Roger Corman saluted by fans at Beyond Fest: ‘Simply, I love making motion pictures’
Beyond Fest and the American Cinematheque saluted producer Roger Corman on Saturday with a four-film marathon followed by a conversation with some of the directors who began their careers working for the now-legendary genre icon.
Speaking to The Times just moments before he stepped onstage at the Aero Theatre for an extended standing ovation, the 97-year-old Corman looked back on some of the changes to the film industry he‘d seen during a career that stretches back to the mid-1950s.
“I think the great heads of studios in the past understood that motion pictures are an art form and a business, and you have to understand both of those things,” said Corman, sitting in the back seat of a car parked behind the theater. “I think one of the problems today is that the new heads of studios understand only the business, and they don’t understand that this is also an art form.”
Though he began his career as a screenwriter and director, it was as a producer that Corman made his biggest impact, in particular through the company he co-founded in 1970 with his brother Gene, New World Pictures. Among those who worked with Corman early in their careers were Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Carl Franklin, Peter Bogdanovich and many more. Though he is known for movies made quickly and cheaply for drive-ins and double-bills, Corman also distributed major international art-house films by the likes of Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, François Truffaut and Federico Fellini.
The Beyond Fest tribute began with director Allan Arkush introducing a screening of “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School,” followed by Ron Howard introducing “Grand Theft Auto,” then showings of Joe Dante’s “Piranha” and the Corman-directed “The Raven.” Howard returned to the theater later in the day on his bicycle to join Arkush, Dante, “Slumber Party Massacre” director Amy Holden Jones, “Hollywood Boulevard” producer Jon Davison and Corman himself for a lively, affectionate conversation moderated by filmmaker Mick Garris.
“It’s impossible to discuss the most influential filmmakers of all time without including the great Roger Corman,” Christian Parkes, founder of Beyond Fest, said in a statement. “The definitive trailblazer and pioneer of independent film, his mark on cinema is indelible, his impact unparalleled, and legacy is forever enduring. Beyond Fest wouldn’t exist without him.”
Before the start of the panel, two surprise tribute videos were played. “Tár” filmmaker Todd Field, who acted in three films for Corman early in his career, celebrated his “amazing, unparalleled impact on so many in the industry.” Field also recounted how, at a test screening of Carl Franklin’s “Full Fathom Five,” Corman declined anything from the concession stand before the movie while Field got a large tub of popcorn. At some point during the movie, Field noticed Corman’s hand sneaking popcorn from his tub.
“And I thought, smart guy,” said Field. “This is why you’re Roger Corman.”
John Sayles, a two-time Academy Award nominee, wrote screenplays for Corman before launching his own career as a director. In a video, he thanked Corman for “sending me through film school and paying me at the same time.”
The filmmakers on stage had collaborated together in various configurations while working for Corman, so there was a collegial, affectionate air of a class reunion to the event. All shared outrageous stories of test screening their Corman-produced movies, from Howard screening his youth car-chase picture “Grand Theft Auto” to an audience of elderly people, and Dante recalling showing “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” for mental patients from Cedars-Sinai.
Among the warm anecdotes and friendly memories, things repeatedly circled back to the same idea that Corman had always expressed — that his own experiences as a filmmaker made him an exceptional producer and studio chief.
Jones recalled how Corman suggested changing the title of a script called “Sleepless Nights” to “Slumber Party Massacre.”
“That was a smart move,” she added, noting that having established a successful career as a film editor, she turned down a job on “E.T.” for the opportunity to direct her own feature.
“The vast majority of people can’t tell good from bad,” said Jones. “You get notes on cuts that don’t particularly make sense, to get reshoots that aren’t fixing what’s actually the problem. But mainly the executives can’t tell good from bad. And Roger knew it immediately.”
“I’ll never be working for anybody again who knows as much about movies as Roger did when I was starting out,” said Dante, who went on to make the “Gremlins” movies. “Unfortunately, the problem is that the more movies you make, and the more executives you meet, the more you realize that there are almost none who know as much about movies as you do. And so they are no help.
“In fact, they’re a hindrance and you spend a lot of time trying to please people who don’t know what they want,” added Dante. “And if they did, they wouldn’t know how to express it anyway. So I think all of us feel that the best years of our creative lives were spent working for somebody who knew more than we did. And that was Roger.”
Arkush pointed to Corman when he said, “The profound thing is, this is the only person to run a studio who knows how to make a movie.”
Howard noted how after his successful career as a young actor, no one would take seriously his desire to direct and Corman was the first person who didn’t patronize him over the idea, agreeing to let Howard direct second-unit if he would star in “Eat My Dust!” After that movie was a success, Howard went in to pitch Corman on other ideas, including noirs, thrillers and sci-fi.
“Finally, Roger said, ‘Well, those are all very interesting. But I’m very interested in young people on-the-run and car-crash pictures,’” recalled Howard. Corman told him if he could write a script with the title “Grand Theft Auto,” he could make that movie.
“It wound up being the fastest green light that I ever got in Hollywood,” said Howard, a future two-time Oscar winner.
Jones recalled that Corman told her a script needed to have either humor, sex or violence to be entertaining to an audience.
“And that changed my entire career,” she said. “All of a sudden I thought, This is a mass medium and we are here to entertain. And I never made anything again that didn’t have at least one of those three elements. And it makes me a little impatient with many Oscar nominees to this day lately, because they don’t necessarily entertain me. I want to be entertained and moved. And that’s, I think, the most important thing Roger taught me.”
“He gives you a tremendous amount of freedom,” Dante said of his mentor. “If you can explain to him why there’s an upside-down shot in the movie, and he buys it, he lets you have an upside-down shot in the movie. For all of us, the trick was: If you’re going to make a women-in-cages movie, you’ve got to make the best women-in-cages movie that you can possibly make. And when you look at the New World pictures against the competition, they’re all better.”
Howard echoed those comments, saying, “While budget was always a concern, in all honesty, quality was always the conversation. How do you gain what’s essential in the scene and make it good, but do it in a timely, responsible way?
“And as a young director coming in, it was about diagramming, it was about organizing, it was about prep,” continued Howard. “It was about all these things so that the elements that are going to matter to an audience are actually as well executed as they can be.”
Dante recalled that when Howard asked for additional extras for a crowd scene, Corman’s response was, “Ron, I’m not going to give you more extras, but if you do this picture correctly, you’ll never have to work for me again.”
Corman summed up his filmmaking ethos as one point by noting, “No matter what happens, keep shooting.”
A lifelong outsider to the Hollywood studios, Corman did tell The Times that there have been moments when he felt accepted.
“When I got my Academy Award, I thought that was acceptance,” said Corman, who received an honorary Oscar at the first Governors Awards ceremony in 2009. “And the star on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame, I thought they were accepting me.”
Corman mentioned two of the films he directed, 1964’s “The Masque of the Red Death” and 1962’s “The Intruder” as personal favorites among his long career.
As for what has kept him going all this time, his answer had the same wise economy as his movies.
“Simply, I love making motion pictures,” said Corman. “It’s a continually challenging experience. Every film represents a problem in one way or another.”
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