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Mini Biography

After studying engineering (a subject he said was ideally suited to making low-budget films on a tight schedule), Roger Corman attempted to break into films by the tried and trusted method of working as a messenger for 20th-Century Fox, eventually rising to the position of story analyst. He started direct involvement in films in 1953 as a producer and screenwriter, making his debut as director in 1955. Between then and his official retirement in 1971 he directed dozens of films, often as many as six or seven per year, typically shot extremely quickly on leftover sets from other, larger, productions. His probably unbeatable record for a professional 35mm feature film was two days and a night to shoot the original version of The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), though several other films were made in less than a week. In the early 1960s, his budgets got bigger (though never big), when he made a series of adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories starring Vincent Price. Apart from Frankenstein Unbound (1990), he retired from directing in 1971 to concentrate on production and distribution through his company New World (and later Concorde), making low-budget exploitation films and using the profits to distribute distinguished art films. Apart from making dozens of enormously entertaining films (there are amazingly few duds in his output), Corman's place in film history is assured simply through his unrivalled eye for talent - among many world-class names who were employed by him at a very early stage in their careers are Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante and many others - which means that his influence on modern American cinema is almost incalculable.

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Trivia

Brother of producer Gene Corman.

Tribute in the Memory of Film section at the Flanders International Film Festival in Ghent, Belgium. [2001]

In the early years of the American Releasing Corporation (later American International Pictures), he became one of their major sources of product for distribution. He would be given a sum of money and an advertising campaign (or somethimes just a title) and he would have to come up with the scripts and produce the films.

If he had to shoot a film on location, he would always try to shot a second film at that same location in order to spread out the costs.

In the new decade of the 1960s, he decided that he wanted to do something that would advance his career. When American International offered him a sum of money to create another one of their low-budget black-and-white double features, he countered with an offer to use the same money to shoot a single feature in color and Cinemascope. American International finally agreed to this offer. It led to the production of House of Usher (1960). The gamble paid off and the film became a box-office hit and generated something that was unusual for an AIP release - critical praise. This was followed by what became known as Corman's "Poe series.".

A running gag in Hollywood was that Corman could negotiate the production of a film on a pay phone, shoot the film in the booth, and finance it with the money in the change slot.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985." Pages 234-242. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

His film The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) set a world's record for the shortest shooting schedule for a feature film...Two days!.

Frequently has cameos or bit parts in the films of Jonathan Demme, one of Corman's many apprentices who went on to become great filmmaker.

In Attack of the Bat Monsters (1999), the character Francis Gordon, as played by Fred Ballard, is "noticeably patterned" after him.

Did a brief stint of study at Oxford University.

Society of Operating Cameramen (soc) Recipient, Governors Award (CAMMY) (2004).

Personal Quotes

"In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady."

"I think there is always a political undercurrent in my films. With the exception of "The Intruder," I tried not to put it on the surface."

"All my films have been concerned simply with man as a social animal."

"I've never made the film I wanted to make. No matter what happens, it never turns out exactly as I hoped."

Salary

... Roger Corman - USA 1967

... pick of Roger Corman's movies ...