The Roger Corman All-stars
As director and producer, ROGER CORMAN worked with, and launched, some of the biggest names in the movie business. He tells us how
ROGER CORMAN HAS some good news. “I got a vaccination yesterday,” he tells Empire. “I’ve been in lockdown since March. The only time I left the house was to go to the doctor. But now I wait three weeks, and then I get the second shot, and then I’m free to move around.” The legendary producer and director of hundreds of B movies is still going strong at the age of 94, and long may that continue. Ironically, in the middle of a pandemic, his greatest achievement as director, The Masque Of The Red Death, is getting a second lease of life, with a new UK re-release giving audiences a chance to revel in a movie in which Vincent Price plays a rich nobleman doing his best to ignore a deadly plague from behind a veil of privilege. “It’s surprisingly close to what’s going on today,” agrees Corman. And it also shines a spotlight on the wonderful Price, who is just one of the many big names Corman has worked with over his seven decades in showbusiness; many of whom got their big break because of Corman’s largesse. Here, he tells us about some of the greatest.
VINCENT PRICE
One of the few stars who was already a big name before working with Corman, the horror stalwart made seven Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with Corman in the 1960s. “When I did The Fall Of The House Of Usher, the first of the Poe films, I sent the script to Vincent, and he called and said, ‘Let’s have lunch and talk about it,’” recalls Corman. “He had his own thoughts about Poe and about Usher, and they coincided pretty closely with mine. We would meet and discuss the character in advance. We never had rehearsal time, because the Screen Actors Guild charges you for rehearsal time, so we’d go in to the shoot completely prepared.”
MARTIN SCORSESE
Corman actually produced Scorsese’s second movie, Boxcar Bertha, just one example of his incredible eye for talent. “He had never done an actual commercial feature, but I was simply impressed by him,” says Corman. “Boxcar Bertha was something of a follow-up to a picture I’d made called Bloody Mama, but I didn’t want to direct the second film, so I produced it.” At one point, Scorsese even brought the idea of Mean Streets to Corman. “We came close [to making it],” he says. “But I had never shot in New York. It just seemed better that he work independently on that with a New York crew.”
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA
There’s a reason why Corman shows up in The Godfather Part II, in the Senate hearing scenes, credited as ‘Senator #2’. It was a way for Francis Ford Coppola to repay, in part, his mentor. Not only did Corman give Coppola his first solo directorial gig, with Dementia 13, but the young filmmaker actually spent some time as Corman’s assistant. “I did a Formula One picture in Europe called The Young Racers,” says Corman. “And Francis was the sound man on that picture. And the second unit director. And he also handled one of the cameras. And I could look at the footage he was shooting, and he was better than anybody else.”
JACK NICHOLSON
As a director still learning his trade, Corman decided to enrol in an acting class to get an insight into how the other half lived. “And it was immediately obvious to me that the best actor in that class was Jack Nicholson,” he laughs. “And so I hired him.” Nicholson made several movies with Corman, including The Little Shop Of Horrors and The Trip (which Nicholson also wrote), but Corman never thought of asking him to make the step up to directing. “I never did, because his acting career was working a little bit. But he wrote a number of scripts for me. He was an extremely good writer. But he was always excellent for me. Every film, I wondered why his career wasn’t taking off!”
JONATHAN DEMME
“I’ve never met a director or producer, who had an extended career, who was not intelligent,” says Corman of his all-star graduates. And that certainly applies to Jonathan Demme who, as a then-publicist, went in for a meeting with Corman and came out with a commission to write a screenplay. Several years later, he directed his first movie, Caged Heat, for Corman, and went on to cast Corman in a number of his movies. “Throughout my career, when somebody would get a job on a very inexpensive little film, sometimes the guy would say, ‘I know this isn’t any good, but I’m going to take the money,’” says Corman. “But when I suggested a women-in-prison movie, Jonathan said, ‘I’m going to make the best women-in-prison picture ever made.’ The guys who took the money and ran did not have careers.”
RON HOWARD
Even in his twenties, and even as an actor famous for Happy Days and American Graffiti, Ron Howard knew that directing was the long-term smart bet. Which is why he made a rather unusual pitch to Corman shortly after starring in the latter’s car-chase movie, Eat My Dust. “That was a giant success,” says Corman. “The Monday morning after it opened, he came in and said, ‘When somebody stars in a picture, and they make a sequel, they always ask for more money. But I’ll do the second picture for the same amount of money. But I’ll direct it.’” Which was music to the ears of the financially fastidious Corman. “So I said, ‘Ron, you’ve always looked like a director to me.’” That movie was Grand Theft Auto, on which Howard worked with one piece of Corman advice ringing in his ears. “I said, ‘Ron, we gotta stay with the budget. But if you do a good job with me, you’ll never work with me again!’” And so it proved — until 1995, when Howard gave Corman a cameo in Apollo 13. Cameos in exchange for launching careers? Maybe that’s the long-term smart bet…