George Romero's DIARY OF THE DEAD is a Fantastic start to FANTASTIC FEST - so says Harry!

I've known Quint since he was literally a child. I'm very proud of the man he's become, but after reading his review of George Romero's DIARY OF THE DEAD... I am left absolutely flabbergasted. Rather than dissect his review and point out several catty remarks I can make about his piece... I'm just going to give you my take. I've seen DIARY OF THE DEAD six times now. I love the film completely. Here's why... George does something so incredibly daring, something so far fetched in the minds of his fans - that it causes some to freak the fuck out. He has made a Zombie film that dares to act as though George Romero never existed. Imagine that. Can you? I mean, if that meteor that knocked hell out of Peru last week, making all those people sick in that village. Imagine that we began hearing reports that the villagers dying were coming back to life and attacking the living - and that an undead plague was spreading throughout South America and threatening our borders. The first thing that every Zombie-fearing geek in the world would say is, "Shoot em in the Head!" In George's DIARY OF THE DEAD... the characters discover the rules, the completely unfair rules, as though not only none of George's films were made, but all the zombie films that came in his wake. So - these kids that apparently were reared without Romero's influence. That, in and of itself is a horrific existence. But to then find yourself dealing with his world... fresh and happening for the first time, not just in reality - but with no fictional precedent... these kids react. And they do each react differently. There was one line in Quint's review that actually irked me. "our RV full of retarded, self-important college douche bags." Well, as someone with over 112 hours of college credit - and knowing quite a lot of college types... I actually take offense at the statement. I've dealt for the past 11 years with young film school types... budding directors, producers, actors and actresses that were attending the many colleges here in the Austin area - and they are often frankly "the cliché" - It isn't that they're self-important - it is that the entire experience of college is about figuring out what that path of life will mean, what your days and nights will be spent doing. As a result, a lot of college students are very self-reflective. Hit a college coffee house and you'll see that. The characters that Romero populates in his RV are not college douche bags. These are not kids that see the zombie Armageddon as a new excuse of elevated hazings. These kids are not obsessing about their bodily functions. They're also not hammering on about how this got out of hand because Bush is a fucking 'tard. No. These are all kids from the film department. The one shooting this... sees this as a significant opportunity to document the world turned upside down. He wanted to be a documentarian, but through film school had decided the only way to get noticed was to shoot a horror movie, but then the reality around him becomes... horrific. The other characters... well they're annoyed by him. His girlfriend goes into crisis mode. It's about being with her family.. her mom, dad and kid brother. She strikes me as someone that just wasn't hacking film school and when this came down... she was ready and willing to run home to mom and dad. The driver of the RV is a lost soul. She's a loving girl that simply isn't meant for the return of the dead. The geek aboard is an information junkie, figuring to get a ride home as well, but ultimately he's just freaking out because he's seeing everything he became dependant upon fall apart. The networks, the main stream... over the course of the few days they're on the road... it's all gone bad. He's hoping to find the right place to hole up, with some comforts and wait it out. Then there's the couple in love. They're just regular good people caught in something they don't really have a handle on. Anything they had in mind seems to be gone and they're faced with very tough times ahead. Then there's the guy that seems to be the most involved with butting heads with the filmmaker. He's the other director in the group - who is working on this project to probably steal crew for something of his own later on. It isn't really developed, but I get the impression he's sweet on the lead's girl and is waiting for him to just drop that ball. Lastly you have the professor on board. He's the most theatrical of all the characters in the film. A tired depressed older character that can't, so he teaches - and he hates it. He accepts the horrors that the world throws at him as if they're the most natural thing in the world. Of course his hell imprisoning him to teach snotty would be filmmakers would only further manifest itself with hell walking the earth as he is literally DAMNED to spend his remaining days here. THAT's how I interpret the "RV of college douche bags" Meanwhile - I love the subtexts of the film and in many ways, it's probably the most personally reflective of myself. I don't plan on having to deal with a zombie Armageddon. I think it's mostly unlikely. However, I do know a little bit about dealing with doom through projecting to a faceless audience. I created AICN whilst facing paralysis and praying for reanimation. I watched my dead legs in my bed praying to see them come back to life, and with zero intention to shoot the big toe. I wrote about film, because film is what made me happy. It took my mind off the big toe. It gave me a place in the world of my mind. It allowed me to feel like I was in a place larger than the oversized closet space I was spending my existence. Sharing the information I was gathering with all of you shook me out of the depression that my world was at that point. The internet was everything, the letters from readers, filmmakers... all of you, it saved my life. And I love it more today than I ever have. If I woke up one day without the bitching and the moaning, it'd be a sad day indeed. Being noticed, debated, discussed. It is a powerful drug. It's why the famous do their thing, more than the money, it's the feeling of counting... of doing something worthy of notice. And in DIARY OF THE DEAD - as the world gets more and more insane. As they face impossibly fucked up situations - they all begin to buy into the significance of that camera. The camera is the illusion of normality that the world dives into when it's gone insane. OJ makes sense to talk about because killing 700,000 civilians really doesn't. And while the mainstream masturbates about meaningless opinions and bullshit analysts - the soldiers and the students are posting the history of the times we live in... that some day will be gathered and tabulated as being the reality that we're living in. Not Britney or Paris or Mandy or whatever other bullshit meaningless celebrity drivel the news media shoves down our throats. The underlying message of the film is a conflict. Should we film Rome burn, should we watch Rome burn, do we grab a water bucket... or is it too late to do anything at all. The film is a treatise on how George as an old tired man... is left watching the tragedies of his youth repeating, just as artistically he began with the zombies, here... 40 years later... the zombies are left reflecting the world he sees around him. Add to that - some amazingly cool zombie gags, great bit characters - and perhaps a dozen additional themes that you could swill down pitchers of coffee chatting about, like a self-important college douche bag. I love DIARY OF THE DEAD - it is everything that I hoped for from Romero... a new theme, a new horror - but with my beloved zombies. BRAVO!