Original subtitles

In a filmmaking career that has spanned over 30 years,

my next guest is the man responsible for such cinematic classics

as "The House of Usher," "Wild Angels,"

"The Monster from the Ocean Floor,"

"The Attack of the Crab Monsters."

Please welcome Roger Corman.

Low-budget movies in those days- it wasn't like today.

Nobody was really trying to make them good.

There was the real emphasis on the price.

Roger Corman has made more than 200 motion pictures in his career,

most of them for extremely low budget.

He's produced around 150-175 films.

He made so many movies. In 1957, he directed 10 movies.

Most people don't get to do that.

He made 250 movies and never lost a dime.

Okay, this is not a $20-million movie.

You know, this is a $1.93 science fiction movie.

We knew these were made fast and cheap,

and we also knew that taste was out of the question.

There was no need for taste.

The way Disney movies, you know, bring out the child in all of us,

you know, so can exploitation.

Sometimes he'll give the notes right on the script

and you get little marginal references like

"Breast nudity possible here?" Question mark.

The goal was, Roger said, "Every motorcycle that runs,

And then when it stops running, blow it up."

Aah!

He said, "Your job, if the cops come,

is to pick up the camera and run."

I said, "We're in the middle of the desert.

What do you mean, there is no water?"

It's a Roger Corman movie, you know. There's no water.

One take on everything.

That's just the way he worked.

You know, you didn't argue with him.

And we were delighted to be working.

It doesn't matter if people are happy.

It doesn't matter if you have a permit. None of it matters.

You know, the only thing that counts is what you get inside the frame.

He's still around, making pictures

in his 30$ and he's-- I just saw him the other day.

He hasn't changed at all.

One, two, three.

- And action!

One, two, three.

I'm in the water with a giant creature on my arms...

...pumping blood out, chomping on a beautiful girl in a bikini.

I mean, it's the essence of Roger Corman cinema.

We feel that the monster

should kill somebody fairly early

and then at regular intervals through the picture.

The first kill should be quite shocking.

The other kills can be a little bit less shocking

as we build up.

And then of course the climax-

everything goes, blood all over the screen.

Roger had made two previous movies

for the Syfy channel that did very well for them.

And he said, "Okay, Frances it's 'Dino-shark.'

You know what that is."

And of course I say, "Yes, I know what that is.

It's a giant shark."

"Yes, but not too much like 'Jaws."' "No, of course not."

- 122-Charlie, take three. - Marker.

"Dinoshark" is about a shark

that is unloosed because of global warming

from an avalanche north of Alaska...

That's your killer.

It hasn't eaten in 150 million years

and it's hungry.

...and somehow mysteriously

makes its way south to Puerto Vallarta

and pretty much terrorizes

everybody and everything in sight.

You know, that whole world

is just so different from the "Entertainment Weekly" world

or the Academy Award world.

The Golden Globes don't even hear about these things.

You know, these pictures- they just go someplace else.

And there's an incredible number of people

that want to see a picture just like this.

The Paradise Village location

also had some accommodation for actors and crew and so on.

So that's always been one of those little tricks up Roger's sleeve-

how he can do what he does on a budget.

Roger always said, you know, "You could make 'Lawrence of Arabia'

for a half a million dollars.

You just don't leave the tent."

If you could imagine

Knott's Berry Farm set on a beach,

but the only people in the park were senior citizens,

no rides, but it had a theme-park-like atmosphere,

that is what we have affectionately dubbed

Paradise Prison.

Who is two minutes from being ready for what?

At first I thought it was maybe some kind of

electromagnetic field that doesn't allow the walkie-talkie service.

I need a radio that works.

But it turns out that we just bought,

you know, children's walkie-talkies.

This is full-on guerilla-style filmmaking.

I mean, you know, we're sort of running and gunning

and stealing locations and driving boats

- where they shouldn't be driven. - Go, go, go, get out!

Oh, my God.

At one point they wanted somebody to get in this water...

- Action! - ...to get attacked by something.

Well, it turns out there was actually things to get attacked by.

Not that this wasn't obvious.

There was a giant sign that said "Crocodiles."

Should she be there?

Well, that's where she was in the wide shot.

- The way this will be cut, it'll work. - Okay. All right.

You wouldn't think of the movies, if you met him,

that he'd have done all these movies-

very polite, very-- almost British.

He really came across, I felt,

as more like an English film professor, you know.

I expected him to be teaching at Oxford or Cambridge

rather than kind of making all of these

kind of violent exploitation movies that he had made.

I thought he'd be more like Lee J. Cobb, let's say,

or somebody a little-- where they're smoking a cigar

and pounding on the desk and--

"You kids get in there and do that work," and, you know--

and actually he's very eloquent,

elegant and precise,

cool-headed, from what I saw,

and very, very different from the type of person

you'd think would be behind these pictures like "Teenage Cave Man."

The difference between

the image you present to the world

and what is going on inside, in your unconscious mind,

is significant.

I've been told that my image is

I'm just sort of an ordinary straight guy.

Clearly my unconscious mind

is some sort of a boiling inferno there.

Like most kids, I was interested in films

essentially all my life.

I graduated from Stanford University in California in engineering.

I worked four days as an engineer and quit.

The only job I could get in films

was a messenger at 20th Century Fox.

And I worked my way up from that to become a story analyst.

I read scripts, commented on them,

and handed in a synopsis of the script or the novel

or whatever had been proposed with my opinion.

As the youngest reader, I was given

frankly the most hopeless scripts to cover.

And the story editor said,

"Roger, you have never recommended one script."

And I said, "You've never given me a script that's worth recommending."

So they sent me a script

which was the first thing I'd ever read at Fox

that I thought was really any good at all.

And I made a number of notes on it.

The picture became "The Gunfighter" starring Gregory Peck.

And the story editor got a bonus for my notes.

And I got no recognition for the fact

that a number of my ideas were used in the script.

This became a big hit for Fox.

You would have thought he would have had some acknowledgment.

This caused him to leave Fox and become what he is today.

After "The Gunfighter,"

he corralled some money from our parents

and some of his money and a few friends',

got an enormous number of deferments

and made his first film-- "Monster from the Ocean Floor."

And that was basically

the beginnings of Roger Corman.

I was the producer, the assistant director and everything.

I would drive the truck to the location

and unload everything I could by myself.

And I would save about an hour

on the crew salary every morning.

The second picture I made

was a picture called "The Fast and the Furious."

It was about road racing and of course had very, very little money.

Roger went to some sports car dealerships

and borrowed sports cars.

And we took the Windshields off them and actually raced them.

And then we'd clean them up and take them back.

Roger was just so inane at the time

and was trying to do it himself

and was starting to run out of money.

If you don't understand money in the movie business,

it's like an artist who doesn't understand paint.

Roger told me, "Well, I understand paint.

If I got to thin her up with turpentine or there's no picture,

why, she gets thinned up a little.

That's all there is to it."

I could see the problem for the independent.

You raised the money. You made the picture.

And then you had to wait for the picture to earn its money back

before you could make another picture.

But Sam Arkoff and Jim Nicholson

were starting a new company- American International.

And they made me an offer for "The Fast and the Furious"

to start their company with.

I said, "I want a three-picture deal

in which I'm guaranteed my money back.

As soon as I finish one film,

I go to the next one using the guarantee."

And that essentially started me

on a regular basis of making films

and started American International.

Don't call me "squaw."

You're a dirty apache squaw.

I'm gonna kill you.

Your people did that-- raiding, thieving, killing.

I was very famous for fighting with the girls.

This was "Apache Woman."

Joan Taylor and I did a knife fight in the street.

And this is Dick Miller in the background

where he belonged.

A friend of mine, Jonathan Haze, said,

"Well, maybe I'll introduce you to Roger Corman and he can help you."

We went down there. He said, "What do you do?"

I said, "I'm a writer."

He said, "We don't need any writers right now."

He says, "I need actors." I said, "I'm an actor."

He says, "You want to play an Indian for me?"

At the end I got killed.

Roger said, "How would you like to play a cowboy for me?"

I said, "Oh, are we going to another picture?"

He says, "No, no, this picture."

I said, "Oh, God. Okay."

I wound up killing myself in the last scene.

I don't know what the budgets were,

but they were really low.

We shot them in seven days, so that gives you an idea.

And that's everything, including special effects

or anything else, you know.

Some weren't all that great, and Roger'd be the first guy to tell you that.

I never had the opportunity to go to film school.

My student work was being shown on the screen.

And some of it wasn't quite as good as it might have been,

but I was learning all the time.

Beat it, I said. You're on a battlefield.

I know that better than you do, Sergeant. How well are you doing?

Half my men are dead. Nothing can stop that thing.

Call off your troops.

It's as if these films were being made

on your street corner, in a way.

They weren't encumbered by having to deal with "art"

with a capital A-R-T.

They just weren't-- I mean, they're art in another way.

I learned fairly quickly

how to handle the camera, what to do with editing,

but I didn't know enough about acting,

and I felt I should simply take a class.

And that was where I met Jack Nicholson.

He came into the class with that little smile,

and everybody's as serious as a heart attack, you know.

He had-- when I was first working for him,

he told me he had 12 companies,

the contracts of which were all in his back pocket.

I mean, he was a one-man band.

Don't make me.

Don't be a fool, kid.

You think I would carry a real gun?

As a matter of fact, the first picture Jack Nicholson starred in

was for me-- a picture called "The Cry Baby Killer"

about a kid who takes a drive-in hostage.

It's coming. Can't you get him to be quiet until it comes?

I hadn't really worked at all before.

Then I got a lead in the movie. I thought, "Oh, this is it.

I'm here. I'm gonna be big," you know.

Then I didn't even get an interview for the next year.

Look, Carole was a swell girl until Manny got his hands on her.

You mean, till she wanted Manny's hands on her.

Listen, Fred...

"Cry Baby Killer" was just humiliating...

...but good for me.

Hey, Roger's the only guy who hired me for about 10 years.

Teenagers-- never had 'em when I was a kid.

The word "teenager" didn't really exist until the '50s.

If you look at the '40s and '30s,

their idea of a teenage movie was "Andy Hardy."

Hey, Betsy.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! What do you think's happened?

- What do you think's happened? - What? Well, tell me what.

Cynthia won't go to the dance and I don't know why and I don't want to.

Times were changing.

- Dave! - Okay, Johnny.

The major studios didn't really understand

the audience was looking for a different type of film.

If we were going to make pictures about young people,

I'd have picked a young guy like Jack Nicholson.

But you're through breaking the law.

Sarge, I don't break the law. I make my own.

Roger really realized that young people at that time

really liked movies where teenagers

were in trouble with the authorities.

He had found an audience that you didn't have to go

through the studio system to reach.

Not only was he a rebel from Hollywood

in that he did it all himself and did it outside of the studio system,

but there was an edge of rebellion, you know, to the movies.

You make it as disreputable as possible

so that the parents wouldn't want them to see it

and that they feel that when they go there,

they're doing something transgressive,

and you've got an audience.

You're making outlaw movies, basically.

And Roger has always been an outlaw.

Let go of me. you big ape!

Now beat it, smart boy, and don't come back

or I'll break your head.

Break whose head, you phony Frenchman?

You ain't so tough. Took this moose-head to throw me out

I've always been anti-establishment.

I spent two years in the Navy.

Those were the worst two years of my life.

I came very close to setting the record for the most demerits,

because I felt if they set up a rule,

I really must break that rule.

Roger understood

the need for audiences to identify with rebellion.

Beating the system- that's cathartic,

you know, defining yourself on your own terms.

These things are elemental.

They're all what we go through during those rites of passage.

I think that he understood that when he was dealing

with those basic experiences and feelings

that he was talking to a young audience.

We know he always had something up his sleeve.

He was more irreverent. He was more hip--

very hip, very cool.

"A Bucket of Blood" is a really good example of parody

of the hip scene, the beat scene in LA.

Walter, you've done something to me,

something deep down inside of my prana.

I have?

Oh, Walter, I want to be with you.

You're creative.

Almost all of Roger's pictures has a little edge to them.

They were-- they just bordered on

something sacrosanct, that you shouldn't touch this,

And that's usually what pulled the picture through.

Feed me.

I'm sorry, pal. I'm fresh out of blood.

Talk to somebody else.

I'm hungry.

I don't care what you are.

Can't you see I'm knocked out? I just killed a man.

I'm a murderer.

He was always pushing.

Roger's idea at the time

was to cut down the time of shooting.

So now his ambition

was to make a film in two days.

Now no Novocain. It dulls the senses.

It was work. I mean, we would get there early in the morning

and we'd just start grinding out these scenes.

One day was half the movie.

Oh, my God, don't stop now.

Roger had borrowed all the dental equipment

from his personal dentist

and they hadn't bolted it down to the floor.

We banged into this big dental shit and it started to fall over.

And Roger cut the camera and ran out

and saved the dental equipment.

To hell with the scene.

I can truly say I've never enjoyed myself so much.

I'd have terrible experiences going into the theater

with movies that I had made in that period with Roger,

'cause, you know, they were kind of-- a lot of them were grim.

- Bye. - Bye now.

By mistake he actually made a good picture every once in a while.

I was never in it,

but that was as much my fault as the next guy's.

By the beginning of the '60s

I began to have confidence in my ability

to master the craft.

At least

she has found peace now.

Has she?

We'd never miss a Poe movie.

They were riveting and stylish

and hip and funny.

And we couldn't wait for the next one.

And of course with Roger, you didn't have to wait very long.

The next one was gonna come out, like, a month later.

Do you know where you are, Bartolome?

The pit

and the pendulum.

The Poe movies were huge for me,

especially "The Pit and the Pendulum."

They had this TV campaign

where the blade was coming down, you know, and just kind of-- whew.

And, oh, my God, it was- and I rushed.

In fact, that's probably the first time that a TV campaign

made me go to the movie.

They were so successful,

I ended up making six Edgar Allan Poe films.

The artistry of the films

really developed into the Poe pictures:

"The House of Usher," "The Pit and the Pendulum,"

and "The Tomb of Ligeia," which is my favorite.

She desecrates the earth in which she lies.

A nervous contraction,

nothing more.

He was a name that we'd go like--

I must say like a Hitchcock film.

We'd go see a Roger Corman.

They wanted me to make more,

but by that time I said, "Enough. I'm starting to repeat myself."

We played it for a little bit of humor in some of the later pictures,

particularly "The Raven."

I was doing "The Raven."

And he said, "Jack, look, these sets

are gonna be up over the weekend,

so I can use the same sets for free.

I'm gonna have somebody write something."

And he went and he got a guy who wrote

63 pages of just dialogue.

To this day, no one knows the plot of "The Terror."

It was very strange. I mean, we played the weirdest characters.

I played a guy that was an assistant to a witch.

In the beginning of the film, I'm a deaf-mute.

And then halfway through the film, they decided

that they didn't have an ending for the film.

They'd better make me talk.

I can say no more. There is great danger.

Find Eric. Eric knows.

Dick played a livery butler

with a New York accent.

And you'll see in the picture now--

God forbid, I don't want to encourage anyone to see it--

I throw Dick Miller up against this door.

Where's the baron?

We must get to him. He's locked himself in the crypt.

And Dick Miller now tries to explain

the entire picture in one speech.

The baron did return that night to find Eric with the baroness

and he did kill her.

But there was a struggle, and in the fight

it was not Eric who died, but the baron.

I killed the baron.

'Cause there is-- there's no story actually arrived at.

Various directors shot the film.

Francis Coppola started and shot some sequences at Big Sur,

but then got an opportunity at a major studio.

Sol had Monte Hellman shoot for a while.

Monte then got another job

and I think--

I've forgotten all the directors.

There were four or five directors,

including finally Jack Nicholson shot some scenes himself.

And eventually I went in for an hour

and shot the final tie-in shots and finished the picture.

It is a somewhat confusing picture.

Oh, man, God.

Hopeless, all of it.

I think he wanted to be taken seriously as a filmmaker

monster movies and sci-fi movies.

Perhaps it's not so much that he wanted critical acclaim,

but he wanted some depth, some feeling,

some reason for making a movie.

I wanted to do something a little bit different.

And I'd read the book "The Intruder,"

which was about the integration of the schools in the South.

And I wanted to make that picture.

I was very much in favor of integration.

I showed the screenplay to American International

and said, "This will be my next picture."

To my real surprise, they said they didn't want to make it.

And they'd never said no.

I took it to Allied Artists. They said no.

Everybody said no, so I said, "All right, I'll make it myself."

So my brother and I produced it in the South.

"He was a leader of men, but he was evil.

He was a stranger, but he brought lust and love,

rape and hate to this quiet Southern town.

He was the intruder."

This is not the reason we made this film.

It is the exact opposite

of what we intended this film to be.

It was not and is not an exploitation film.

This picture was the first film that Roger could actually make

a statement about his personal feelings

as opposed to doing the Poe films

or the films that were just exploitation, drive-in films.

Playing the lead was the new young actor

making his first film-- Bill Shatner.

All I knew was that it was a wonderful part

and it was a wonderful opportunity for me

at an early point in my career.

The character I played was based on a real person.

He was a white supremacist from New York City

and went down into the South to rabble-rouse

and tries to stop the integration of a school.

I mean, they've got 10 niggers enrolled already in the school.

And they're starting Monday.

Yes, I know. Do you think it's right?

No, I sure don't.

Neither does nobody.

But it's the law.

Whose law?

What is difficult for people to understand now--

"separate but equal" was the law of the land.

That meant water fountains,

that meant restaurants,

it meant schools

that were totally segregated.

It was the height of the integration wars.

It became very apparent once we were down there

that people held polar opposite views

of what was right and what was wrong.

Take it easy, nigger. You're not going anywhere.

- What's the trouble? - Are you looking for trouble?

No, sir. We're on our way to the house.

"Just on our way to the house."

I didn't tell people what the subject matter is,

but the title-- "Intruder," you know.

And with the track record of Roger, all the films,

I mean, they naturally thought it was a horror film

or something in that genre.

It was only as everything started to unfold

and they saw exactly what was happening-

I mean, people were driving us out of locations.

We had to change motels.

I mean, it got to be very heavy down there.

Hey, are you really gonna make him go to the white school tomorrow?

Why, I'm not making him go.

Am I. Joey?

- No, Ma. - Well, it's too bad I ain't old enough.

I wouldn't be scared, that's all.

Who's scared?

We were having our lives threatened

to make a film about integration.

Roger displayed such courage under fire.

And Gene Corman, his brother-

such courage to make the film.

There was such animosity

and the experience of hatred

that I think we realized we had a bigger problem.

I think we were more naive

than we should have been at that point in time.

You were alone with a white girl

in the basement of the school,

but you didn't try to do anything?

Is that what you expect us to believe, nigger?

- Well, speak LIP!

We felt we should definitely expose our audience

to this kind of material,

because this is what was going on in America

and somebody had to say, "Stop.

This is not the American way."

It was a lie-- everything,

everything I said about Joey, all of it.

You were gonna kill this boy. You know it and I know it.

Making films is a dedication.

You have to be possessed.

At some point there, I realized

that they had mortgaged their home for that film.

That, perhaps, was the most admirable thing of all,

because it's one thing to be cavalier

about spending money that isn't yours,

but to be so adamant

as to put your house on the line,

that's-- that's extraordinary.

We aren't gonna give up now,

not now.

No, sir, not ever.

I'd set up the sneak preview with Pacific Theaters.

It was almost a riot in the theater.

People were screaming, "Communist!"

And one of the ushers

or one of the people who worked at the theater

came up to me, pinned me against the wall,

said, "You're a Communist. You don't belong in this country."

The picture was a wonderful commercial

failure.

I started to say "a wonderful critical success,"

but I got confused.

But I'll leave the confusion there because it's all wound up in my mind.

It sort of gets me in the stomach when I talk about it.

This is the only film

that I don't think we ever made money on.

And yet it was our best film. We were ahead of the time.

It made me rethink my method of making pictures.

And I felt the public

really is the ultimate arbiter

of your film.

If there's something you really want to do--

in Roger's case it's making movies-

then you keep on doing it.

Every time you fail, you just keep on.

I thought, I should go back

to a more commercial type of film."

I was starting to learn method acting technique.

There was what was known as the text and the subtext.

The text is the written script,

what you were saying.

The subtext is what you mean,

what you really feel,

that causes you to say these words.

And I felt

I should make my subject matter the text,

which will be a commercial text,

but my theme,

my message, what is important to me,

should be the subtext,

so the audience will get what they paid their money to see.

I think he consciously was looking

to contemporary events, news,

for inspiration for material to make a movie.

AIP said, "All right, what do you want to make?"

I said, "There's a phenomenon in the country right now--

the Hells Angels, the outlaw motorcycle gangs.

I want to make a picture about the Hells Angels."

And they agreed instantly.

Roger offered me $125 a week

to work as his assistant on the picture.

And he said I could take Polly with me.

His reputation was, you know, complicated,

because I kept hearing that he was a millionaire.

And I thought he was pretty eccentric, you know,

'cause he didn't live like a millionaire.

But I had little interest in his movies, to be honest,

because I was a big snob and I only liked Fritz Lang

and Howard Hawks and John Ford.

The star of the picture was George Chakiris

who'd won an Oscar for "Westside Story."

The phone rang in my house here

in Los Angeles, in Beverly Hills, and it was Roger.

He said, "We have a problem."

I said, "George can't ride." He said, "How do you know?"

I said, "Because I know George. He can dance, but he can't ride.

You need a biker." "Do you ride?"

I said, "Oh, yeah, Roger, I ride.

I'll do it."

I said, "Who's gonna play my part?"

He said, "Bruce Dem." I said, "Great. I know Dernsy."

We just had, like, eight actors,

and the rest were all extras.

But the extras made the movie, because they had the machines

and they were what the movie was about.

And they were real Hells Angels guys.

They were terrible. They were frightening.

We all rode our bikes

down the 2, in the desert.

And he filmed it along the way.

But he didn't get a police escort or anything like that.

He got no permits. We just did it.

It was the beginning of what you know now

as real guerrilla filmmaking.

You know, Roger's a guy who's not gonna miss an opportunity

to take advantage of every single thing he can shoot.

At one point, there was supposed to be a kind of a fight

between the Hells Angels and the townies.

We didn't have enough townies, so Roger turns to me

and he says, "You run in there, be a townie."

So I run in, and within seconds,

the Angels were beating the shit out of me.

All I did was go right down to the ground

and just prayed for "Cut!"

When work was over, you never saw Roger.

He didn't go to dinner. He didn't-- you didn't know what he did.

As close as we were to him on that picture,

and we were literally his only friends-

I mean, not that nobody liked him,

but he was just-- didn't reach out toward friendship.

And he remained mysterious.

But tell me,

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.

- Yeah! - I second the motion.

I remember asking him,

oh, about the third or fourth day of the "Wild Angels"-

I said, "How many of these things have you done?"

He said, "This is my 100th."

This is 42 years ago,

and this was his 100th movie he directed.

Oh, my God.

The film was really an incredible success.

It was the biggest-grossing independent film

ever made at that time.

"The Wild Angels" was a tremendous success.

It was a huge hit.

It galvanized the whole underground culture.

And that changed his persona

and changed the perception of Peter Fonda.

I thought, "This is wonderful.

This is saving me from becoming the next Dean Jones for Disney,"

which is what my agents thought- that I should be that.

Roger felt that I had helped him

and contributed something to it.

And he called me and he said,

"Would you like to direct your own picture?"

And I said, "Yes." He said, "All right.

We have a Russian science fiction picture.

And AIP will buy it, but they won't buy it

unless I put some women in it.

There's no women in it. It's all men walking around Venus."

"But what am I supposed to do, Roger?"

He said, "Look at the picture and just decide where to put the women."

"Okay, sure."

"We've got Mamie Van Doren and she'll be one of the women.

Get a couple of other women and just put them in the picture.

And no sound. Don't write any dialogue.

I don't want to pay for sound."

And I had to explain to Mamie that there would be no dialogue.

She said, "Then what do we do?"

I said, "You look meaningfully atone of the other girls.

And then the other girl will immediately react.

So you look at her and the other girl goes...

and goes."

"Telepathy, Mamie- it's telepathy."

We cut this thing together,

screened it for Jim Nicholson and he said,

"What the fuck is this about?

What are they doing? They keep looking and then the other--"

"It's telepathy, Jim."

"It's bullshit." He says, "I don't know what--"

Roger says, "You have to put voices in."

Meriama, Wearie...

"Go get the shells." "Yes."

Ptera is a false god.

Roger is the kind of person who says-

"Do you know how to swim?" "No."

And throws you in the water. And if you learn to swim

because you don't want to drown, you're fine.

And if you drown, that's the end of that.

I think he was alert

that this was a time when things were beginning to change.

Certainly there weren't movies being made

reflecting the changes in the thinking of young people.

And I think that Roger was alert to that.

What was going on really was revolutionary.

I smoked pot at work.

- Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll. - It was blowing up.

Vietnam.

I thought it was the end of America.

I looked at this guy in a cardigan sweater

talking about mayhem in the streets.

I was probably the straightest guy

in a fairly wild movement.

His political views were becoming increasingly left,

as he said at the time, "almost Communist,"

which always makes me laugh,

because of course I don't buy that for a minute,

but I understand what he means.

For someone who seems so square on the outside,

he was actually a very interesting, cool, hip director.

I may have felt at the beginning of the '60s

that I was an underdog, but as we got into the '60s,

I thought, "Hey, I'm with the new movement."

By now Roger and I are in sync.

Hey, the man's supporting my whole life.

How could I not be in sync with him?

He asked me to write "The Wild Angels,"

'cause I was writing by then.

I said, "Roger, you know, we're pals in this.

Can't you just pay me a little more than scale?"

If he'd just said, "All right, scale plus $5,"

I would have relaxed.

No. And I didn't write it.

To write "The Trip," though, he finally said, "All right."

Cut. It's good here. How was it for second camera?

- Fine here. - Okay, print it.

When I decided to make "The Trip" about LSD,

I felt as a director I cannot make a film about LSD

without trying LSD.

Initially the idea was that

I would take notes on Roger's trip.

I think he believed that he would be able

to coherently dictate notes to me.

How high are you, man? Can you tell that?

Listen, I think--

I'm afraid.

There's nothing to be afraid of, man.

I had had a wonderful trip, a spectacular trip.

I felt, to be fair, I had to have some experiences

of people who'd had bad trips.

Luckily, Jack Nicholson was a very good writer

and he knew LSD.

'Cause I was special talent.

Only he and I had actually taken LSD at the point.

I never did it for fun-- too strong.

I mean, a lot of my friends did, but, baby, I mean,

what, you want to confront the face of God literally for fun?

Come on.

I'm Peter Fonda.

We've just finished making a movie

dealing with the most talked-about subject of the day-- LSD.

I honestly believe that it will be

today's most talked-about motion picture.

Roger's a serious moviemaker.

He wanted to make a serious film about LSD,

which had just changed the culture forever, really.

That's what the movie is about.

The artistry of the films really developed.

By the time he did "The Trip," he really had a sense

of pushing the power of the image.

What he hit upon in that picture was interesting,

particularly if you see it in the full aspect ratio

because it just cuts through time and space.

It becomes really a beautiful kind of cinematic montage

and achieves a kind of poetry.

AIP were really concerned that this was a pro-drug movie

and they would lose money because of that.

It's easy now.

Wait till tomorrow.

Yeah, well, I'll think about that tomorrow.

Arkoff and Nicholson changed the ending

on the picture without telling Roger.

They froze frame

and did an optical of broken glass on that.

What is power? You understand?

He created these guys.

This set me up,

because in "Easy Rider," the first thing we do

is we buy junk in Mexico, smuggle it across the border,

get a lot of money, put it in the tank, off we go.

"Easy Rider" came out of my films

"The Wild Angels" and "The Trip."

Peter Fonda starred in both pictures

and Dennis Hopper costarred in "The Trip."

That whole thing came from Roger to me--

take The Establishment on.

And since they had never made a picture,

they wanted me to be the executive producer.

And I said, "Fine." And I took the idea to AIP

because "The Wild Angels" and "The Trip"

had been very successful.

And in one unfortunate meeting,

one of the executives at AIP said to Dennis,

"if you fall more than one day behind schedule,

we want the right to replace you."

I could see that Dennis and Peter were really mad.

And I said, "I can't put that pressure on Hoppy.

That's not fair." And Roger agreed.

And I said to this executive,

"He worked perfectly with me on 'The Trip'

and I am positive he can do this."

And that was not a good thing to say.

A number of things happened

and the picture moved over to Columbia.

And AIP and I

lost our percentage of the profits

on one of the most successful independent pictures ever made.

Oh.

Oh, what am I gonna do now?

When I went to Cannes with "Easy Rider"...

Oh, my head.

...my character came on the screen

and the movie exploded in that audience.

It just went ka-pow like it does in rock 'n' roll.

I'm the only person who ever in real life felt,

"Holy shit,

I'm a movie star"-

do you know what I mean? --and knew.

So that's what the change felt like.

I experienced it right here.

Roger, if you paid me over minimum,

you would have had "Easy Rider."

"Easy Rider" was the beginning of the new Hollywood.

It's hard to imagine the new Hollywood

without Roger Corman.

So many people started with Roger-

Francis Coppola and Bobby De Niro

and Jack Nicholson. And the list goes on and on.

At the end of the '60s Hollywood was so desperate.

They didn't know what to do.

And the young Roger Corman alumni

were there to step into the breach.

Jack's career took off.

And Peter and Dennis got deals

at Universal to make their movies.

Well, those are all offshoots of the University of Corman.

Roger was in a perfect position,

having discovered and cultivated Francis Coppola, Bogdanovich,

so many other people like that.

I always wondered why Roger couldn't take

that next step with those guys.

You had to take that leap. You had to go from high school to college

or you had to go from college to grad school.

It was a jump that Roger never really took.

And that's the one place

that Roger left out of his mix.

And that's why he's constantly being insulted

by people calling him the King of the Bs, right?

Roger was never taken seriously.

He was a schlockmeister and a guy who did drive-in movies.

He never really got his due, I don't think.

I mean, even "The Intruder," which is one of his best pictures,

it was a movie that was hardly ever seen anywhere when it came out.

Every year at the Academy Awards,

they give out a Lifetime Achievement Award.

How they can not have gotten to Roger Corman by now

is disgusting.

And I don't know that they ever will, because they'd say,

"Well, what are the great movies he made?"

I guess this proves there are

as many nuts in the Academy as anywhere else.

ls Roger worried about being underappreciated?

If he is, I'm going over there tomorrow night.

Shark! Shark!

Help!

Cut, cut, cut.

Roger Corman isn't doing it for the awards.

The fans recognize him. The filmmakers recognize him.

We know who he is and we appreciate him.

And I don't think he needs some statue

from some organization that never liked his movies in the first place

to come out and say, "We love you."

From my viewpoint, everything is going extremely well.

Observing Roger, however, now

as actor/producer...

Kevin, you're aware they're putting a mic on the girl who's not in the shot?

Maybe the kit should be just a couple of inches there

so you don't step over it.

No, wait until she comes here. Stop.

It'll be after they say "Action!" because the camera's on her

and it's going to come around and see...

Okay, and we're out of the shot.

He is always noticing what needs to be fixed,

what is the problem, but that's the nature of producing.

Okay, so I'm looking here.

And on action, you say, "There's someone here to see you."

Rolling sound.

You would think that a man who makes so many films

kind of doesn't really care about each individual film,

but I think Roger for each of his movies-

they're like his children, you know.

And he loves every single one of them.

And he's so engaged in every single one of them.

And, you know, the last time I had lunch with him,

you know, he had to hurry away 'cause he was going back

to the cutting room of "Minotaur."

And it's like, "You know, Roger..."

They're really-

it's just way too much time spent on Iva.

They're working on her makeup all the time.

Explain who she should put it on.

They can't do this stuff for every shot.

I'll never forget Julie. She was, like, amazing.

She was talking about redecorating her house.

And then she had a child in a crib.

She was raising children, you know.

And here she was- she was known

to do movies even cheaper than Roger Corman.

I mean, this woman was amazing.

The first film that I produced, I didn't think of it as producing.

I didn't put a name to it.

I just thought, "Oh, this needs to be organized."

Roger did sit with me for about 45 minutes

and go through what's needed- the cast,

the crew, and what the positions were

and a way in which to shepherd production through.

But then I thought, "Well, he'll be there every day and I could--"

No, he wasn't really available.

And there was this sense I had of,

"He just thinks I can do this?"

And then I just did it.

But he will recognize in someone

that he thinks they can do whatever it is.

And then he just walks away

and they do it.

I first met Julie when she answered an ad

for a job as my assistant.

I offered her the job. She turned down the job,

but she agreed to have dinner with me.

We began dating and we also began working together.

Roger had by then asked me to marry him

and I had said yes. And then he went off to the Philippines

and I didn't hear from him for a week.

So I was like, "I wonder what that means."

So I called him and said, "Are we still getting married?"

He said, "Oh, yes. Did you pick a date?"

And I said, "Well, I was thinking of December

or maybe later in the spring."

"Oh, definitely December. Sooner-- better, right?"

I said, "Okay.

I just wonder why you didn't call me."

Well, he didn't call me because it was a long-distance call,

so it wouldn't have occurred to him.

But anyway, you know, getting to know each other.

All right now, everybody, reach for the nightgown of the Lord.

- Reach.

Anybody moves-- you're dead.

Roger had done "Bloody Mama"

with Shelley Winters and Bobby De Niro.

And, you know, it was a great success for AIP.

And AIP wanted another woman gangster movie.

And so I found this book.

It was the story of a woman

who'd been something of a tramp, a hobo,

had ridden the boxcars of the rail roads

of the United States during the Depression.

It was her story as a rebel,

as a pre-feminist, as it were,

and as an outlaw.

"Boxcar Bertha" the first picture

that Julie worked on with me as co-producer.

It was also the first picture that Marty Scorsese directed.

I met him and he said, "Look, I have a sequel to 'Bloody Mama.'

It's called 'Boxcar Bertha.' Would you be interested in doing it?"

I said, "Absolutely," you know.

And "Bloody Mama" actually had De Niro in it, see?

By the time we got to Camden, Arkansas,

Marty had sketched every shot of the picture,

which was all over the walls of his motel room.

I took out all these drawings, about 500.

And he looked at the first 20 or 30 or something.

And then he looked, he said, "Did you do this for the entire picture?"

I said, "Yeah." He said, "All right."

He put it away and he left.

Run, Bertha!

God damn that bitch.

The thing that Roger hated was

when Sam Arkoff came in--

'cause he needed Sam because the budget was too big for him.

And then Sam kind of took over

and masterminded the release

in a way that Roger didn't like.

And Roger said, "I'm never gonna do this again."

And that's when he formed New World

and he went back to making $25,000 movies

and worked his way back up again

just simply so that nobody could tell him, you know,

how he should cut his movie or how he should release it.

Roger somehow

is fueled by

outwitting, I would say,

even more than rebelling against, authority.

He was that way with AIP.

I think, actually, it brings out his creativity and his drive.

It just seems to fire him up

to just show them

that he will do it himself.

He doesn't need them to tell him how to do it or what to do.

I decided to start a small production/dtstrtbution company,

a little bit the way AIP had started in the late 1950s.

Roger is a brilliant producer

in terms of knowing what the market is,

anticipating the trends and then capitalizing on them.

He was a trendsetter for years. I mean, he--

in the '60s he set every trend.

He has the idea-

the original idea for almost all the films

that are produced by New World Pictures.

He had a somewhat finite audience.

They weren't expecting things to be held over.

You know, things played for two weeks in the grindhouses

and a couple weeks at the drive-in

and then a new thing came in.

But within that, you were gonna have

a very loyal audience of young people.

Hollywood Boulevard- the street where starlets are made.

On Monday Candy came to Hollywood.

On Tuesday she lost her blouse.

On Thursday she massacred 300 rebel soldiers.

On Friday she found out the bullets were real.

On Saturday she married Godzilla.

By Sunday she was a star.

Things happen fast on Hollywood Boulevard.

Rated R.

♪ Hello, Hollywood. ♪

The fact that the rating system came in was a tremendous change.

Now you were allowed to do things in movies

that you hadn't been allowed to do before.

You were allowed to show things.

What they did to her in Jackson County was a crime.

Yvette Mimieux.

"Jackson County Jail,"

where the cops make their own laws

and the only way out is murder.

We're cop killers.

There are '70s exploitation pictures that are really out there.

I mean, they have plot twists

that are like, "Whoa, I didn't see that coming.

I didn't think people did that in the movies."

Woman was made for man

to hunt.

Roger certainly took amazing advantage of that.

Hunters competing for the game.

Set your sights on the tastiest game,

from New World Pictures.

Roger's operation

is an exploitation operation on almost every level.

He exploits directors. He exploits writers.

He exploits people in the crafts who are trying to get established.

But we are also exploiting Roger.

I think he had a lot of fun

working with these young people.

And so it was often known as, you know,

the Corman school of filmmaking.

The first time I met Roger,

this crazy Roger Corman-y thing happened

where he said, "Okay, you can write press releases.

Do you think you could write a screenplay?"

And this had never really occurred to me,

but I said, "Yes."

And he said, "Let me explain.

I'm starting a new company.

It's called New World Pictures.

I need a bunch of pictures to go into the works very soon."

He wanted a nurse movie,

but he also wanted to crossbreed it with a prison movie.

Four American nurses, snatched

from their work in a foreign hospital,

jumped in the jungle,

caught between a kill-crazed revolutionary

and a sex-crazed major.

Roger says, "Exploitation pictures don't need plots.

But they need sensational things

like girls shooting Filipinos out of trees.

That works."

In New World-- they very often go back

and add action to a picture.

'Cause you'll see how a rough cut plays,

and Roger almost always wants you to add

another chase or at least another explosion.

♪ Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school ♪

♪ Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll high school. ♪

"Rock 'N' Roll High School"-

the school where the students rule.

Could your school be next?

We knew the genre notes that we had to hit.

And if we hit those notes,

what we put in between those notes was entirely up to us.

"Grand Theft Auto"

is a love story

with cars.

Also it's a comedy...

...with car crashes.

"Grand Theft Auto,"

directed by and starring Ron Howard.

Well, hell.

We had a very limited number of extras that we were allowed to have

at the big demolition derby climactic action scenes.

And I called Roger

asking for more extras to fill out the stands,

'cause, I said, "This is supposed to be this huge event.

There's a big riot at the end. You know, 75 extras

is gonna fill exactly, you know,

1/10 of the stands. It's gonna look cheesy."

And he said no. And he could see I was dejected.

And he smiled

and he put his hand on my shoulder in a kind of fatherly way.

And he said, "Ron, here's what you need to understand.

You do a good job for me on my terms

on this movie,

and you never have to work for me again."

And, well, I didn't.

I certainly wish

that Roger would move out of the formula film--

the exploitation film.

I guess that he just feels that as long as he's investing his own money

that he wants it to be surefire.

In "Death Race" at the very beginning behind us,

there's a city of the future.

And it is so obviously a painting.

It's almost a cartoon.

And I said that to him and he said,

"People come to my pictures looking for camp.

And I'm going to give it to them."

If he just violated this rule of his

of never making a movie

that cost more than $1 million, you know,

and make one for $1.5 million or $2 million--

I said, "Look, all your pictures make money.

None of them go through the top."

And he said, "Yeah, that's true."

And then he went over and turned off the air conditioner.

Sometimes the movies were really dreadful

and you had to just sort of camp them up and make fun of them.

- "Cover Girl Models." - And we did-- by the time

we got to "Cover Girl Models," we were doing outrageous ad lines-

you know, "They don't need clothes to strike a pose";

"They're always overexposed but they're never underdeveloped"--

to the point where the pictures looked like jokes.

They didn't look like they were real movies.

They're like movies in the front of "Tropic Thunder."

They just didn't look real.

But the audiences never minded. They were happy.

The limitations of a low-budget film can work positively

in terms of getting something spontaneous.

There's no time for rehearsal.

There's no time for extended discussions

of motivation and character and so forth.

And indeed there aren't many characters or motivations in any of the films.

You'll never be a star now, you little cunt.

The great thing about working for Roger was

that every possible obstacle

to making a movie was thrown in front of you.

Beverly Hills police.

And if you could figure out a way to get around them,

you could make your movie.

At the end credits of "Hollywood Boulevard,"

that background shot was shot

while the camera crew was hiding in the bushes

and I was talking to the Beverly Hills police

and explaining that I was just out here admiring the scenery.

And they said, "Well, get back in your car and drive down the hill."

It's not as bad as John Davis and having to spend the night in jail

while making "Fly Me," though.

I think when he called Roger and he said, "I'm in jail,"

I think Roger said, "Well, you know, that's a good experience.

You should learn from this."

Blossom, honey.

You philandering, fornicating bastard,

you went off with that skinny honky for two days

and gonna come back here and call me honey?

Now wait a minute, Blossom, honey.

I told you I was gonna cut it off if you tried to pull that shit on me.

We called it "make do."

You know, whatever you can do to make do, that's what we did.

And from it, I lived through my stunts.

I look back at it-- would I do them again?

Yes, but more padding on the head.

Not a lot of women wanted to do stunts.

All right, everybody, back 'em up.

And they couldn't handle guns. They were afraid of guns.

Sit down on the floor.

Where do you want to be buried, nigger?

And it's Miss Nigger to you.

And there weren't a lot of women who wanted to be

tossed around the room or thrown over a cliff.

And he said, "Let's keep her doing movies.

She loves to do crazy stuff. Let's set her on fire."

You know, "How many cars can she crash today?"

They loved that.

He could talk you into, you know, buying some sand in a desert.

Hey, and it'll taste good, too.

I'm like, "Excuse me,

did I just buy this glass of sand from Roger?"

"The Final Comedown"--

this year's heaviest motion picture.

Baby, I'm not bitter. I was bitter 350 years ago.

I'm violent, you hear me, God damn it? Violent!

Get hip to this year's winner--

the fight you've been dying for.

Rated R, it's a mother.

Dig it.

I did bring "Mean Streets" first to Roger.

And it was the beginning of the Blaxploitation pictures.

And he said, "So the story is interesting and everything.

It's really interesting. I can give you

a couple hundred thousand dollars to do it,

but if you could swing a little bit

and make it black,

it might be-- we might have something here."

So I thought about it. I said, "Okay, let me think about it."

I wouldn't say no. I always say yes to these things.

And I walked out and realized my heart sank

because I realized, no, they're Italian-Americans.

That's the part of the cultural thing. It's Sicilians and Neapolitans

and ancient code that goes back to the medieval times.

You're a fucking jerk-off.

And I'll tell you something else, Mikey-

I fuck you right where you breathe,

'cause I don't give two shits about you or nobody else.

I said, "That's-- totally not. I'm not gonna be able to do it."

But because of "Boxcar Bertha"

and because of the group that worked on the film,

I learned how to make the picture within a certain amount of time.

And we were able to take the same principles

that we applied to "Boxcar Bertha" and use them for "Mean Streets."

We wound up shooting most of it in Los Angeles

because we had that crew and the Corman crew knew how to work.

Roger's own personal taste in pictures

is very different from the type of pictures that he makes.

And also his taste in directors

tends towards Antonioni and Bergman.

Most of our films are domestic.

However, we do distribute a number of foreign films--

Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut,

now Kurosawa and a number of others.

Roger had a lot of connections

and he had his own distribution company.

And when the majors started to give up on foreign films,

Roger talked people like Ingmar Bergman and Fellini into--

"I can get your picture on screens

that have never run a movie of yours,

because I have a different audience

and a different way of selling the movie."

And they all signed off on it.

Ingmar Bergman was a seminal influence on Roger as a director.

"Cries and Whispers" did extremely well

and Ingmar Bergman was very pleased.

And then Roger being Roger, he had the idea

to distribute it in drive-ins.

And that's what he did.

No one else had ever been able to do that before, and probably not since.

That was something new for Roger,

to have such prestige people associated with him.

And it just went from there.

Roger, when he formed New World Pictures,

was the first company that was completely bifurcated.

In other words, in one direction they were doing exploitation films,

but in the other direction they were doing

the best foreign-language films that were out there at that time.

The money is secondary

in that particular area.

It's because I feel these films should get

to a larger audience than they do.

The new Fellini--

"Amarcord."

The company is building very rapidly,

which takes a lot of time.

My wife and I have had three children

in three consecutive summers,

which takes a certain amount of time.

We would go home in the evening

and talk about the problems of the day.

Then there got to be a time

when we, like, just didn't talk about what had happened during the day.

But it got to be a little embarrassing

because Roger didn't really know what all I was doing

and I didn't really know what all he was doing.

And I said, "Look, Roger, it's very embarrassing

when people say, 'What movies is Roger making?'

and I don't know. You know, it is our company,

but there's what you're making and what I'm making."

And so he said, "Well, I'll tell you what I'm making."

He said, "I'm making 12 films."

And he couldn't remember the last two.

So he said, "Well, whatever they are, I'm gonna cancel them."

You had made a statement to the press

that you were getting out of exploitation films

and into higher-budget films. What brought you back into it?

In my last years as a director,

I was climbing out of the low-budget field

and was doing more expensive films,

but when I started my own company,

which was financed essentially out of my own savings,

I was forced back to low-budget films

because those were all I could afford.

New World has had several profitable years

and we're now starting to make more expensive films

and we're climbing once more.

Roger's had such success with New World Pictures

in the past couple of years that now

people are dying to invest in his movies.

And if a script is going around town which has his endorsement on it

and a promise that he will distribute it, you're in fabulous shape.

There's an old story about

the producer with a successful Broadway play.

And his friend comes to him and says,

"Here's the way we can fix the second act."

And the producer says, "Never -- around with a winner."

Roger came bounding up the stairs.

And he said,

"Ron, you're here. Have you heard the news?"

I said, "No." "Great news:

'Grand Theft Auto'--"

which was a very successful movie for him--

"'Grand Theft Auto' just sold to CBS.

It's the first time we've ever sold a movie to the networks-

for $1.1 million."

And I said, "Well, that's great, Roger."

He said, "It's fantastic.

That makes your 7.5% look awfully good."

'Cause I had a little profit participation in "Grand Theft Auto."

I said, "Yeah, it does." He said,

"it makes my 92.5% look goddamn wonderful."

There is a creature alive today.

It lives to kill--

a mindless eating machine.

It is as if God

created the devil

and gave him jaws.

The blockbuster movie of the summer is "Jaws,"

the tale of a murderous white shark...

The record-breaking box office receipts created by "Jaws"...

- ...the movie "Jaws." - Some people who have seen it

are now seeing phantom sharks every time...

- Steven Spielberg... - "Time Magazine" seldom...

- When that movie was released...

See it before you go swimming.

When Steven Spielberg made "Jaws,"

he took a very Cormanesque idea- you know, the killer shark.

I mean, it doesn't get any more Corman than that--

killer shark eating naked girls as they go skinny-dipping.

Once people got a taste of movies like "Jaws,"

they really didn't want the drive-in movies anymore.

They stopped going

They wanted to go to the theaters

and be part of some cultural phenomenon

that everyone was talking about and everyone was going to see.

And it wasn't about taking your girl to the drive-in.

And then everything kind of changed

- on the day "Star Wars" came out. - Yeah.

We went to an 11:00 show right over at the Chinese

and it was extraordinary.

- When these lines appeared... - Yeah.

...everybody was astounded. I mean, they couldn't understand.

"Jaws"-- it was like, okay, it's a best-seller and we sort of know

that's gonna make a lot of money. But "Star Wars" came from nowhere.

And all of a sudden this gigantic change happened.

It was just like the "Easy Rider" change.

It was like going to a revival meeting. That first screening just was amazing.

When I saw "Star Wars"

I said, "This is a threat to me

because it means that the major studios

are beginning to understand what we've been doing

for $100,000 or so

and they're now doing it for multi-millions of dollars.

And it's going to be very difficult for us to compete."

I felt the major studios

are hitting straight into

what has been my bread and butter

for 20 years

and also the staple of many of my compatriots.

"Jaws" and then "Star Wars"

set a whole new standard.

I mean, just the bar got set higher.

You couldn't really get away

with doing cheap science fiction films anymore.

I hated "Star Wars."

If "Star Wars" doesn't make a ton of cabbage,

you know, we'd still be having

these weird green flashing lines going across the screen.

All these guys are coming from film school.

We're all coming from, "Let us get a job."

He did it first with horror pictures,

with science fiction pictures which he did for no money

and, you know, quickly and unpretentiously.

That's who we are today.

And I miss the Roger Corman versions.

What we see now is the tent poles of the studios.

The summer and Christmas tent poles

are very often films that could have been done

by Roger Corman at a much smaller budget.

But those are the films now that are attracting

the top filmmakers and the biggest budgets.

And what has the wonderful revolution done

for independence of filmmaking?

Well, we make 12 circuses a year and very few movies.

When you read that a picture cost $35 million to make,

what do you think of that cost?

Actually I think it's wrong.

I think the artist should be able to express himself

for less money than that.

And the businessman should be able to invest his money better.

I think from both an artistic and a commercial standpoint,

it is wrong to spend that much money. And in addition,

I think there are better things to do with the money in our society.

- For example? - You could-

for $30 million or $40 million,

which is what some of these films are costing,

you could rebuild a portion of the slums of a city,

- just as one example. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

So you think it's obscene to spend that much money.

Yes, I would use that word.

Once the "Star Wars" juggernaut thing happened

and the idea that everything had to be an event movie,

it just became difficult. The business changed.

He ended up having to go direct to video with a lot of the stuff.

There's just 100 billion shelves with 100 billion DVDs

and it's very hard to stick out.

He switched over to making slasher movies.

And that was a very limited genre, so it was harder

to make something that was interesting in that genre.

I met him at a dinner party in New York in the early '30s.

And I said, "Aren't you gonna do any more?

Are you gonna direct a few more?"

He said, "I don't think so. The whole scene is changing-

screwdrivers going into people's heads.

It just doesn't-- it doesn't-- I don't belong there anymore."

I think he's become more obscure.

And I think that's too bad, because I think

he really has a very important legacy in Hollywood.

When a lot of his stuff went straight to DVD,

I think he lost a little bit of his mystique and cachet.

If you walked up to any

20, 25-year-old film buff

and asked if they knew who Roger was,

I think unfortunately they probably don't.

Gosh, I mean, how many other people

have made 400-- 335 movies, you know?

If he hadn't done seven million other pictures,

he'd have the same reputation

as any of the other artistes.

Are the people with whom you've worked over the years

still friendly with you? Do they like you?

Do they call you on the phone now and again and say,

"Hi, Roger. How is it going?"

I think so. I still talk with them. Careers move in different directions,

but most of them are still friends of mine.

They use words with you like, forgive me, "the schlockmeister."

Does that bother you when they say those things?

- Yes. - Does it?

- Yeah, it bothers me, right. - It should. You're just trying...

Roger Corman made it okay for all of us

to make exploitation movies.

He showed that you shouldn't be embarrassed.

There's nothing wrong with you for loving a movie like "Piranha."

That it doesn't mean that you're stupid

for loving a movie that seems like a stupid exploitation movie.

And that a lot of these films are very smart,

made with lots of intelligence

and that it's okay to have fun at the movies.

I think it's very important

to let the generation of today know who he is.

We all-- we knew it almost 40 years ago.

So it's time to reintroduce him as a director,

but also what he represents of American entertainment.

He represents a side of Hollywood

sort of unto his own, you know.

You know, there are a lot of Samuel Goldwyns,

a lot of Irving Thalbergs. There's really only one Roger Corman.

That style of filmmaking,

that attitude, that approach to filmmaking

really is unparalleled.

You know, I know it's right to have the tie hand-tied,

but frankly the pre-tied ties

look better because they're perfect.

I guess the whole idea is if it's slightly imperfect,

it's considered to be handmade.

Yes.

There's delight in disorder.

Right.

Now...

- There you go. - Okay.

We're gonna give the Lifetime Achievement Award

to Roger Corman.

And they've asked me to be part of it.

I got to call him. And I said to him,

"The board of governors of the Motion Picture Academy

has voted to give you an honorary Oscar

for your life achievement."

And there was silence. He wasn't--

He goes, "Excuse me? That's unbelievable."

The funny part is, of course, that Roger is,

you know, the ultimate fierce independent.

So I told him, "Yes," I said,

"I know when you get up there, you're really gonna stick it to The Man."

Roger, if you could stand,

I'd like to offer you a toast.

For all your

progressive influence

in our medium

and for our industry,

it's our honor to salute you tonight, Roger.

- Hear, hear.

The Academy thanks you.

Hollywood thanks you.

Independent filmmaking thanks you.

But most importantly,

for all the wild, weird,

cool, crazy moments you've put on the drive-in screens,

the movie lovers of the planet Earth thank you.

He is one of the finest personages in our field.

Roger, please come up to accept your Oscar.

Needless to say, I'm delighted

to accept this Oscar personally,

but I'd also like to accept it on behalf of my wife Julie,

- who's been my--

--my producing partner for many years.

I think that to succeed in this world

you have to take chances.

I believe the finest films being done today

are done by the original,

innovative filmmakers

who have the courage

to take a chance and to gamble.

So I say to you.

Keep gambling. Keep taking chances.

- Thank you.

When I think of sort of sublime moments

in my professional life,

I think of winning an Academy Award,

and right next to it

is the wrap party for "Grand Theft Auto."

Actually everybody grab for it.

I'd always dreamed of making a movie

and Roger let me make a movie.

And not only did I make it,

I loved it more than I ever dreamed I might.

Is this sort of like the way you get an honorary degree at Harvard?

Am I an honorary member

of the Roger Corman school of filmmaking?

You know, I don't know.

I'm actually a little tongue-tied when I'm with Roger.

I just have-

you know, we're completely different kind of people.

And I have such respect for him.

You know, every once in a while

Roger would come to my rescue pretty much,

you know, when things were- nothing was happening.

My husband left me and the phone stopped ringing,

but the only person who called me was Roger.

And he said, "You can direct a picture any time you want.

I'll produce it for you."

So he's the only person who called me.

We'll put them on our Facebook pages.

I mean, there's nobody in there

that he didn't in the most important way support.

He was, you know, my main connec--

my lifeblood

to whatever I thought I was gonna be

as a person.

And, you know, I hope he knows

that this is not all hot air.

I'm gonna cry now.

Not just me, who's very sentimental,

but these other people also love him.

Sorry.

Mike, I've just gotten off the phone with Syfy.

They're very worried about the climax of the script.

They believe the Mayan dance sequence

in the jungle is not big enough.

I'm going to make the stage bigger

and bring in almost a Mayan village rather than a temple.

He wants to stay in the game.

To some extent, he does see

making movies as a game,

a game that you can win or lose.

And staying in means that you're winning.

These are for "Splatter."

- Oh, for "Splatter," okay. - Yes.

He really epitomized what's wonderful about the American dream-

that you can succeed no matter what.

Even if you fail, you can reinvent yourself.

If you love it and you're allowed to keep working,

or you have the energy to keep working, as Roger does,

there is no retirement age.

No one kind of gives you your gold watch

and tells you to go home because your career's over.

Let's go back.

Cut on the frame after she exits the shot--

bam! right there.

There's an Arab maxim, which is,

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

And this is Roger to me, as the caravan, you know.

He's making the decision and moving forward.

And you're saying, "But wait a minute,

you haven't thought about what the actors will think.

And what about if the truck isn't available?"

"We're gonna shoot this here now."

Consider yourselves officially enrolled in Rock 'n' Roll High School.

The facilities are yours. Do whatever you want.

What the hell?

- Sir. - Excuse me, I'm on the phone.

- The piranhas. - What about the goddamn piranhas?

They're eating the guests, sir.

Hey, quiet. Quiet, everybody. Listen. Quiet.