I found an interesting recent interview with George A. Romero that makes a nice footnote to my “Zombies Part 1” post. It’s illuminating in that it shows a glimpse of his mindset when he made the movie.
In it he states “Listen, when we made the film, I thought that we were talking about miscommunication — people who, even when faced with impossible and improbable situations, still argue among themselves about petty things rather than facing the problem. I find that this is still going on today. That’s all I really care about.” This was certainly a theme that he explored over and over throughout his career.
Some ideas and observations are timeless – we seem to be doomed to create these same mistakes over and over again. Or perhaps it’s just part of human nature. Has anything changed in 50 years in North America? Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it.
Here’s the thing about genius – often the visionary themselves don’t fully understand on a conscious level what they are doing. They are JUST DOING IT. They are somehow a conduit, a vessel through which these ideas coalesce and flow. There’s something mysterious and unknowable about how this all happens. How did Billy Bob Thornton make “Sling Blade,” a perfect movie? How did Miles Davis make “Kind of Blue? How did the Beatles accomplish what they did? What perfect storm created Bob Dylan? I think George would be the first to tell you the the art he created was inspired by the zeitgeist of the times. The universe aligned in a very specific way to bring all these elements together…