Roger Corman, the Godfather of American independent film, is gone. He died at his home in Santa Monica, California, on May 9th. He was ninety-eight.
Legendary both for his cheapness (no one could squeeze more out of a budget than he could) and for his generosity (he gave countless actors, directors, writers, and technical people their first chance in Hollywood), Corman began his almost seventy-year long career in the mid 50’s by directing extremely low-budget movies for the fledgling American International Pictures, most of which were shot in one or two weeks for less than 100,000 dollars. Corman’s understanding of the necessity of ruthless economy on the one hand and of the appetites of his largely teen-aged audience on the other made these films highly successful, and during those early years, that success was perhaps the major factor in establishing AIP as an ongoing concern.
Even Corman’s cheapest, most hurried work showed a degree of innovation, imagination, and ambition that were unusual in low-budget films of that era, and he quickly graduated to somewhat more expensive pictures, the most celebrated of which are the eight visually flamboyant, wildly Freudian Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that he directed from 1961 to 1964, seven of which starred Vincent Price. The best of them are probably The Masque of the Red Death and The Tomb of Ligeia, both 1964; the first is my favorite of the Poe cycle and the second is Martin Scorsese’s. Between the two of us, you can’t go wrong.
Corman’s best-remembered movies are his many science fiction and horror offerings, but his restless, rebellious refusal to settle on any one thing led him to try his hand at almost every genre; in his fifteen years as an active director, western, sword-and-sandal, social problem, gangster, war, rock and roll, offbeat comedy and teenage delinquent films all received the Corman treatment.
In 1970, Corman left AIP and himself became a cut-rate mogul by founding New World Pictures. (The last straw was when the AIP brass changed the ending of his LSD movie The Trip without his consent; the ever-independent Corman vowed that he would never submit to such treatment again.) By this time he had largely stopped directing, contenting himself with acting as producer for a never-ending outpouring of exploitation fare, while at the same time using New World to import and distribute the best European art films (Fellini and Bergman were his personal favorites), a task which other studios had largely abandoned. He spent his last decades presiding over his low-budget empire as an increasingly revered elder statesman, a man who had been hugely important in the last three quarters of a century of American film, a period of movie history which would have been radically different without him.
Roger Corman’s place in that history is secure. He was a universally-acknowledged father of the “New Hollywood” that succeeded the decaying studio system in the 1960’s, because so many people who shaped that looser, freer, more independent and iconoclastic Hollywood came out of the so-called “School of Corman.”
Before he directed The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola directed Dementia 13 for Corman; before he wrote Chinatown, Robert Towne wrote The Last Woman on Earth for Corman; before he directed The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdonovich directed Targets for Corman; before he acted in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jack Nicholson acted in The Raven for Corman; before he directed Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese directed Boxcar Bertha for Corman. These examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely; Jonathan Demme, Robert DeNiro, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Joe Dante, John Sayles, James Cameron, Pam Grier, Dennis Hopper, Ron Howard — all got a hand up from Roger Corman. (Many of his alumni returned the favor by tapping him to act in their films; he lent his distinguished presence to The Godfather Part II, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, The Howling, and Apollo 13, among others.)
Corman’s importance was finally officially recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2009, when they awarded him an Oscar to honor his life’s work in both making films himself and in nurturing several generations of filmmakers; that night the establishment did homage to the insurgent, and everyone present seemed truly delighted.
Movie moguls are notoriously unlovable figures; when Columbia’s abrasive Harry Cohn died, a wit attending his funeral looked around at the packed church and quipped, “If you give the people what they want…” Roger Corman was a maverick in every way, though, and he even bucked the Harry Cohn Hollywood tradition — he died one of the most genuinely loved men in the business. In the terrific 2011 documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, David Carradine said,
I’m actually a little tongue-tied when I’m around Roger. I just have — you know, we’re completely different kinds of people, and I have such respect for him. You know, once in a while Roger would come to my rescue, pretty much, you know, when things were — nothing was happening.
Carradine also related a conversation that illustrates Corman’s… well, let’s not say economy or frugality — of the dead, nothing but the truth — it illustrates Corman’s cheapness:
If he just violated this rule of his of never making a movie that cost more than one million dollars, you know, make one for a million and a half or two million dollars, I said, “Look, all your movies 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.
Jack Nicholson also appears in Corman’s World, telling stories of the days when the world was young, and he breaks down in tears near the end, when he says this of his lifelong friend:
I mean, there’s nobody in there that he didn’t in the most important way support. He was, you know, my main connection — 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.
Speaking of when the world was young, Roger Corman was one of the last remaining links with a grindhouse, drive-in, weird movies-on-late-night-TV world that has vanished forever, never to return. I saw my first Corman movie, The Little Shop of Horrors, flickering on my television screen one midnight in the late 60’s or early 70’s; it was the beginning of a love affair that has lasted for over fifty years. One of the high points of my life was the time in high school when one of our local Los Angeles independent stations aired The Masque of the Red Death every night for an entire week. In those pre-home video days, it didn’t get any better than that.
Part of getting older is a growing familiarity with the world “without.” I now have to face — we all have to face — the world without Roger Corman. I can’t yet wrap my head around what that will be like, knowing that he’s not out there anymore. But I have his movies to get me through; they’re not going anywhere. Just a couple of weeks ago, a friend (a fellow Cormanite like myself — we’re everywhere, like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers) watched his wild beatnik satire A Bucket of Blood, and as we watched, in between our laughter, we continually remarked how good the movie was — how well shot, how well acted, how funny and lively and better than it had any right to be it was. That surprising quality wasn’t an accident — it was Roger Corman.
School ends for me in just a couple of weeks, and my summer vacation begins. I know how I’m going to spend it — I’m going to have a great big Roger Corman film festival. Come on by; I guarantee you’ll have a blast.
When Roger Corman received his Oscar in 2009, Quentin Tarantino made a speech, thanking the King of the B’s for all that he had done. I can’t better Tarantino’s words:
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!
Amen. I can only add my thanks to Tarantino’s, and say, good night, sweet prince, and don’t forget to turn off the air conditioner.
Thomas Parker is a native Southern Californian and a lifelong science fiction, fantasy, and mystery fan. When not corrupting the next generation as a fourth grade teacher, he collects Roger Corman movies, Silver Age comic books, Ace doubles, and despairing looks from his wife. His last article for us was A Reckless and Unwarranted Speculation on the Origin of a Great Science Fiction Story