BPS 312: How to Always Make Money with Independent Film Godfather Roger Corman

Roger William Corman was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 5,
1926. Initially following in his father's footsteps, Corman studied
engineering at Stanford University but while in school, he began to
lose interest in the profession and developed a growing passion for
film. Upon graduation, he worked three days as an engineer at US
Electrical Motors, cementing his growing realization that
engineering wasn't for him. He quit and took a job as a messenger
for 20th Century Fox, eventually becoming a story analyst.After a
term spent studying modern English literature at England's Oxford
University and a year spent bopping around Europe, Corman returned
to the US, intent on becoming a screenwriter/producer. He sold his
first script in 1953, "The House in the Sea," which was eventually
filmed and released as Highway Dragnet (1954).

Horrified by the disconnect between his vision for the project and
the film that eventually emerged, Corman took his salary from the
picture, scraped together a little capital, and set himself up as a
producer, turning out Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954). Corman
used his next picture, The Fast and the Furious (1954), to finagle
a multi-picture deal with a fledgling company called American
Releasing Corp. (ARC). It would soon change its name to
American-International Pictures (AIP). With Corman as its major
talent behind the camera, it would become one of the most
successful independent studios in cinema history.

With no formal training, Corman first took to the director's chair
with Five Guns West (1955) and, over the next 15 years, directed 53
films, mostly for AIP. He proved himself a master of quick,
inexpensive productions, turning out several movies as director
and/or producer in each of those years--nine movies in 1957 and
nine again in 1958. His personal speed record was set with The
Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which he shot in two days and a
night.In the early 1960s, he began to take on more ambitious
projects, gaining a great deal of critical praise (and commercial
success) from a series of adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories,
most of them starring Vincent Price. His film The Intruder (1962)
was a serious look at racial integration in the South, starring a
very young William Shatner. Critically praised and winning a prize
at the Venice Film Festival, the movie became Corman's first--and,
for many years, only--commercial flop.

He called its failure "the greatest disappointment in my career."
As a consequence of the experience, Corman opted to avoid such
direct "message" films in the future and resolved to express his
social and political concerns beneath the surface of overt
entertainment.Those messages became more radical as the 1960s wound
to a close, and after AIP began re-editing his films without his
knowledge or consent, he left the company, retiring from directing
to concentrate on production and distribution through his own newly
formed company, New World Pictures. In addition to low-budget
exploitation flicks, New World also distributed distinguished art
cinema from around the world, becoming the American distributor for
the films of Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini,
François Truffaut, and others. Selling off New World in the 1980s,
Corman has continued his work through various companies in the
years since--Concorde Pictures, New Horizons, Millenium Pictures,
and New Concorde. In 1990, after the publication of his biography
"How I Made A Hundred Movies in Hollywood And Never Lost A
Dime"--one of the all-time great books on filmmaking--he returned
to directing but only for a single film, Frankenstein Unbound
(1990)With hundreds of movies to his credit, Roger Corman is one of
the most prolific producers in the history of the film medium and
one of the most successful--in his nearly six decades in the
business, only about a dozen of his films have failed to turn a
profit.

Corman has been dubbed, among other things, "The King of the Cult
Film" and "The Pope of Pop Cinema," and his filmography is packed
with hundreds of remarkably entertaining films in addition to
dozens of genuine cult classics. Corman has displayed an unrivaled
eye for talent over the years--it could almost be said that it
would be easier to name the top directors, actors, writers and
creators in Hollywood who DIDN'T get their start with him than
those who did. He mentored Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Martin
Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, James Cameron, Robert De Niro, Peter
Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, and Sandra Bullock. His influence on modern
American cinema is almost incalculable. In 2009 he was honored with
an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

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