Roger Cor­man in his own words

Roger Corman’s con­tri­bu­tion to cult cin­e­ma and the Amer­i­can main­stream – by virtue of his asso­ci­a­tion with New Hol­ly­wood fig­ures such as Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and Mar­tin Scors­ese – makes for an extra­or­di­nary cin­e­mat­ic lega­cy. Since the 1950s, he has cul­ti­vat­ed an image as the ulti­mate guer­ril­la film­mak­er and exploita­tion king. We met up with the leg­endary schlock­meis­ter recent­ly to find out what makes him tick.

“Well, it’s prob­a­bly not as good as ​‘Emper­or of the As’. I’ve been called worst things and I’ve been called bet­ter things. I accept it. One of the best things I’ve been called is The Pope of Pop Cin­e­ma. That one I liked.”

“I think all motion pic­tures are a com­bi­na­tion of art and busi­ness. If you’re a painter all you need is your­self, some paint and a can­vas. With film, you can’t do it your­self. You need mon­ey to make it and mon­ey to pay the crew. Then, auto­mat­i­cal­ly, you’re in a business.”

“I made The Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors in two days and a night. I had to make very low-bud­get films because it’s all the mon­ey I had. It was an eco­nom­ic neces­si­ty but also, look­ing back, there was some­thing psy­cho­log­i­cal about it because I made a cou­ple of films with longer sched­ules and I was get­ting tired.”

“The film was about racial inte­gra­tion in the South and racial inte­gra­tion of schools. The Intrud­er is about an agi­ta­tor (played by William Shat­ner) who comes to this small town. It was some­thing I believed in and I made it with my own mon­ey. I hoped it would move me into a dif­fer­ent area. It played well at film fes­ti­vals but was a finan­cial fail­ure and it changed some of my the­o­ries on film. I came up with a the­o­ry – it was only ever vague – that films can work on two lev­els. On the sur­face lev­el it will be the enter­tain­ment that the audi­ence comes to see. Under­neath the sur­face will be a theme or com­ment that is impor­tant to me, but will always be sub­or­di­nate to the enter­tain­ment. After­wards I felt it had been too much of a les­son – as if I’m try­ing to teach the coun­try a les­son. And that’s not what films are about.”

“It was a semi-black­list and a very strange thing. Some stu­dios would work with him and some stu­dios wouldn’t. He shot High Noon star­ring Gary Coop­er for Fred Zin­ne­man, so he was able to make big films but some direc­tors wouldn’t work with him. Dur­ing one of those times, he was a cam­era­man for me and I realised he was a bril­liant cam­era­man. When­ev­er he was avail­able, I always went back to Floyd. I think he won the first Acad­e­my Award ever giv­en for Cin­e­matog­ra­phy. I wasn’t aware of his work for FW Mur­nau at the time, but I cer­tain­ly became aware of it [lat­er on]. He was very good and he could work quick­ly. I found there were cam­era­men who worked quick­ly but whose work wasn’t so good. Some cam­era­men do excel­lent work but work very slow­ly. He was the only cam­era­man I ever met who could work quick­ly and at the same time do good work.”

“I got tired. I had direct­ed 58 or 59 films in 15 years. I was shoot­ing a pic­ture in Ire­land, Von Richthofen and Brown, a World War One pic­ture. On my way to the set, I’d come to a fork in the road. One was to Gal­way Bay and the oth­er to Dublin [where the film was shoot­ing]. I used to think, ​‘I’m so tired I think I’ll just dri­ve to Gal­way Bay and sit on the beach,’ but I didn’t. I went and shot the film. I made too many films too fast and I was work­ing almost con­stant­ly. I thought I’d take a year off – the tra­di­tion­al sab­bat­i­cal – and go back to direct­ing but dur­ing the year I start­ed my own dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny and it became suc­cess, so I stayed with that.

“Uni­ver­sal had done some mar­ket research with the result being that a pic­ture called ​‘Roger Corman’s Franken­stein’ would be a suc­cess and they asked me if I want­ed to direct the film, and I said no. There were so many Franken­stein pic­tures and I didn’t care what their research said. They offered me more and more mon­ey and I said if I could find a new way to treat the Franken­stein sto­ry that I would do it. Bri­an Ald­iss, a sci­ence-fic­tion writer, came up with Franken­stein Unbound, which had to do with a diplo­mat who time-trav­els back to the 19^th cen­tu­ry and I thought that was some­thing I could do. I changed the char­ac­ter from a diplo­mat to a sci­en­tist because I want­ed a sci­en­tist from the future to come back to meet Dr Frankenstein.”

“I was mak­ing low-bud­get films and I had a choice about who I could hire. I could hire com­pe­tent direc­tors, just gen­er­al­ly com­pe­tent on that low-bud­get lev­el, or I could gam­ble with new young peo­ple (like Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, Peter Bog­danovich and Mar­tin Scors­ese) who didn’t have much expe­ri­ence – or some­times had no expe­ri­ence – but who I felt could do good work. I took a chance and they did excep­tion­al­ly good work. I felt it was bet­ter to take a chance with the hope they would do some­thing extra­or­di­nary, and gen­er­al­ly they did. Very few of the peo­ple who start­ed with me did not go on to have careers. I was con­vinced they were very tal­ent­ed but I had no idea how far they would go.”

“I was the squarest guy in a fair­ly wild group, includ­ing Jack Nichol­son, who wrote the screen­play [for 1967’s The Trip]. I took LSD as a con­sci­en­tious deci­sion as a direc­tor, oth­er­wise, I wouldn’t know what I was shoot­ing. One of the most beau­ti­ful places I know is Big Sur, which is south of San Fran­cis­co. I decid­ed to go there and, to my great sur­prise, peo­ple heard I was going to trip. Sud­den­ly there was parade of cars all going up to Big Sur and we had to work out some­thing like a pro­duc­tion sched­ule – with a per­son who wasn’t tak­ing LSD look­ing after a per­son tak­ing it. I still remem­ber it. It was won­der­ful. But I couldn’t base an entire film on my expe­ri­ence oth­er­wise it would be pro­pa­gan­da for LSD. I talked to oth­er peo­ple who had had bad trips, and tried to bal­ance that with Jack Nicholson’s script.”

“When James Cameron made Titan­ic it was the most expen­sive film ever made, but it was the biggest-gross­ing film ever made. When he made Avatar that was then the most expen­sive film ever made but, again, the biggest-gross­ing film. When Jim Cameron spends that much mon­ey you can look at the film and you can see why and it’s all up there on the screen. You can see why it cost so much mon­ey. If you’re spend­ing mon­ey at that lev­el for a film, I total­ly under­stand that. It’s when you spend that much mon­ey and you don’t get that lev­el – that’s when I say there’s some­thing wrong here. I’ve been around long enough to see cycles come and go and I think we’re see­ing a peri­od where there will con­tin­ue to be these $100 – 200 mil­lion dol­lar films, but there will be less of them, because too many have failed recently.”

“I have some regrets but pret­ty much all I can say is this: I’ve always tried my best and I’ve nev­er been a ​‘take-the-mon­ey-and-run’ direc­tor. No mat­ter what the bud­get or sub­ject, I’ve always said I’ll make the best film I can make under the giv­en circumstances.”