What do you think the Lutheran Society was thinking? It seems like they wanted a movie about how the elderly are mistreated, and they definitely got that from this film, but did they want a nice version of how the elderly are mistreated? 

I don’t know, but I think they found it a little edgier than they would have liked. And people have said to me, “Well, Jesus, if you hire Romero, you’re gonna get edgy!” At the time, he hadn’t yet established—he had only done “Night of the Living Dead,” which is obviously edgy, creepy, but that doesn’t mean he would necessarily spend the rest of his career being that guy. As it turns out, though, as I was talking about that box. So, yeah, I think they were surprised, but what I think is more incredible is, once I had this film, I showed it to the students at the University of Pittsburgh in the gerontology department and asked them their opinion. They too found it edgy and disturbing and they didn’t like it. They thought, “No, this is not the right message. This is not how this message should go out.” 

Were there any challenges with the restoration process? Any technical hurdles to overcome?

Well, it was a mess, no doubt about it. My copy was the best of the three, but it was warped. It was ripped, scratched, faded. It was all those things. First of all, technology today is astounding. You know, they have such great equipment. It was painstaking. It was frame by frame by frame. I would come in and oversee or take a look at how it was coming along. Sound was separate from the actual picture, so we needed to work that out. There was a piece of music that we couldn’t find, so we couldn’t get it licensed, so we had to use something else. So, yeah, there was some stuff to go through with the process, but they did such a terrific job. Of course, I see every scratch, every fade, but you know, it’s patina. It’s 1973. It’s not hi-res. So, we just have to get over it. 

I’m wondering if you could give me a window into what this was like for you as a personal journey, of rediscovering your husband’s life’s work. 

It’s a labor of love. I’ve said this story before, but when we were playing Scrabble about five weeks before he passed, I asked him what he thought his legacy was and he said, “Ah, nobody really cares.” And I thought, Oh my God. I have to say it disturbed me big time. I didn’t say anything at the time and then he passed and I kept hearing those words. It gave me the push to prove him wrong. So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m proving him wrong. [laughs] Every day, I’m proving him wrong, because I do think people care. I do think that I would like to take him out of that box and have him seen as a filmmaker, an artist, an American artist, someone who had a voice, someone who had something to say and who used film to say it. 

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