Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel Page #8

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a painting.

It's almost a cartoon.

And I said that to him

and he said,

"people come to my pictures

looking for camp.

And I'm going to give it to them."

Lf he just violated

this rule of his

of never making a movie

that cost more than $1 million,

you know,

and make one for $1.5 million

or $2 million--

I said, "look, all your pictures

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.

Sometimes the movies

were really dreadful

and you had to just sort of camp

them up and make fun of them.

- "Cover girl models."

- And we did-- by the time

we got to "cover girl models,"

we were doing outrageous ad lines--

you know, "they don't need

clothes to strike a pose";

"they're always overexposed

but they're never underdeveloped"--

to the point where the pictures

looked like jokes.

They didn't look like

they were real movies.

They're like movies

in the front of "tropic thunder."

They just didn't look real.

But the audiences never minded.

They were happy.

The limitations of a low-budget film

can work positively

in terms of getting

something spontaneous.

There's no time for rehearsal.

There's no time for

extended discussions

of motivation and character

and so forth.

And indeed there aren't many characters

or motivations in any of the films.

You'll never be a star now,

you little c*nt.

Dante:
The great thing about

working for Roger was

that every possible obstacle

to making a movie

was thrown in front of you.

Beverly hills police.

And if you could figure out

a way to get around them,

you could make your movie.

At the end credits

of "Hollywood boulevard,"

that background shot

was shot

while the camera crew

was hiding in the bushes

and I was talking

to the Beverly hills police

and explaining that I was just

out here admiring the scenery.

And they said, "well, get back

in your car and drive down the hill."

It's not as bad as John Davis

and having to spend the night in jail

while making "fly me," though.

I think when he called Roger

and he said, "I'm in jail,"

I think Roger said, "well, you know,

that's a good experience.

You should learn from this."

Blossom, honey.

You philandering,

fornicating bastard,

you went off with that skinny honky

for two days

and gonna come back here

and call me honey?

Now wait a minute,

blossom, honey.

I told you I was gonna cut it off

if you tried to pull that sh*t on me.

We called it "make do."

You know, whatever you can do

to make do, that's what we did.

And from it,

i lived through my stunts.

I look back at it--

would I do them again?

Yes, but more

padding on the head.

Not a lot of women

wanted to do stunts.

All right, everybody,

back 'em up.

Grier:
And they couldn't handle guns.

They were afraid of guns.

Sit down on the floor.

Where do you want

to be buried, n*gger?

And it's miss n*gger

to you.

Grier:
And there weren't a lot

of women who wanted to be

tossed around the room

or thrown over a cliff.

And he said,

"let's keep her doing movies.

She loves to do crazy stuff.

Let's set her on fire."

You know, "how many cars

can she crash today?"

They loved that.

He could talk you into, you know,

buying some sand in a desert.

Hey, and it'll taste good, too.

I'm like, "excuse me,

did I just buy

this glass of sand from Roger?"

Announcer:

"The final comedown"--

this year's heaviest

motion picture.

Baby, I'm not bitter.

I was bitter 350 years ago.

I'm violent, you hear me,

god damn it? Violent!

Announcer:

Get hip to this year's winner--

the fight you've been dying for.

Rated r, it's a mother.

Dig it.

I did bring "mean streets"

first to Roger.

And it was the beginning

of the blaxploitation pictures.

And he said, "so the story

is interesting and everything.

It's really interesting.

I can give you

a couple hundred thousand

dollars to do it,

but if you could swing

a little bit

and make it black,

it might be--

we might have something here."

So I thought about it.

I said, "okay, let me think about it."

I wouldn't say no.

I always say yes to these things.

And I walked out and realized

my heart sank

because I realized,

no, they're Italian-Americans.

That's the part of the cultural thing.

It's sicilians and neapolitans

and ancient code that goes back

to the medieval times.

You're a f***ing jerk-off.

And I'll tell you

something else, Mikey--

I f*** you right

where you breathe,

'cause I don't give two shits

about you or nobody else.

I said, "that's-- totally not.

I'm not gonna be able to do it."

But because of "boxcar Bertha"

and because of the group

that worked on the film,

I learned how to make the picture

within a certain amount of time.

And we were able

to take the same principles

that we applied to "boxcar Bertha"

and use them for "mean streets."

We wound up shooting

most of it in Los Angeles

because we had that crew and the

corman crew knew how to work.

Dante:
Roger's own

personal taste in pictures

is very different from the type

of pictures that he makes.

And also his taste

in directors

tends towards

antonioni and bergman.

Corman:

Most of our films are domestic.

However, we do distribute

a number of foreign films--

bergman, fellini, truffaut,

now kurosawa

and a number of others.

Dante:

Roger had a lot of connections

and he had his own

distribution company.

And when the majors

started to give up on foreign films,

Roger talked people like

ingmar bergman and fellini into--

"i can get your picture

on screens

that have never run

a movie of yours,

because I have

a different audience

and a different way

of selling the movie."

And they all

signed off on it.

Ingmar bergman was a seminal

influence on Roger as a director.

"Cries and whispers"

did extremely well

and ingmar bergman

was very pleased.

And then Roger being Roger,

he had the idea

to distribute it

in drive-ins.

And that's what he did.

No one else had ever been able to do

that before, and probably not since.

That was something new

for Roger,

to have such prestige people

associated with him.

And it just went from there.

Roger, when he formed

new world pictures,

was the first company

that was completely bifurcated.

In other words, in one direction

they were doing exploitation films,

but in the other direction

they were doing

the best foreign-language films

that were out there at that time.

Corman:

The money is secondary

in that particular area.

It's because I feel these films

should get

to a larger audience

than they do.

Announcer:

The new fellini--

"amarcord."

Corman:
The company

is building very rapidly,

which takes a lot of time.

My wife and I have had

three children

in three consecutive

summers,

which takes

a certain amount of time.

We would go home

in the evening

and talk about

the problems of the day.

Then there got to be a time

when we, like, just didn't talk about

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