Line #38 Creator/GeorgeARomero


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_0750_4.JPG]]
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3	->''"I'll never get sick of zombies. I just get sick of producers."''
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5	George Andrew Romero (February 4, 1940 – July 16, 2017) was an American director and screenwriter known for his [[BMovie B-Movies]] and horror films, most famously the Film/LivingDeadSeries, in which he had occasion to invent a [[FleshEatingZombie well-known trope]].
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7	Romero was born and raised in New York City, to a Spanish-Cuban immigrant father and a Lithuanian-American mother. After attending Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, he began making short films and television commercials, subsequently banding together with some friends and investors to found a film production company. When it came time to write a feature script, Romero and co-writer John Russo drew inspiration from Creator/RichardMatheson's novel ''Literature/IAmLegend'', in which TheVirus kills almost all of humanity and turns the rest into [[FeralVampires semi-sentient]] bloodthirsty vampires. Romero and Russo ran with this concept, but tweaked the idea to make their monsters into even less intelligent, [[FleshEatingZombie flesh-eating]] “ghouls”.
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9	The resultant film was ''Night of the Living Dead'', which not only went on to become one of the most successful independent movies of all time, but also helped to redefine the word "zombie". The term originally came from voodoo, or rather HollywoodVoodoo, and referred to [[VoodooZombie voodoo zombies]]: dead or comatose people who were re-animated and enslaved by a master using voodoo magic. Romero's concept of the zombie became so iconic that it pretty much displaced the voodoo zombie in popular culture.
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11	Romero continued making films, including ''The Crazies'', ''Season of the Witch'', and ''Martin'', but those didn't catch on with the public like ''Night of the Living Dead'' had, so he went back to the zombie well with ''Dawn of the Dead'', and later ''Day of the Dead'' and ''Land of the Dead''. His other credits included the horror movies ''Creepshow'' and ''Monkey Shines'', and he was an executive producer of the 1980s syndicated horror television series, ''Tales from the Darkside''.
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13	Romero passed away in his sleep on July 16, 2017, after a battle with lung cancer.
14	----
15	!!Filmography:
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17	[[index]]
18	* The Film/LivingDeadSeries
19	** ''Film/{{Night of the Living Dead\|1968}}'' (1968)
20	** ''Film/{{Dawn of the Dead\|1978}}'' (1978)
21	** ''Film/{{Day of the Dead\|1985}}'' (1985)
22	** ''Film/{{Night of the Living Dead\|1990}}'' (1990; writer only)
23	** ''Film/LandOfTheDead'' (2005)
24	** ''Film/DiaryOfTheDead'' (2007)
25	** ''Film/SurvivalOfTheDead'' (2009)
26	* ''[[Film/TheresAlwaysVanilla There's Always Vanilla]]'' (1971)
27	* ''Hungry Wives'' a.k.a. ''Season of the Witch'' (1973)
28	* ''Film/{{The Crazies\|1973}}'' (1973)
29	* ''Film/{{Martin\|1977}}'' (1977)
30	* ''Film/{{Knightriders}}'' (1981)
31	* ''Film/{{Creepshow}}'' (1982)
32	* ''Series/TalesFromTheDarkside'' (television series, 1984-88; writer only)
33	* ''Film/{{Creepshow 2}}'' (1987; writer only)
34	* ''Film/MonkeyShines'' (1988)
35	* ''Film/TalesFromTheDarksideTheMovie'' (1990; writer only)
36	* ''Two Evil Eyes'' (1990)
37	* ''Literature/TheDarkHalf'' (1993)
38	* ''Film/Bruiser2000''
39	* ''Film/DeadtimeStoriesVolume1'' (2009) (actor only)
40	* ''Film/DeadtimeStoriesVolume2'' (2010) (actor and executive producer)
41	* ''The Amusement Park'' (2019)[[note]]Filmed in 1973, but unreleased until 2019[[/note]]
42	[[/index]]
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44	----
45	!! Tropes Associated with Romero's work:
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47	* ApprovalOfGod: [[AvertedTrope Nope]]. Romero was pretty disappointed by the [[Film/DawnOfTheDead2004 2004 remake]] of ''Dawn'', finding it just too serious and lacking the humour of the original. He also famously absolutely ''loathed'' the late 00s, early 10s zombie craze, even if it allowed him to have a CareerResurrection just by association, having a lot of harsh words to say about things like ''Film/WorldWarZ'' or ''Franchise/TheWalkingDead''.
48	** The one exception to this of course is ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil''; which Romero ''loved'' and was touched by the many homages to his work found in it, stating games like it and ''VideoGame/HouseOfTheDead'' was what truly resurrected the genre in the late 90's. Not only did he pen a sadly unused screenplay for a movie, he was commissioned by Capcom to make a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcDjo_uKeF4&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.talesfromapocrypha.org%2F&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=ResidenceofEvil a live-action commercial for the second game.]]
49	* AsHimself: Guest-starred in ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyZombies'' as himself... turned into a zombie monster while filming a movie.
50	* AuthorTract: Romero ''really'' hated military and armed forces of any kind. As a result, any work of his that could fit it in included some form of MilitariesAreUseless.
51	* CoolOldGuy: George A Romero was a cool, respectable, easygoing, NiceGuy in real life.
52	* CrazyPrepared: A year after his death, his wife announced that he'd left behind almost ''fifty'' completed scripts that had not been produced, which she's now trying to get going.
53	* CreatorsOddball: ''There's Always Vanilla'' is a RomanticComedy-cum-{{Dramedy}}, in contrast to the horror and action films making up the rest of his oeuvre.
54	* FilibusterFreefall: ''Dawn'' and ''Day'' are noticeably more political and satirical than ''Night'', in which the subtext was mostly accidental. [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools This was actually for the better]], as their deeper subtext helped to elevate the films into horror classics and make social commentary a hallmark of the zombie genre. Opinions are more divided, however, on the three later ''Living Dead'' films, which grew increasingly heavy-handed.
55	* HeAlsoDid: He started his career working as a cameraman on--we kid you not-- ''Series/MisterRogersNeighborhood''. His own directorial debut was in fact a short documentary entitled ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Mr. Rogers Gets a Tonsilectomy]]'', with a bizarre tone that he later credited as a direct inspiration for the Living Dead Series. (Creator/FredRogers later watched ''Night of the Living Dead'' and declared that it was "really fun.")
56	* HumansAreBastards: This is a recurring motif in his zombie films. While the zombies are the cause of society's collapse, the movies tend to focus on humanity's inability to cooperate with each other.
57	* OddFriendship: With Creator/FredRogers, of all people! Romero started working in film as a cameraman for ''Series/MisterRogersNeighborhood'', and would often point out later on that Rogers was extremely supportive and a great friend. Rogers was apparently even a fan of Romero's ''Night of the Living Dead'' and ''Dawn of the Dead''.
58	* OneHitWonder: He did dozens of movies, but he's almost entirely associated with ''of the Dead'' series, particularly the first three.
59	* OurZombiesAreDifferent: While the earliest depictions of zombies in films were {{Voodoo Zombie}}s controlled by necromancy, Romero popularized the idea of zombies created through scientific processes. ''Night of the Living Dead'' claimed that the zombies are [[NuclearMutant radioactive mutants]], and ''Dawn of the Dead'' hypothesized that a virus may be responsible for the zombie phenomenon although one character also proposes that the zombies are souls {{barred from the afterlife}}, essentially a supernatural explanation. ''The Crazies'' is the most obvious example as the zombies are unambiguously the result of an infectious virus.
60	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Most of his films, especially his zombie films, tend to lean quite heavily on the cynical end.
61	* ZombieApocalypse: The ''Living Dead'' series and ''The Crazies'' are about human society collapsing to the new zombie threat.
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Context Creator / GeorgeARomero