Roger Corman’s Trials and Tribulations As The Godfather Of Independent Filmmaking
Corman lost money on only one movie—a message film. He never made another movie like it
“When you read that a picture cost $35 million to make, what do you think of that cost?” Tom Snyder, late night host of “Tomorrow” asked Roger Corman.
Corman replied, “Actually, I think it’s wrong. I think the artist should be able to express himself for less money than that. And the businessman should be able to invest his money better.
“I think from both an artistic and a commercial standpoint it is wrong to spend that much money. And in addition, I think there are better things to do with the money in our society.”
“You could for $30 million or $40 million — which is what some of these films are costing — you could rebuild a portion of the slums of a city, just as one example,” Corman added.
Snyder followed up, “So you think it’s obscene to spend that much money?”
“Yes, I would use that word,” Corman said.
The godfather of American independent filmmaking defied the supposedly refined sensibilities of Hollywood and while doing so produced 493 films. He directed 53 of those films.
If Corman did not spend too much money making a film, then he was unlikely to lose money, which meant he would have money to make the next picture.
Not only did Corman launch the movie careers of Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Bruce Dern, Robert DeNiro, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson, but the movies that he produced were often built upon wildly imaginative premises with subtexts that allowed Corman to make political statements.
Corman’s genre films could be ripped from the headlines, and he appealed to young people by reflecting the zeitgeist of the social or cultural moment. But the rise of “event movies,” like “Jaws” (1975) and “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope” (1977), effectively rendered the drive-in movie master obsolete. In fact, he faced the same predicament that filmmakers labeled as “specialty cinema” creators face today.
On May 9, 2023, Corman died at the age of 98.
“Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel” (2011), directed by Alex Stapleton, gathered many of the luminaries who owed their careers to Corman. It also featured Corman himself, his wife Julie, and his brother Gene.
One impactful story in “Corman’s World” illustrated a rule that he imposed on his filmmaking, which somewhat conflicts with his representation as a maverick.
In 1961, Roger and Gene set out to adapt Charles Beaumont’s novel The Intruder about the forced integration of schools in the South.
“I was very much in favor of integration,” Roger recalled. “I showed the screenplay to American International [where he was a principal producer] and said this will be my next picture. To my real surprise, they said they didn’t want to make it. And they never said no.”
“I took it to Allied Artists. They said no. Everybody said no so I said, alright, I’ll make it myself.”
The lead character of Adam Cramer was played by William Shatner, and as he describes in the documentary, it was based on a real person, who was a white supremacist from New York. Cramer travels to a southern town to stir up a rebellion against desegregation.
Roger and Gene produced “The Intruder” (1962) at the “height of the integration wars.” According to Shatner, “it became very apparent once [they] were down there that people held polar opposite views of what was right and what was wrong.”
Gene did not tell people what the subject matter was about other than the title. Given Roger’s track record, “they naturally thought it was a horror film or something in that genre.” But as people drove the cast and crew out of locations or harassed them into changing motels, “it got to be very heavy to be down there.”
Roger and Gene Corman Mortgaged Their House
“We were having our lives threatened to make a film about integration,” Shatner declared in “Corman’s World.” “Roger displayed such courage under fire.” And so did Gene.
As Shatner put it, “Making films is a dedication. You have to be possessed. At some point there, I realized that they had mortgaged their home for the film. That perhaps was the most admirable thing of all. Because it’s one thing to be cavalier about spending money that isn’t yours, but to be so adamant as to put your house on the line, that’s extraordinary.”
Gene said Roger and him felt they had to “definitely expose our audience to this kind of material because this [was] what was going on in America, and somebody had to say, stop, this is not the American way.”
The film was uncharacteristic of what one might define as a Corman film. There are no otherworldly creatures, and the entertainment was not dependent on any explosions, shootouts, or chase sequences. It is a message film.
However, there is a sleaziness to the story that only Roger (and Gene) would dare to bring to a film about racism. The characters liberally use the n-word, and the scene where Cramer rallies a mob to fight integration includes a speech tinged with anti-Semitism and racist anti-communist zealotry.
Compare Cramer to the white supremacist prisoner John “Joker” Jackson of another message film of the era, “The Defiant Ones” (1958). Jackson transforms after what he endures while shackled to Noah Cullen, a Black prisoner (Sidney Poitier). In contrast, Cramer proves he is irredeemable, and even the racist townspeople can see through him.
Cramer’s storyline betrays a sense of hope that the country can overcome systemic racism in the South.
‘It Sort Of Gets Me In the Stomach When I Talk About It’
New York Times critic Bosley Crowther had some praise for the film after it opened. Crowther contended that it broke “fertile ground in the area of integration that [had] not yet been opened on the screen. And it [did] so with obvious good intentions and a great deal of raw, arresting power in many of its individual details and in the aspects of several characters.”
When “The Intruder” had a sneak preview at Pacific Theatres, Gene said there was nearly a riot. People were screaming, “Communist!” One usher grabbed Gene and pushed him up against the well. “You’re a communist! You don’t belong in this country!”
The American Film Institute catalog contains a detailed account of the distribution troubles that prevented Corman from finding a wider audience for his film:
The 24 Sep 1962 DV reported that, although distributor Pathé-America had gone out of business, Corman was still in debt to the company for publicity expenses. He signed a deal with Mike Ripps of Cinema Distributors of America, who repaid the debt and took over the release. An article in the 19 Dec 1962 Var explained that The Intruder, after failing as a “prestige” film, was being re-released with a “hard-sell” exploitation campaign. While Corman admitted that he preferred “the prestige approach,” the new campaign would enable him to recover his investment and make a profit as well. Corman reportedly financed the nearly $200,000 project with profits from his more successful productions. Although the filmmaker gave Ripps free rein in exploiting the picture, the director’s edit was to remain intact. When questioned as to whether the film might compromise the U.S. image abroad, Corman argued that it would have the opposite effect, as a testament to the free society that allowed it to be made. The 6 Nov 1963 Var announced the picture’s 1964 release under the title, I Hate Your Guts. Some prints were given the title, Shame.
The 30 Dec 1965 LAT reported the film’s opening the previous week in Los Angeles, on a double bill with Rat Fink (1965, see entry). William Shatner told the 2 Feb 1966 LAT that he was deeply upset over the fate of “the picture he risked his life to make.”
“It sort of gets me in the stomach when I talk about it,” Roger said in “Corman’s World.” According to Gene, this was the only Roger Corman movie that never made money. And yet Gene considered it Roger’s best movie. “We were ahead of the time.”
As courageous as Roger Corman was while making “The Intruder,” as he recalled, the ordeal pushed him to rethink his approach to the stories he selected for the silver screen. “The public really is the arbiter of your film.”
So Corman refused to make another message film. The rest of his movies were “commercial-type” films, though he included subtexts that stemmed from his political perspective.
For example, outlaw movies would primarily feature shootouts and car chases but underneath there was a sensibility that the upper class was responsible for screwing over the film’s main characters.
His creature features involved fantastic but sleazy or tacky-looking monsters. How they came to terrorize characters in the film might be a result of atomic experiments, bioengineering, or climate change.
No matter what, Corman did not want to risk angering his loyal audience by showing them a film that was far from the entertainment that they had paid money to see.
The next movies that he made after “The Intruder” were his beloved cult classic adaptations of tales written by Edgar Allen Poe that starred Vincent Price.
Corman increasingly identified with the counterculture, and in the 1960s, movies like “The Wild Angels” (1966) and “The Trip” (1967) helped usher in the films of the New Hollywood era. Still, he steered clear of making strong political statements.
By the late 1970s, as studios invested in blockbusters, Corman lost his audience. Like he said in “Corman’s World,” studios finally understood what he had been doing, and they had multi-million dollar budgets—obscene amounts of money for their genre movies.
The assembly line of talent that Corman was able to foster through a multitude of breakneck productions each year and his innate sense of how to make movies was forever disrupted.
What passes for an event movie in the 21st century tends to be dull and repetitious and frankly inferior to Corman’s formula for exploitation flicks. There will never again be anything in cinema quite like what he accomplished.
