In Memoriam
Roger Corman (1926-2024):
A Tribute and Rare Interview
Falling just short of a century, it had seemed that Roger Corman might well not only go beyond the milestone one hundred years of age but also carry on being involved in film productions past that landmark figure too. So evident was the oeuvre he had amassed and his enthusiasm for his projects that he almost seemed to be in tandem with the perennial and immortal, certainly if the titles of some of his films like It Conquered the World (1956) and Not of This Earth (1957) are in regards to exemplary pointers. It is therefore no surprise that in an amazing seventy-year career he would earn a reputation with monikers that could also have been the titles of his films: The Pope of Pop Cinema, The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood, The King of Schlock, and The King of Cult. Following his prolific early years as both a producer and director, he would build up a body of work that would be an inspiration to his contemporaries and younger directors, many of whom would become the dominating auteurs of American and World Cinema as well as maverick directors in the world of independent film, a legacy that would increase through the years and decades to make him a living legend and guiding light.
Corman’s first involvement with a feature film was when he co-wrote the story for the film Highway Dragnet (Dir. Nathan Juran, 1954) with U.S. Andersen, and is also a film that Corman was associate producer without charging a fee, just so he could gain the experience. His next film Monster from the Ocean Floor (Dir. Wyott Ordong, 1954) was his first as producer and did well enough to encourage Corman to produce another film. The racing-car thriller The Fast and the Furious (1954) was co-directed by Ireland and Edward Sampson and decades later the title would be licensed by Universal Pictures for The Fast and the Furious (Dir. Rob Cohen, 2001), which eventually spawned a successful franchise. Corman's next film as producer, Five Guns West (1955), was also the first one he decided to direct. A Western film and made in color with a budget of around $60,000, it starred Dorothy Malone and John Lund, with a script by Robert Wright Campbell, someone who would collaborate with Corman on several more occasions.
House of Usher (1960) became the first of eight films directed by Corman that were adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe and which became known as the Poe Cycle. Throughout the 1960s there were countless features directed by Corman, a great deal of which were low-budget films that later attracted a cult following and are now legendary today: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), The Intruder (1962), and X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963). There are also the counterculture films, The Wild Angels (1966) and The Trip (1967) which further helped to cement the prolific reputation of the ubiquitously resonating grindhouse auteur. As a result of the number of films he had already amassed in what was still an early stage in his long career, in 1964, Corman became the youngest filmmaker to have a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française, as well as in the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art.
In the New Hollywood filmmaking movement that gained momentum in the 1960s and 1970s, Corman would help launch the careers of actors like Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, and William Shatner. As he had made so many films as director by the end of the 1960s, from the 1970s onwards Corman would concentrate on his passion for producing and this is where his legacy and influence is particularly strong. He would subsequently mentor and give a start to many young film directors who are now legendary household names, including: Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, John Sayles, and James Cameron. He was the co-founder of New World Pictures in 1970 that was a film production and distribution company, and Concorde-New Horizons in 1983. Also a longtime member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Corman was finally recognized for his work and as a talent developer in 2009 when he was bestowed an Academy Honorary Award "for his rich engendering of films and filmmakers". A documentary about Corman's life and career titled Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, directed by Alex Stapleton, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011 followed by a screening at Cannes the same year, with Corman in attendance.
Considering his very conspicuous enthusiasm for all aspects of film from story, script, direction, production, and distribution, it was no surprise to find that Corman occasionally acted in films and often with directors who had started out with and owed a debt to the opportunity he gave them, even if the younger generation would probably not recognize him from his cameo appearances as an actor. To those who did, examples of some thirty films where he would make memorable appearances include: The Godfather Part II (Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), The Silence of the Lambs (Dir. Jonathan Demme, 1991), Philadelphia (Dir. Jonathan Demme, 1993), Apollo 13 (Dir. Ron Howard, 1995), and The Manchurian Candidate (Dir. Jonathan Demme, 2004). Furthermore, Corman was also famous for handling the U.S. distribution of many films by noted foreign directors, including Federico Fellini (Italy), Ingmar Bergman (Sweden), François Truffaut (France) and Akira Kurosawa (Japan).
Roger Corman interviewed about his work in Europe
In December 2002, The Bratislava International Film Festival also paid tribute to Roger Corman who by this time was already the most successful B-movie producer and director of all time. With a retrospective of highlights from the vast back catalogue of his work as producer and director, he was also a guest at the fourth edition of the festival. In a career at that point totaling some 550 odd films he had produced, and some fifty others he had directed, tribute screenings included The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and The Masque of the Red Death (1964), showcasing his work as director, and Boxcar Bertha (Dir. Martin Scorsese, 1972) and Big Bad Mama (Dir. Steve Carver, 1974) representing his work as a producer. In the atmosphere of a film festival, it gave a chance for the local audience to see his films which were otherwise rarely screened.
While Eastern Europe may not have been so familiar with Roger Corman, he certainly knew Eastern Europe. First of all, his paternal grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants, and his mother was of German ancestry, which may have partly explained his gravitational pull to the region. He had also been doing business in Eastern Europe since the 1960s and was one of the first to recognize the potential of the former Communist countries in providing cheap actors, crew and services for productions an industry that was worth millions, if not billions, of dollars to the region every year. In fact, by the early 21st Century, as little as 40 percent of productions by Corman's New Concorde company were being shot in the US. The same number were made at the company's Irish studios, a strategic move made to give the company a foothold into the European cultural subsidy system, and not least to take advantage of low taxes and generous job creation subsidies. The remaining 20 percent were shot in various other locations around the globe, mainly the Philippines and Russia, as well as Ukraine and Bulgaria. In the case of Russia, Corman had entered into a deal with Mosfilm that enabled him to use for free the expensive sets left over from high-budget productions such as La Reine Margot (Dir. Patrice Chéreau, 1994), underlining once again his ability to create a film on a reduced budget through astute negotiations.
Despite being little-known in Slovakia and, indeed, generally on the other side of the former Iron Curtain, while in Bratislava, Roger Corman also hosted an industry seminar in regards to the ways of attaining funding for a film project and also took part in a Q&A for independent producers. In this follow-up interview in Bratislava, Corman talked more extensively about his work in Europe. Here the interview with Corman is presented alongside additional material from the Q&A, added seamlessly for the sake of readability.
Steven Yates: You seem to have been operating in Europe from quite an early date in your career. Can you remember when you first came to Eastern Europe?
Roger Corman: Well, in the 1960s I bought the American rights to several Russian science fiction films. They were made with big budgets and tremendous special effects. They were, unfortunately, filled with anti-American propaganda. I said to the Russians, "I'm going to have to cut the anti-American propaganda out. I can't show these pictures in America," and they said that they totally understood. One of Francis Coppola's first jobs coming out of UCLA Film School was to cut the Russian propaganda out of these films for me (which were shown dubbed). I didn't work again in Eastern Europe until the 1980s, which is not to say I didn't work at this time.
I came back and did those three or four films in Bulgaria as co-productions in the 1980s and then three or four films in Russia in the early 90s; I was working with Mosfilm in Moscow, and I've (since) gone back there. We've just finished Fire over Afghanistan in Bulgaria (released as Escape from Afghanistan (Dir. Timur Bekmambetov, 2002, with Corman as executive producer) and a picture called (The) Keeper of Time in Lithuania (released in 2004 and directed by Robert Crombie (as Alan Smithee) for Corman’s New Concorde distribution company) and I'm exploring the possibility of shooting elsewhere, particularly Romania.
SY: Have you produced films in Romania before?
RC: I've not done films in Romania, but I've talked to a Romanian director (Sinișa Dragin) who won one of the awards tonight (În fiecare zi Dumnezeu ne sărută pe gură (Every Day God Kisses us on the Mouth, 2001), which won Dan Condurache the Main Jury Award for Best Actor) and we were talking about the possibility of doing something.
SY: Were there any particular problems doing deals with Communist countries?
RC: There were no real problems. There were slight problems that I think were misunderstandings just because of the culture and because at that time, particularly with the Russians, they didn't understand the way in which the international film world worked. But other than that I got on very well with them and there were never any problems in shooting. I think, as a matter of fact, Mosfilms is one of the great studios in the world.
SY: I think anyone who went to Eastern Europe before the end of 1989 must have some stories to tell about what they encountered. What do you remember from this period that stands out?
RC: Well, in both Bulgaria and in Russia there was a little bit of disorganization. They had been working under a Communist regime, which didn't push the efficiency of production very much. So, their pictures were likely to run on for months and months and months in the shooting, and nobody particularly cared. When I was first dealing with them I was insistent upon the budget, the length of the shooting schedule and so forth; and they didn't really understand why I was so interested in this. I said "Well it determines how much money I'm going to have to put up," and gradually they began to learn. The experience was very good. In both Russia and Bulgaria, the first two places I shot, the crews were slow. Again, they had never been pushed to work efficiently, to get a certain number of shots in the day, but once they understood, I wouldn't say they caught up immediately but they came half-way there.
SY: You withdrew from Russia in 1997 and your producer there, Anatoly Fradis, was quoted in the Hollywood Reporter as saying "Who needs cold weather, the Mafia, rising costs, political instability and dilapidated studios anyway?"
RC: Well, that may have been a slight over-quote. Sometimes they embroider or heighten your quote to make it more interesting. I had all those problems but, in retrospect, they seem minor now. Maybe over time you forget a little bit, but thinking and talking to other people who've shot in Eastern Europe, I'm inclined to think that it turned out better for me than some of my friends.
SY: You pulled out of Russia around 1997, but you went back there last year to make Gladiatrix (Dir. Timur Bekmambetov, 2001) (the film had to be called The Arena in the US to avoid confusion with Ridley Scott's similarly entitled feature, Gladiator (2000). What was it that made you go back to the country?
RC: I had met a young Russian Producer who convinced me that if I moved away from Mosfilm the films could be made less expensively. So, we shot in a forest outside St Petersburg, and we constructed our sets there and, indeed, working with the crew from St Petersburg and one that was not part of a studio bureaucracy, we were able to cut our costs substantially. And, I'm more interested in Russia again than I was.
SY: Was the film made for the Russian market first and the international market second? As I understand it, the film's star Yulia Chicherina is a pop star in Russia and the film's theme song, also performed by her, became a hit single.
RC: From my standpoint, it was always geared to the international market. However, my co-producer from Russia had the Russian and the East European rights and he chose to put the Russian pop singer in the film, and they released the film theatrically in Russia and it did rather well.
SY: After 1989, you moved around quite a lot in Eastern Europe. You went to Belarus, Russia, Bulgaria and the Ukraine. Would it not have been more economical to stay in one place and just use a regular film crew?
RC: In the beginning, I followed the advice of Anatoly Fradis. Mosfilm on the first picture was very good but then, as often happens, they started raising their prices on the second and third film, and Anatoly Fradis told me that we could go back to the original prices and save money by going to the Ukraine. Which I did, but I still felt they had become a little bit too expensive and I walked away until I was offered the deal on Gladiatrix outside (of St Petersburg). Then I shot in Lithuania, which was a little bit cheaper.
SY: What conditions do you look for when you are producing a film in Europe?
RC: The number one concern for the American market is that they want the film to be shot in English. It is possible to shoot the film in double close-ups. So, if you're shooting in Germany, you can shoot your long-shots all the same but when you come to close-up, you would have the actor say the line in German and in English. But, that is a little bit awkward in production. Technically it's a good idea but I think the actor loses his performance a bit and it harms the film.
First, I'm looking for it to be shot in English. Secondly, I'm looking primarily for the traditional subject matter/the action/adventure, horror, sci-fi, mystery, etc. These subject matters work almost all the time. The cost of making a film in the United States is so high that to make a film in English and to make it in Europe, where you have subsidies and grants from the European Union and individual countries, works very well for me. I've done that a number of times.
SY: Do you ever use digital?
RC: Yes, I have just shot a film on digital in Bulgaria.
SY: What's your main concern when you're deciding whether to shoot on digital or on film?
RC: We have a rough figure, and our philosophy is that our most expensive films always are shot on film. We find that in the United States it doesn't make much difference whether it's shot on digital or on film, but overseas, particularly Europe, not so much Asia or South America, but particularly Europe, they will pay you more money for a film shot on film. So we figure we can save, and it varies from film to film, we can save USD 60-70,000 by shooting on digital. But, if we're going to get USD 90,000 more back for shooting on film, we might as well shoot on film.
SY: Your films go into distribution globally. Do you have any feelings about how the different distribution markets work? Is Europe more open to imported films than America?
RC: I think there is a world-wide film culture and I think we all belong to that. There has never been any discrimination from America against European films or any other country's films. For example, the French film Amelie (Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) has been a very big success in the US. However, America doesn't give financial aid to independent film-makers or producers like Europe does. More US films are now being shot in Europe because there are slightly lower labour costs there.
Production and distribution in Europe has a pretty safe and traditional market. The films that tend to break through are independent personal films. In the days, during the 1960s, when I had my first distribution companies, I was responsible for films by the likes of Kurosawa and Truffaut. We would open in one theatre in New York and LA, and by the second week we would rely on the critics that we knew, and the publicity campaign was based on what they thought.
From a distributor's standpoint, they don't really care what the film is. All they want is to see it open on a Friday night, the figures, and what the figures for the second week are, because by that point one will know whether the gross is going up or going down. So, in general, it's been the more personal European films, rather than the more commercial ones, that have had success in theatres in the United States.
By Steven Yates
The internationally renowned and loved film critic and historian Ronald Bergan, also a regular contributor and omnipresence in Camera Lucida, had already written an obituary of Roger Corman before his own passing in 2020 and it was published in The Guardian in May 2024, therefore posthumously serving as a further tribute to the memory of both Corman and Bergan.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/may/12/roger-corman-obituary
