Roger Corman: Interviews

Roger Corman Interview

94 Roger Corman Interview Larry Salvato / 1975 From Millimeter, December 1975, 12–16, 48. Reprinted with permission from Penton Media. Today Roger Corman, in the producer’s role, is one of the most respected men in Hollywood. Through the success of his own company, New World Pictures, he has proven to the film community that a small, independent company can wield a good deal of power in the movie marketplace . For Corman, the road to independence was not easy. In the fifties, high-brow critics laughed when they sat down to review any of the numerous low-budget films that he had directed in his early affiliation with American International Pictures. His name was more or less associated with everything that was cheap, vulgar, and exploitative in the cinema. But slowly, as the horizons of cinema began to expand and liberalize, Corman’s filmography began to be re-evaluated and appreciated. His reputation as a director began to bloom in Europe, where he was the youngest director to be given a retrospective at the Cinema Francais. The Little Shop of Horrors, Bucket of Blood, The Undead, Sorority Girl, Machine Gun Kelly, and Teenage Caveman seem unlikely candidates for canonization in the cinema hall of fame, and as critic Michael Goodwin points out, “These films are characterized by a clean, minimal technical style, near-total lack of production values and a striking film noir ambiance.” In the early sixties, Corman directed an Edgar Allan Poe series plus a number of other horror films and, as the sixties closed, he explored the motorcycle / hipster genres (The Wild Angels, The Trip). By this time, Corman had gained enough respect to be entrusted with the direction of big-budget films for major studios: both of these ventures, The St. Valentine ’s Day Massacre and Von Richthofen and Brown, were atypical of his ca- larry salvato / 1975 95 reer style and didn’t possess the economy and sharpness of vision found in his smaller, low-budget films. After a disagreement with AIP over his picture, Gas-s-s-s, Corman ended his relationship with them and set up his own production company . He plunged into the administrative and production details of his company, and, as a direct result of that, he has not directed a film since. For the past five years, Corman has essentially been functioning as a producer . Independent of studio bureaucracy hassles, he has slowly been pushing the boundaries of exploitation films to where they have never been before: with higher budgets, more action, and better scripts. Moreover , the distribution arm of New World has garnered high esteem via their handling of such prestigious foreign films as Bergman’s Cries and Whispers and Fellini’s Amarcord. With the help of Corman’s super-efficient staff, an interview was finally arranged. As you might expect, a man with Corman’s background could supply a wealth of information to any interviewer: questions about directing, questions about producing; the questions are almost endless. The irony of it is, that while Corman is a veritable library of information , he is also an extremely busy executive. I could have spent six hours talking with him, but his other responsibilities only allowed for a twenty-minute discussion. With Corman, however, twenty minutes is enough. He gets directly to the point without hemming or hawing and my questions were answered almost as fast as I could ask them. Millimeter: When you left AIP, there was some talk that the reason you left was because of the way they handled Gas-s-s-s. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that. Roger Corman: Yes, that was one of many reasons. They recut Gas-s-s-s after I finished it. Then I went to Europe to do Von Richthofen and Brown for United Artists. While I was there, they recut Gas-s-s-s, taking all the controversial points out of it. Now, the controversial points were the funny ones. For instance, one of the key characters was God. They cut God completely out of the picture, thus taking away not only the humor , but a lot of the meaning. And they cut the whole ending off. The ending of the picture, to me, was one of the best shots that I’ve ever done in my life. It was an incredible shot from the top of the Acoma Indian pueblo of a high school marching band, the Hell’s Angels, and an Indian tribe; it was phenomenal...