How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime 0394569741, 9780394569741

Citation preview

How I Made a Hundred Movies

in

Hollywood

and Never tosf a Dime >^r

$18.95

fpt

"Amazing... a significant contribution to the history of American movies."

—Publishers Weekly

What

do Martin Scorsese, Peter Fonda,

Demme, common?

Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan

and Jack Nicholson have They, along with so

many

in

other Holly-

wood stars, had their starts with Roger Corman, one of the film world's most successful directors and entrepreneurs. Though he graduated from Stanford with a degree in engineering, Roger Corman long knew he wanted to be in pictures. And with such memorable titles as

The Little Shop of Horrors, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Viking Women, and The Beast with 1, 000, 000 Eyes, Corman carved a special niche for himself in the history of Hollywood cinema.

How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime details Corman's rise from Twentieth Century-Fox messenger to antistudio maverick and leading producer of low-budget "exploita-

tion" films. His success began in the

when he produced his first The Monster from the Ocean Floor, for $12,000. Like so many of his other movies that followed, he shot it in under a week, early 1950s film,

got excellent production values for the

money, and profit.

The

still

earned a substantial

trick: ruthless efficiency,

propriety-be-damned resourcefulness, a

sense of humor, and the best young (and hungriest) talent Hollywood could offer.

A

specific

Corman

style

emerged,

making him the darling

of film school

graduates, foreign

and American

critics,

audiences just out for a good time. I

continued on back flap)

4jow\ J K Lambert M s r'\s43* First Edition

To my

wife, Julie

and most valued

— my best

critic.

I

friend, strongest supporter,

love you.

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2012

http://www.archive.org/details/howimadehundredmOOcorm_0

—

Dnttoductlon My

career has been an anomaly in Hollywood. I have been called everything from the King of the B's to the Pope of Pop Cinema directing over 50 low-budget independent motion pictures, and producing and/or distributing another 250 for my own companies, New World Pictures and Concorde/New Horizons. While there's a tradition in Hollywood that no one sees profits on a movie no matter what the box office, I've seen profits on probably 280 of those 300-odd pictures. Despite their low budgets, my films have been shown at prestigious festivals, and I was the youngest director to have retrospectives at the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, the National Film Theatre in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While I produced R-rated exploitation films through the 1970s at New World, I also imported distinguished art films from abroad five of which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Over the years, the motion picture industry has undergone signif-

INTRODUCTION

viii

and economic shifts. Drive-ins, once a major outlet have given way to mall and urban multiplexes. The majors usurped the theatrical market in "exploitation" or "B" genres in the 1970s, throwing giant budgets, top stars and directors, and state-of-the-art high-tech effects at an idiom that had long been the humble domain of the "quickie" artists. As a result, the dominant ancillary market for low-budget features has evolved from TV in its early days to network, syndicated TV, pay TV, and home video. The breakup of the studios' "vertical" monopoly over production-distribution-exhibition in the late 1940s gradually opened up the field to independents. Through these years my company and I have changed with the times. We still stand as one of the leading independent production and distribution companies in the United States. Because of my notoriety as an "outlaw," a new generation of filmmakers, educated in the 1960s counterculture, saw me as an uncompromised artist/entrepreneur who got his own movies made outside the Establishment. They could learn from me not only the filmmaking skills of preparation, prelighting, dolly movements, "cutting in the camera," composition, and quick pacing; I also grounded them in marketing, advertising, and distribution. A Corman credit in the "minors" was their fastest path to the majors. In the early days, I directed Robert Towne's first script. Jack Nicholson appeared in eight of my films and I produced three of his screenplays before Hollywood "discovered" him in Easy Rider. Francis Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich started out by recutting and reworking Russian science fiction movies I acquired for release before I backed their first features. Dennis Hopper shot second unit for me on The Trip. But it was in the 1970s, when I grew tired of directing and created New World Pictures, that the "Corman School" became an alternative institute of independent filmmaking. Many of those New World "graduates" are powerful directors and producers today, with credits that have netted the majors hundreds of millions of dollars: Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Jonathan Kaplan, Allan Arkush, John Sayles, James Cameron, Jon Davison, Gale Anne Hurd, Frances Doel, and Barbara Boyle. never forgot how tough it had been for me to break in to the studio system in the early 1950s, when there were far fewer independents in business. I spent months looking around for work and still needed connections just to get hired as a messenger at Fox. My engineering background at Stanford helped anchor me in meticulous preparation and a passion for efficiency and discipline. I did many of my movies in one or two weeks for well under on. noo. On a bet, I shot Little Shop of Horrors in two days and a $ icant sociological for

I

1

my

films,

INTRODUCTION

night for $35,000. I decided to shoot half of The Terror in two days without a finished script simply because I hated to see the wonderful gothic sets for The Raven go to waste when we wrapped. I made two films at once, first in Hawaii and then again in Puerto Rico, to cut transportation costs. I hired Hell's Angels, along with their bikes and women, to lend realism to The Wild Angels in 1966, and a year later I dropped acid in Big Sur before making a film about the effects of

LSD, The

My

Trip.

seventeen pictures in a row were profitable until I lost art film about racial segregation called The Intruder. I learned my lesson and almost never lost money on a film again. I was even offered a job running a major studio, but the salary was less than I was making. I asked for total control and considered this nonnegotiable. The studio, of course, rejected my request. No single production executive ever has "total control" in the majors, which is why I have remained faithful to my maverick sensibility. Studios thrive on a committee approach that prevents anyone from concenfirst

money on an

trating

power

for too long.

As the head of my own company, I favor a small, loosely stratified office environment that rewards dedication and competence and resists excessive bureaucratization. Titles and job descriptions mean virtually nothing. There's an aura through the halls that everybody can and eventually will do everything. There is no room for prima donnas or political power plays. Three very successful filmmakers teamed up on their first feature at New World when my head of promotion, Jon Davison, bet me he could produce a film in ten days for under $90,000. He got my trailer editors, Allan Arkush and Joe Dante, to direct Hollywood Boulevard and won the bet. Examples like theirs still abound. We hired a gofer recently for a four-week shoot and by the end of the first week he had advanced to second assistant director. By the time we wrapped he was first a.d., and two pictures later I asked him to be production manager.

—

—

—

*

FRANCES DOEL

was Roger's

assistant and story editor for sixteen years and worked him probably longer than anyone. He had a most contradictory writing scripts and approach to delegating. On the creative side directing he would give tremendous responsibility to young people who basically had no idea what they were doing. And they would learn. But in terms of running the company, he found it very, very difficult, if I

for

—

—

not impossible, to delegate decision-making authority.

INTRODUCTION

x

There was never, for instance, in my entire time at New World, a staff meeting. Except once. That was when Barbara Boyle, Roger's vice president, counsel, and chief negotiator, pointed out that most other production-distribution companies and studios actually had staff meetings all the time. Roger was very reluctant to do anything like that, but she convinced him to try

it

once.

—

like instead of starting work on Monday morning and facing the horrific and impossible tasks Roger would ask you to handle alone, we'd have a group meeting. We were all there and he showed up. We asked Roger all kinds of questions. To which Roger responded by using mumbling, "I don't know," "We haven't made a decision yet" or he was silent. the royal corporate serious "we" The meeting lasted a whole twenty minutes and he didn't really answer one question. He was unwilling to indulge ever again in that kind of a) bureaucracy and b) waste of time.

This

was

a great novelty

—

—

*

JOHN SAYLES

When you're starting out, most screenwriters write a dozen things and two maybe get made. The important thing about Roger is that he makes movies he doesn't fuck around a lot. He just decides, "I'm going to pay somebody to write this movie and that means we are making it once the script is in as good a shape as we can for the money and time I've

—

wrote three screenplays for Roger and all three got why he is really so incredible. You get the learning, the writing, the story conferencing, and all that. But you also see the whole thing translated into a movie. Because of the smallness and directness mean, there was one boss, which was Roger you didn't go through a dozen subproducers to get to the guy who was going to say yes or no to a screenplay. With the studios, you're always campaigning for one guy so that he'll hand it off to the next guy, and the other guy might actually respond very differently. So you never really know who your audience is. Five or six people will filter your script through, whereas at New World there was Roger and there was Frances and that was it. So right away you got to talk to the people who were responsible for making your movie. did so many fewer drafts working for Roger than for other places, and as far as I'm concerned the extra drafts didn't make for a better set aside for it."

made

I

into movies. That's

—

—

I

I

movie.

were

It

was

just that other functionaries in the

getting to

lift

their leg

major studio process up on your work along the way.

— INTRODUCTION

For an independent,

to

make

a

movie and wait

to see

money

xi

is

a

can take, incredibly enough, up to a year for theater owners to get an independent's box-office figures on the books, even though they know to the dollar how much your film has taken in by the time the popcorn is swept up after the last show. strategy for demise.

It

more than once checks on the courthouse steps just before a hearing I know. As an attorney once told me, "At least the exhibitors build nice new theaters on the interest your money earns them." Still, I'd rather earn that interest myself. Very few independents control their own distribution. Even if you don't, the trick to remaining in business is to get advances from distributors so you can stay in production. I have been in production almost constantly since 1954. The first film I produced an underwater monster story cost $12,000 cash with a $5,000 deferment for lab costs and made a profit of $100,000. Before long I had an advance from that film's distributor, which financed my next picture. Then I signed a threepicture deal with what would become American International Pictures. With a steady cash flow fees, advances, profits on film rentals to reinvest in production, I was able, for example, to produce/ direct eight movies in one year in the late 1950s. The pace hasn't slackened. In 1987, 1988, and 1989 my company produced and released more than sixty films, topping any major studio's output for Having brought always getting

—

legal action against exhibitors

my

—

—

—

—

those three years. finding new markets and recouping have dominated the exploitation genres with budgets ten times higher than ours. I made movies about interplanetary adventures when George Lucas was still in grade school. And it was Vincent Canby of The New York Times who once wrote, "What is Jaws but a big-budget Roger Corman movie?" But when the Spielbergs and Lucases make technically exquisite genre films, they cut deeply into the box-office appeal of our kind of picture. The majors also send out 1,000 to 1,500 prints. No independent distributor can afford the prints and advertising of such a massive release. Also, with one-tenth the budget you're unavoidably getting far less production

The major challenge has been

costs while the majors

value.

So

in the late

1970s,

the emerging pay

TV

we had market.

to sell our films to the

Then we began

networks and

to presell the films

once we established a track record. This often allowed us to recoup our entire cost of production before shooting, as in the cases of Avalanche and Grand Theft Auto, both of which were sold to network

TV for more than $1 A few years later,

million.

even that market began

to

erode because the

cable and network markets wanted bigger-budget features. Audi-

xii

INTRODUCTION

ences were simply accustomed to science fiction, horror, or action/ adventure films with a Sio million or $20 million price tag or more. So I moved my company in the direction of home videocassette presales. I can supply main of the home video dealers by signing multipicture deals that guarantee me an ancillary source of cash for with a "limited" thevirtually every movie I produce or distribute

—

atrical

release that publicizes the cassette

reduces

my

releases and greatly

distribution costs.

have a track record of reliability and trustworthiness money for the video dealers. I remember one deal especially well. I was having lunch in Germany with an agent and I asked her, "Has anybody shot anything in English that I might pick up for U.S. distribution?" She mentioned a film about a rock musician that had been shot a few years earlier in Berlin but never finished. The role of the downand-out American rock promoter was played by Dennis Hopper. I watched half the film and she asked me what I thought. "It's not very good," I said. "It makes no sense at all, really, and you're right, it isn't even finished. I'll buy the American rights for fifty thousand It

in

helps that

I

delivering films that earn

dollars."

This offer startled her. "Roger," she said, "you can't buy a film for going up slightly in my final thousand dollars." But I did buy it

—

fifty

offer

— and went

to

work on

it

back

in L.A. I assigned the recutting

and finishing of the film to Rodman Flender, my head of advertising, who was in his mid-twenties. But we had two major problems: the film didn't hang together and the German producer hadn't paid Dennis all his money yet. But I saw a way out. A favorite device of mine when a film makes no sense is to add narration. Suddenly all the disconnected, incoherent scenes fit because you've created narration to match and explain them. I offered to pay Dennis the missing money owed him by the producer, and then deducted that money from the purchase price of the film. So I basically got Dennis to read the narration for free. We then cut in some American rock roll sequences from another film produced by my company and retitled Dennis's movie Let It Rock. All this took about two weeks and $20,000; my total investment w as still under $ 1 00,000. We sold the film to a home video firm with whom we had a multipicture deal. The price: $450,000. That's what is so amazing about film. There is always something there like a if you just find a way to rework, recut, reshoot. (50 percent profit That's where an independent filmmaker has a clear edge. Part of why Hollywood studio features average $20 million is the justifiable cost of making big pictures combined with supply and demand for fume box-office stars who command gigantic fees. But

V

—

—

INTRODUCTION

another part is simply inefficient or indulgent filmmaking. I can look at a movie with an ostensible $1 million budget and say whether the money was well spent or not. With a $30 million or $50 million picture, I have no frame of reference. Who can tell you what a $50 million picture is supposed to look like? Lucas's Star Wars money was brilliantly spent. It was on the screen. The fortunes spent on Heaven's Gate or Ishtar, for example, clearly were not. I remember shooting Atlas in Greece almost thirty years ago when

was staging the climactic battle in which Atlas leads the troops of Praximedes against the walled city of Thenis. I'd promised a contriI

bution to the Greek five

hundred

Army

Charity

soldiers for the battle.

Fund

On

in return for its

providing

the appointed day only

fifty

appeared. Possibly someone had misplaced a decimal point. The script called for Praximedes to overwhelm the outnumbered defenders with the size of his army. The only thing I could think of was to abandon my plans for large-scale panoramic shots and shoot the battle in a series of close action shots to hide the size of the army with a flurry of action on the screen. Before shooting I quickly wrote some new dialogue in which Atlas asked Praximedes how he hoped to conquer the city with such a small number of soldiers. Praximedes replied that in his theory of warfare a small band of efficient, dedicated, highly trained warriors could defeat any number of rabble. That's my theory of filmmaking.

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