I wanted 'Night of the Living Dead' to look naturalistic, but we weren't able to do it because we were shooting with a blimped 35mm camera, which is automatically static.

Back then, in 1968, everything was suspect - family, government, and obviously the family unit in 'Night of the Living Dead' completely collapses. That's what we were focused on.

When we made 'Night of the Living Dead,' we got riddled. There was this famous article Roger Ebert wrote just blasting the film because he had gone to see it at some screening where there were all these kids in the audience. I don't know why that happened. We didn't make the movie for kids.

To me, the zombies have always just been zombies. They've always been a cigar. When I first made 'Night of the Living Dead,' it got analyzed and overanalyzed way out of proportion. The zombies were written about as if they represented Nixon's Silent Majority or whatever. But I never thought about it that way.

'Night of the Living Dead,' then 'Dawn of the Dead' is a few weeks later, 'Day of the Dead' months later, and 'Land of the Dead' is three years later. Each one spoke about a different decade and was stylistically different.

I'm like my zombies. I won't stay dead!