on that fence between pragmatism like, how do I survive as an independent filmmaker, and the kind of the idealism of being an independent filmmaker. So I suppose it’s probably an ambivalence that would have been there right from the start for around.
Dread Central: Zack Snyder’s first film was a remake of this film and I can’t think of a less independent filmmaker than Zack Snyder. I don’t mean that in a pejorative way at all, but he’s playing with the most comic book characters. He’s playing with the biggest studios in the world. It’s almost like it’s almost like a right-wing politician adopting the music of Rage Against the Machine.
TF: That’s such an awful, awful concept.
Dread Central: They’re Paul Ryan’s favorite band.
TF: No, I know, I’m with you! I understand exactly what you’re saying. One of my initial criticisms of it [the Zack Snyder Dawn of the Dead] was it didn’t address the kind of inherent political message that Romero saw in this idea of hiding in a shopping mall. And that’s really interesting, that really speaks to what you were saying is how much did Romero’s independence, the fact that he’s making this without, you know, big studios, looking over his shoulder, gave him that freedom to really kind of force home that political message? And is that something Zach Snyder is unable to do when he’s coming at it through more mainstream parameters? I mean, he’s a very interesting filmmaker who would make an adaptation of Watchmen and 300, which seemed very politically different to me. I’m not sure where he falls politically. And maybe that serves him well in the mainstream.
Dread Central: I’m so glad you brought up the pandemic, we’re talking about the four-year anniversary of the announcement that COVID was a pandemic in the United States. Do you think this film is more impactful since the pandemic?
TF: Yeah, that’s such a good question. It’s hard to say. I think the film’s always had that impact. And it’s not necessarily a film about a pandemic, although that’s kind of a key thread. But I think what you see is the ramifications of how quickly that felt like it happened is something that’s kind of an undercurrent of all of Romero’s zombie films, where it gets out of hand really quickly, and you’re in it before you even realize. There was the aspect early in the pandemic, this real kind of competitiveness, where people were in it for themselves, and they were raiding the supermarkets and they were gonna get all the toilet roll and all the things that they needed to sustain themselves without thinking about a wider community. And that is a thread that is really inherent in all of Romero’s films, this idea, particularly in zombie films, where people can’t work together to solve a problem. And there’s that element of the pandemic which I think Romero kind of hit the nail on the head and that feels very, very current still.
Dread Central: I feel like I grew up in George Romero’s America and John Landis’ America because of the mallification of it all and I’m from where Blues Brothers was shot and set so I’ve always felt like this is my home. You’re not from Pittsburgh or Chicago. How did this paint your picture of middle America?
TF: Oh, that’s a great question. I’m from the UK. Originally, I moved to the US, in fact, four years ago.
Dread Central: What a time.
TF: Yeah, it was like three weeks before the lockdown. So it was crazy.
I grew up in the video era. I really grew up with an idea of America through media and I suppose that’s how a lot of people who aren’t Americans experienced that country to begin with. For me, I think of films like Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, these kinds of big, grandiose celebrations of America at a particular time, as well as Reagan America. And then you have Romero who’s on the other side, you see somebody very critical of America. That responded to me as a teenager, you know, this kind of punk teenager. I always think of him as kind of a punk filmmaker. He has kind of an angry aesthetic that feels very punk, very immediate. I just wanted that. You realize there are Americans out there who are unhappy with the system and demanding change. It’s a complicated idea of America, but also reinforced the kind of fundamental values and decency at the heart of America.
Dread Central: I think you have a wonderful perspective as an outsider. What is the scariest horror film that represents America?
TF: I do think of Romero when I think of American horror cinema, and not necessarily because he’s criticizing America. The regionality of his films, that kind of Pittsburgh, they feel like there’s a working-class America in Romero’s films, specifically in Martin, his vampire film. It’s set in Braddock, Pennsylvania, which is this working-class city where the steel mills had closed down so it was going through this period of industrial and economic depression, which was not a million miles away from where I grew up in England in Stoke-on-Trent. We were an industrial city, we had the ceramics industry which was suddenly going overseas, the same kind of economic hardships. I responded to that idea of America. Romero is a working-class American and he’s showing regional America, but also showing the kind of universal qualities that people outside of America can connect to.
I think Romero’s reputation as a horror filmmaker is assured. But I think people tend to overlook how important he was to independent cinema. I think he’s as important to someone like John Cassavetes or Steven Soderbergh or Spike Lee or Jim Jarmusch or Wim Wenders, all these independent filmmakers, who didn’t make genre films, who were kind of celebrated in the independent sector.
Romero reinforces the fact that you can do it yourself. You don’t have to do it through a mainstream system. You can make these films independently, and you should watch films like Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, because they’re going to offer a template of how to do that. The technology has obviously changed, but now it’s even more accessible. It’s really this template for the kinds of films that you can make yourselves with your friends outside the system. I think that’s really important and also just really fun.
The themes within Romero’s films are really relevant. They still speak to who we are as people, who we are as communities, who you are as Americans, or how other people see you as American. They’re relevant, fun, and still scary.
Dread Central: You’re in that mall, you’re in the film, do you survive? And more importantly, do you even want to survive?
TF: I think I’d probably end up like Flyboy Stephen, I make it so far and then I do something stupid. And the elevator doors would open. I’d be a zombie. But I would try to survive for as long as possible.
Categorized:Interviews
