Have You Read... How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime by Roger Corman (Random House)?
The ultimate budget-buster spills his secrets.
Forget blockbusters, big stars and six-picture deals. Say ‘hello’ to legendary producer/director Roger Corman and his budget-busting, sticky-back-plastic ‘n’ stock footage school of cinema.
A bargain-basement Bruckheimer, Corman terrorised American drive-ins throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s with such hack jobs as the marvellously-monikered The Viking Women & The Sea Serpent, Attack Of The Crab Monsters and Teenage Caveman. The creation of these and similar schlock is chronicled in How I Made…, a superb account of success on a shoestring that makes Kevin Smith look like David O Selznick.
In Corman’s world there is no room for excess - films are shot in days rather than weeks; pictures are filmed back-to-back to save on sets. Nor is our Rog above buying foreign films and redubbing them or casting actors in multiple roles. Indeed, Corman regular Dick Miller swears he shot himself in one of the great man’s westerns.
Yet for all his biker, beast and beach movies, Corman wasn’t without artistic ambitions (he financed a fine series of films base on Edgar Allan Poe). He also had a very attractive benevolent streak and it’s this that makes How I Made.. really fly, with the people who were given their big break by Corman The Employer lining-up to pay their respects.
And the guys in question? Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, Jack Nicholson, Jonathan Demme, Peter Fonda, Ron Howard, Monte Hellman and Martin Scorsese. Now whatever became of them…?