Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American independent film producer, director, and actor. He has been called "The Pope of Pop Cinema", and is known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film. Much of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of low budget cult films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Admired by members of the French New Wave and Cahiers du cinéma, in 1964 Corman was the youngest filmmaker to have...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth5 April 1926
CityDetroit, MI
CountryUnited States of America
I think The Blair Witch Project is an exceptionally well-conceived and well-made film.
My father was an engineer, ... But I found out that the film critics for the Stanford Daily got free passes for all the films. So I became first an assistant critic and then the main film critic. Those free passes changed my life.
Charlie Bronson, Peter Fonda -- worked with him a number of times. Sylvester Stallone. Bobby de Niro -- I guess he's put on a number of years, you'd call him Robert de Niro today. More recently, Sandra Bullock: She made 'Fire on the Amazon' with us (1993). She was young and the first actor who was really that good in years. We went right back to hire her again, but she'd already signed with Fox or Warner Bros.
The majors now have sort of semi-independent companies allied with them, making lower-budget films. They're competing with us. And television is a huge target for young people. So we don't quite have the monopoly on young writers, directors, producers and actors that we formerly did.
My father was an engineer, .. But I found out that the film critics for the Stanford Daily got free passes for all the films. So I became first an assistant critic and then the main film critic. Those free passes changed my life.
Jim Cameron is proof that if you are good, you'll get promoted.
As a producer, I probably am a little stronger than most, since I was a director originally.
There were two practical reasons we moved to Venice. One was that there was an artists movement and a countercultural movement. Lots of people we might want to hire lived in the area. We also wanted to buy in a lower rent area that looked like it was going to be gentrified so that we could eventually sell the studio for more money.
I've never made the film I wanted to make. No matter what happens, it never turns out exactly as I hoped.
I think one of the reasons movies are the quintessential modern art form is that it is partially a business. The director needs a crew - the writer, the producer, etcetera - and to have that, he needs money.
Somebody said, 'Roger doesn't know how to spend money.' And I thought, 'I don't spend money because I don't have it!' If I had it, I could spend money! That's about the only time I was told that!
I'm not going to shoot seven days a week. I think it's counterproductive. I think you're going to have people stumbling around after a couple of weeks.
When I started, every film got a full theatrical distribution. Today, almost no low budget films, maybe two or three a year, will get a full theatrical distribution. We've been frozen out of that, which means they must be aware that for a full theatrical distribution it either has to be something like Saw or some exploitation film of today or an extremely well made personal film.
There are eleven or twelve or thirteen cities in China with populations of over 10 million people and most people in the West have never even heard of these cities.