NO INTENTION OF STOPPING

This interview, the first of two Phil van Tongeren and Roel Haanen did with Roger Corman, took place at the film festival of Ghent in October 2001. This was just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and Corman was already planning an action film about the hunt for Bin Laden.

We recently saw a double bill of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER and THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM at the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival. Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman was there as well and he told us afterwards that he was so impressed with the films that he would urge you to direct again the next time he would see you. Any chance of you returning to directing? 

The years are piling up. I’m getting older and more easily tired. If I should get a great idea for a movie that I really want to make, then I might direct it myself. At the moment I have no such idea, but I might get one tomorrow morning.

But why did you stop directing at the age of 45?  

I never wanted to stop directing. I just felt tired. I had directed somewhere between 55 and 60 films in twelve or fifteen years. That was a bit too much and I thought I would take one year off after which I would go back to directing. But during that year I started New World, my production and distribution company and when that proved successful I couldn’t find anyone to run it for me. So I had to do it myself and never went back to directing.  

Later I was offered to do a Frankenstein film, but I turned it down. There had been so many films about Frankenstein that I only wanted to do it if I could find a new idea. Then I read the novel Frankenstein Unbound by Brian Aldiss which did have an original approach to it. That’s when I decided to make it.

In 1961 you made a movie that was close to your heart, THE INTRUDER. In your autobiography you wrote that you learned a lesson form that film, because it lost money. But if it was so close to your heart, why not try something like that again? 

When THE INTRUDER turned out to be less successful I realized that I had made the message too clear. I wasn’t entertaining the audience, I was lecturing them. So I had to pull back. From that moment on I made films that would be entertainment on the surface and at the same time contain a social or political subtext.

You once said that even in the nurse comedies you made in the seventies there was a message.

There always was [laughs].

Those films at the time came out of the counter culture. Do you find any themes in this age you would like to communicate through your movies? 

This age, at least in the United States until a few weeks ago, is less politicized than the sixties, seventies and early eighties when the differences between left and right were enormous. In the nineties the two political camps came together in the middle. There is no strong left wing or strong right wing any more. There are many issues that interest me, but I’m not as passionate about them as I was then.

Maybe that’s also one of the reasons you stopped directing? 

Not really. I stopped because I had done so many films in just a few years and I wanted to charge the batteries so to speak.

You still produce a lot of films. In the past you would produce for the drive ins, now mainly for the home video market. Could you tell us about the difference? 

We’re producing primarily for video. The biggest change has not occurred in production, but in distribution. When I started, every one of my pictures, even if it was a low budget production, got a theatrical release. Today I produce slightly bigger pictures with slightly bigger budgets, including inflation. Still, no more than 10 to 15 percent will get a theatrical release and it’s only a small release. The power of the big studio’s has grown so much that they own almost all the screens, not only in the US but all over the world. Independent producers have more or less been banned from theaters, so we had to make the transition to video, cable television and regular television. We will never have another big success theatrically, but we still can on video.

In your book you are very enthusiastic about the prospects of home video. Now it’s ten years later. How do you look at that market now? Has the market developed like you thought? 

Yes, the video market has developed pretty much as I expected, especially the fact that it has grown rapidly and has become our major source of income. What I didn’t anticipate was that the majors would come to dominate home video just like they dominate theatrical. Until the early to mid-nineties we did great sales. Starting in the mid- to late nineties our sales have dropped a little because of the power of the big studio’s. But now there’s DVD and that market is growing rapidly as well.

How do you feel about your own films getting a second life on DVD? 

I’m very pleased about that, because DVD is better than video in every way. The picture is sharper, the sound is better.

You used to distribute  European art films in the US though your company. Is that something you would still like to do? 

No, I sold my distribution company in the eighties. I came back to distribution about five years later. By that time companies like Miramax had discovered European art films so there was no room for me. However, the last couple of years the majors have been paying so much for these films and have not been able to make their money back, so they are starting to lose their interest. Maybe I can make my comeback.

Can you still get excited about making a new film? 

I’ve always been excited about making films and I hope that I will be excited all my life, because I have no intention of stopping.

Why not? You’ve had such a successful career, why not retire and enjoy your vineyard? 

I had a vineyard for a couple of years, but I’ve sold it. No, I just like the process of making films too much.

You’re also famous for giving many young talented film makers a chance to work, especially in the sixties and seventies. People like Coppola, Scorsese and Jonathan Demme. Is that something you still do?  

Yes, we still like to give young people a chance to work. Sandra Bullock did her first leading role in one of our films, FIRE IN THE AMAZON. Some of the young directors who have a lot of potential are Rachel Samuels, Paul Ziller en Jay Andrews*.

What are some of the pictures they have made for you? 

Jay has just finished a film called RAPTOR, about the cloning of dinosaurs. We did CARNOSAUR a few years ago and then CARNOSAUR II and III. When we were finished I said: I think I’m going to store these dinosaurs in a warehouse. In a few years we’ll do another dinosaur picture. So for RAPTOR we took them out of storage and used them again. The film is doing very well on video.

Are you’re doing more movies that are inspired by blockbusters? Because CARNOSAUR was clearly inspired by… 

I did CARNOSAUR just before JURASSIC PARK [laughs]. But I’m doing some pictures that I like to event films. Paul Ziller just finished a film for us called AVALANCHE ALLEY, which was shot in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. We set off some explosion to create avalanches and we’ll add digital effects to them. We’re just starting using digital effects, because they’re quite expensive.  

I’ve just come back from Kazakhstan a few days ago, where I attended the premiere of a film called THE ARENA. The director [Timur Bekmanbetov] is going to make another film for us. I got the idea during the flight over. It’s about an American ex green beret or something whose wife is killed at the World Trade Center attacks. So he says: I’m going after Bin Laden, just by myself! I’ll shoot it in Kazakhstan.

Aren’t you afraid Menahem Golan is already working on something like that? Whenever there’s a tragedy he starts filming immediately, like with the killing of Versace.  

It’s an old tradition in the American film industry that you get the idea for your next picture from the headlines. Menahem is probably already working on it [laughs].

What do you think of the current resurgence of the horror genre? 

SCREAM by Wes Craven was wonderful, especially the combination of horror and humor, which I’ve always liked. The only thing about modern horror films is that they sometimes revolve around special effects. I think special effects should support the story. But that is a minor objection I have. I particularly like horror movies that depend on atmosphere and don’t show too much.

Like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and THE SIXTH SENSE?

THE SIXTH SENSE I was not enthusiastic about. It reminded me too much of a picture I made with my wife called BRAIN DEAD. It’s about a man who has a number of strange experiences and at the end of the film you discover that he had actually already died. When I saw THE SIXTH SENSE I thought: that’s the same idea! 

But the idea had also already been used in CARNIVAL OF SOULS.

I have heard of it, but haven’t seen it.

You used to make horror movies based on stories from Edgar Allen Poe. These last couple of years you’ve been producing films based on works by writers like Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James and Jack London.

There is a market for them, but we’ve done research that shows the audience doesn’t respond to these classic stories the way they used to. I was very pleased with THE HAUNTING OF HELL HOUSE, but we will probably concentrate more on contemporary stories the next couple of years.

Related talks:

• David Carradine

• Monte Hellman

* Jay Andrews is in fact a pseudonym of the very productive Jim Wynorksi who has been making movies for Corman since 1986! We only found that out after we returned from the interview. The old sly fox had slipped one by us.

This interview first appeared in a shorter version in the Dutch fanzine Schokkend Nieuws. Above is the full version of this talk, edited only for clarity.