George A. Romero Goes Back To Basics In Diary Of The Dead

The Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness screenings are always a raucous affair, and Saturday’s screening of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead drew a particularly enthusiastic crowd to the Ryerson Theatre.

Fans whooped it up as Romero, the man who first brought zombies to the big screen in 1968 with the now classic Night of the Living Dead, introduced his latest in person. Diary of the Dead is a reimagining of the original film but with a modern spin – film students recording a zombie movie for a school project end up documenting the real thing.

“I got the idea because of this explosion of media out there,” the legendary director said following the film. “Everybody’s on a blog, everybody’s a reporter, and on YouTube and there’s all these millions of voices. I just wanted to do something that reflected that.”

Diary may draw comparisons to The Blair Witch Project, but Romero maintains the two films are quite different.

“We were trying to be a bit more theatrical, a bit more traditional, not just the hyper-realistic stuff,” he said. “I wanted the dialogue scenes to play and not be unintelligible, and I didn’t want the shots to be so crazy and indecipherable.”

Shot in and around Toronto, the film utilizes largely Canadian actors, including Shawn Roberts, Michelle Morgan and Joshua Close. Like the original ‘Night’ it’s also independently produced, as opposed to the last zombie movie to come out, Land of the Dead (2005), which had a bigger budget. Listen closely to some of the media reports in the film and you may recognize a voice or two – among the famous contributors:  Quentin Tarantino, Shawn of the Dead’s Simon Pegg, Guillermo del Toro, Stephen King and Chloe Sevigny.

“We really appreciate that those guys did it,” noted the horror master. “We were able to do them all over the phone because they’re all ‘futzed’ anyway. We had a great time.”

Romero is familiar with Toronto, having made films here before.  When asked about where he’d hide out if a zombie apocalypse occurred, he joked one place he’d definitely avoid was the DVP (Don Valley Parkway).

The film is gory, like Romero’s previous work, but even that is treated differently in this installment.

 “Luckily these guys were able to pull it off. A lot of it was mechanical. We had to use CG (computer generated) for some of it because there was no actor that would let us melt his head,” Romero deadpanned. “We were trying to do it from the perspective of the cameras that they were using and I think that makes some of it a little stronger. Everybody just pulled the stuff off beautifully. There’s probably more gore in Land of the Dead but it’s a bit more affecting when it’s occasional and seems to matter more when it’s not all over the place.”

George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, screening at TIFF07:

Fri. Sept. 14, 11:00pm
Varsity 5

(Scene from George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead)

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