What would George Romero do if there was a zombie apocalypse? "I'd go to Max Brook's house; he has all the weapons!" Romero quipped in the Q&A panel on September 4 at Toronto's Fan Expo. As author of The Zombie Survival Guide, Brooks might well be the best bet to have as a friend in case of a zombie apocalypse--and who would know better than Romero?
Romero, who has lived in Toronto for over a decade, is best-known as the film auteur who created the iconic zombie films Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, plus three more films in the Dead series, as well as the vampire classic Martin, and film adaptations of Stephen King's Creepshow (based on King short stories) and The Dark Half. One of his biggest regrets, he reports, is that his collaborations with King on film versions of Pet Sematary and The Stand never came to fruition. "My versions would have been a little bit different" than the ones that ended up being made, Romero noted. Also better, one might imagine.
TV fans may be more familiar with Romero for Tales from the Darkside, the horror anthology TV series he created in 1984, which ran for 90 episodes, until July 1988. Like Creepshow, to which it might be seen as a sort of unofficial sequel, it adapted tales from King as well as numerous other SF, fantasy, and horror luminaries, such as Harlan Ellison, Frederik Pohl, Fredric Brown, and Clive Barker.
Romero's work may be returning to the small screen in the near future. His comic book series for Marvel, Empire of the Dead, did very well, and it has been in development as a possible television series for a while, as was announced last May at the Cannes film festival. Romero could provide no information about the series, including how close a deal was, but he seems optimistic that the show could materialize, bringing Romero's perspective to the increasingly crowded zombie television landscape. What with The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, Z Nation, and iZombie, there is currently no shortage of televisual zombies at the moment, but surely the creator of the modern zombie has something to add.
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Here's hoping his current endeavours do not meet a similar fate. Romero's return to television would be a welcome addition to the increasingly strong line-up of genre-oriented programming, especially in horror. Romero's work can stand with the best in the genre, even though, as he says, being scary isn't his primary interest. The horror is there, but always in service of something else he wants to say.
Malcolm McDowell's freewheeling question and answer session, by contrast, offered up little in the way of potential new projects--though when asked what his favourite part is, McDowell responded, "the next one!" he did not provide any hints about what he might be doing next. IMDB lists about fifteen projects completed, in process, or announced, but we might want to take these with a grain of salt, given McDowell's eye-rolling and contemptuous dismissal of IMDB as a reliable source of information, in response to one hapless fan's citation of is as the basis for his assertion about A Clockwork Orange.
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McDowell has had a long career, in which he has been involved in everything from pornography to voicework for children's television programs. The pornography involvement requires a bit of explanation. Gore Vidal wrote a screenplay based on the life of the mad Roman emperor Caligula, and recruited McDowell to take the part. However, the film was produced by Penthouse magazine's Bob Guccione, who insisted, McDowell reported, on shooting and inserting into the film a couple of pornographic sequences that did not fit stylistically or tonally into the larger movie. Vidal ultimately removed his name from the project, but the star does not have quite that luxury. McDowell's comments today make clear that he does not view the film as a worthwhile product, though, having seen it (in its censored version), I can confirm that McDowell's performance, at least, is stunning.
This experience seems to be far more the rule than the exception for McDowell. He pointed out repeatedly
in response to questions that most actors don't have the luxury of picking and choosing their roles, and that he certainly has generally not chosen his roles; they, he asserts, have instead chosen him. In response to one question about why he chose to do one of the various less than great films with which he has been involved, his response was the amusing but also no doubt painfully true, "It's called a fucking mortgage, you idiot!" He conceded to having made a lot of bad stuff but insisted that all one can do is take the few pearls when they come along. "My name isn't Tom Cruise," he asserted, adding a theatrical "Thank God!" that got one of the biggest laughs of the panel.
Thank God, indeed. McDowell may well have made many a poor film (of course, so has Tom Cruise), but he has also been involved in more than a few great ones, and as he remains a very busy actor (assuming we can trust IMDB, anyway) we can hope to see him amaze us again in the future.