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‘Dawn of the Dead’ Star Gaylen Ross Recalls the Chaos of Shooting George Romero’s Zombie Classic: ‘Nobody Got Killed’
'Dawn of the Dead' star Gaylen Ross reflects on the making of George Romero's classic zombie film.
Gaylen Ross has only a handful of acting credits to her name, but the first of them remains significant enough even today for her to be permanently canonized in horror film history: “ Dawn of the Dead.” Playing television producer Fran Parker for writer-director George A. Romero, Ross joins what’s otherwise a boys’ club cast to combat zombies (and post-apocalyptic boredom) in an abandoned shopping mall, in the process adding to the genre’s then-nascent collection of heroines who are forced to summon strength and resourcefulness in the face of unimaginable — and deadly — circumstances. In the 45 years since the film’s release, Ross became an award-winning documentary filmmaker, trading Romero’s anti-consumerist metaphors for more literal explorations of social and historical causes with films like “Killing Kasztner” and “Beijing Spring.” Yet as she raises funds for her latest project, “Sapiro: The Jew Who Sued Ford,” “Dawn of the Dead’s” North American anniversary rekindles her connection to a phase of her career whose endurance the late Romero would no doubt appreciate: it refuses to die. I’m not going to scream and cry, and if that’s how we’re doing this, then I don’t feel comfortable doing it.” So it was an interesting dialogue that George and I had at the beginning about how are we going to make Fran not a victim, and part of the characters that were active?
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