EPISODE 262: Roger Corman - Mourning a Giant
Martin Scorsese said of Roger Corman’s films, “they weren’t encumbered with having to deal with art.” There’s a freedom in that The Film Talk thinks. In this appreciation of the great, prolific director and producer Roger Corman Jett and Gareth touch on his astonishing legacy, the one shirt John Sayles appears to have, a very special Laurie Anderson lyric, the merits of James Cameron’s True Lies and much more. Corman will be missed by many, (Jett hasn’t cried at the death of someone he didn’t know more), yet he exists still, in his work and in the work of those he fostered.
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Just what is it that you want to do? Well, we want to be free. We want to be free to do what we want to do.
We want to be free to ride.
We want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man.
And we want to get loaded.
And we want to have a good time. Oh, my goodness, I'm laughing, dear listeners, but it's a sad day because a giant, a titan of cinema as we used to know it, as movies as they used to be from the days when cinema was arguably the primary art form.
And we can talk about art here in this quick few minutes we've got for this. This person has left us, Roger Corman.
Yes, Roger Corman, as you all know, passed away last week, 98 years old.
Under budget.
He passed away under budget. He would be glad. And perhaps on schedule.
I don't know. That is a good long life. And we decided we'd do a little episode to pay tribute to him.
Now, Jett, I freely acknowledge, you've definitely seen many more Roger Corman movies than I have, but most of us have seen lots of films that were influenced by Roger Corman, or indeed their directors were mentored by Roger Corman.
Jett, can I tell the listener what you communicated to me on Saturday night when his death was announced?
Yes, you can. And for folks who don't know Roger Corman, legendary director and producer of very, very low budget films, that doesn't really get into why so many people are mourning his passing, but please go ahead, Gareth.
So you texted me to say that he was gone, and you were clearly genuinely moved, and even what you described appeared to be real authentic grief.
That's correct.
I want to ask you about that, because we do have these parasocial, I think they're called parasocial relationships with people we've never met. I'm assuming you never actually met Roger Corman.
No, but I did meet Herschel Gordon-Lewis.
Well, I was thinking that-
And also Mr. Big of Bird Eye Gordon. But Corman powered over the wall-
So, Corman you never met, and yet you cried at his passing.
Will you tell us why?
You know, I've been married, what, about a year and a half now. I've known my wife for five, well, I've known my wife for a lot longer, but we've been together for five years. She has never seen me like that, she told me.
I sobbed uncontrollably for, I don't know, 20 minutes, genuine grief. I think at its heart, what I was mourning was the passing of the movies as I know them.
Because when I was a kid, you know, in the pre-streaming age, there are repertory cinemas, there was, you know, where I lived, there were seven different cinemas within walking distance, and one of those was a multiplex within walking distance, and
there were tons of people. They would go, you would go to the movies, it was a thing. And of course, movies have gone through a lot of different phases.
There was the silent era, then movies would have, you know, news reels and cartoons and beef pictures, then television came along and changed that. But people used to go to the movies, and we would just review challengers.
And when I went to challenge, I didn't go to a critic screening, I just paid my monies and took my chancels. And I was the only one in the theater. And it was the middle of the day, weekday, sure.
Okay, I'm the only one in the theater. Whatever upcoming episodes is going to be on this, one of these new eight pictures, I don't know, what is it?
It's Stratosphere of the Apes, Truck Wagon of the Apes, Ford F-150, the Apes, whatever it is, I don't know.
iTunes discount gift card of the Apes.
You know, iTunes doesn't exist anymore. It's now Apple Music. Things change.
I'm mourning the end of streaming as I knew it, as I was growing up.
Exactly.
I went to a midday screening on Saturday, and there was only a couple of people.
And when I was growing up as a kid, even if it was like, you know, an early screening, there would be a crowd of some kind for a big new blockbuster like Land Rover of the Apes.
And they wouldn't know everything that was going to happen in the movie.
And they wouldn't? Well, we're going to talk about that in our review of the film, which will be released soon after this little Roger Corman appreciation. My point is that films aren't the art form that they were.
There's a documentary about Roger Corman in which Martin Scorsese says that his films, he says, they weren't encumbered with having to deal with art.
But the reason I mourn so much Roger Corman is that with him gone, all that institutional knowledge, right? There's that Laurie Anderson, the artist, musician, she sings a song.
It's got a line that when my father died, it was like a library burning down. Corman is gone and with it, the movies as we knew them.
Because I think arguably the reason why he's so famous to film aficionados now is because of how many people he fostered, kickstarted into Hollywood, the folks that became sort of the new Hollywood.
Here's a list of just some of the people that he helped start their careers with. Some of them had already had jobs in the movies, but he really pushed them in that direction to be directors and producers and actors.
Jack Nicholson, Joe Dante, John Sayles, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Polly Platt, the great Polly Platt, Jonathan Demme, Penelope Spheeris, Peter Bogdanovich, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, maybe Gail and Herd, Dick Miller, of
Late friend of the show, Monte Hellman.
Friend of the show, Monte Hellman.
I like to think all these folks could be friends of the show. Paul Bartel, Mary Warren. The point is that-
Nobody of significance, nobody of significance.
People got jobs with him when they were young and he worked the hell out of them.
But that film school of Roger Corman, if they could survive that being exploited and doing all the different jobs, they could go on to do something. Peter Buckdanovic said that, I went from getting the laundry to directing the picture in three weeks.
Altogether, I worked 22 weeks, pre-production, shooting, second union, cutting, dubbing. I haven't learned as much since.
That kind of school of Roger Corman, as Tarantino said when he gave him an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar, is what's so incredibly important. His passing marks the end of a Hollywood that is now gone.
Some of this is going to relate actually to the, what is it? Skyscraper of the Planet of the Apes, we're going to be talking about in another show this week. Does any of that make sense?
Watching that documentary, which is called Corman's World, and I liked it.
It was informative and there was something, it was kind of clear that some of the time they had just tried to be, I don't know, do something different with what's available.
And something that I find irritating about a lot of biographical documentaries is when you get the talking heads, I don't mean David Burns band, but you get the individuals talking.
Was that a joke?
Not a good one. Not a good one. The other members of talking heads would probably beg to differ with the characterization that it was David Burns band.
Oh, hot take. Well, they're all great. They're all great.
Tom Tom Club for the win.
If you haven't seen American Utopia, see you American Utopia, David Burns concert film that Spike Lee directed a few years ago.
Anyway, when you get these pieces to camera where individuals are speaking, they're usually sitting in a chair facing the same direction, framed exactly the same way.
This film Corman's World does something that's at least visually creative with all of its talking heads and they speak with such love and affection for this man, Roger Corman. I had heard him interviewed and watched him interviewed many times.
He was blessed with a voice that I don't know why he didn't record audio books. He would have been a magnificent late night radio host, a kind of a call in host.
Frankly, when you see him interviewed in this film, there's one very striking moment where he's been in. It looks to me like it was probably the early 80s.
He's asked about the budget for his movies because his movies were famously as cheap as they could possibly be made, and he was asked about some of the most expensive movies being made at the time, which the interviewer said would cost as much as $30
Yes.
And Roger Corman actually agrees that this is obscene, and that that money would be better spent redeveloping housing for people of limited means.
He used the word slums, I think.
We don't use that word anymore.
This is a man of heart.
And if you look at the film that certainly his brother, Gene Corman, is producing, partner, I guess, along with or prior to marrying Julie, the film that he's probably proudest of, that he considers to be the best film that he ever made, is one of
The Intruder.
It's a film called The Intruder from 1964.
Something like that. Which I once saw in somebody's living room on a 16-millimeter print, which made it really somehow even more authentic.
A film with William Shatner about an interloper who comes into a southern town and tries to prevent an integration. And it's really an extraordinary film. One of the most politically radical films I've ever seen made in Hollywood.
He didn't get to make lots of films like that. So my question to you, Jett, and I saw you nodding at the malefluousness of his voice.
He does appear to have been a kind man, a good man, a person who people thought of with great affection, a person who knew how to mentor people. And yes, they make jokes about they were exploited.
And maybe they were, and that should be discussed, but it doesn't seem like people felt that they lost in the end. They benefited from this mentoring.
And as he famously said to Ron Howard, if you do a good job for me, you'll never have to work on this film. You'll never have to work for me again.
What do you think about this idea that Roger Corman himself appears to have been a good human or a human whose goodness was on the surface?
And what do you think about the possibility that your grief at his passing is as much to do with what you were projecting on to him as a person, not just as an artist or as a public figure?
Well, you know, the thing is you can look at the films and say, oh, these are just, you know, terrible, you know, schlock movies. But there must be something about the person that he shepherded in some way.
So many people who created some of the greatest works of filmic art of the 20th century in the English language. There's got to, there has to be something there. That's not a coincidence.
Of course, I'm referring to James Cameron's True Lies. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not really. It's got some good stuff in it.
I mean, that bit with the limousine on the Florida Keys Bridge. Love the Florida Keys Bridge. Love that.
And Timothy Dalton's License to Kill. Love me some license to kill. No, there has to be something.
Yes, just, just for completion's sake, almost as good as True Lies would be, for instance, John Sayles' Mate Wan or Francis Coppola's The Conversation or Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show or Scorsese's Silence.
But yes. True, True Lies.
True Lies is the, is the Corman legacy, according to you, my beloved co-host. You mentioned John Sayles, you talk about, oh, they don't shoot everybody in his studio.
You know, if you had asked me, let's say they're going to shoot John Sayles' documentary, I would have said, where are they going to shoot him? He's going to be sitting on a stoop, maybe in Brooklyn.
Probably in Brooklyn. Yes.
Probably in Brooklyn.
Wearing the blue, can I tell you something about John Sayles? You know that, that, that blue shirt that he's always, he wears in every interview.
That's his interview shirt.
I have met John Sayles on three occasions.
Did he wear his shirt?
And he was wearing that, he was wearing that blue shirt every time.
I love me some brother from another planet.
That's it.
A man out. I mean, yeah. May Wan, John Sayles, come on.
Limbo, Limbo, Lowe.
Did John Sayles do a re-write on Piranha?
Did he do Piranha? I mean, did he probably do Death Race 2000?
I think he might actually have been the first writer on Piranha.
I think that's-
No, no, no. It might have been, dear listener, I know you come to The Film Talk for your authentic film, Esoterica. Esoterica?
Esoterica?
Esoterica, that sounds like the name of a stripper villain in Ed Wood film. It's Esoterica. You ever see Orgy of the Dead, by the way?
Which of the dead?
Orgy of the Dead, Ed Wood.
It's nothing but one strip act after another, a couple's forced to watch. It's something.
To go back to the Esoterica, without making it up, I think John Sayles may have written a sequel, did he not write the sequel to Piranha or did Cameron direct the sequel to Piranha? The Spawning? I've never seen any Piranha movies.
Never seen any Piranha movies.
No, I haven't either. I mean, I believe that Cameron probably, he directed some parts of Piranha. That's where famously, I think he had that nightmare in an Italian hotel room where they're re-editing Piranha II or it's a disaster.
He has his fever dream and that's where he had that dream of a metal robot coming out of the flames and inspired Terminator.
Lord of all, if only that had influenced his future career. Back to the question, are you grieving your projected kindness of Roger Corman as well as-
And grieving the end of cinema.
You're making the case that anyone who influenced these people, there's something to, I mean, there may actually be something to mourn here about he didn't get to make all that many good films.
Well, it comes up in that documentary and some other things about Corman.
There are people that start low rent production houses, like New Line, and they do the Freddy Krueger movies, and then they splash out on Lord of the Rings, and Corman didn't do that.
Corman family is talking to somebody in his office, and they're talking about how the budget of a film, and Corman walks over and turns off the air conditioner, because that costs, it's going to cost money, but he had no problem losing money
distributing films of Fellini or Kurosawa or Bergman. For whatever reason, Corman himself did not make the leap to do higher budget stuff.
He was so conscious about money, it feels like maybe he thought that was too much of a risk to spend millions, though he did do films like Battle Beyond the Stars, which is takes place off on Planet Akira, so it's a remake of Seven Samurai, you see
what he's doing there. And maybe he was very aware of the industry. It was a common mistake, I would argue, for people to start a low budget and they put all their money in and they lose something, right?
Well, think about the guys, it was a Charles Band, they did the reanimator and From Beyond great movies and they splurge out big budget for them on a film like Robot Jocks, which I love Robot Jocks, but it didn't make any money.
So Corman was really focused on that bottom line. I'm just going to pick at random one year. These are the films he directed in 1957, 1957.
He directed Naked Paradise, Night of this Earth, the classic Attack of the Crab Monsters, Rock All Night, The Undead, Teenage Doll, Carnival Rock and Sorority Girl, all in 1957. So he was about quick, quick turnaround.
Certainly, it's more films than I've ever directed in one year.
Possibly than anybody's, maybe Fassbender, right? Fassbender probably could have directed that many and then done a 20 hour mini series in three stage productions and possibly-
But was he happy? Was he happy? I don't think he was happy.
And Roger, I mean, I meant that as a joke, but I mean, Roger Corman does appear to have been a happy person.
He seemed pretty stable.
Other than The Intruder, what's one Roger Corman film that you would recommend the listener to see?
Well, I would probably, the ones that he directed, not the ones that he produced, because there's films of people of his that he produced that came out of various, he had various different names for his studios.
He had agreements with American International Pictures. They're that company that intruously bought the distribution rights to Mad Max and then dubbed all the actors, the Australian actors. That's the version that I grew up with and it's rough.
We got to give them back their heroes, Max.
Do you think someone could do that for us?
Personally, this is not really me. I've just hired somebody. I've hired Jeff Loe.
Jeff is actually doing the show. He's doing a great job. He's actually just an AI.
Well done, Jeff.
Well done, Jeff.
You know, you were talking about money-making prowess. So when he directed a movie, I think it was the second film. It was the second film he directed called The Fast and the Furious.
Okay. So they're going to do a remake. What a title.
What a title. They wanted what is it? Universal?
Is it Universal, I think? Wanted that title. So they offered him, probably offered him, I don't know, X hundreds of thousands of dollars, whatever it is.
Want that title, Roger. And the agreement, you know the story, the agreement he struck with them is like, I don't want any money. I just want access in perpetuity to your entire stock library.
So then he could use shots of avalanches, car chases, crashes from the history of Universal. I mean, that's Roger Corman. I'd recommend The Trip, probably, with Peter Fonda.
With Peter Fonda.
That's a really interesting film, Bavigard and any of the Poe films.
The Poe films are great. They're incredible colors, beautiful compositions, great storytelling. Those are like, they're great movies with Vincent Price, you know, The Tomb of Legea, The Raven, The Pit and Pendulum is one of my favorites.
Or any of those, Little Shop of Horrors, he directly originaled that. They shot that in two days. Two days.
Maybe they wrote it in an hour. But I would go with The Trip or The Wild Angels. The Wild Angels is the one that has that famous funeral scene in which the person, the religious figure overseeing the funeral scene has upset all these bikers.
Like, what do you want? And Peter Fonda tells them, just want to be free, man. And you know who I felt was free even though he was in business and had to turn a buck?
Roger Corman. And that's a reason I am more than I think. Roger Corman was free.