00:18 - In 1968,

00:19 - an independent, low budget film made in Evans City,

00:23 - Pennsylvania, revolutionized the horror genre.

00:28 - But some film distributors wanted no part of its shocking depiction

00:33 - of reanimated dead people eating the flesh of their victims.

00:39 - Pittsburgh filmmaker George Romero's

00:41 - vision of a slow shuffling, flesh

00:44 - eating automaton technically a ghoul,

00:48 - but usually referred to as a zombie, today is considered an archetype

00:54 - that continues to spawn numerous imitations

00:57 - all over the world.

01:03 - The first scene in Night of the Living Dead,

01:06 - filmed in the Evans City Cemetery, inspires terror of a relatable kind

01:12 - after brother and sister visit their father's grave.

01:16 - A playfully imagined attack becomes reality.

01:21 - Shots from the scene can be easily lined up

01:24 - with the same gravestones that exist today.

01:46 - Hi, my name is Lawrence Vincent.

01:48 - I am a George Romero film historian, and we are now in the Evans City

01:54 - Cemetery in Evans City, Pennsylvania,

01:56 - where they film the original Night of the Living Dead.

01:59 - I am standing in front of the chapel in the cemetery, and I'm going to give you

02:03 - a tour of the filming locations from Night of the Living Dead.

02:09 - Nothing wrong with a radio station.

02:12 - Which row is it in?

02:16 - Johnny and

02:16 - Barbara come walking through the cemetery and several shots

02:20 - where there's no one around.

02:24 - But in the last one leading up to their father's gravesite,

02:27 - they come directly through here.

02:31 - Johnny comes,

02:32 - kneels before the gravestone, which is where their father would have been here.

02:36 - He places across here and he's like,

02:39 - I wonder how many times we bought the same cross?

02:43 - Each year we spend good money on these things.

02:45 - We come out here and the one from last year's gone.

02:48 - Well, the flowers die and the caretaker or somebody

02:52 - takes them away and a little spit and polish.

02:55 - You can clean this up and sell it next year.

02:59 - Wonder how many times we bought the same one.

03:15 - Hey, come on, Barb.

03:16 - Church was this morning, huh?

03:27 - First time you see the cemetery zombie in the movie,

03:30 - there is this distant shot of him, and he's actually walking right about here.

03:35 - Or more like, shambling through the cemetery.

03:38 - You might not see them, but maybe he does.

03:43 - Do you remember one time when we were small?

03:45 - We were out here.

03:46 - It was from right over there.

03:48 - I jumped out at you from behind the tree and Grandpa got all excited

03:52 - and he shook his fist at me and he said, Boy, you beat them to hell.

03:56 - I remember that right over there.

03:59 - Well, you should really be scared here,

04:02 - Johnny.

04:03 - You're still afraid. Stop it now.

04:06 - I mean it.

04:11 - They're coming to get you, Barbara.

04:14 - Stop it.

04:16 - You're ignorant.

04:17 - They're coming for you, Barbara.

04:20 - Stop it.

04:20 - You're acting like a child.

04:22 - They're coming for you.

04:25 - Look, that comes one of them. Now

04:28 - you hear you?

04:29 - Here he comes now.

04:30 - I'm getting out of here, Johnny.

04:40 - Oh, God.

04:49 - So, as Johnny wrestles with the cemetery Zombie,

04:52 - his sister Barbara cowers by this very gravestone here.

04:57 - Nicholas Kramer Stone.

05:20 - So the cemetery zombie

05:22 - is hovering over Johnny, who is right here, possibly dead.

05:26 - He sees Barbara ahead of him, and he looks at her

05:30 - as he leans over the body.

05:32 - And then he goes up.

05:34 - And after.

05:50 - So the cemetery zombie is chasing

05:52 - Barbara through the cemetery towards her car where she's running.

05:56 - And you see a shot of him

05:58 - for rustling through the bushes, in trees.

06:01 - And beside him you can see this cold stone here in the shot.

06:11 - So, of course, Barbara

06:12 - is being chased through the cemetery as she runs along this path here.

06:16 - And she trips and falls

06:22 - and the

06:39 - cemetery, zombie sheriff is down by the car where Barbara's inside of it

06:43 - and it's banging on the window, trying to get in the car.

07:00 - She's inside and she doesn't have keys for the car.

07:03 - He runs around the side.

07:04 - The cemetery zombie reaches down, picks up a rock, and he comes over to the window.

07:10 - Smash, smash, and then smash

07:12 - all the way through.

07:22 - Of course, the rock went into the car and almost hit the cameraman,

07:25 - who was George Romero himself, and

07:38 - so the cemetery zombie claws at the car

07:41 - as Barbara takes off and he follows her

07:44 - down the path.

07:56 - So the cemetery

07:57 - zombie follows Barbara in her car down the hill,

08:00 - and you would think the next shot would be down the hill, but it's not.

08:02 - It's actually over here.

08:05 - And he actually runs down this path here and the car stops

08:08 - right about here where there used to be a tree and it's where it crashes

08:26 - and where

08:54 - the passage of time has enhanced

08:57 - the appeal of Night of the Living Dead

09:01 - cast members and fans gathered in Evans City

09:05 - to celebrate the film's influence on popular

09:08 - culture.

09:19 - The Living Dead Weekend at the City 2023.

09:24 - Action.

09:40 - We are here to celebrate Night of the Living Dead.

09:42 - It is the movie that started the zombie genre,

09:47 - and that's only one reason

09:48 - why it's important, because it's also an independent film

09:52 - that, you know, broke through all kinds of barriers and became like a big film.

09:56 - It's a Pittsburgh film.

09:57 - It's an even city film.

09:59 - Having city is my hometown.

10:01 - Evans City Cemetery is my home cemetery.

10:04 - So I had this lifelong mission to tell the world, Hey,

10:09 - Evans City, Pittsburgh,

10:11 - let's be proud that that's something this important was started here.

10:15 - And that's why I started doing these festivals,

10:17 - which grew into this this convention, which is basically to celebrate that

10:21 - and the local pride of being like the beginning of something that's, that's

10:26 - turned into something that was never envisioned by the filmmakers.

10:30 - If they weren't trying to create a new horror movie

10:35 - genre, that video games and cartoons and movies and TV shows

10:39 - would be playing off of for 55 years, they were just making a film

10:44 - that people wanted to see that would be fun film.

10:47 - And along the way, the world turned that into a zombie genre.

10:52 - They weren't even called zombies. It just

10:55 - played out in happened over over several years.

10:58 - It wasn't even like something that they were talking about in the script

11:01 - because that word meant a different sort of thing.

11:05 - At that time, it meant that that voodoo

11:08 - mind control, we have pretty much

11:11 - all of the, you know, the remaining cast that's still alive today.

11:16 - They're coming to get you, Barbara.

11:19 - We have Russell Reiner, who's the producer and star of the film, Judith O'Dea.

11:24 - Judy is the lead in.

11:25 - You know, the other lead is is unfortunately, he passed away.

11:29 - But we have also Judy Ridley,

11:32 - who was, you know, one of the major characters in the film.

11:35 - We have Kyra Schoen, who was the little girl, ghouls

11:39 - that people would called Zombie.

11:42 - George Romero came to Pittsburgh

11:45 - when we were 18 years old.

11:46 - Restauranteur And George and Ira were the same age 18.

11:52 - I was at West Virginia University.

11:54 - Ross was at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, and George came here from New York

11:59 - because he enrolled at Carnegie Tech, which is in all Carnegie-Mellon

12:03 - as a fine arts major.

12:05 - We're both fine arts majors, and when we're supposed to be drawing

12:10 - the naked girl, George is drawing

12:14 - scenes from Ben-Hur. So.

12:18 - And he said he wants to he wants to paint

12:20 - he wants to paint scenes from Spartacus on my bedroom walls.

12:24 - And my mother was going to let him do it.

12:27 - So I came home and

12:30 - we already had a 55 Plymouth convertible.

12:33 - We jumped in a car and went to George's apartment

12:37 - in Logan, already honk the horn

12:40 - and George came down on the street and he was wearing a big sombrero

12:46 - to bandolier.

12:47 - I was around ammunition, too.

12:49 - Pistole was a big, droopy, black mustache, and of course,

12:52 - we didn't remark on that at all because we're way too cool to notice.

12:58 - So George jumped in the car and we went to get the

13:02 - Dairy Queen ice cream,

13:05 - and the girl took one look at him and slammed the windows shot and wouldn't

13:08 - wait on us.

13:08 - So we just laughed and kept going.

13:11 - And the reason he was wearing some rare

13:14 - and all that was his favorite movie.

13:17 - One of his favorite movies was Even Supporter,

13:20 - and that was about $1,000,000 Emilio's supporter, who, along with Pancho

13:24 - Villa, was they were the two top Mexican revolutionaries on Viva.

13:30 - So far.

13:30 - This starred Marlon Brando as the father, George and I.

13:36 - We're the two writers in our company.

13:38 - We only had five people in the company.

13:41 - I suggested we all make a horror film because we bought a 35 millimeter camera.

13:46 - And I said We ought to be able to, you know, maybe if

13:50 - if we and five of our friends, we'd have ten people for each film.

13:55 - 600 bucks, we'd have 6000.

13:57 - Maybe we could shoot some cheap

14:01 - horror film.

14:05 - And George went away just before Christmas.

14:08 - He didn't show up at the office for a few days and came back

14:11 - and he had 20 or 30 pages of a short story

14:16 - that had a brother and sister visiting their

14:21 - father's grave,

14:23 - which was also why I said whatever we do ought to start in the cemetery,

14:27 - because because cemeteries are spooky to people.

14:31 - So we had this thing where the girl gets attack

14:33 - and then people are chasing our allies

14:37 - and he quit writing after about 30 pages.

14:40 - And I said, Well, George just tells all the right twists and turns and suspense,

14:46 - but who's chasing this girl?

14:48 - You never say?

14:50 - And he said, Oh, I don't know.

14:52 - Well, I said, Well, I think I could be dead people.

14:56 - He said, That's good.

14:58 - And I said, Well, what are they after?

15:00 - You don't say that either.

15:02 - And he said, I don't know.

15:04 - And I said, Why don't we use my flesh reading idea?

15:08 - I was involved

15:10 - 55 years ago

15:13 - in a movie called Night of the Living Dead.

15:17 - There are about seven people in the world

15:20 - who have not seen or heard of Night of the Living Dead.

15:24 - But for those who haven't, I played

15:28 - kind of an annoying older brother to a young woman.

15:34 - Oh, we're out to visit a grave site, and

15:40 - things don't go well.

15:43 - And the brother is quite tormenting to his younger sister.

15:47 - And before you know it, what starts off

15:50 - as a ordinary visit to a cemetery

15:54 - turns very, very bad for both of them,

15:58 - especially the character of Johnny,

16:01 - which is the character that I play

16:04 - a director by the name of George Romero,

16:07 - who was struggling to get his career off the ground.

16:12 - I was struggling to get my acting career off the ground,

16:16 - met through a mutual friend.

16:19 - Our relationship kind of turned into

16:23 - Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland.

16:25 - How about if you bring the costumes and I'll write the songs

16:28 - and we'll eventually make a movie that's

16:32 - that's a little bit tongue in cheek, but it's basically how it happened.

16:36 - George and I ended up being business

16:39 - partners and friends for 60 years.

16:43 - And along that pathway

16:47 - in 1967, we filmed Night of the Living Dead.

16:51 - He directed it.

16:53 - He co-wrote it with John Russo,

16:56 - and I co-produced it with Carl Hardman,

17:00 - one of the other people who plays a character in the film.

17:05 - And what was one of the things that was unique about it?

17:09 - It was sound in Pittsburgh.

17:12 - It had never Pittsburgh

17:14 - had never been host to a movie before.

17:18 - We put our hands in the air and said, We'll make a movie here.

17:22 - We did.

17:23 - We self-financed it.

17:25 - So we didn't have any studio people looking over our shoulder

17:30 - saying, You can do this and stay away from that.

17:34 - So we kind of made the movie that we wanted to.

17:39 - There were ten of us.

17:41 - The company that owns Night of the Living Dead is called Image ten.

17:46 - There were ten investors who each put up

17:49 - the princely sum of $600.

17:53 - So we started with $6,000.

17:57 - And the lesson to be learned from that four young

18:00 - filmmakers is

18:04 - if you think you have a good idea and if you can cobble together

18:08 - a little bit of money, make sure you finish your project.

18:13 - Because if we hadn't finished Night of the Living Dead

18:18 - 55 years later, I'd be at home doing yard work.

18:22 - I had to come to grips with that as an actor,

18:25 - that Johnny was basically a jerk

18:28 - and and tormenting was his game,

18:32 - he says, a

18:33 - rather memorable line in the film.

18:36 - So that coming to get you Bob or

18:42 - that has gone down as a line

18:47 - in movie history, I don't know why.

18:50 - I can't explain why, but I think it was the combination

18:54 - of the jerk Johnny tormenting his sister

18:58 - and the line delivery of that.

19:01 - It's it's become a part of movie history.

19:05 - It might be a bigger line than Clark Gable's.

19:07 - Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

19:12 - I was living in California at the time in L.A.

19:16 - I wanted very much to be in film.

19:19 - I got a call from Carl Hardman,

19:22 - who plays Harry Cooper in the film.

19:25 - He and I had worked together off and on for many years.

19:30 - He had a recording studio,

19:32 - Hardman Associates, doing television,

19:36 - radio, audio commercials.

19:40 - I did a lot of them, I think.

19:43 - He said, Would you like to come back and audition?

19:46 - We're going to make a film.

19:47 - George, Russ, Jack.

19:50 - I said, I'm in. I auditioned.

19:54 - I think I must have found out shortly after that

19:56 - that he very kindly had given me the the role of Barbara.

20:00 - But it just happened.

20:02 - You needed me to go out to Hollywood to make it big in film and

20:06 - to make your big film back in Pittsburgh, I think that's rather ironic.

20:12 - Cemeteries always frighten me.

20:15 - As a kid,

20:17 - my mother told me a wonderful story

20:20 - about her and the cemetery, and I'd never forgotten.

20:25 - Interestingly, I was thrilled just to be on set,

20:29 - but what was even more exciting

20:32 - when I came back to the cemetery

20:35 - after being away for those decades after

20:39 - the film had come out and it was doing well

20:44 - to go back to the cemetery

20:47 - was surreal.

20:50 - I felt if I pushed the air just a little bit harder

20:55 - that I could pop right back

20:59 - to where I was in 1967.

21:04 - George gave us tremendous freedom.

21:07 - He told us what we wanted to achieve

21:09 - in the scene and then gave us the freedom to achieve it,

21:14 - which as a young actor,

21:16 - that's a gift, George said.

21:19 - Throw in a comment about the candy.

21:22 - You know,

21:22 - I figure we're either going

21:23 - to have to move mother out here or move the grave into Pittsburgh.

21:27 - She can't make a trip like this.

21:28 - Oh, so she can't.

21:31 - Sorry that candy left.

21:34 - No, look at this thing. We still remember.

21:37 - I don't.

21:38 - You know, I don't even remember what the man looks like.

21:41 - Tell him about driving from Pittsburgh.

21:43 - He just gave bear there.

21:47 - The dialog was all

21:49 - improvization Barbara to many people.

21:53 - Over the years with whom I've spoken,

21:57 - I have thought Barbara to be

22:01 - a weak character.

22:03 - I do not find Barbara to be weak at all.

22:08 - I think

22:10 - she has tremendous strength.

22:14 - I think her behavior,

22:16 - once she got to the house

22:20 - and had to process

22:22 - what she had just seen is a very intelligent, natural

22:29 - way to behave and

22:32 - I worked for George and Russ, and

22:37 - I think that they they liked me and they wanted to find a spot in the film

22:42 - for me.

22:42 - I probably petitioned for that a little bit.

22:46 - Well, I think that the Judy character was pretty much a given

22:50 - that it would be I was the one that was going to be playing Judy.

22:54 - It wasn't it wasn't going to stress me.

22:56 - It wasn't going to be beyond my my capabilities.

22:59 - I wouldn't embarrass myself.

23:02 - So that's how it came to be.

23:04 - I didn't read the script.

23:06 - So it was a came in,

23:10 - you saw what was going to happen that day

23:13 - and there might have been rewrites during the day.

23:17 - George would sit cross-legged with me

23:19 - in the living room on the floor,

23:22 - and he would talk directly to me

23:26 - and tell me what he thought.

23:28 - This character of Judy might be thinking.

23:31 - You know, her given her age and her,

23:34 - you know, prove how naive she was.

23:39 - So that was really very helpful.

23:42 - And of course, I didn't want there to be a lot of retakes

23:44 - just because of the cost of film stock.

23:48 - But of course, there were some

23:49 - you know, I knew that the body at the top of the stairs was a

23:54 - a model of a of a hobby

23:56 - from a hobby store with silly putty poured over it.

24:00 - And I knew that the actual body was, Kyra, being moved.

24:04 - So I know I've been asked on many occasions, were you frightened?

24:08 - And it no, no.

24:11 - I rewrote what he wrote, and then I wrote

24:14 - the whole second half of the script myself.

24:17 - We had some script discussion with a few people,

24:21 - and nobody except me was come up with ideas, not even George.

24:25 - And I wondered why he wasn't.

24:28 - So George read it and he said,

24:30 - I think there was something the matter with it.

24:33 - And I said, I don't think so.

24:35 - He's George here, Rudy, you read it.

24:37 - So Rudy read it and he said at the time there was nothing wrong with it.

24:41 - George

24:42 - thought for a minute or so and he said, I know what it is.

24:45 - It needs one more siege

24:48 - and what he meant by that is there should be a point

24:51 - where the ghouls almost break into the house,

24:55 - but maybe three quarters of the way through the movie.

24:58 - But they don't succeed.

24:59 - And only when the final surge of goals happens

25:03 - do they succeed in breaking into the house

25:28 - and the mid-nineties.

25:29 - George was on a TV show with Richard Matheson.

25:33 - He wrote I Am Legend.

25:35 - I have never read I Am Legend, which is a good thing.

25:39 - And George

25:41 - apologized to Matheson for ripping them off.

25:45 - Yeah, that's why I quit writing.

25:48 - Because if he would have said they were vampires,

25:50 - the rip off would have been apparent.

25:52 - So I unwittingly Bill bailed them out.

25:55 - And, you know, I came in and said it's dead.

25:59 - People were after human flesh now they were no longer vampires.

26:03 - Now we can go ahead with that scene

26:06 - I got out of the

26:07 - Navy when I was a young guy, 19 years old,

26:10 - and went back to Pittsburgh in Rust.

26:14 - Reiner's brother, Gary

26:17 - and I went to school together and he knew I needed some work.

26:20 - George Romero, the producer, he said, Yeah,

26:25 - let's do let's do a movie, a full, full length movie.

26:29 - And it's going to be on a shoestring.

26:31 - But everyone was all up for it.

26:34 - I come out of the bushes, you know, straggling out of the bushes.

26:37 - I'm zombie and I go to attack him.

26:42 - He basically grabs me.

26:44 - And then this is where I get a shot, a full, full screen mug shot.

26:49 - And that's my 15 minutes of fame right there.

26:53 - We struggle, and he gets me to the ground and beats me.

26:57 - He beats my brains out, basically with the tire iron.

27:01 - And that set the precedent

27:04 - for you got to kill the brain to kill the zombie.

27:08 - It was just a spectacle that hasn't been seen before.

27:13 - So this guy whose arm I was eating was my real father.

27:19 - So Harry Cooper was played by Carl Hardman.

27:21 - My real father.

27:22 - And so he was fine with my participation.

27:25 - He was the reason I was in the movie in the first place.

27:27 - So he signed on first? Yeah.

27:30 - He was one of the producers and an actor and he did sound effects

27:34 - and that sort of thing too.

27:35 - He had a recording studio in Pittsburgh at the time,

27:39 - so he, you know, contributed sound

27:42 - to the production too.

27:44 - When I was a kid, I'm

27:46 - really old now, but it was when Chiller Theater

27:50 - was on TV on Saturday afternoons.

27:54 - So I think I was about five years old when I started

27:57 - watching horror movies and I was hooked on them.

28:00 - I loved them and you know, they weren't like movies are today.

28:04 - I mean, they were much tamer, the universal classics,

28:07 - you know, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolfman.

28:10 - And I loved them and the Crawling Eye and the WASP

28:14 - woman and Little Joe showing those movies today, right?

28:17 - Yeah. And they were they were wonderful.

28:19 - And and I they were kind of like a roller coaster ride for me.

28:23 - So, you know, it was just it was fun and it was escapism.

28:27 - And I laugh and get scared and but, you know, it was mostly just really fun.

28:33 - So when I got to play a little monster,

28:36 - I was beside myself with joy.

28:39 - I really was. I was stabbing into a pillow

28:43 - while someone threw black paint at the wall.

28:46 - And I think it's safe to say that photo of you looking

28:48 - straight into the camera with the tresses over the one eye and the one.

28:51 - Yeah, the blacked out.

28:52 - I, I think it's fair to say that's an iconic photo.

28:57 - It was that in the movie or is that a promotion still?

29:00 - Do you remember?

29:00 - My dad shot it at lunch time and I was hungry so that sort of the pre

29:07 - I roll like dad and not from hungry

29:10 - you know so there's nothing more fierce than a hungry nine year old girl.

29:13 - That's the reality of the context.

29:15 - I just noticed the trial necklace and I've never seen anything like that.

29:19 - Yeah, I.

29:20 - Well, a friend got this for me at an antique shop.

29:22 - These little guys, I make these, I do these and pewter.

29:27 - I cast this myself.

29:30 - Wave of murder, which is sweeping the eastern third of the nation,

29:33 - is being committed by creatures who feast upon the flesh of their victims.

29:39 - The first eyewitness accounts of this grisly development came from people

29:43 - who were understandably frightened and almost incoherent.

29:46 - Officials and newsmen at first discounted

29:50 - those eyewitness descriptions as being beyond belief.

29:53 - However, the reports persisted medical examinations

29:56 - of some of the victims bore out the fact that they had been partially devoured

30:03 - by God the road.

30:04 - Because there was a recording studio and

30:10 - a film house.

30:11 - They went together to make image camp.

30:14 - I was the receptionist for the recording studio.

30:19 - So it was a situation where,

30:22 - you know, most people were asked if they'd like to be in this movie.

30:26 - Well, I was told that

30:29 - after I was done at the studio

30:31 - that I could go out the road and be in the movie for another 4 hours.

30:36 - And that's the way I got into it.

30:38 - My moment of glory

30:41 - was after they blew the well.

30:43 - Like you said, if no one's seen the movie, they don't understand.

30:47 - They blew a truck up that had two people in it.

30:51 - And after they blew the truck up, the zombies, Marvin started to pull out

30:58 - sections of

30:59 - people and who had been killed in the blast,

31:03 - who had been killed in the blast and dismembered.

31:06 - So some people hadn't cast.

31:08 - Some people had livers and I got a bone.

31:13 - So I had to walk away from this

31:16 - this flaming truck with a bone in my mouth.

31:20 - And they had poured Silly Putty on it

31:23 - so that I could grip it, you know.

31:27 - But it was so funny, you know.

31:29 - Now, that must have felt I mean, you must have felt pretty special

31:32 - to be one of the ghouls, to get seriously not a bone on camera,

31:36 - because not all of them got to do that.

31:38 - So that was a good way to distinguish yourself.

31:40 - So about how old were you at that time?

31:43 - And I was 20 years old. 20 years old.

31:45 - And when you told your parents about your involvement in this movie,

31:48 - I bet you explained it to them. And how did they react?

31:51 - Do you remember?

31:52 - My dad was excited. He was saying it.

31:54 - He was in it, too.

31:56 - He came down on a weekend and did it in the afternoon.

31:59 - He's one of the zombies that they shot, so he had the makeup

32:04 - put on his back that exploded out, that kind of stuff.

32:08 - And my mother, I think, thought she was too cool for for anything like this.

32:14 - She wouldn't have had any interest in it.

32:16 - Now, Paula, let's talk about your famous shot here, your claim to fame, where

32:21 - you had to get the human remains from the truck that had been blown up.

32:26 - So you're seen in the movie chewing, knowing on a human bone.

32:31 - And it turns out here we are at this convention and Evans City.

32:34 - And one of the fans brought kind of an artificial bone

32:39 - to suggest as a gift to you the remains that you not on

32:44 - that was over 50 years ago 55. The

32:48 - people that come are really

32:51 - vested in what this movie was and how they got along with it and

32:57 - and how they reacted to it.

32:59 - And we get a lot of gifts

33:02 - that people make, particularly things that people make.

33:06 - And they like us to have little figurines or

33:10 - cards.

33:12 - After a convention like this, we always go home

33:14 - with with a few items that people have dropped off.

33:18 - Well, they really went out of their way with this artificial bone.

33:21 - They just didn't pull it off the counter by bring it in here.

33:23 - In fact, they put it in a special coffin shaped package

33:27 - photo of you again from that moment to glory in the movie, right?

33:31 - Yeah.

33:32 - They're amazing.

33:34 - They just really are invested.

33:36 - I get a lot of pleasure out of doing this, I think,

33:39 - and they get a lot of pleasure out of giving them to us through,

33:43 - you know, the accolades that come along with it.

33:47 - You know, I was the

33:49 - that was the goal that got the turn on the hill by fire

33:52 - with Ben and me and he puts it with a tire iron.

33:56 - Yeah. I also did the Molotov cocktail stunt,

34:00 - real gasoline, three takes.

34:03 - And I just had the George and

34:05 - I would set the camera up because we were the camera to him.

34:09 - Hardman would make a puddle of gasoline and my feet

34:12 - naturally Vaseline up my leg and back.

34:15 - And on the action, he'd throw a lit match

34:18 - into the puddle and the flames of race up my leg and back.

34:21 - And then I had a diversion like a zombie until I could feel my hair.

34:25 - Being Samson, I would fall over a bank where people

34:29 - were waiting with blankets to smother the flames.

34:32 - So I didn't get hurt.

34:34 - I mean, we pretty carefully worked it out and I was pretty careful.

34:39 - And, you know, George said, we're going to watch stupid smile and catch on fire.

34:45 - And then he said, Well, we don't have a mouse best suit

34:47 - and we don't have a stunt man.

34:48 - Oh hell, I'll do it.

34:50 - So I put on heavy down hems and

34:55 - loose fitting brown suit that

34:56 - I pulled out of Apollo Goodwill clothes that we had there,

35:00 - and figuring out if it was loose fitting, maybe I could get all of it fast.

35:05 - And that's how we did it.

35:07 - I, my brother, obviously, Russ Strider was one of the owners of the latent image,

35:12 - was which was the parent company to image ten that made the film

35:18 - and I caught the bug years before he

35:23 - he had invited me out to be an extra in Chantilly Park and

35:28 - and I spent a beautiful Saturday day I believe it was out there.

35:33 - And I

35:34 - said, this movie business could be okay.

35:38 - And so I started hanging around with Russ.

35:41 - George was a chain smoker back then,

35:44 - and he used pop bottles as his ashtrays.

35:49 - You know how disgusting that can be.

35:52 - Yeah And that was one of my chores.

35:55 - And one of the first ways that I got paid from the late image

36:00 - was I got to take the pop bottles back and make the $0.02 on the bottle.

36:06 - But the problem was, yeah, that no one

36:09 - would take the bottles with all these cigaret butts in it.

36:12 - So my job was to take the cigaret butts out of the bottles and wash them out.

36:18 - We were we were a unit, you know,

36:20 - we had the latent image had done tons and tons by this time.

36:25 - By the time we got to know the living dead, we weren't

36:28 - that naive little group that started back on the South.

36:32 - And, you know, we had all kind of grown up within that company and made ours.

36:38 - And we're self-taught moviemaker.

36:42 - You know, there's not too many environments you can do that in.

36:45 - You know, usually you're not working if you don't have

36:49 - technical abilities, this, that or the other thing.

36:52 - But with us, it was much more about

36:55 - what needs done and we'll figure out how to do it.

36:58 - I think that George had a real natural intuitive for

37:04 - knowing how to make things work.

37:06 - You know, I said for years

37:10 - I thought George was a more brilliant editor than anything else.

37:16 - George just had such an incredible knack of editing and so

37:22 - I wouldn't say we ever did a lot.

37:24 - We did more in commercials, of course, you know, because we have dialog and so on

37:28 - so far

37:29 - have they hit their mark and you know, George wasn't

37:31 - particularly worried about them hitting their mark.

37:34 - If if the content and the action was good in Night of the Living Dead,

37:39 - you would buy a ticket, sit down in a seat and not know what to expect.

37:44 - I knew everything what what to expect.

37:46 - I knew every cut.

37:47 - In fact, I used to have a lot of fun drive ins.

37:51 - I'd sit with the windows rolled down in the drive in, and I,

37:54 - before the character said the lines, I would just kind of shout them out.

37:59 - If it hadn't been an independent film, it would have never got made.

38:03 - Hollywood would have never that it if

38:06 - and if it did if they did somehow greenlight it to be shot

38:11 - with the first cut, they're going to

38:15 - they're going to be okay with a black man smacking a white girl.

38:19 - We primarily shot it in black and white because of budgetary constraints

38:26 - for the most of Hollywood, once again, because distributors are all Hollywood

38:31 - or New York.

38:32 - So you finally have to, no matter what, you have to get to that level.

38:36 - They were then moved on to color, you know, black and white was the one.

38:40 - They weren't terribly interested in it.

38:42 - And I think and finally, Paramount held on to it

38:47 - for a number of weeks and months,

38:50 - trying to make their decision.

38:52 - And then their final

38:52 - and final decision was to pass because it was in black and white.

38:56 - I don't think the living dead

38:57 - would have been night of the Living Dead if it was shot in color.

39:00 - I, you know, gives you all those shadows to hide

39:04 - in, you know, and all those scary points.

39:07 - But, you know, I mean, you look at these photos on my tape

39:10 - on the table, this is so in your face.

39:14 - You know, even these photographs are more mysterious, you know,

39:20 - four than

39:21 - the original made a living dead idea.

39:24 - The end sequence when Duane Jones gets shot,

39:28 - everything turns to stills because his life has ended

39:32 - and that whole sequence has actually animated a frame at a time.

39:35 - So we could start and stop on each photo exactly where George wanted.

39:39 - When it came out, it was, first of all, it was kind of a miracle that it was made

39:43 - you know, it was made in Pittsburgh.

39:44 - I mean, there's tremendously talented people here

39:47 - doing all kind of work and back then as well.

39:51 - But the idea that you could pull off a feature film locally, I mean, now,

39:55 - you know, look at how many films have come into Pittsburgh over the years.

39:59 - But at that time it was unheard of.

40:02 - People like to be scared, but more importantly,

40:04 - they like to overcome the fear and overcome the threat.

40:08 - And in most cases, that happens.

40:10 - But George threw a twist to it.

40:13 - Night of the Living Dead has become its own history unto itself.

40:18 - It's own phenomenon.

40:20 - It's I don't pretend to understand all the reasons why,

40:25 - but people continue to like the story.

40:29 - I at conventions, I talk literally

40:33 - I talk with people who are grandparents

40:37 - standing at my table, with people who are teenagers, the people who are

40:43 - eight and ten and 12 years old.

40:47 - And the young kids seem to get as much

40:51 - entertainment out of it as their grandparents.

40:54 - It will always be home for me here, and I really appreciate

40:58 - everything that goes into the making of one of these conventions.

41:02 - I will also get to see my kids who live in Pittsburgh.

41:06 - So it's a it's a special time.

41:09 - The people that were coming to these conventions are just fans.

41:13 - They're there.

41:13 - They're not someone who is going stalk you or,

41:18 - you know, embarrass you or ask you

41:21 - questions that maybe you don't want to answer.

41:23 - No, they're they're very respectful.

41:25 - Very respectful.

41:26 - I couldn't get over that.

41:29 - What are the fans say to you in general?

41:31 - And I'm sure you've heard him make all kinds of kind remarks to you.

41:35 - They're happy to see you.

41:36 - I know it.

41:39 - Talk about getting your ego

41:42 - tatted.

41:43 - I go home.

41:45 - They know I don't know the house for a while.

41:49 - Yeah.

41:50 - They have said things like

41:55 - I so believed.

41:57 - I believed you, what you were doing,

42:01 - how you were being an even though you didn't have much to say

42:04 - in the catatonia state, you still conveyed

42:09 - the fears and the storyline.

42:12 - That is a wonderful compliment.

42:16 - Another is yours was the first horror film I ever saw,

42:21 - and it made me fall in love with horror as

42:27 - I saw it.

42:29 - And other family said, I've shown it to my son.

42:33 - He's shown it to his grandson.

42:37 - We have generations of family members who have watched the film.

42:42 - They'll come back and they'll tell me these wonderful stories

42:45 - about seeing it with my grandma.

42:47 - She showed it to me when I was five,

42:51 - and that was a pioneering idea back in the sixties.

42:53 - And of course, nowadays ghouls and zombies are commonplace.

42:57 - Now it's not there.

42:58 - Not at all.

43:01 - We never knew.

43:04 - Judith O'Dea, who plays Barbara in the film is they're all such delights.

43:08 - Everyone here is so nice

43:09 - and it's a very special event because you have for the four big stars

43:14 - who are surviving in the cast Judith O'Dea,

43:18 - Judy Ridley, Russ Traynor and Kyra Schon are all here.

43:22 - And that really makes it special for all of the fans.

43:24 - They're all so memorable.

43:26 - They all have very

43:28 - everyone.

43:28 - All the fans, I think are complimentary to them

43:31 - because they love the film so much.

43:32 - And they seem refreshingly surprised

43:35 - by how everyone's still so fascinated by the film

43:39 - and that everyone is so taken with it and it's so much a part

43:41 - of everyone's lives and I think that's just a nice relationship that we have

43:46 - and it keeps the film alive.

43:47 - You know, things like this events and it spreads the word for new generations.

43:51 - I think, you know, I think just her her acting,

43:54 - she's so good at acting is so good at acting.

43:57 - Like how would you be in this situation

43:59 - if the world you knew completely changed overnight?

44:02 - I think capture that.

44:03 - And her fear and detachment is probably the most famous movie

44:08 - to ever come out of Pittsburgh.

44:09 - This is something that just means the world to me and my wife.

44:13 - We both celebrate kind of horror movies in that culture.

44:17 - And we she's from Ohio.

44:18 - And believe it or not, so I'm from Michigan.

44:21 - We actually drove down from Michigan for this event to be here

44:24 - because this is freaking awesome. It's amazing.

44:26 - This movie was so important in undergrad.

44:28 - I wrote a paper on this movie.

44:29 - No kidding.

44:30 - So tell me more about that paper very. Interesting.

44:32 - Yeah.

44:33 - Just really exploring, you know, the socio

44:35 - political economic implications of what they were trying to do

44:39 - and then the impact.

44:39 - I mean, what were they as far as you're concerned?

44:41 - I'm really, you know, kind of the rise of, I would say, really strong

44:46 - capitalism in the United States.

44:47 - And we see this kind of bold

44:49 - move to just almost like a mindless know type of a person,

44:54 - which we saw even more in the mall in Dawn of the Dead, which was like,

44:57 - this is what we're becoming.

44:58 - You know, we always said it should be a stage play

45:00 - because it's just in the farmhouse for the most part.

45:03 - But it's character driven.

45:05 - It's not quick shots that like just 3 seconds.

45:09 - It's like it.

45:10 - You get to absorb it.

45:12 - Yeah, you sit there, there's not a lot of music.

45:15 - It's the dialog.

45:16 - It's not even about the zombies, honestly.

45:18 - It's like that's almost like an afterthought.

45:20 - And it's more about the drama.

45:21 - And yes, it's zombies and that's all great.

45:22 - Everyone loves zombies,

45:24 - but it's more it's more about, for me, the interplay between the characters.

45:27 - And I think it's just expertly done really and shot.

45:29 - And then the fact that it's in black and white is not a distraction.

45:33 - It's a bonus.

45:34 - It's a bonus that it's in black and white.

45:36 - It would look skewed sometimes color is a distraction.

45:38 - It's additional information you don't need.

45:40 - There's no there's no reason there's no reason to have it in color.

45:43 - And the kid's kid, you should watch it.

45:45 - You should watch it

45:46 - even should they avoid the colorized version that's out there,

45:49 - you know, avoid it

45:50 - like the plague doesn't even exist and it doesn't exist as an opinion.

45:54 - I'm here with my media teacher from A and Mr.

45:57 - Cordova, he showed us

45:59 - the movie two days ago on Thursday, and we watched it for the first time.

46:03 - I feel like people like the feel of an apocalypse world

46:07 - or like a world that has been taken over.

46:10 - It's all about like dystopian future.

46:12 - I mean, it's all about survival when it comes to those things and people

46:15 - like that, people like that genre.

46:18 - We got our posters signed for the event

46:20 - and we came from New York, so we did like a six hour drive.

46:23 - I'm sure there's people that have come from even farther to,

46:26 - so it's just a fun way to meet the celebrities and just hang out

46:29 - and fellow fans of the film and it's just it's cool, you know, big horror fans.

46:33 - So it's it's a natural thing for us. Yeah.

46:36 - Now you're dressed up in character here today.

46:38 - Tell us about the character you selected and why

46:42 - I'm Johnny from Night of the Living Dead, the original.

46:45 - He has a relatively short life span in that movie, but he's memorable

46:49 - and kind of looks like me, so it was nice. And easy.

46:51 - Well, you know, no one knows what happens after we die.

46:54 - You can have

46:55 - you can debate this forever, you know, and there's all different levels of it.

46:59 - So it's fun to just make up something new that might happen.

47:02 - What? What's next?

47:03 - I don't know.

47:04 - And it's an easy thing

47:05 - to it's an easy monster to create because it's just every man.

47:09 - It's your neighbor.

47:09 - It's, you know, it's the construction worker down the street.

47:12 - They all could just become a zombie at any moment.

47:15 - So it's a movie monster that that touches the everyday man.

47:19 - You don't have to go to Transylvania and find some flying bat vampire.

47:23 - It's just like this guy over here running the camera might all of a sudden

47:27 - become a zombie, right?

47:30 - Right.

47:41 - You know, how many have.

47:48 - All right, send the wagon through town directly.

47:51 - I want

47:54 - to talk

47:59 - back off

48:00 - of those things.

48:09 - And I my.