Long-time readers may recall my fondness for the movie Shaun of the Dead, which was one of my top-five favorite films last year. Or, at least, it would’ve been, if I’d ever gotten around to compiling a top-five list. What can I say? Procrastination is my greatest vice.

Anyhow, I’m not generally a big fan of zombie movies, but Shaun was an amazing little feat of filmmaking — it stayed faithful to all the zombie-movie tropes while also subverting them for the purposes of humor and character development. It was a smart and entertaining love letter from its creators to the genre that it was spoofing. Now the creator of that genre is thanking the creators of Shaun in a very wonderful way. Here’s the relevant paragraph from an LA Times interview with George Romero, writer/director of the seminal zombie film Night of the Living Dead and the upcoming Land of the Dead (which opens Friday, if that’s your thing):

There were the pilgrimages of fans trekking to Toronto last winter for the freezing, all-nights “Land” shoot to fulfill lifelong dreams of being a Romero zombie. Two of those were Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, who created last year’s respectful zombie spoof “Shaun of the Dead,” which Romero loved. “They’re the zombies at the photo booth,” tips Romero to their cameo in the film. “They shot their own little film [while] on set, and it’s going to be on the DVD.”

For the record, Simon Pegg played the title character in Shaun of the Dead and co-wrote the film with director Wright.
I just love this kind of intertextual stuff — in-jokes, homages, tributes, and “guest appearances” almost always make me smile. They’re like a wink-and-a-nod to the informed viewer (or reader, in the case of novels) that acknowledges the whole wide body of material out there and reminds us that it all relates on some level or other. I know this sort of thing bothers some people, but I think it’s fun. Almost fun enough to consider seeing Land of the Dead just for that half-second glimpse of my old buddy Shaun…