Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel Page #7

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for the nightgown of the lord.

Reach.

Anybody moves-- you're dead.

Julie:
Roger had done

"bloody mama"

with shelley winters

and Bobby de niro.

And, you know, it was

a great success for aip.

And aip wanted another

woman gangster movie.

And so I found this book.

It was the story of a woman

who'd been something

of a tramp, a hobo,

had ridden the boxcars

of the railroads

of the United States

during the depression.

It was her story as a rebel,

as a pre-feminist, as it were,

and as an outlaw.

"Boxcar Bertha"

the first picture

that Julie worked on with me

as co-producer.

It was also the first picture

that Marty scorsese directed.

I met him and he said, "look, I have

a sequel to 'bloody mama.'

it's called 'boxcar Bertha.'

Would you be interested in doing it?"

I said, "absolutely,"

you know.

And "bloody mama"

actually had de niro in it, see?

By the time we got

to Camden, Arkansas,

Marty had sketched

every shot of the picture,

which was all over the walls

of his motel room.

I took out all these drawings,

about 500.

And he looked at the first

20 or 30 or something.

And then he looked, he said, "did you

do this for the entire picture?"

I said, "yeah."

He said, "all right."

He put it away

and he left.

Run, Bertha!

God damn that b*tch.

Carradine:

The thing that Roger hated was

when Sam arkoff came in--

'cause he needed Sam because

the budget was too big for him.

And then Sam

kind of took over

and masterminded the release

in a way that Roger

didn't like.

And Roger said,

"I'm never gonna do this again."

And that's when he formed

new world

and he went back to making

$25,000 movies

and worked his way

back up again

just simply so that nobody

could tell him, you know,

how he should cut his movie

or how he should release it.

Doel:

Roger somehow

is fueled by

outwitting, I would say,

even more than

rebelling against, authority.

He was that way with aip.

I think, actually, it brings out

his creativity and his drive.

It just seems

to fire him up

to just show them

that he will do it himself.

He doesn't need them to tell him

how to do it or what to do.

I decided to start a small

production/distribution company,

a little bit the way aip

had started in the late 1950s.

Roger is a brilliant producer

in terms of knowing

what the market is,

anticipating the trends

and then capitalizing on them.

He was a trendsetter for years.

I mean, he--

in the '60s

he set every trend.

He has the idea--

the original idea

for almost all the films

that are produced

by new world pictures.

He had a somewhat

finite audience.

They weren't expecting things

to be held over.

You know, things played for

two weeks in the grindhouses

and a couple weeks

at the drive-in

and then a new thing came in.

But within that,

you were gonna have

a very loyal audience

of young people.

Announcer:
Hollywood boulevard--

the street where starlets are made.

On Monday

candy came to Hollywood.

On Tuesday she lost

her blouse.

On Thursday she massacred

300 rebel soldiers.

On Friday she found out

the bullets were real.

On Saturday

she married Godzilla.

By Sunday she was a star.

Things happen fast

on Hollywood boulevard.

Rated r.

Hello, Hollywood.

The fact that the rating system came

in was a tremendous change.

Now you were allowed to do

things in movies

that you hadn't been

allowed to do before.

You were allowed to show things.

Announcer:
What they did to her

in Jackson county was a crime.

Yvette mimieux.

"Jackson county jail,"

where the cops

make their own laws

and the only way out

is murder.

We're cop killers.

There are '70s exploitation pictures

that are really out there.

I mean, they have plot twists

that are like, "whoa,

i didn't see that coming.

I didn't think people did that

in the movies."

Announcer:

Woman was made for man

to hunt.

Dante:
Roger certainly took

amazing advantage of that.

Announcer:

Hunters competing for the game.

Set your sights

on the tastiest game,

from new world pictures.

Roger's operation

is an exploitation operation

on almost every level.

He exploits directors.

He exploits writers.

He exploits people in the crafts

who are trying to get established.

But we are also

exploiting Roger.

Julie:

I think he had a lot of fun

working with these

young people.

And so it was often known

as, you know,

the corman school

of filmmaking.

Demme:

The first time I met Roger,

this crazy

Roger German-y thing happened

where he said, "okay,

you can write press releases.

Do you think you could write

a screenplay?"

And this had never

really occurred to me,

but I said, "yes."

And he said,

"let me explain.

I'm starting a new company.

It's called

new world pictures.

I need a bunch of pictures

to go into the works very soon."

He wanted a nurse movie,

but he also wanted to crossbreed it

with a prison movie.

Announcer:

Four American nurses, snatched

from their work

in a foreign hospital,

jumped in the jungle,

caught between

a kill-crazed revolutionary

and a sex-crazed major.

Roger says, "exploitation pictures

don't need plots.

But they need sensational things

like girls shooting

filipinos out of trees.

That works."

In new world--

they very often go back

and add action to a picture.

'Cause you'll see

how a rough cut plays,

and Roger almost always

wants you to add

another chase

or at least another explosion.

Rock, rock, rock, rock,

rock 'n' roll high school

rock, rock, rock, rock, rock 'n' roll

high school.

Announcer:

"Rock 'n' roll high school"--

the school where the students rule.

Could your school be next?

We knew the genre notes

that we had to hit.

And if we hit those notes,

what we put in between those notes

was entirely up to us.

"Grand Theft Auto"

is a love story

with cars.

Also it's a comedy...

...with car crashes.

Announcer:

"Grand Theft Auto,"

directed by and starring

Ron Howard.

Well, hell.

We had a very limited number

of extras that we were allowed to have

at the big demolition derby

climactic action scenes.

And I called Roger

asking for more extras

to fill out the stands,

'cause, I said, "this is supposed

to be this huge event.

There's a big riot at the end.

You know, 75 extras

is gonna fill exactly, you know,

1/10 of the stands.

It's gonna look cheesy."

And he said no.

And he could see I was dejected.

And he smiled

and he put his hand on my shoulder

in a kind of fatherly way.

And he said, "Ron, here's what

you need to understand.

You do a good job for me

on my terms

on this movie,

and you never have

to work for me again."

And, well, I didn't.

I certainly wish

that Roger would move out

of the formula film--

the exploitation film.

I guess that he just feels that as long

as he's investing his own money

that he wants it to be surefire.

Carradine:
In "death race"

at the very beginning behind us,

there's a city of the future.

And it is so obviously

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