Face to Face - Roger Corman

[Music] roger corman you've made over 200 films you've been reviled as a peddler of exploitative trash you've been hailed and admired as a witty satirist you've given an awful lot of people an awful lot of pleasure what are the trademarks of a roger corman film i don't know if there's any conscious trademark but there's certain ingredients certain elements i try to work with first i try to make a film that will be interesting to me i feel if it's interesting to me maybe it'll be interesting to somebody else next i look for energy i'm willing to do almost anything in a film except for the audience do you find your subjects in books or in life or in scripts or what i find my subjects everywhere sometimes they'll come from a book sometimes they'll come from life for instance the poe series the edgar allan poe films all came from the works of edgar allan poe when i did films like the wild angels in the trip they came out of the headlines i read about things in the newspapers other things come from ideas within me occasionally i will buy a screenplay but most of the projects i will create from an idea i get from somewhere action humor sex a touch of social comment sometimes what are they what's the most important of those ingredients they're all they're all important i don't know if i would pick one over the other uh probably is the sex more important than the social comment well i work let me let me come at that a little bit indirectly all of those are important but when you mention the social comment i try to work on two levels on the surface i will do a film that is advertised as an entertainment and i hope will be in entertainment the audience will come they will see the film they will enjoy it on a beneath the surface or subtextual level there will be some comment that is meaningful to me maybe it will be meaningful to the audience maybe they won't even notice it but i try to give the audience that added bonus if they come to see a comedy it'll be a comedy but it'll have some thought behind it is a horror film there may well be some thought behind it as well what audience do you aim at have you a particular audience in mind have you had a particular audience in mind for many of your movies the audience for me is changing a little bit in the past i was appealing primarily to a young audience say 15 to 30 something like that today i'm making my films for a slightly older audience it may be that i'm getting slightly older but i think the audience the demographics in the united states and in most of europe as well the average age is increasing we find that our films are playing how should i say it only a portion of their playing time is now given over to theaters video cassettes pay tv free television take a large proportion of the playing time of the film and the audience there is older than the theater audience so we make our films accordingly okay but what does that accordingly mean what's the difference between making a film for a young audience for an older audience it may be that the thoughts the concepts within the films are a little bit different my current film frankenstein unbound has an older leading man john hurt than say when i did the wild angels with peter fonda and bruce stern of the trip with peter and dennis hopper for instance in the wild angels my leading man was uh was peter fonda and frankenstein unbound my leading lady is bridget fonda peter's daughter so we move with the generations here but i mean when you talk about making movies for a young audience a lot of that young audience had assembled uh with partners of i suppose mostly the opposite sex but perhaps also for the same sex in a in a in a motor car at a drive-in with a bag of popcorn and a can of goodness knows what to to watch the movie were they really watching the movie or were they just having fun and your movie was part of that fun i think it was an experience of which the movie was only part or it was i would hope uh the largest part uh the drive-in phenomenon has pretty much ended in the united states which was the only country where it was really important for a variety of reasons there are very few drive-ins left so that audiences but it was once an important audience for you yes i would say in the 50s and 60s the drive-ins audience for us was probably 30 to 40 percent of the of the total audience with that audience in mind i mean what uh how did how did that shape the movie well for instance um i did uh the first film with jack nicholson called the crybaby killer which was about a teenage boy who holds up in a drive-in as a matter of fact with hostages and is frightened as to what he's done today i probably wouldn't do such a film if i did a film about a killer uh holding up uh or holding up some place uh he probably would be a little bit older i think i know why people enjoy laughing at a movie uh i'm never sure that i've properly understood why people enjoy being frightened at a movie can you explain that i think uh the concept of being entertained by horror has been with us always beowulf was i believe as long time ago since i studied english literature it was the first uh long-form english english narrative which in part is a horror film the monster grendel is there i think it goes back to our unconscious mind what i try to do is to break through the barriers of the conscious mind and attack the fears the fantasies of the unconscious and i think the people reasoning the reason people enjoy this is these fears are in everybody we give them the chance to relive the fear and they come out whole they're alive at the end they have conquered the fear and any time you can conquer some fear or some problem within you it's exciting while you're doing it and it's a sense of triumph at the end that's if you're identifying in the movie as i guess many people do with the victim i mean and shrinking with terror when they shrink with terror do you think other people in the audience identify with the terrorizer and and act out fantasies of aggression that in their ordinary lives they can't i think they probably do i would hope the majority is not with the aggressor but for the that minority that is with the aggressor they lose in the end we teach them that crime or aggression does not pay except in one film i did a creature from the haunted sea i was so tired of always killing the monster a creature from the haunted sea had to do with an underwater treasure and a number of people who were going after it it was actually a comedy horror film the last scene in the picture showed and i wrote the whole film to lead up to this last scene the monster is sitting on the treasure picking his teeth at the bottom of the ocean and the corpses and skeletons of all the people who are in the picture are scattered around them that was the only time we had the monster win did you ever want to do that again actually i'd like to do it again but i figured one time it's a long time ago maybe i could try it once swamp woman she gods of shark reef a bucket of blood are you wallowing in a genre in making movies like that or are you perhaps sending sending it up just a little in those films a particularly bucket of blood uh which was a precursor to a little shop of horrors they were deliberately comedy horror films uh humor was the whole point of it and the titles we hoped what we were trying to do is to push the title so far that the audience would know that we were not serious how important is it that a film should make money it's quite important i'm tempted to say vitally important for me it's extremely important because i have my own company and it's privately held i'm not a my company is not a publicly held company so if i'm to continue in business and continue making films my pictures must make money so that i can come back to make another one if you're making a film for a large corporation the need to make money is possibly a little bit less and i envy to a large extent the european filmmakers who are able to work with government subsidies where the need to make money uh is not important at all uh the government recognizes films as an art form and is willing to subsidize them something the american government has never done but do you recognize film as an art form yes i think film is a corrupted art form therefore i would say it is the art form of the 20th century have any of your movies ever lost money yes i've lost a couple of times i have a autobiography coming out sometime this fall i think and the publishers for reasons best known to them have given it the title if i can remember it how i made a hundred films and never lost a dime and i pointed out to him i've made over 200 films and i've lost uh at least 10 12 times out of that 200 i have lost money intruder which was in a picture that was important to you didn't do well did that worry you at the time yes uh it bothered me a great deal at that time i had never made a film that had lost money i forgotten what it what number it was it was 18 or 19 consecutive of successful films and the intruder while i won a couple of awards at some minor film festivals and got wonderful reviews it was the new york herald tribune this is still in my mind after all those years that this motion picture is an important credit to the entire american film industry and it was the first film i ever made that lost money when you talked about film as an art for corrupted art though i was really wondering whether there was some aspect of filmmaking that you'd had to deny yourself as a producer or director or a director because of this need uh to make money i mean do you feel that your movies would have been different if that imperative hadn't been there yes my movies probably would have been a different the intruder which had to do with racial integration in the american south uh was the type of film i wanted to do when the picture lost money and therefore i lost money i pulled back i tried to analyze what had taken place and i felt that to a certain extent my message as it were had taken precedence over the entertainment value of the film so i've tried to do a different type of film since then a film as i say that on the surface will be an entertainment and under the surface if there is some message it'll be a message that's meaningful to me but only slightly accessible to the audience or the audience need not feel they're being preached at which of your films are you most proud of i've been asked that before and i don't know uh one day i'll say this picture another day i'll say that picture another day i'll say i don't like any of them but for today maybe the intruder maybe one of the po films the fall of the house of usher the pit and the pendulum the mask of the red death in the 60s 60s i did some films based upon the kind of social upheaval of the time the trip and the wild angels uh come to mind uh i don't know which was the worst one the worst one um probably a picture i made called gas it was a great idea uh it was uh it was at the height of the vietnam war and a lieutenant i forgotten his name had destroyed a vietnam village and when asked why he said it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it so the title of my film was gas or how it became necessary to destroy the world in order to save it and it started out to be a wild comedy with some sort of a thought behind it but i went into production without a finished script and for all the filmmakers out there i will say there is one rule as far as i know and that is make certain you have a finished script before you start shooting you grew up in hollywood did you always want to direct movies no my father had been an engineer and i graduated from university with a degree in engineering i worked four days for u.s electrical motors and said that's it i can't come in friday and i left and it may well be that having gone to school with the sons and daughters of people in the film industry and being close to it my mind was starting to move in that direction i then got a job at 20th century fox's a messenger and worked my way up to the story department and one thing another and eventually wrote and made my own films but it's interesting you were saying that i mean you're not saying that you ever saw a movie that made you think i want to be a movie maker you're saying that because you lived in a part of the world that made movies you almost naturally gravitated into making movies is that right it's that's right but i think also i was increasingly impressed by the films the better films i was seeing so i became intrigued fascinated possibly eventually obsessed by the film medium and at the same time i was in the fortunate position of being at least part of it or on the periphery of it what have been the important influences in your in your early life were your parents important to you yes i would think my parents were important my father was a successful engineer my mother came from a rather strict germanic background her both her parents were born in germany and i think the combination of a kind of german catholic background from my mother and a kind of free thinking intellectual quest of my father may have shaped me in some way did you read books as a child yes i read a great deal matter of fact uh my mother occasionally would say you reading too much do something else are you from a tv generation of children was that television in your home no my generation was before television so a television benefit didn't affect me at all i see my children watching television and i tell them they watch too much television they should read books and these kids are pretty savvy they will say to me television is to us what books are were to you and i'm and i'm trying to find a way to defeat that uh that concept did you go to the movies as a young boy as a young man yes uh i went to the movies uh with my friends the saturday matinees were our general way of seeing films you mentioned earlier that you studied english briefly at oxford does that still mean much to you or anything to you uh yes it was mostly the experience i liked the the idea of playing tennis in the lawn of saint hilda's and having tea afterwards i was at oxford for just a short period of time so i can't claim too much of an education there but what i did learn gave me probably uh a greater recognition and feeling for the backgrounds of literature of today at that time their concept of english literature stopped somewhere in the 1920s the feeling was that to discuss and study later work was premature that the critical concepts of those films had not yet been formed in your movie-making career and particularly as a producer you have a quite extraordinary reputation for having spotted young talent and given a lot of that young talent sometimes acting talent nicholson and de niro directing talent like jonathan demi and martin scorsese their first chance what is it about a young director's work that catches your eye i look for several things in a young director when you gave those guys their chance by the way you had seen their work uh not always uh i had seen a student film from francis coppola i'd seen nothing from peter mcdonough i had seen nothing for marty scorsese jonathan demi had worked for me as a producer and as a writer and had shot some second unit work and based upon that so sometimes i'll see the work of a director and sometimes i'll just say okay i think you can do it and they come cheap uh comparatively so yes what do you look for in a script somebody puts a script in front of you generally the ideas behind the script the concept of the script is the most important thing to me then it's the way the ideas are express the structure of the script finally it will be the characters and the dialogue i feel that we can always if necessary go for a rewrite either with the writer hopefully with the original writer occasionally with a later writer to work with the characterization and the dialogue do you think most movies are visual enough are scripts written with enough of a of an eye to what people are actually going to see on the screen yes today they are very possibly overly so if you look at the quote great films of 30 40 50 years ago you'll find that very often they were not particularly visual films were still an outgrowth of the novel end of the stage today there's a recognition and has been for some time that films are a visual medium that recognition is carried sometimes to excess so you're seeing nothing but flashy images on the screen you said that when you were looking at a script you were looking for structure could you say a bit more than that are you actually looking for narrative are you looking for something that never lets up what is what really matters it's partially a narrative structure a plot but to a large extent an emotional structure layout as it were of the script that will build to peaks and valleys and hopefully the highest peak will be at the climax of the film but when i say structure i should also include with that the idea the concept the theme of the film and the way in which the structure embodies that thing why did you stop directing yourself i got tired i had directed something like 50 pictures in about 15 years one picture one year i think i directed six films and the last film i directed was von richthofen and brown in ireland and every day i would drive from dublin to the airport where we were shooting and there would be a fork in the road and would say one way to this airport the other way to galway bay and every morning i was tempted to drive to bal galway bay and say to hell with this i've had enough but i dutifully went to the airport and finished the film and i knew that i would stop for a little while my original plan was just to stop for one year take a rest the traditional sabbatical and come back but you went on to produce instead yes during that year i started my company new world pictures and became so involved with that that the year stretched on and i never did get around to directing again until last year when i did frankenstein on bob as a producer how much freedom do you allow a director i allow a director a great deal of freedom on the set in the pre-production stages however i will work closely with the director so that he and i are in agreement on the theme of the picture on the structure of the script on the casting on the way in which the picture will be made once we've agreed on those concepts i will then leave the director almost totally free to interpret them on the set as he wishes when you're going through the script with the director in that way are you suggesting a bit more action here an opportunity for violence there an opportunity for nudity in the in another scene i mean is that right people say that sometimes i will do that not always occasionally as with some of our wilder directors i will be saying let's pull this back a little bit maybe we're going too far here you have your conversation and he starts to shoot do you see rushes yes uh i make so many films now i've been averaging about 20 films a year for the past three years and we'll make about 20 again this year that i can't see the rushes of all of the films all of the time i will generally see the rushes of the first week of every film and then occasionally meanwhile i'll have other people looking at the rushes for me if you don't see something you don't like do you point this out to the director yes but i will not do it on the set when i first started producing and working with other directors i would go to the set to talk with the director and i found that people would turn to me rather than the director and i felt this was wrong so i will if i go to the studio i will talk to the director at lunch or while a shot is being set up but i believe that i should not infringe on the director's authority while shooting do you see a rough cut of the film or a fine cut or when do you see the film assembled we have developed and i say we because i have what i believe is a very good staff working with me we have a general procedure that we work with the editor makes the first assemblage with the director's notes while shooting so that within three or four at most five working days after the completion of the film the editor shows that assemblage to the director only neither i nor my staff go to that the director will then go through the picture one time himself and make his first director's cut at which point several people in my staff will screen it with him but i will not go to that screening he will make his second and sometimes his third director's cut and then i will come to the third fourth fifth screening and i will probably go to two or three screenings or cuts after that do you ever have to ask for things to be done again occasionally are we like because they're too strong or not strong enough um sometimes if it's uh if it's too strong you can cut it out it's not strong enough sometimes we will shoot but it's generally not for that uh it's generally for areas that we simply feel have not worked out well they've not really reached their fullest potential but i'd say we reshoot on no more than 20 to 30 percent of our films most of our films are cut and finished according to the way they were shot during production what ratio do you average do you allow a director that's it that's an interesting question because we do and one that's i think has almost never been asked me before because we do a lot of our work overseas and when we work as we do in south america and sometimes in the orient the ratio of film becomes very important because film with its various import duties in those countries is very expensive and south american directors that we work with such as lucho yosa in peru and hector oliveira in argentina shoot at a much lower ratio than american directors and the first time i sent an american director to argentina hector and the crew were appalled at the amount of film he was rolling through the cameras so we have said to our american directors shoot at a lower ratio and we said to hector and lucho feel free to run a little bit more film through than you normally do okay but what kind of ratio are we talking about okay uh we will generally say about eighty to a hundred thousand feet uh which would be a ratio of around ten to one would be what we'd be striving for that's uh fairly reasonable are you the producer responsible for the budget of the movie or is the director responsible to you for sticking to budget i feel it's a joint responsibility but the primary responsibility is the producers i will determine the budget with my production manager actually i should restate that i i will just determine the budget i will tell the production manager work with the production manager as to how we're to make the best film within that budget i will then say to the director don't worry too much about the budget you have this number of days you have a certain schedule you will have a certain amount of of sets we have this much to spend on the actors providing you stay within these areas that's all you have to do to concern yourself with the budget are producers more free in hollywood than our directors it varies from film to film uh sometimes the director will be the most important person other times the producer will be the most important important occasionally the star will be the most important i would say this however the producer is more important in the hollywood style of making films than he is in the european style do you regard yourself as conducting a typical hollywood operation or do you see yourself in contra distinction to the big studios we are definitely in contra distinction or opposition to the operation of the major studios we make our films for a fraction of the cost of major studios and we work in a totally independent fashion what's wrong with the big studios not as much as people think most of the big studios are profitable entities which is why they are there they make a reasonable number i think of good films their product the hollywood motion picture is the most popular motion picture in the world by far for instance a big problem in the united states now is our adverse trade balance few people know that the second biggest dollar earner in the united states of all industries are motion pictures and television aircraft is first motion pictures and television is second the financiers of new york and the industrialists of detroit and pittsburgh would be shocked to recognize that but it's true so hollywood is doing some things right on the other hand i think the preoccupation with the blockbuster with the film that will earn 100 million dollars has driven out a lot of more interesting smaller films more experimental films that could be made i think hollywood has a tendency to play it safe now to look for the big film and uh there's a certain amount of waste also involved in the bureaucracy are agents too powerful in hollywood agencies a few agencies probably are too powerful matter of fact i'll change that i know for a fact uh at least two agencies wield too much power and have damaged certain films do you want to name those i just assumed that you've given lots of opportunities to young talent as we said to beat the system as it were to give them a break what is it about the system that denies that talent its chance i don't think the system denies that talent its chance indefinitely i do think the good writers the good directors the good producers will emerge eventually and will show their talent and be recognized it's just that the machine as such is so monolithic it's hard to break in so what i'm able to do is work with talented young people and give them a chance a little bit earlier what's the funniest thing that's happened to you in your movie-making life i've never been asked that question and i'm not certain i have uh a ready answer i've had some mildly amusing things but this is a tough business and i don't know if i've ever had anything wildly funny what frightens you i think what frightens me is not that dissimilar to what frightens other people i think it is the the childhood fears the childhood fantasies bottled up somewhere in the back of my mind when i when most people were young we were afraid of stormy nights of thunder and lightning and possible monsters hiding underneath the bed our parents told us that this was nonsense there was nothing to be afraid of we knew very well there was a lot to be afraid of and i think those things are still buried within me as with others with me also there might be and i don't know how much this would be shared with other people there's probably a fear of lack of control a fear of controls being taken away from me a fear of being rendered helpless maybe part of my method of filmmaking is an ex way to conquer that to be an independent filmmaker both as a producer and a director so that i have my own company and am not under the the power of a major studio and probably some of the themes of my films express that to a certain extent who are the filmmakers you must admire most of the filmmakers i admire are are dead now i like very much the work of the russian director eisenstein of of john ford of hitchcock of howard hawks of the directors i admire today or the filmmakers today probably people who make film is very dissimilar from my films probably fellaini bergman of the directors closer to what i'm doing probably george lucas steven spielberg you were you talking about that some of those great masters is people making dissimilar films to the ones that you're doing have you ever wanted to join them somewhere yes go ahead i'm sorry do you see yourself as one of them no i don't uh i think these people were giants i think these were the great artists of the film i think of myself more as a craftsman maybe there's some element of art will come into my work but i try to make the best film i can under the circumstances on which i work some of those circumstances or difficulties might be self-imposed make them quick make them cheap make them popular has that been a satisfying life for you mildly satisfying i don't think anybody has a life that is completely satisfying but i'm moderately satisfied with my life how do you relax uh i relax to a certain extent with my family uh i still read a great deal i did play tennis until i hurt my elbow i do a lot of swimming a number of things what's left what's the what's the unrealized ambition probably to make films that will be a little bit more satisfying to me and i'm hoping that uh i will be able to do so in the future my company is built to the point where it has a little bit more solidity now we have more capital behind this we are a richer company than when we started so i can afford to experiment a little bit more than i have in the past in what way do you think movies will develop in a rapidly changing world with all sorts of different media upon us i think movies may diversify i think there's been this emphasis emphasis upon the 50 million dollar blockbuster i think with the rise of video cassettes with pay tv with syndicated television with uh free television in europe for instance europa has been the bastion of government television there will be more avenues for the film to be exhibited and as such i think or i would hope there'll be more freedom for the filmmaker so that you can make more interesting films on a limited budget but have ways in which to exploit those films you said earlier you thought perhaps some young would-be movie makers might be out there watching you as we talk if you had to give them one piece of advice as to how to get on in movies what would that advice be it would probably be two pieces of advice one would be to study films either to go to a film school or to look at films and read the body of critical work that has grown up around them so that you have a knowledge of films and second would be to get a job in the film or television industry in any way you can it's nice to say i will be a director i started as a messenger if you have to start as a messenger start as a messenger but do something to get into the industry because ability eventually will be recognized and you can work your way up [Music] you

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Length: 35min 24sec (2124 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 25 2017