Greg Nicotero and Jimmy Miller Team Up for Documentary on Romero Classic

Nicotero and Miller set on Romero classic making-of documentary

Pittsburgh natives team up on a documentary about the zombie flick that started it all.

Pittsburgh can be rightly hometown proud when three of its many native mavericks team up to produce a film about the making of the seminal horror flick, Night of the Living Dead. In this case, ‘regents of revenants,’ if you will — George Romero, Greg Nicotero, and Jimmy Miller.

And who better to make this documentary?

Nicotero is the force behind the acclaimed Walking Dead series, and he credits Romero’s films as providing a major impetus in honing his craft. And he relates having something like an epiphany when attending Romero’s 2017 memorial service, listening to the director’s friends and colleagues reminisce and share anecdotes about this revered work. Thus Nicotero was inspired to make a film to explore that very phenomenon: the making of Night of the Living Dead.

Romero himself was essentially a homebody. He was born and raised in the Bronx. But after graduating from Carnegie-Mellon, he stuck close to his adopted city until the mid-1990’s. Until then, he had rebuffed suggestions to ‘go Hollywood,’ preferring to pursue his art around Pittsburgh. But that’s okay — evidently, Hollywood came to him. Now considered ‘The Godfather of the Dead,’ his legacy is very much alive and has inspired filmmakers around the globe.

Joining Greg Nicotero in this tribute is his friend Jimmy Miller, head of Mosaic, the company which produced the 2020 series of Stephen King’s The Stand (2020) and more recently the television series, Night Sky. How these two will delve into the making of the NOTLD, beyond reporting the facts, is fun to speculate on. They seem as much interested in George Romero the man (or ‘the creative,’ as they call him) and his motivations as the day-to-day efforts of moviemaking.

It’s remarkable enough for a person to envision a new beginning, whether it be art, science, philosophy, or any other human endeavor. But Night of the Living Dead did more than get there first. It was, and still is, truly a pearl beyond price — all the more so because those involved paid with the dearest blood they had: fortitude, belief in their concerted effort, faith in one another, and a pretty shallow pot to piss in. Nonetheless, despite its premieres sparking controversy, in 1999 the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Archives.

Yet interestingly, if Night of the Living Dead can be regarded as an experiment in ground-breaking horror, it has the second distinction of replicating an earlier one almost exactly. This proves the potential of what is known as ‘guerilla style’ filmmaking. Like George Romero, Herk Harvey’s mainstay work had been in commercial and industrial films until directing Carnival of Souls in 1962, at a fraction of NOTLD’s slim budget.

Despite the similarities between the two works, there are also marked differences. Carnival of Souls is subtle — in fact, it is a collection of subtleties, exploring the contradictions of afterlife and unsettling due to its impact on the subconscious. Living Dead, on the other hand, is terrifying due to its grittiness and evoking the primeval. Put another way, Carnival is creepy, whereas Living Dead is scary.

The point is, at the end of the day, a mountain of money isn’t necessary to bring a unique vision to everlasting life. If necessity is the mother of invention, then paucity often fosters the cutting edge. That said, what greater tribute to ‘the Father of the Zombie Film’ than to explore the movie that made him famous, crafted by those whom he inspired the most?

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