From an email I am subscribed to (SHUDDER)
Proving George Wrong From the Bottom of My Heart By Suzanne Romero
The day Shudder released The Amusement Park was very emotional for me. I think of George all the time, of course, but that day I felt a rush of memories flooding my thoughts. I remembered our very first Christmas together where he and I went to a beautiful tree farm north of Toronto. We took a frosty sleigh ride to the site where the trees were, and I made him chop down ours. How romantic, right? After a lengthy selection process — I mean, the tree has to be perfect! — he sawed one down. Then, when we got home, it was too tall! So he had to do more sawing in the hallway of my condo. That was the very last Christmas we spent in Toronto. I guess he was far less enthusiastic than I thought. Ah, the early years.
George thought I was deprived in my cinematic knowledge. So, after my first Romero festival where I watched all his movies, we continued with others. Ford, Polanski, Wyler, Hitchcock, etc. We would get the TCM monthly program and he would highlight all the films I “needed to watch.” He was so keen on sharing his vast knowledge of cinema. A decade later when the program came in the mail, there were no longer films he could highlight. I had graduated! How fantastic is that? I remembered the gazillions of games we played. We would always pack a bag full of them for vacations. Super Scrabble was the mainstay as well as Trivial Pursuit, but we played so many others like Battleship, Monopoly, and Scene It. We would talk about everything during those games. We would see couples together enjoying their books and we would be busy trash talking each other. Gosh, we were so competitive! Always playing to kick each other’s butt!
I miss that so, so much. And that laugh; so hearty. He laughed often. I won the lion’s share of our Scrabble games. Not because George didn’t have an incredible vocabulary, but I contend that he was not very good at rack management. He was convinced that I had incredibly amazing tile karma. We recorded everything, and I still have our log book of our contests. It was playing Scrabble when I asked him weeks before he passed how he thought his legacy would play out. He said “Ah, no one really cares.”
I was stunned.
I never said anything to that and after he died those words haunted me. I kept playing them in my head over and over. So when The Amusement Park came out, I wept. It was official: people do care. His legacy is worth preserving. This just fuels me to do more for him, for the movies, for the genre.
I needed to prove him wrong. I did that every day.
I love him and miss him.
Suz Romero
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Suzanne Romero graduated from the Dome Theate School in Montreal and is the President and Founder of the George A. Romero Foundation. It is her dream to raise George’s legacy, to support independent filmmakers, and to elevate the horror genre to get the respect it so deserves.