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
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.
I've never made the film I wanted to make. No matter what happens, it never turns out exactly as I hoped.
People gravitate occasionally to the brilliantly made art low budget films, which is maybe one out of every five hundred low budget films made.
Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I'd give it my best shot.
Horror films have been with us forever, so you can't say I originated that in any way, but it sort of brought back a classical way to make a horror film.
I love the process of making films and an incidental satisfaction is the fact that most of them made money.
In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady.
One of the worst things you can do is have a limited budget and try to do some big looking film. That's when you end up with very bad work.
When I started in the late 1950s, every film I made - no matter how low the budget - got a theatrical release. Today, less that 20-percent of our films get a theatrical release.
Motion pictures are the art form of the 20th century, and one of the reasons is the fact that films are a slightly corrupted artform. They fit this century - they combine Art and business!
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.
I think The Blair Witch Project is an exceptionally well-conceived and well-made film.
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.