Roger Corman changed film and then the world with silly B-movies
Last week, legendary director/ producer Roger Corman passed away at the grand age of 98 years old. To say it was a life well lived would be an understatement. His vision for what film and its distribution could be changed the course of the medium’s trajectory, and he did it all through being a purveyor of shlock, camp, and low-budget absurdity. It’s not a stretch to say that the world would look differently without his mind.
Corman’s career and reputation began to ramp up and solidify once the 1960s rolled around, his off-the-wall humour and lack of fear in looking tastelessness in the eye ripe for a slow cult audience build-up. The decade was perfect for someone like Corman.
Audiences s were ready for something different ifferent from the plastic world d of old Hollywood, which had become ecome stale bread by the start of the decade.
The suits chalked up falling interest to the he rise in the household television, elevision, but Corman was s no suit. He knew better.
Society was as changing and people were looking for something with a strand of creative authenticity, henticity, something real eal and direct. Something ething outside the false walls that mainstream cinema had constructed for itself. His directorial efforts fforts like The Little le Shop Of Horrors and d The Intruder r made his name me as someone who could create and understand the form he was operating in, that he wasn’t wa just another salesman lookin looking to market to an audience without w care. But it was as a producer produce that Corman really made hi his mark. It could be argued that he was not only the archit architect of cult film and the world w of B-movies, but b also the New Hollywood Holl moveme movement that swept mainstream m cinema cinem as the social socia changes of 1960s 1960 America came cam into foc focus.
T The names of who Corman has acted as mentor far outweigh his own name recognition, acting as some behind-the-scenes looming shadow that can make things move and shake.
Among them: Peter Bogdanovich (his first directorial feature, the freeway killer thriller Targets, was under Corman’s tutelage); Martin Scorsese (although he had already directed his debut, it was the Corman-produced Boxcar Bertha that set the stage for the career we’re much more familiar with today); and Jonathan Demme (before his huge mainstream success with The Silence Of The Lambs, he manned the Corman production Canned Heat, an exploitation movie that helped to popularise the “women in prison” midnight showing trend).
Corman’s passing is monumental because he was the last of a dying breed. Creatives like Corman don’t exist any more – they simply can’t. The film industry has closed in on itself and is no longer a place of wonder that can be moulded in the image of its creatives (if it ever was).
The opportunities for a singular mind to break in, shed industry orthodoxy, and leave their mark and influence, has ceased to exist.
The infrastructure and access to resources that Corman built for himself would be a fool’s errand to replicate now the house always wins.
Filmmaker John Boorman wrote to The Guardian following Corman’s passing, summing up just how far away from tradition Corman’s process was at the time: “He often reversed the process of making a film. If someone came to him with an idea, he would give it a title, get a poster made, then test it on audiences. If they responded well, he would get someone to write a script based on the poster.”
This allowed him to generate immediate, appealing ideas that audiences were looking to get on board with. The film industry Corman knew wasn’t looking to understand its audience, so it was to the advantage of Corman that he was always on the front foot of how people feel and react to his ideas.
This process was a far cry from the norm of gauging reaction when already deep in the post-production process, where it’s too late to do anything if a film idea lacks a central appeal.
Corman was not an island unto himself when it came to approach, however.
As much of a career architect as he was, his own career was built on his work with producer William Castle, whose attention
grabbing gimmicks for his low-budget monster movies in the 1950s opened Corman’s eyes to a different way of doing things.
Think novelty barf bags handed out to audiences as they entered the screening.
But Corman had no limits in approach, applying this independent mindset to myriad contexts, spreading his influence further than the small world of that decade’s monster movies.
It’s difficult to imagine what American film and film in general would be without the seeds Corman planted and helped to grow. Although it’s easy to imagine that it would be much greyer, less in tune with the sensibilities of what people truly enjoy on screen, and would be far less interesting without the fruits of what Corman helped to build.
It’s not a comfort that there will never be anyone like Corman again, but it certainly helps show just how vital he was in this world.