Our never-before-seen interview with Roger Corman, a Hollywood legend who revolutionized the movie business
Known as the "King of the B Movies," the legendary filmmaker Roger Corman died on May 9 at the age of 98. Corman specialized in making low-budget genre movies with titles like "The Wasp Woman," "Attack of the Crab Monsters," and "Teenage Caveman." A producer of nearly 500 films, he also directed over 50 features. He's perhaps best known for giving many of Hollywood's most successful directors their first breaks. He received an honorary Academy Award in 2009 "for his unparalleled ability to nurture aspiring filmmakers by providing an environment that no film school could match."
In 2017, chief video correspondent Graham Flanagan sat down with Corman in his Los Angeles office for a wide-ranging conversation about his storied career. This is the first time this extended version of the interview has been published.
Corman is credited with helping launch the careers of actors such as Jack Nicholson as well as Academy Award-winning filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, and Jonathan Demme. Corman hired these directors in the early stages of their careers to helm low-budget features that the filmmakers have acknowledged as learning experiences they applied in their later larger-scale productions.
In fact, many of these directors hired Corman in small acting roles in movies like "The Godfather Part II," (Coppola), "The Silence of the Lambs" (Demme), and "Apollo 13" (Ron Howard).
In the interview, Corman shares myriad lessons learned while working in the film industry for more than 60 years. He talks about producing a movie that was never released based on Marvel's "Fantastic Four" series, as well as how he made a unique deal with Universal Pictures for the rights to the title of "The Fast and the Furious," which is the name of a 1954 film he produced.
In 2017, chief video correspondent Graham Flanagan sat down with Corman in his Los Angeles office for a wide-ranging conversation about his storied career. This is the first time this extended version of the interview has been published.
Corman is credited with helping launch the careers of actors such as Jack Nicholson as well as Academy Award-winning filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, and Jonathan Demme. Corman hired these directors in the early stages of their careers to helm low-budget features that the filmmakers have acknowledged as learning experiences they applied in their later larger-scale productions.
In fact, many of these directors hired Corman in small acting roles in movies like "The Godfather Part II," (Coppola), "The Silence of the Lambs" (Demme), and "Apollo 13" (Ron Howard).
In the interview, Corman shares myriad lessons learned while working in the film industry for more than 60 years. He talks about producing a movie that was never released based on Marvel's "Fantastic Four" series, as well as how he made a unique deal with Universal Pictures for the rights to the title of "The Fast and the Furious," which is the name of a 1954 film he produced.
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TechTranscript
00:00 Mr. Gorman, thank you so much.
00:14 Call me Roger.
00:15 Roger, thank you so much for letting me come here today and sharing your time with me.
00:19 It's an honor to talk to you.
00:21 How did you become known as the king of B pictures?
00:25 It's partially because of what I did and partially because of the circumstances.
00:31 Shortly before I started making films, actually when I was still in school, the major studios
00:37 were faced with a monopoly suit because they owned the means of production, they owned
00:43 distribution, and they owned the theaters.
00:46 They agreed to spin off their theaters.
00:50 By the time I came of age to make pictures, the fact that they had spun off their theaters
00:57 meant there was greater room for the independents to move in.
01:02 So I moved in with a number of other people, of course.
01:06 So it was partially that and partially the way I make pictures, which is fairly complicated,
01:14 but in a simple statement, I was making medium budget and low budget films very efficiently
01:23 and keying them to a teenage audience.
01:26 I was aware of the fact that the theaters, and particularly the drive-in theaters, were
01:32 appealing to the youth market.
01:34 The young people were going to the theaters.
01:37 The major studios, who had money invested in their stars, were using their stars, but
01:44 a 50-year-old leading man making love to a 40-year-old leading lady was not what the
01:52 18- and 19-year-olds wanted to do.
01:55 So I deliberately made pictures for the teenage market.
02:00 What are some of these pictures, some key examples of these types of films that you
02:06 aimed at that demographic, and how were they received?
02:11 Well, one comes to mind immediately because it was so direct.
02:16 When Ford brought out the Thunderbird, it was called the T-Bird, it was a huge success.
02:22 I made a picture called T-Bird Gang.
02:26 When Rock and Roll first appeared, I made a picture called Rock All Night.
02:31 In other words, I was aware at that time of the youth culture because I was young myself
02:38 and I knew what the kids were talking about, and I geared the pictures to that market.
02:44 How at that time were you able to stay so in touch with the zeitgeist at the time in
02:51 a way that allowed you to channel that knowledge about what the kids wanted into this product
02:57 that you wanted to make?
02:59 It was partially myself being a little bit older than that, but still being young enough
03:05 to understand, and also doing some research.
03:11 We had a bigger company then because we had theatrical distribution.
03:15 I would have some of our younger people go to high schools and just conduct surveys.
03:22 What are you thinking about now?
03:23 What's going on?
03:24 What's happening today?
03:25 Wow.
03:26 So you actually went out and talked to these kids to see, and then you would have meetings
03:31 and turn that into ideas for movies.
03:33 Yes.
03:34 You mentioned that your method of production is complicated, and it's a very unique method.
03:41 You revolutionized the way that movies could be made.
03:45 I would love for you to expand on that.
03:47 How does Roger Corman make a movie?
03:52 It's changed a little bit, as all things do, over time.
03:56 But I probably shouldn't have said complicated.
04:00 Complicated probably meant the whole concept.
04:05 But the concept of the way I made films is I put huge emphasis on pre-production planning.
04:13 My average shooting schedule at that time was 10 days, although I shot a few in less
04:20 than that, and the average budget was around $50,000 for a black and white picture and
04:27 $65,000 or $70,000 for color.
04:30 Now my background, I have a degree in engineering, so maybe the engineering comes into this.
04:37 But my thought was this.
04:38 If I'm shooting a picture in 10 days, I do not want to make major decisions on the set.
04:47 I want to make all the major decisions I can before shooting.
04:53 And as you know, a number of people have gone on and they still remember that point.
04:59 They've been quoted on it, the emphasis of planning every possible thing you can before
05:06 shooting, but know you'll never follow your plan exactly.
05:12 You have to be a little bit loose.
05:13 You might get a better idea on the set or maybe something won't work.
05:19 I once told Ron Howard, "If you're getting late in the day and you're shooting a scene,"
05:26 I told him, "A scene I once shot where there was a hill and the sun was going behind the
05:32 hill.
05:33 I got the long shot of two people on the side of the hill and as the sun went down, I moved
05:40 the crew up on the neck on another hill so we were in light.
05:45 So each time it got dark, we moved higher up the film."
05:49 And Ron said, "That's a great idea when you're making low-budget films."
05:54 He was making something like an $80 million film.
05:58 He told me he was in trouble.
06:00 He moved the crew up the side of the hill with the light.
06:03 So the rules still pertain.
06:05 Can you put it in perspective in terms of, okay, you said that you were spending $50,000
06:12 to $65,000 for these budgets and these shoot schedules were no longer than 10 days.
06:19 Put it in perspective for me.
06:21 What were other motion pictures being, what were their budgets and shooting schedules
06:26 at that time?
06:27 "Well, the major studios were spending $10 to $20 million or so.
06:34 Inflation has taken place and the cost of special effects has grown so much.
06:43 So they were going $10 to $20 million.
06:46 The first picture I made for a major studio was the Secret Invasion for United Artists,
06:52 which was a World War II picture.
06:54 A picture cost $600,000, which for them it was the cheapest picture of the year.
06:59 For me, I was in the big dime."
07:01 Back in the '60s and '70s, what are some techniques, cost-cutting techniques that come
07:10 to mind?
07:11 Some of the, just examples of using car headlights to light the scene or what you were saying,
07:18 moving around to try and get as much as you can out of the natural light.
07:22 What are some examples of these types of techniques that became synonymous with your method?
07:27 "Well, first, I think the first rule is write your script in relationship to your budget.
07:36 If you know you have $50,000, don't write in some scene that alone will cost $50,000.
07:44 Be aware when writing the script that it must be able to fit your budget.
07:50 And the same thing in scheduling.
07:52 For instance, it takes several hours for a crew to move from one location to another.
08:03 I tried to only make one move during the day, and that would be during lunchtime, when I
08:12 would give the crew a half-an-hour lunch and the cast an hour lunch.
08:19 So the crew could be moving the equipment during that time.
08:24 I did not want to do it more than once a day.
08:29 Same thing to a lesser extent with sets.
08:32 I didn't want to make too many moves from one set to another, although that's a simpler
08:37 proposition."
08:38 So, you figured out this model and this approach.
08:45 How did that affect the business model?
08:49 Did you find that you had a business model that really worked and was profitable for
08:53 you?
08:54 Talk about the business side that resulted because of this approach to the art itself.
08:59 "First, from the art itself, it helped because I was able to spend more time shooting in
09:05 ten days than you normally spend.
09:09 But it also helped from the business standpoint because I was able to get a bigger-looking
09:15 picture.
09:16 The time was spent shooting, not moving from one place to another or not having to rehearse
09:26 the cast thoroughly every day.
09:28 I rehearsed the cast before shooting.
09:32 So the discussions between the director and the actors on the major motivations and so
09:39 forth were all done before shooting.
09:42 So none of this stop shooting in the middle of the day for an hour while the director
09:48 and the actors work out a problem.
09:51 Those problems are worked out in advance so the director is still directing the actors
09:57 but on the details of a scene because the overall character arc has been determined
10:05 before shooting."
10:07 How and when did you figure out a way to produce films and make money doing it and be successful
10:16 at doing it?
10:17 "I think actually it was right from the beginning.
10:21 It was the fact that I had very little money.
10:23 I actually had $12,000 in cash and a lab deferment.
10:28 And I had to say, 'What can I do for $12,000?
10:34 Where can I get a location?
10:36 What is the limitation on cast?
10:39 So are limitations in other ways and how can I spend the time shooting?'
10:44 For instance, what I would do, I was the truck driver, I would drive the truck to the location
10:53 before the crew and cast arrived.
10:56 I would unload the light equipment from the truck before the crew arrived.
11:02 The crew would then unload the heavy equipment that I couldn't do.
11:07 At the end of the day, the crew would load back the heavy equipment into the truck.
11:13 I would stay on and load the light equipment back on, drive the truck back and do the same
11:20 thing.
11:21 The third or fourth day, a representative from the Teamsters came to me as a producer
11:28 and they said, 'Who's driving the truck?'
11:30 I said, 'I am and the Teamsters are known for being tough guys.'
11:35 This is an amiable guy.
11:36 He laughed.
11:37 I told him what I was doing.
11:38 He said, 'Alright, Roger.
11:39 We're going to make you an honorary Teamster for this picture, but on the next picture,
11:45 you're going to sign with the Teamsters.'
11:47 I said, 'Absolutely.'
11:48 What was motivating you to do that, to get in early and do manual labor that produced
11:54 like Sam Spiegel and David Lean didn't get together before the crew got there and unloaded
12:00 the lighting stands?
12:02 What was motivating you to do that while you were doing it?
12:05 It was simply an attempt to work efficiently and make a small amount of money into a picture
12:14 that looked like a bigger picture.
12:18 When did you start making money in your early career in the 60s?
12:22 When you figured this out, when and how did that money start rolling in?
12:27 How much did you invest some of it?
12:28 How did you handle your money when it started rolling?
12:33 The first picture was successful.
12:34 As a matter of fact, the first 17 pictures were all successful until I did a picture
12:41 that I believed in very greatly, 'The Intruder' about racial segregation in the South.
12:49 'The Intruder' got wonderful reviews, won a couple of minor film festivals, and a new
12:56 young actor, unknown Bill Shatner, won a couple of awards for playing the lead.
13:01 It was the first picture I ever made that lost money.
13:06 And I realized that I had forgotten on that one picture that a film should be entertaining.
13:14 And if you're going to have a message or a theme or a thought, it should be subtextual.
13:22 The audience should come to see an entertainment, and if you want to give them some thought,
13:28 it should be beneath the surface.
13:30 So underneath the action and the laughs are points that are important to me, but I make
13:40 a real effort to let the audience know those, but to keep it to such a low level it never
13:49 interferes with the entertainment.
13:52 The Intruder, I know you're proud of that film, and do you think that there's any aspect
13:57 of the themes of 'The Intruder' that are poignant today in our society that you think would
14:05 make people want to watch that movie and rediscover it or for new audiences to discover it?
14:11 Times are a little bit better on the racial front today than they were in 1960 when I
14:17 made the picture.
14:19 But the problems are still there.
14:21 They're just eased a little bit, and I've had an offer to re-release the picture for
14:26 that reason.
14:27 Yeah, I think it would be great to run it on like TCM or something.
14:32 I think that would get a lot of people talking, but hopefully that happens.
14:38 So I wanted to ask you, what is the biggest mistake you feel like you've ever made in
14:42 your career, and what did you learn from that and apply later after making it?
14:48 I would put two mistakes.
14:51 One would be the intruder itself, the fact that I was essentially lecturing to the audience
14:59 rather than entertaining them.
15:02 That would be the first mistake.
15:03 The second mistake was on a picture I made that was very successful called 'Black Scorpion.'
15:12 Black Scorpion was a police lieutenant by day, Black Scorpion by night.
15:20 She became a superhero with a souped-up car, and the picture was extremely successful.
15:29 So successful that, and particularly in Europe, in both France and Germany, when it played
15:36 on television, it got the highest rating in both countries of the year for a television
15:43 program at that time of night.
15:46 I had an offer from a German company to make a TV series out of it, and I thought, "Well,
15:53 I really think Black Scorpion is in Los Angeles.
15:56 It's hard to think of Black Scorpion in Berlin."
15:59 And I thought, "Why don't I make a TV series myself?"
16:03 And there was a mistake in regard to budget.
16:06 Since I financed my pictures myself, I don't have that much money.
16:11 So I spent too little on the TV series.
16:15 It ran for a year and got sort of okay ratings and so forth, but it wasn't really a big
16:22 enough series to compete.
16:24 I had misjudged the economics.
16:28 So you say you set up multiple pictures.
16:30 It was very successful.
16:32 How do you and how did you measure success?
16:35 What makes a picture successful?
16:36 There are two levels of success.
16:40 First is the level artistically.
16:42 How good is the picture?
16:46 That is something that's important primarily to me.
16:49 The other, more universal measure of success is how much did the picture make?
16:56 I'm trying to get good reviews and make money.
17:00 In general, almost all of our pictures have been successful.
17:06 I wanted to ask you about in the 90s, you produced a Fantastic Four film.
17:13 This is a Marvel property.
17:16 Marvel didn't become the multi-billion dollar business that it is now until 2008 with Iron
17:22 Man.
17:23 Talk about that experience of making that film and what was the result?
17:26 The Fantastic Four was one of the weirdest experiences I've ever had.
17:32 It started when Bert Eichinger, a German producer who was a friend of mine, came to me in late
17:38 October of one year and said, "I have a problem that maybe we can solve together."
17:45 Then he explained what it was.
17:47 He said, "I have an option on the comic book, the Fantastic Four, but it expires December
17:54 31st if I haven't started shooting.
17:56 I have a script and I have a budget and I don't have the money for the budget."
18:03 I said, "Well Bert, I don't think there's any way I can help you there."
18:06 He said, "There's another way."
18:08 I said, "Okay, what's the budget?"
18:11 He said, "$30 million."
18:13 I said, "How much money do you have?"
18:15 "One million dollars.
18:18 What I'd like to do is go into partnership with you, I'll put up the million dollars
18:24 and you make the picture for a million dollars."
18:27 And I said, "Well that's cutting a budget fairly drastically from $30 million to $1
18:34 million.
18:35 Without having read the script I will tell you we can't make that script exactly."
18:40 But this was on a Friday.
18:42 "Let me send it down to the boys at the studio.
18:45 Let them work on it over the weekend.
18:47 I'll go over it myself over the weekend and we'll meet Monday morning and tell you
18:54 if we can do it."
18:56 And we did.
18:57 We met Monday morning and said, "We'll go ahead."
19:01 And I said, "But this is late October.
19:04 We're going to have to do a slight rewrite of the script.
19:07 We can save the dialogue and so forth, but the big action scenes have to be modified.
19:14 People don't work on December 31st, but I suggest we start shooting December 30th because
19:20 we need every day we can get for pre-production."
19:25 And Berndt said, "If we start shooting on December 30th they'll know what we're doing.
19:30 I think we should start shooting on December 26th."
19:34 I said, "Berndt, they're going to know what we're doing either way.
19:37 It doesn't make any difference.
19:39 I think we compromised and started shooting on December 28th."
19:45 And I had all kinds of things.
19:48 I had the ability to distribute it and he would put up all the money for prints and
19:53 advertising and this was a time when low-budget pictures were starting to fade theatrically.
19:59 And I thought, "This might be an interesting gamble to see if I can take something like
20:04 this and do well."
20:05 He said, "But I think he had, I think it was 90 days, he had 90 days to buy it away
20:12 from me and give me a very nice profit."
20:17 Almost the whole 90 days went by.
20:20 We've got somewhere in the back here the poster.
20:22 We prepared a really nice poster.
20:25 We prepared the trailer, the TV spots.
20:28 We were ready to go and Berndt came to me just before with a check and said, "Here's
20:36 the check.
20:37 I'm buying the picture."
20:38 So we never had a chance to release the picture.
20:43 Now I think it was 20th Century Fox and Berndt, and here it's a little confusing but as I
20:49 understand this is what happened because partially Berndt told me this much.
20:53 I said, "Well, what are you going to do with the $1 million picture?"
20:56 He said, "I will release it after," and the budget then had gone to $60 million,
21:02 "I'll release it after the $60 million picture, call it the prequel and I'll make
21:08 more money off the $1 million picture than I will off the $60 million picture."
21:15 I don't know exactly what happened but Fox put a clause in his contract that he couldn't
21:23 release the $1 million picture.
21:25 So he lost that opportunity.
21:27 But you made money on the movie.
21:30 Yes, we did very nicely but it was one of the few times when I actually would have liked
21:36 not to have made that money.
21:40 To me it was an important experiment because as I say the box office for low budget pictures
21:46 was fading away and I thought this might be the start of a different way to go but unfortunately
21:54 I never had the chance to run the experiment.
21:58 The movie has a positive cult following.
22:00 I looked at some reviews last night and it's hard to find negative reviews.
22:05 Like people say it's just a lot of fun, it feels like a comic book.
22:08 What do you think of the movie and how it turned out?
22:11 I think for a million dollars it's a pretty good film.
22:13 I think people think of it affectionately.
22:16 Just as if you've got one son who graduated from the top university in the world and is
22:25 now a billionaire.
22:27 You've got another son who's an idiot.
22:30 You love the idiot.
22:33 So talk about your deal.
22:35 You in a way are responsible for the Fast and the Furious franchise.
22:41 Talk about why that is and the deal that you made going back to your original film from
22:46 the 50s.
22:48 Neil Moritz had produced a car racing film and he didn't like the title.
22:55 They had already finished shooting, they were in post-production and he was trying to find
22:59 a different title.
23:01 He was having dinner with his father, Milt Moritz.
23:04 Milt was the advertising manager for American International and Milt said, "Well if you've
23:11 got a car racing picture, you know Roger made a picture in the 1950s called the Fast and
23:17 the Furious.
23:18 What do you think of that title?"
23:20 And Neil said, "That's a good title.
23:22 I like that title."
23:23 So Neil and I had lunch and I said, "Fine, I'll sell you the title."
23:31 And their legal department, this was interesting from a legal standpoint, for once a major
23:36 studio legal department was fair.
23:40 They said to me, and they were right, "Your picture is copyrighted but if your title has
23:47 not become famous like Gone with the Wind or something like that, after a certain number
23:53 of years it sort of becomes dormant and somebody else can use the title."
23:59 For instance, my picture of the Intruder, somebody made a picture called the Intruder
24:03 a few years ago.
24:04 They said, "We could take the title, the Fast and the Furious, and you could sue us
24:12 and you would probably lose but it would be a big mess.
24:17 What we like to do, we want to be fair, we'll pay you a little bit of money and buy the
24:21 title."
24:22 And I was aware of all of this and I said, "Sure."
24:24 So neither they nor I knew what was going to happen with that title.
24:31 Were you happy with that deal?
24:32 I mean, what kind of, I'm just curious if you're willing to share what kind of a figure
24:36 can you get?
24:37 I'll just say it wasn't much.
24:38 But one thing, the money wasn't much but there's something that I've done before
24:45 with major studios when negotiating.
24:47 They have stock footage and their stock footage library consists of huge scenes from multi-million
24:55 dollar pictures.
24:57 I did this once previously with Warner Brothers and I said to Universal, "Okay, I'll
25:02 take a small amount of money but I would like to have free access to your stock footage
25:08 library and I will pay the lab costs of making a dupe negative from your negative for the
25:16 scenes I want.
25:17 So it will not cost you a penny and it's worth something to me."
25:22 And they agreed.
25:24 And I did indeed use that stock footage and got a very big looking picture out of it.
25:31 So that was for the Fast and the Furious.
25:32 That was part of that deal.
25:33 So in addition to the, they also paid you a figure.
25:37 It was also access to what?
25:39 Just go in and get, take whatever you wanted?
25:41 Take anything I want.
25:43 Now stock footage, normally you don't have close-ups of a big star in stock footage which
25:52 is not what I wanted anyway.
25:54 What you do have is big scenes.
25:57 What I did, I took the stock footage from their TV series Spartacus in which they had
26:04 ancient Rome, an arena with thousands of people and I knew where that set was where they shot
26:12 Spartacus because I've shot on that studio myself.
26:16 It's in Sofia in Bulgaria.
26:22 So I took the stock footage, all the big shots from Spartacus, went into the same sets where
26:28 Spartacus was shot and shot all my close-ups and medium shots and cut them together with
26:37 the long shots for a picture called Cyclops which I made for the Syfy channel and I got
26:43 a letter from Tom Vitale, the head of the Syfy channel saying, "Cyclops is the biggest
26:49 and best picture anybody has ever made for Syfy," courtesy of the Fast and the Furious.
26:56 That's an amazing story.
26:58 That really is.
27:00 Has using recycled footage and stock footage been a part of your method over the years
27:05 or is that just something that you started to exploit later?
27:09 It started on my second or third film.
27:13 I was barely aware that there was such a thing as stock footage but I knew somewhere and
27:19 I actually looked up in the phone book and found a company that was selling stock footage
27:24 and I went over and they had a catalog and I just went through the catalog and picked
27:29 some shots that I thought fit and from then the idea built.
27:34 Who are some of the great notable names in Hollywood who have been some of the most successful
27:42 filmmakers whose careers you sort of helped to launch or usher in to reality?
27:50 Well from a director's standpoint I think more Academy Award winning directors have
27:55 started with me than anybody else.
27:58 The first one was Francis Coppola, well I don't know in order, Francis Coppola, Ron
28:06 Howard, Jonathan Demme, Marty Scorsese, maybe somebody else but then we've got actors,
28:16 producers, cinematographers, a large number of cinematographers, also film editors, oh
28:24 and composers.
28:25 When we had our studio what we were doing we were hiring what we thought were the best
28:31 young guys and girls, Gayle Ann Hurd who does The Walking Dead was my assistant for a number
28:38 of years and she came out of my old school, Stanford, with a Phi Beta Kappa key.
28:45 I hired her simply because she was bright.
28:48 It's like a football coach with a winning team.
28:51 You say he's a great coach and then you find out for the last five years in a row he's
28:56 had the number one recruiting class in the country, these people would have been great
29:02 if they'd never met me, I just helped them a little bit.
29:04 Would it be fair to say you're the Nick Saban of Hollywood?
29:09 More or less.
29:10 We'll go back to the directors, why do you think that their experiences here led to the
29:18 careers and filmographies that we've seen?
29:20 What was it that they experienced here and took from working with you that helped them
29:25 become the legends that they eventually became?
29:28 It's partially because I was a director myself, I directed around 60 films so I was able to
29:34 talk to them as an older director whereas most producers have come up from other areas,
29:44 very few directors become producers.
29:46 I became a producer just because I got older and I thought I don't want to work that
29:51 hard, I'll be a producer now instead of a director.
29:54 So I was able to talk to them saying things like I did to Ron Howard, this is something
29:59 I did when there was a change of light and I'm able to talk to them from a director's
30:04 standpoint.
30:05 For instance with Ron Howard I was talking about pre-production planning and I said what
30:10 you do not want to do is walk on the set on the first day of shooting and stand there
30:19 and think where am I going to put the camera?
30:23 You walk on the set having known in advance where you're putting the camera and I remember
30:31 Ron did this better than anybody I've ever seen.
30:34 We were shooting in the house in Brentwood and in the living room he came in and he said
30:41 the camera goes on a dolly here, it's got a 30 lens.
30:46 The woman who played his mother in HAPPY DAYS, I've forgotten her name, will come through
30:50 that door, as she moves to the couch the camera is going to dolly from this point here to
30:57 this point here, dollying and panning to that point.
31:01 She will sit down at that point, we will cut and we'll go in for a close up.
31:06 I'm going to get a cup of coffee, let me know when you're ready.
31:10 And I thought brilliant.
31:11 Ron has done a couple of things.
31:14 He's let him know he knows what he's doing but he also did it cleanly and pleasantly.
31:22 He wasn't pushing orders or doing anything but he wasn't saying I'm a beginner, help
31:29 me.
31:30 He says I'm a beginner as a director but I know what I'm doing.
31:33 When you look at that list of names you just mentioned, you know you have James Cameron,
31:37 Scorsese, Cope.
31:38 Oh I forgot Jim Cameron is Academy Award.
31:41 I mean these are the titans of the industry and how does it make you feel looking back
31:48 on that legacy of being there for these guys, hiring them early in their careers.
31:56 What emotion does that inspire in you?
31:58 I'm very pleased.
32:01 I'm happy for them, I've remained on good terms with them.
32:05 We're all friends, our paths go different ways.
32:09 I'm still very close friends with some of them and just vaguely friends with others
32:14 and I'm totally delighted with the success they've had.
32:19 What advice would you give to your 20 year old self?
32:25 Alright if I were 20 and starting I would try to go to a film school.
32:30 I and most of my contemporaries learned on the job.
32:35 It's best to learn in a film school, you learn so much technically that it would be
32:43 my first choice.
32:45 If you can't go to a film school and this is one of the ways the industry has changed,
32:50 there are so many little pictures being made with $2,000 budgets where everybody chips
32:58 in and has a piece of the picture.
33:00 It's easy to get a job on one of those pictures.
33:04 You get a job on one of those pictures and you're doing two things.
33:08 You're doing your job but secondly you are looking around at what everybody else
33:14 is doing and you're learning on the set at the same time you're doing the job.
33:19 Is there anybody out there now that you see that sort of reminds you of yourself in terms
33:28 of their approach to production and distribution and marketing?
33:33 The business has changed so much that I couldn't be me.
33:38 In other words what I was able to do in the late 50s when I started I couldn't do today
33:45 because the business is different from the late 50s.
33:48 But in regard to the business changing I would say probably Jason Blum.
33:55 Jason has been very successful doing things similar to me.
34:01 I've met him and he's a nice guy and he's very bright and he's done the low budget
34:08 films.
34:09 He's going to continue with the low budget films but he did Whiplash a couple of years
34:14 ago and he's doing some big films as well.
34:17 Why is producing horror, it seems to be the most solid business model in terms of being
34:24 able to turn a large profit on a small budget.
34:27 Why horror?
34:28 There is always a market for horror films.
34:32 Now these things work cyclically.
34:36 Somebody has a big success with a horror film and everybody rushes in to make horror films.
34:42 They make too many of them.
34:44 The public gets tired of them and the cycle turns down.
34:49 And then somebody else will come along and make a brilliant one and it'll move back
34:53 up.
34:54 So horror is always there whether it's a hot commodity or let us say a cooler commodity.
35:02 Also it's something that is not dependent upon stars.
35:06 So many films you really need a name to sell it.
35:11 For a horror film if the film is really horrific the film sells itself.
35:17 Why are horror films easy to make cheaply?
35:23 Very often you're in a haunted house.
35:27 You're in a small studio and you build three sets and that's your picture or you rent
35:31 a house.
35:32 So the production problems are not great unless you choose to make them bigger to enlarge
35:39 the film.
35:41 And that's a matter of judgment as to how much bigger I will make it.
35:46 But it's a film that can be made easily.
35:50 Talk about what's your advice and your sort of takeaway from the environment we're
35:56 in now with YouTube and streaming, all the different streaming platforms.
36:02 Would you be able to have done, obviously it's changed so much from when you started,
36:06 but how do you see this impacting the business of film and the business of trying to be a
36:11 filmmaker?
36:12 In that area I am not giving advice.
36:17 I'm looking for advice because neither I nor anybody else to my knowledge really understands
36:25 it.
36:26 It's changing so fast that as we speak somebody out there somewhere is inventing a new way
36:36 to distribute and exhibit films.
36:39 It is much more complicated because it used to be really pretty simple.
36:44 You put your film in a theater and then you sold it to television and that was it.
36:49 Now it's a matter of fact somebody I know in distribution said I used to sell a picture
36:54 for a dollar.
36:56 Now I sell it for 20 nickels.
36:58 Meaning, he's got to sell it in 20 different places to get the same amount of money that
37:04 he could get selling it in one place or two places.
37:08 How do you feel about your legacy as it stands now, as it continues and what do you want
37:12 it to be?
37:13 Well, I think really in the history of Hollywood I will be a footnote.
37:19 But I would say I'm a filmmaker.
37:23 I started as a writer, then became a director, then became a producer and I had a distribution
37:29 company at one time.
37:31 I mentored or taught people who have gone on.
37:34 So I worked in films.
37:36 That's great.
37:37 Well, thank you so much for taking the time.
37:38 This has just been a privilege and an honor to talk to you.
37:39 I know that our audience is going to really enjoy this.
37:45 So thank you so much, Roger.
37:47 Thank you.
37:48 Okay.
37:49 That's taking it enough.
37:50 Great.
37:51 Thank you so much.
37:52 You're a good actor too.
37:53 Thank you.