Although his films have never been nominated for any major film awards, director/producer Roger Corman remains to be one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of pop culture.  Since 1956 Roger Corman has directed and/or produced nearly four hundred films during his long and colorful career.  However, his films are rarely held in the same regard as Casablanca or Citizen Kane.  With such strange titles under his belt such as Swamp Woman, It Conquered the World, The Wasp Woman, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Little Shop of Horrors, A Bucket of Blood, The Velvet Vampire, Wild Angels and Death Race 2000, Roger Corman has been given the royal title of “King of the Bs.”  His films became legendary staples of drive-in theatres, low budget movie houses and late night picture shows, inspiring millions of film fans and filmmakers to stretch their imaginations and their minds to the world of the unique, weird and imaginative. 

Roger Corman: King of the Bs

Roger Corman will always be most legendary for his ability to make great films in as little time and with as little money possible.  With nearly no funds and only his friends around him, Corman could shoot a brilliant looking film in as little as a matter of days.  However, unlike most B directors doing this at the time, Corman’s films were not only popular amongst distributors, but were remembered and well received by film fans.  Although his films were usually shown in drive-ins or low budget movie houses, Roger Corman’s movies almost always made more money then it took to actually make them.  Corman is truly the master of the cheapie film.

Yet, whether his films were respected or not, Hollywood couldn’t help but feel the ripples that Corman’s mighty hand created.  In the 1960’s, when horror icons like Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre fell on difficult times, it was Corman who revitalized their careers via his highly successful series of Edgar Allen Poe films.  It was Roger Corman who mentored young directors such as Martin Scorsese (Boxcar Bertha), Francis Ford Coppala (Dementia 13), Ron Howard (Grand Theft Auto) and James Cameron (Piranha II:  The Spawning), leading them to successful Oscar winning directing careers.  It was Roger Corman who brought the Ramones to film in Rock and Roll High School, discovered a young actor named Jack Nicholson and casted him as a masochistic dental patient in Little Shop of Horrors, and gave such legendary Hollywood icons as Robert DeNiro, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and David Carradine their earliest notable film roles, long before they found their breakout films.  Most importantly, it was Roger Corman who proved to Hollywood that you don’t need studio backing to be a success.  Roger Corman has become one of the most successful independent filmmakers in the history of Hollywood, and has created a legend and a legacy that he has been able to see in his lifetime.. 

I can truly credit Roger Corman as one of the main influences over the way I watch films.  As a teenager I discovered his films via late night movie shows, and I quickly began to value and collect Corman’s strange little films over the stuff that was coming out of Hollywood.  While my peers were quoting John Hughes films, I was quoting A Bucket of Blood.  His movies were clever, different and always had an underlying element of brilliance in each scene.  So, when I received the opportunity to interview Roger Corman early one morning, it was a thrill of a lifetime for me.  My DVD collection is full of his movies, and posters from his films don the walls of my home.  I wasn’t interviewing just another one of my icons.  I was interviewing one of my heroes.

Join me as I talk to one of Hollywood’s most influential filmmakers and a legend of the independent film industry as  

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS 

LITTLE SHOP OF CORMAN: 

A CONVERSATION WITH ROGER CORMAN

I spoke to Roger Corman via telephone from his offices in Los Angeles, California in August 2009.

Roger Corman:  Hello?

Sam Tweedle:  Hello!  Is this Mr. Corman?

Roger:  Yes.

Sam:  Hello!  How are you?

Roger:  Very good.

Sam:  Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.  Mr. Corman…

Roger:  Call me Roger.

Sam:  Okay…Roger.  Well, I’ve written this many times, but a big reason I love movies the way I love movies is because when I was a teenager I was watching your movies.  What made you love movies the way that you love movies and decide to get into the film industry?

Roger:  Well, as with many boys, I loved movies when I was young and I used to go to Saturday matinees, but what really got me into film was that when I was at Stanford University writing for the Stanford Daily, I found out that the critics for the [paper] got free passes to the theatres.  I thought that I would like to get some free passes so I wrote a couple of reviews and I was taken on as a critic.  Then I started seeing just about every film played, and as a critic I started looking at the films more intensely and analyzing them in a way that I hadn’t as a spectator.  As I became more interested in films, although I was engineering major, I made the decision that when I graduated I was going to try to become a film director.

Sam:  What year was the first film you made?

Roger:  I believe it was around 1956.

Sam:  You’re famous for making films in as little as two to three days but still making them look brilliant.  You made The Terror and Little Shop of Horrors in only a few days.  How were you able to put productions together so quickly?

Roger:  It may have had something to do with my engineering training, but to me, working quickly is a function of intense pre-production.  I don’t want to go on the set and try to figure out where to put the camera.  I want all of these things figured out in pre-production so I am able to walk around the set the first day and say “The camera goes there, and the actors go there.”  So we get off to an immediate start and everything is planned as completely as possible in advance.  All of the decision making is made in pre-production before shooting.  However, you never follow your pre-production exactly.  The situation on the set almost always indicates that you are going to have to make some slight changes, so you go in fully prepared to shoot knowing that you are going to make some modifications as you go along.

Roger Corman's production of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (1963) not only helped revive the fading careers of Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, but featured a young actor named Jack Nicholson

Sam:  In the 1960s you were working with gentlemen like Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre at a time when horror films were making a comeback, but these men’s careers were brittle and crumbling.  Yet thanks to you they had a resurgence of popularity.  What got you interested in working with these horror icons?

Roger:  It started with the fact that I wanted to make a picture from Edgar Allan Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher.  The lead was Roderick Usher, a distinguished and extremely sensitive, somewhat neurotic gentleman, and I had a certain amount of money for the lead and I wanted some sort of a name.  Looking over the possibilities in Hollywood, it simply became obvious to me that Vincent Price was the best possible actor for Roderick Usher, which was a success.  Vincent and I got along well together, so we did all the rest of the Poe pictures with Vincent, except one picture, The Premature Burial, which required a younger leading man and I had Ray Milland for that. 

Sam:  What was Vincent Price like to work with?

Roger Corman and Vincent Price

Roger:  He was great.  Vincent Price was a brilliant actor.  Much underrated.  He was a star on Broadway and kind of a star in Hollywood.  Generally he was the character lead, although occasionally he played the romantic lead in films.  I got along with him very well.  He was an excellent actor and a great gentlemen and very intelligent.

Sam:  You worked with some amazing people, such as David Carradine, Roger DeNiro, Peter Fonda, Sylvester Stallone and Jack Nicholson early in their careers.  Who is your all time favourite actor to direct or to work with?

Roger:  I wouldn’t answer that question because a lot of them are friends of mine and I really don’t have one favorite.  I think almost all of the people that you recognize are very very good actors.

Corman regular Dick Miller whose films for Corman included "A Bucket of Blood" (1959), "Little Shop of Horrors" (1960), "The Terror" (1963) and "X" (1963)

Sam:  Like most great directors, you have a certain circle of people that you work with often.  Dick Miller comes to mind immediately, who is a personal favorite of mine.  What is Dick Miller like to work with?

Roger:  Dick is a very underrated actor.  I am surprised that Dick didn’t have a bigger career.  Dick is a very intense and dedicated actor who comes in completely prepared to do the role, and when you are shooting quickly you appreciate that.  Plus, he is just a good guy to work with.  He always gives a very good performance, understanding that sometimes a little bit of humor can come into a dramatic situation.  He handled that very well.  The drama plays, but there is just a little bit of humor around the edges which adds an extra dimension.

Corman discovered B movie actress Lana Clarkson, who would make headlines in 2003 when she was murdered by music mogul Phil Spector.

Sam:  You also discovered Lana Clarkson, who was unfortunately murdered not long ago by Phil Spector.  The world never really got to know Lana.  I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about her.

Roger:  Again this was somebody that I really thought should have had a big career.  Lana was very beautiful.  She was a good actress.  I wouldn’t say she was a great actress, but she was as good of an actress as many of the stars, and just as beautiful.  I thought she would have had a bigger career, but probably the thing that hurt her was that she was so tall.  She was 5’11 or something like that.  That could have hurt her because she overshadowed the leading men.

Sam:  Probably my all time favorite movie that you put together was Bucket of Blood.  Everybody I show it too seems to love it.  Some of your other films, especially Little Shop of Horrors, was sort of a rewrite of Bucket of Blood.

Roger:  Little Shop of Horrors was not necessarily a rewrite but, in fact, the same thing.

Sam:  Did you do a lot of recycling that way?

"A Bucket of Blood" (1959), Corman's black comedy about modern art and beatnik culture, featuring Dick Miller, Barboura Morris, Antony Carbone and Julian Burton included the first film credit for future TV actor Bert Convy

Roger:  No, but I used the idea for three pictures that I did in a long line, starting with Bucket of Blood, Little Shop of Horrors and a little picture I shot called Creature From the Haunted Sea, and those were all low budget black comedies.  Bucket of Blood and Creature From the Haunted Sea were shot in a week, and Little Shop of Horrors was the fastest film I ever shot.  I shot that in two days and a night.

Sam:  My God.  You shot it so quickly yet it is a brilliant film.  It is incredibly funny.  In Little Shop of Horrors you were working with a lot of people that you had worked with previously.  Did that help the speed and the quality along?

Audry Jr., the flesh eating plant from Corman's black comedy "Little Shop of Horrors" (1960). Corman not only shot "Little Shop of Horrors" in less then three days, but was the film debut of Jack Nicholson.

Roger:  Yes.  Not only was I working with actors I had worked with before, but I had put together a crew that I had worked with in almost every picture [I had done] and the fact that we had all worked together and understood each other helped to make pictures rapidly and efficiently.

Sam:  You helped a lot of people to get their start in Hollywood.  Especially a lot of directors who went on to win Academy Awards, including Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, James Cameron and Martin Scorsese.  When you were working with these gentlemen did you think that they would go on to be as successful as they have become?

Roger:  I saw that they were very talented.  I could not predict that they would win giant awards or anything like that, but I believed and I was positive that they would have major careers.

Sam:  From the beginning your films were, obviously,  early independent successes before there was even an independent film industry.  I would describe you a pioneer of the independent film industry.  Do you think that is a fair assessment?

Roger:  I would say that I was one of the pioneers.  There has always been a little bit of an independent film industry, but I, as well as a number of other people, was dedicated in the 1960s to making it more popular.

Sam:  Your films and your career has inspired so many people.  As I said, for myself, as a fan, your movies helped shape the way I value movies.  Your work is an inspiration to a lot of people.  In this industry, who inspired you?

Roger:  Well I would say as a filmmaker I like the works of John Ford and specifically I’ve always admired the great Serge Eisenstein.

Sam:  Well Roger, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me.  It was such a thrill for me as a film fan.

Roger:  Thank you.

Not long after I conducted this interview with Roger Corman, it was announced that he would finally be getting the recognition that he deserves when the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced that it will be bestowing an honorary Oscar to Roger Corman for his contribution to the shaping of Hollywood, and for his mentoring of so many talented actors, producers and directors during his amazing career.  In an official statement, the Academy stated:

“The Honorary Award, an Oscar statuette, is given to an individual for extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the Academy.  Roger Corman is the director and producer of such notable low-budget films as “It Conquered the World,” “The Little Shop of Horrors,,” “The Intruder,” “The Raven,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Wild Angels,” and “The Trip.” He has directed more than 50 films and produced more than 300 during his five-decade career. In addition to his own credits, Corman is widely known for the opportunities he provided as a producer to a number of filmmakers as they embarked on their careers, including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme and Ron Howard.”

Roger Corman’s legacy has finally been validated beyond that of film geeks and cult film connoisseurs.  Roger Corman truly has proven himself to be one of the unquestionable legends of Hollywood.

POP CULTURE ADDICT NOTE:  I would like to thank Holly Beetham from Applause Communications for giving me the opportunity to talk with Roger Corman, and helping in making this interview happen.