- [Announcer] This program was made possible by contributions from all the wonderful, warm-blooded people who are members of WQED.

(crickets chirping) - [Rick] In 1968, just north of Pittsburgh, unburied dead bodies came back to life, hungry for living human flesh.

(laughs) They were all part of this unusual, low-budget horror movie titled, "Night of The Living Dead."

It's become a legend, a classic, a landmark in the history of American cinema.

Lots of people consider it one of the most terrifying films ever made.

(zombie yelling) The film's director, George Romero, still makes movies in, and around, Pittsburgh, and he's helped create a new reputation for the city.

- Is Pittsburgh scary?

(laughs) Not particularly, no.

Just some of the things we do in it I hope are scary.

- [Rick] George Romero and his work have become part of Pittsburgh's cultural history and its unexpected charm.

Pittsburgh Magazine named Romero Pittsburgher of the Year for 1991, because he's helped attract a lot of feature film production to this area.

And there's no question, he's shown movie fans around the world that Pittsburgh can be a memorable location, even if you're dead.

(suspenseful music) - Okay, here we go.

Let's stand by for a rehearsal please.

Nice and quiet.

Lock it up here please.

Everybody just freeze.

- [Rick] These people are working on a new movie with George Romero.

He always wears a scarf for good luck when he's on location.

He's made many unusual, often very gory films, but he comes across as a remarkably calm and easygoing guy.

Although this scene supposedly takes place in a bedroom in a high rise New York apartment building, it's all illusion.

These people are in the Hunt Armory in Pittsburgh.

- [Nick] Here we go.

Camera set, Mike?

- Yes sir.

- Thank you.

Okay, Joey.

- Action.

Phone.

- The sound effect of a telephone ringing will be added later.

This film, starring Timothy Hutton and Amy Madigan, is based on Stephen King's bestseller, "The Dark Half."

This actor, Tom Mardirosian, plays a New York literary agent who gets a phone call from a psychotic killer.

- Hello.

What?

Who are you?

- [Rick] Romero has staged this New York scene in Pittsburgh because this is where he likes to make movies.

He's far away from the Hollywood studios here, and he's got loyal Pittsburgh friends who have worked on his crew for years.

- And that's counted rehearsal.

(crew chattering) Nice.

Nice job, Mr. Mardirosian.

- [Rick] Another reason Romero likes to shoot in Pittsburgh is the city itself.

- It's a terrific place.

I think it's a great place.

I really love it.

I think Pittsburgh is exactly what moviemakers are looking for.

It has some character.

It has a bit of the old and a bit of the new, and it's a nice combination of all kinds of different looks.

- [Rick] Many Pittsburghers now recognize the look of a movie crew at work, lines of trucks and other vehicles surrounding a location, like this house in Edgewood.

Romero is using it for "The Dark Half," too.

- This is supposed to be Bangor, Maine, actually Edgewood.

And this is where the Beaumont's live, the main characters live.

This is their house.

This is their city house, and then they have a country house, a lake house, which we did over down in Washington, PA. And it's going very well.

It's like traveling a circus, I guess.

You can see how it is on the streets with all the wagons and the trucks.

It's incredible.

- [Rick] It takes an incredible amount of equipment and a lot of people to get all the elements of a big movie like this just right.

And while Romero, his cast and some crew, are inside shooting, there's another crew outside making sure all the external elements are under control.

Even making sure that the light coming in the windows is just right.

- Fredo, can I get it quiet outside the windows out front?

- Yeah.

Guys, hold the work please.

Got the babies in there.

Quiet please.

- [Rick] Making movies means work for many people who've come to rely on the increasing number of productions that come to town.

And because camera and lighting gear and other equipment have to be hauled around in big trucks, there's show business for teamsters too.

Eddie France, from Local 249, is the teamster captain on this job.

He says it's his 9th or 10th movie in three years.

- You know, we park them here, and wait for them to do whatever they gotta do, and then we move on to the next location.

Now on these movies, they've been very good, especially George.

He's been very good to us, 'cause he, I think he's brought about, oh five, six movies into the city.

They're not actually different than the other ones, except George is one of the local people, you know, that's from Pittsburgh.

And he likes to come to Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania to make movies, and that makes work for the local people.

- [Rick] While George does help keep some local people busy, he's not originally from Pittsburgh.

Born in 1940, George Andrew Romero grew up in New York City, in the Bronx, the only child of Anne and George Romero.

- But he certainly was a treasure from heaven, oh, right from the very beginning.

- [Rick] As a boy, he was interested in cartooning and making movies, and finished his first film, "The Man From the Meteor," at age 14.

- He invited his friends over to see the movie in the apartment, with his ticket.

He would sell 10 cents a ticket.

And I had to give them refreshers and milk, and he thought that was great.

(laughs) So did we.

He was so enterprising at such an early stage, uh-huh.

- [Rick] After high school, George went to Suffield Academy in Connecticut.

There he won an award from the Future Scientists of America for his science fair project.

- But what happened there was that most of the kids built beautiful sets of pumping oil, you know, things like that.

It was all about the ecology.

He decided to make a movie about the ecology, you know.

And I guess the school and everybody all thought that was a great idea.

So he won the prize for Northeastern Part of the United States Future Scientist of America.

Of course, he wasn't gonna be a future scientist.

(laughs) He was gonna be a future (laughs) horror moviemaker.

- [Rick] The future horror moviemaker, on the right here, obviously enjoyed playing with 8 mm film.

One of George's cousins saved these home movies from around 1960.

They include, "Death in Small Doses."

It's an amateur thriller that George didn't write or direct, but he's one of the principle actors.

Shot on location on summer vacation in Maine, this simple silent tale features George as a young artist.

One of his crayons is destroyed, stomped on for no apparent reason.

(movie reel tapping) The artist is obviously stunned.

The stomper couldn't care less.

George's shock turns to anger.

He decides to get outrageous revenge.

The villain realizes there's gonna be a chase here.

Then for some reason, George takes his shirt off, and then finds some rope.

He sets up a booby trap in the woods.

It's hard to see, but there's a scythe, or a shovel or something, on the end of that rope.

When the villain comes sauntering through the forest, George cuts the line.

There's a primitive special effect here that's supposed to be blood.

George may have been involved.

And the crayon stomper gets what he deserved.

(movie reel continues tapping) Romero fans know that George sometimes still plays small parts in his own films.

- I don't know, I used to joke and say well, I studied acting, and it's taken me 22 years, and I still haven't gotten a job, and I know the director.

- [Rick] George came to Pittsburgh in 1957 to study at Carnegie Tech, what's now called Carnegie Mellon.

- I was studying painting and design.

I was gonna try to be a commercial artist, which is my dad was.

I got involved with a little theater group here, and we did a play called, "The Connection."

And I was an actor.

Ted Hoffman, the dean of the department at the time, saw the play, and said, "You know, you oughta transfer into the theater department."

And it was the first encouragement that I ever got from anyone, or the first time that anyone ever said to me, "You know, this is something that you can do with your life."

So I just jumped on it right away.

I transferred out of the painting and design department.

As a result, I never graduated.

I went for 2 1/2 more years to CMU, so I was there a total of 5 1/2 years without ever having graduated.

- [Rick] When he left school, Romero decided to stay in Pittsburgh.

He then occasionally did some painting, like this large portrait of a Pittsburgh neighborhood that still hangs in the dining room of his Oakland apartment.

With some friends, he started a commercial film company called The Latent Image.

They found work around town, and even did some work for WQED.

- The first jobs we ever had were QED.

We did some stuff for the Junior League, and then we did some Picture Picture things for Fred Rogers.

- Unless we could ask Picture Picture to show us how people make light bulbs.

Why don't we do that?

'Cause Picture Picture has a film about it.

(whimsical music) Let's ask it.

Hello again, Picture Picture.

Uh, Picture Picture, we'd like to see how people make light bulbs.

- "How to Make Light Bulbs," was one of them.

I remember that we had to go to New Jersey, and we did a how to make light bulbs movie, "How They Make Light Bulbs," and that was really, really fun.

(gentle music) Also a very, you know, just sort of encouraging experience, you know, to work for someone that really has, you know, strong ideas about what he's doing, and trying to shoot that stuff, and trying to, you know, make him happy.

And it was, it was great fun.

- [Announcer] Question is, can he play out of this rough?

- [Rick] Working with The Latent Image, Romero made many commercials, including this one for an electric grass clipper.

He says, this is how he learned the basics of big-time film production.

- I mean, that's still the basic stuff.

I still did probably, per minute, probably the highest budget I've ever had, was on a commercial.

You know, on a a minute-by-minute scale, we did a thing for Calgon once.

It was a spoof on the "Fantastic Voyage," about a little submarine that gets miniaturized, and goes down in a washing machine, and looks at the gunk in the fabric of a shirt.

- [Announcer] Preview Films present "The Calgon Story."

What happens when a Calgon research team and their submarine are reduced to micro size, and sent on a dangerous mission, deep inside a washing machine?

(ship tearing) (siren blaring) - Engines reversed full, Captain.

We're stuck.

- We've gotta find out what's on those fibers.

- [Announcer] Trapped in the fibers of a giant T-shirt, the Calgonauts discover secrets of gray, dull-looking laundry.

- [Diver] Why, it feels like- - Leftover detergent film.

The fibers are covered with this stuff.

- Oh, this box has never been opened.

- Add the Calgon.

(bold music) - [Announcer] You'll thrill as Calgon dissolves the dirty leftover detergent film.

- It's working.

The gray is gone!

The fibers are clean.

- Let's get outta here.

- I think I'm in love with you.

(gentle music) - If you're tired of dull detergent films and grade B washes, thrill to, "The Calgon Story."

(bold music) At your nearby family washing machine.

- And that was the most expensive thing I've ever shot.

It was really incredible.

- [Rick] What was really incredible came shortly after "The Calgon Story."

- I just always loved the genre stuff.

And I always, in particularly, horror stories.

I just always loved it.

So I was happy to do one.

(suspenseful music) We tried before "Night of the Living Dead" to promote a couple of feature films, that were serious efforts, as some people might call them, and we couldn't get financing, we just couldn't get it together.

So we decided to do "Night of the Living Dead," and 10 of us kicked in 600 bucks apiece, and that $6,000 got us started.

- [Rick] The movie starts in a cemetery, where a brother and sister have come to put flowers on their father's grave.

The sister, Barbara, is played by Judith O'Dea.

Russ Streiner, who plays the brother, was one of the film's producers.

And teasing his sister, he delivers what may be the film's most famous line.

- They're coming to get you, Barbara.

- [Rick] Most of the actors and the crew were Pittsburgh friends, investors, and colleagues from The Latent Image.

- [Johnny] Look, there comes one of them now!

- [George] When we went to make "Night of the Living Dead," we put our names in a hat to see who would direct it.

We you know, so, and I got the, I pulled the long straw, or the short straw, I don't know which it was.

(suspenseful music) - Oh, John!

(screaming) Oh, Johnny!

Help me!

- We were just making a horror movie.

And we try, we were gonna try to make it harder-hitting than others that had been out.

Although when you look at "Night of the Living Dead," when it first came out, people were railing against it for being so, sort of cruel and dark and graphically violent.

And when you look at it today, it seems very, very tame, of course.

But I guess it came right at a time when whenever the monster bit somebody on the neck, they cut away, and we didn't cut away.

(maniac groans) (metal thuds) (suspenseful music continues) (head cracks) (suspenseful music continues) So we didn't even think we were overstepping.

We didn't think we were in taboo country at all.

We just thought we were gonna go one inch further.

- Good Lord.

(dramatic music) - But the film has a, I guess it has an emotional effect on some people.

It's more than, I think that 30 or 40 seconds of graphic footage that is the problem.

It has a very brooding kind of, I think it preys on you in other ways, which makes it seem even darker.

(suspenseful music) (feet thudding) - [Rick] "Night of the Living Dead" wasn't an overnight sensation.

Its popularity and reputation grew as it became a hit in Europe, where horror films are often taken more seriously, and then one of the first midnight cult movies in America.

In the early '70s, George directed three movies, which never really caught on.

Probably the most widely-known of the three was "The Crazies" in 1973.

Then George did a series of sports documentaries.

They included this one about Bruno Sammartino.

Romero had teamed up with Richard Rubenstein, a young producer and businessman from New York, and together they formed a company called Laurel Entertainment.

These popular sports documentaries got Laurel off to a good start.

But Romero wanted to make feature films.

In 1978, he wrote and directed "Martin," an odd tale of a young man who may be a vampire.

John Amplas, an actor from Pittsburgh played Martin.

Martin comes to live with an older cousin and that cousin's granddaughter.

They live in the depressed steel mill town of Braddock, not too far outside the city limits of Pittsburgh.

- It's not meant to be about Pittsburgh or about Braddock.

That's meant more as a backdrop where the kind of, you know, for the kind of place that this might happen in.

And it's the allegory, the collapse of communications, and the collapse of that family, and the collapse of communication within the family and not being able to talk, being living on such two completely, you know, violently opposite poles.

And then they could never speak about the problem.

Where if they could speak about the problem, maybe they could solve the problem.

You know, it's a theme that I work with a lot actually.

- [Rick] In "Martin," the character of Christina, the granddaughter, was played by a young actress named Christine Forestt.

- Uh, you must be Martin.

- [Rick] In 1980, she married, George.

- Is Tateh Cuda home yet?

- He actually wrote that part for me, that I do on that.

So, and that's when we fell in love.

And have been together since.

- [Rick] Christine says that George is the kind of director that actors like to work with.

- He has wonderful instincts.

He's able to communicate with actors really well, because he's able to make them feel relaxed, and really get to core of, you know, what is happening in this moment.

- [Rick] "Dawn of the Dead" was the next Romero film released in 1979.

It was shot primarily at the Monroeville Mall, in the suburbs just east of Pittsburgh.

The living dead, the zombies, were back.

- What are they doing?

Why do they come here?

- A kind of instinct, memory, what they used to do.

This was an important place in their lives.

- You could never afford a set like that, that's a bigger set than Cleopatra, you know.

So they were great about letting us go in and actually use it, and we shot there during the night, all night for whatever that period of time was.

- [Rick] It took about 10 weeks to shoot "Dawn of the Dead," and it was George's first big commercial success, earning over $55 million around the world.

It's still considered one of the most successful independent films of all time.

Critical reaction was mixed, but many people loved the film's oddball combination of social satire and outrageous comic book style gore, and violence.

George's next film wasn't nearly so gruesome.

"Night Riders" was an unlikely combination of Arthurian legend, traveling circus, and motorcycle mayhem.

The movie featured the actor, Ed Harris in his first starring role as King William, the leader of this troupe of motorized knights and damsels.

They go from town to town putting on medieval fairs and entertaining crowds with modern jousting.

Early in the film, in the crowd, there's an obnoxious man played by bestselling writer, Stephen King.

- You know, I don't have the balls to wear anything like that.

- [Partner] Don't I wish.

- [Rick] Stephen King and George Romero, two American masters of horror, had become friends, and Stephen wrote the original screenplay for George's next movie, "Creepshow."

(eerie music) "Creepshow" was six short films presented as a scary comic book come to life.

It was an unusually commercial movie for Romero.

Relatively big budget distributed by Warner Brothers, it featured some famous Hollywood faces, as well as script writer, Stephen King, returning to the screen as the star of this segment about a man and a meteor that creates its own greenhouse effect.

- Holy old Jesus!

(dramatic music) - [Rick] Most of the movie was shot around Pittsburgh, and although there were a few Hollywood actors, George still enjoyed working with his loyal group of local collaborators.

By this time, Tom Savini from Pittsburgh was famous around the world for all the unforgettable, bloody special effects, and the incredible makeup he'd been doing for George since the days of "Martin."

(Bedelia yelling) - Where's my cake, Bedelia?

(Bedelia yelling) - [Rick] It seems that throughout Romero's career, the dead just don't wanna stay dead.

In 1985, George wrote and directed his third zombie picture, "Day of the Dead. "

17 years after the "Living Dead" were first filmed north of Pittsburgh, around Evans City, they now walked through the streets and in the movie theaters of Fort Myers, Florida.

By this time, moviegoers were used to blood and gore, after movies like "Friday the 13th" and other so-called slasher films.

- Some people probably feel that my zombie films are the equivalent of "Friday the 13th."

I don't.

I think that they're more a fantasy.

They're sort of funnier, and they have sort of a sociopolitical underbelly to them, which in my mind forgives it a little more.

But I know it's not everybody's cup of tea.

But I'd love to be able to make a really hard-hitting horror film, but it's very, very hard to, because no one will finance it.

And you cannot, you can't distribute it effectively if it gets an X rating.

So you have to work within the limits of what's considered to be acceptable.

And most people don't like it.

And you can't blame them.

I mean, you know, some people like rollercoasters, and some people don't.

(zombies cackling) - Yeah!

- [Rick] On "The Day of the Dead" rollercoaster, most of the action takes place underground, shot in the limestone mine near Wampum, Pennsylvania.

The story involves a kind of scientific and military compound, where zombies have been captured for medical experimentation.

- I guess maybe my own attitude, by the time I made "Dawn of the Dead" and "Day of the Dead," that the zombies were old hat to me and almost my buddies.

You know, they weren't very scary.

So it was, I don't see them as as a very scary monster.

You know, I really do see them more as us.

They were always sort of the blue collar monsters, the zombies, and you know, they were the guys that were out picking cotton while the ghost, he was sipping wine up in the castle, you know.

So they were the guys down doing the work.

(laughs) - [Rick] In 1988, George wrote the screenplay for, and directed a movie called "Monkey Shines."

(monkey chattering) - Get away from there, you little!

- [Rick] About a small monkey that's trained to help a young man who's paralyzed from the neck down.

(whimsical music) (toy rattling) It becomes a thriller when the monkey seems to start taking over.

Even though it wasn't a huge box office success, "Monkey Shines" earned George some of the best reviews of his career.

- A present.

You serious?

You're giving me a monkey?

How am I supposed to take care of it, Geoff?

- The idea is that it's gonna take care of you.

- [Rick] After "Monkey Shines" in 1989, George directed one half of a movie titled "Two Evil Eyes," two modern adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe stories.

And in 1990 he produced a remake of "Night of a Living Dead" that got some good reviews, but didn't cause a sensation like the original.

In 1990, he also started this work on "The Dark Half."

- [Crew Member] Okay, here we go.

(clapperboard snaps) Keith, you set?

- Yep.

- Billy, ready?

- Yep.

- Bells, please.

(bells ringing) - [Rick] "The Dark Half" is the biggest budget film that George Romero has ever directed or produced.

And on days like this, while he's shooting at the Hunt Armory in Shadyside, downtown at the old William Penn Hotel, in a special editing room, Pat Buba is putting together pieces of "The Dark Half."

- Uh, uh, there's been a, a, you better call an ambulance.

There's...

Call an ambulance, huh?

(door slams) - [Rick] Part of Pat's job as an editor, is choosing between different takes of the same scene.

- Call an ambulance, there's been a, a.

Better call an ambulance.

- [Rick] Hollywood actors, like Timothy Hutton and Amy Madigan, are important parts of this big production.

(tape scraping) - Alright, we'll go.

I love... - [Rick] But then there are these Pittsburgh natives, like Pat Buba.

He's been working with George since the time of the sports documentaries.

He's part of what some call the Romero family.

- Making movies with people is, because of the pressures and the time that you spend together in concentrated periods of time, you see the best and worse in people.

And if you can stick and do more than two films with the same group of people, then you know, then something's working.

- [Rick] And while "Dark Half" has hundreds of people working on all kinds of jobs, there are other long-term members of this Romero family helping George all the time.

Barbara Anderson, professor from Carnegie Mellon, has been designing and overseeing costumes on this film just as she has on every movie since "Creepshow."

Her husband, Cletus Anderson, also a CMU professor, has been George's production designer since "Night Riders."

Nick Mastandrea is first assistant director this time.

He started as a gopher on the sports documentaries.

There are some other newer collaborators, including Declan Baldwin, who, like George, is from the Bronx.

As the line producer on "Dark Half," he manages the overall production.

He says the Romero family is impressive.

- Right now, I'm sure that there are at least 25 people on this film who can date back with George at least a decade making movies.

And I think again, there's only one reason for that, and that's George.

People don't stick with people for that long unless there's something very special about that person.

- [Rick] And the person who inspires this loyal company is now surrounded by more helpers than ever before in his career.

Some of the old wow-we're-making-a-movie spirit, might be gone.

- Well, we have fun occasionally.

I mean, there are people on this set that are saying that I'm not, that are saying, "Boy George, you don't seem to be having a lot of fun this time."

But it's just been, this has been a very, this has been the most difficult production for me.

It's the biggest thing that I've ever done, and so it's just been very tough, and it's been, you know, very cumbersome, but nice.

You still have fun.

I still enjoy the work.

I love the, you know, the process.

It's just, I'm not the kind of guy that likes to sort of sit around and wait for the elephants to move, you know.

I like to get in there and just do it.

And, action!

- [Rick] George Romero has created many unusual films.

He's gathered a company of people who like to work with him, he's captivated audiences around the world, and he likes to make movies in Pittsburgh.

- Cut!

- Cut it, please.

♪ They were singing ♪ ♪ Back to back ♪ ♪ Back to back ♪ ♪ Ooh, belly to belly ♪ ♪ Belly to belly ♪ ♪ Well I don't give a damn, 'cause I'm stone dead already ♪ ♪ Back ♪ ♪ Back to back ♪ ♪ Belly to belly ♪ ♪ Oh, belly to belly ♪ ♪ At the zombie jamboree ♪ ♪ One female zombie, she wouldn't behave ♪ ♪ She wouldn't behave ♪ ♪ See how she's dancing out of the grave ♪ ♪ In one hand she's holding ♪ ♪ A chord all wrong ♪ ♪ Cord all wrong ♪ ♪ The other hand was knocking a Congo drum ♪ ♪ You know, the lead singer starts to make his rhyme ♪ ♪ While the other zombie is rocking in time ♪ ♪ One bystander, he had this to say ♪ ♪ It was a trip to see the zombies break away ♪ ♪ Shaa ♪ ♪ And they were singing ♪ ♪ Back to back ooh ♪ ♪ Belly to belly ♪ ♪ Belly to belly ♪ ♪ Well I don't give a damn, 'cause I'm stone dead already ♪ ♪ Back ♪ ♪ Back to back, man ♪ ♪ Belly to belly ♪ ♪ Belly to belly ♪ ♪ It's a zombie jamboree ♪ ♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey ♪