Raising the Dead

📖 The Scoop

"George A. Romero never intended to become a master of horror, but he made Night of the Living Dead and became a legend. Raising the Dead: The Work of George A. Romero is an account of Romero coming to terms with horror, reshaping the genre to fit his expansive imagination in the process. Raising the Dead dives into the expansive, extraordinary body of work found in Romero's archive, going beyond his iconic zombie movies into a deep and varied trove of work that never made it to the big screen. From the early 1960s until his death in 2017, Romero was a hugely prolific writer, producing scripts in every conceivable genre, from arty medieval allegories to wacky comedies to grand-scale science fiction epics. Though he had difficulty funding projects outside of the horror genre, he continued to write in whatever mode his imagination dictated, and even if he routinely abandoned unfunded projects, he rarely abandoned his ideas. Themes, story ideas, and even characters were re-purposed for new scripts, evolving and transforming with each new iteration and, sometimes, finding a home in a horror film. But in order to accommodate ideas that began in such different contexts, Romero would have to change the horror genre itself: a zombie movie could be a tense thriller, but it could also be a savage satire of consumerism or an excoriating critique of militaristic or capitalist hierarchies. The horror genre became what Romero made of it. Based on years of archival research, Raising the Dead moves between unfilmed scripts and familiar classics, showing the remarkable scope and range of Romero's interests and the full extent of his genius. Raising the Dead is a testament to an extraordinarily productive and inventive artist who never let the restrictions of the film industry limit his imagination"--

Genre: Performing Arts / Film / Direction & Production (fancy, right?)