A documentary on the making of ‘Night Of The Living Dead’, with four sources of info: George Romero himself (dun dun DUN!), a voiceover guy and stock footage (Oh, the pretension…), various voices talking over scenes/stills of the movie itself, and lastly (and leastly) some “experts” giving their opinions on various subjects (OHHH, the pretension).
Before proceeding further let me be clear: this is a DOCUMENTARY. It’s not a ‘Dead’ movie. It’s not about a new ‘Dead’ movie. There is NOTHING new here in terms of actual “movie”. So if you’re looking for that, stop right here and look someplace else.
If you’re up for a ‘Night’ documentary, this is in some ways unique (quotes, stills) and in some ways lacking; leaving out important behind-the-scenes bits that I’ve seen in other documentaries on the subject.
If you think you might be up for it, here goes…
The Sources:
1: Romero – talks about himself, talks about the making, talks about the travails, makes some jokes, laughs, grins, smiles, rakes in the dough. Hell, I’d be smiling. “Screw you, copyright laws!” he may well have been thinking. He also confirms some theories:
-The ending was, from the beginning of the script, intentionally as dark as possible – something they fought to keep, actually.
-The cause of the “zombies” is never given on purpose (I believe George could have concocted something solid if he really wanted to): “God changed the rules, no more room in Hell…” or whatever else you can think of.
-By what he says AND doesn’t say: there was no Vietnam message, no civil rights message, etc etc etc…(see the IQ below for George’s overall take on making the film). The closest he comes to validating any of these (or any other) theories is to acknowledge that the fictional inspiration for ‘Night’ was about “revolution”.
From his own commentary, he may have used little bits here and there of what he saw/heard/experienced of the times, but only in the same way that he used the already-dented car: it was there (physically or in his head), so it came out.
According to Romero’s own words, they DO NOT explore the “racial issue” AT ALL…the script remains as it is despite the concerns of (you guessed it) Duane Jones.
A black man as a hero is great, and Duane Jones is a real actor…and the retroactive commentary is fun to think about/look at…but Romero didn’t cast Jones because he was black. He wasn’t making a message. He was hiring an actor. So let’s not turn this into some great, brave revelation by Romero. It simply was as it happened.
2: Voiceover guy and stock footage – lots of commentary about the 60’s, the civil rights movement, riots, unrest, violence, politics, Vietnam…none of which, I believe, had anything to do with ‘Night’. I mean, was Romero AWARE of these events? Sure. Did they inspire him to make a movie? Did they have ANYTHING to do with the movie? No. He just wanted to make a flippin’ movie. Again, see the IQ below. Trudging through this is often painful since it’s so obviously cr@p and it’s not even NEW cr@p…I’ve heard most of it before.
3: Various voices + scenes/stills – Often interesting, mostly because of the movie supplying the footage, but occasionally due to some commentary that rises above mediocre/redundant (usually from George). Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be able to decide on whether it wants to be THIS (an actual analysis of creation/scenes/etc) or an over-analysis of extremely debatable “motivations”/”themes”/”messages”…ultimately the latter wins out, which is too bad.
4: The only names I recall are Fessenden and Ebert, because everything else was just so unremarkable. You’ve got George himself talking about it…who the fck cares what some random unrelated guy THINKS George was “trying to say”? You’ve got the man himself there. And the man himself seems to say, for the most part, “I was just trying to make a horror film”. But for the good and the bad:
– Larry Fessenden tries to cast the movie as a willful defiance of Hollywood as a form of “critique” of “Hollywood” films…but that’s bullsh1t. Romero shot it on a really worn shoestring because he
HAD to, not cuz he would have minded getting a few thousand from “mainstream cinema”. So Fessenden stars as the guy that gets the most pretentious about the whole thing.
– As Roger Ebert (among others) attested to, and is quoted rather hauntingly around 1:02:00 as saying, this was NOT your typical B-grade 60’s cheezy “horror” flick – something which children found out rather painfully after going in expecting to see one. His quote, as per usual with him and R.C., says it better than I ever could.
Other notes: Some good background info on the many contributors to the film that you may not have seen/heard/known before, some interesting little factoids in general, a completely unexplainable venture into Sidney Poitier films that makes me think they needed to pad out the length or were just REALLY stretching the whole (non-existent, IMPO) “civil rights” angle to the film, and LOTS and LOTS of over-analysis.
I think Romero himself summed up ‘Night’ and dismissed all the brouhaha surrounding it simultaneously with the best line of the doc.
Inspirational Quote: “It was no big thing, man.”
Grade: D