Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 312: How to Always Make Money with Independent Film Godfather Roger Corman
Transcript
- 0:03You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
- 0:08podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
- 0:13Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three twelve. Don't let small minds convince you that
- 0:19your dreams are too big. Anonymous broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in
- 0:24Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof
- 0:28Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
- 0:33to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
- 0:39Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
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- 1:33Enjoy today's episode with guest host Jason Buff Thanks for joining us here today.
- 1:40We have a super guest on today. We're talking with one of my heroes,
- 1:45mister Roger Corman. Now just between us, I was scared as hell
- 1:51to just give Roger Corman a call. I was sitting in my office and
- 1:55I got it. Very nice. Secretary told me a time to call in,
- 2:00and it's kind of like, all of a sudden, I was on
- 2:02the phone with one of my heroes. Roger Corman really is someone who all
- 2:07indie filmmakers should know about and should definitely understand his contribution to the world of
- 2:15independent film. He's also responsible for giving the first break to a lot of
- 2:19people that my generation considers the filmmakers that really influenced them, like Scorsese,
- 2:25Francis Ford, Coppola, Jonathan Demi, Joe Dante, and Ron Howard.
- 2:31So what I want to do is listen to some of them talk about how
- 2:37Roger Corman influenced their filmmaking. The first interview I want to go to is
- 2:40with Jonathan Demi, who said this about Roger Corman in the documentary Roger Corman
- 2:46Hollywood's Wild Angel in nineteen seventy eight documentary. Well, in any film that
- 2:50I've ever worked on with Roger, there three main elements that he's looking for.
- 2:53One is humor, which he considers tremendously important. Another is action,
- 2:58which he considers very important, and another is sex, which he considers important
- 3:01but not quite as important as the other two elements, I don't think.
- 3:05But it's funny the way these things pop up, because, for example,
- 3:07in my script for Caged, hand your script in, and what Roger does
- 3:12is sometimes he'll give the notes right on the script and hand it back to
- 3:15you. So you get the script back and you get little little marginal references
- 3:17like breast nudity possible here, question mark, which yes, you realize,
- 3:22yes it is possible here. And you don't want to get too idealistic because
- 3:25actually you don't have negative feelings about nudity anyway, So you go, yes,
- 3:29Roger, indeed it is. And that's the bargain you make with Roger
- 3:30if you buy his it's never articulated, I don't think, But if you
- 3:35buy his concept that pictures that audience is like contain these three major elements action,
- 3:39humor, and sex, and you really buy it, and you're kind
- 3:43of commit to getting as much of that stuff as possible in there. And
- 3:46if you will also want to make a good picture and tell a good story,
- 3:49then the best of both worlds happens. He gets a movie that contains
- 3:52these things, and he's confident of releasing it, and you get a chance
- 3:54to make a picture very much the way you want to make it. I
- 3:58know that you've worked with You gave so many people their start, so many
- 4:01great talents to start. Francis Ford Coppola worked with you before he really worked
- 4:08with anyone else. Isn't that true? Yes? Right? As a matter
- 4:10of fact, he was a soundman, the second assistant director, and a
- 4:15shot second unit all on one picture. Really very versatile. Okay, And
- 4:18did you know then this kid's going places? Actually I knew he was good.
- 4:23I had no idea that he was going to go to the heights.
- 4:25He did, okay, Ron Howard. I think also Howard's first correcting jobs
- 4:30with you is right. He started with us as an actor and the picture
- 4:33was called Eat My Dust Car to Film. It was a big success,
- 4:39and he came into the office and he said, I know you want to
- 4:41do a sequel. Whether a star plays a role in a successful film,
- 4:46he always asked for more money. I will star in the next picture.
- 4:51No more money, and I will do an additional job. And I said
- 4:56what is that? And he said, I'll direct. And I said,
- 4:59Ron, you will always looked like a director to me. You influenced the
- 5:03way film trailers are made. I think many people, especially young people,
- 5:08think that film trailers have always been similar. But no, you really changed
- 5:12the way they were made with a certain innovation. What is it you did
- 5:15well. It was Joe Dante, who went on to become a very well
- 5:18known successful director, who started cutting trailers for us. And he was cutting
- 5:24one trailer and I looked at it and I said, Joe, is this
- 5:27a fairly dull trailer. What can you do to jazz it up? He
- 5:31said, come back this afternoon. I went back this afternoon and there was
- 5:35the same dull trailer. In the middle was an exploding helicopter. It made
- 5:42the trailer. I mean ask your question, was there an exploding helicopter in
- 5:45the film? There is no law that says everything in the trailer that's fantastic
- 5:56the balls Man, that was incredible. I mean, what isn't what this
- 6:00show would be jazzed up by a helicopter crash occasionally, you know, that's
- 6:04the kind of thing that would help a talk show. They should do it
- 6:08everywhere. We could give you the stock footage. Would you charge me for
- 6:11it? Very little? You've got great titles, great titles for your films.
- 6:17One of my favorites, Attack of Crab Monsters and and there's the of
- 6:23course the title for it as so many amazing titles over there. Did you
- 6:29come up with the title first and then decide to shoot the film? How
- 6:30does it work? Sometimes? For instance, Grand Theft Auto, which was
- 6:34Run Howard's first film as a as a director, the title came first.
- 6:42But if oh, the film he did before Eat My Dust, I've forgotten
- 6:46the title. We were shooting a car chase somewhere out in the San Fernando
- 6:49Valley and dust was flying all over the place, and the director who said
- 6:54we had to call its picture eat My Dust, I said, we will,
- 6:57and he said I'm joking. I said, I'm not joking. That's
- 6:59a great title. So the title, now, of course, that was
- 7:01Conan O'Brien. And now here's Ron Howard talking about working with Roger Cormick.
- 7:05Conversations that were really significant during the course of making Grand Theft Auto. The
- 7:12first was he sat me down and said, Ron, I'll come visit you
- 7:15on the first day of filming. And if you're productive, and you know
- 7:20you're making around twenty setups a day and you're making your days, you you
- 7:25won't see much at meaning in all candor, if you're not achieving those those
- 7:30kind of results, you're going to see one hell of a lot of me.
- 7:32That was his little warning. I had a great moment on the Paramount
- 7:36Lot. I was finishing up the season of that season of Happy Days walking
- 7:43Along and as soon as Hiatus came in March, I was gonna go direct
- 7:49Grand Theft Auto. And Jonathan Demi called me from out out the window at
- 7:58the second second story office. He was getting ready to do Citizen Band.
- 8:03I think um and uh uh, and of course I knew him as a
- 8:09Roger Corman veteran. And he came bounding down the stairs and he said,
- 8:13I heard you're going to direct a picture for Roger. Come upstairs. And
- 8:16I went upstairs and he talked to me for about twenty minutes. He gave
- 8:20me these sheets that he would use to sort of plan out the shot lists
- 8:24and in the day, and gave me great advice. Here's this young guy
- 8:26saying, make sure you get plenty of sleep, you know, this hipster
- 8:30guy. And I and I and uh, you know and and and uh
- 8:33and he basically said, you know, um, Roger will let you creatively
- 8:37do whatever you want to do. That's the fantastic thing about working for Roger.
- 8:41Uh and uh but uh uh, you know, you just have to
- 8:45make sure that you're efficient and here's how you do it, and remember to
- 8:48think ahead and just lots of good fundamentals, but also encouraging me to explore
- 8:54and be creative and really, you know, take advantage of this this opportunity
- 8:58that Roger was was was given me. I finally carried my end of a
- 9:01great tradition and cast Roger and a Paul thirteen He had a very nice scene
- 9:07playing a senator with Tom Hanks, and it was a really wonderful day to
- 9:15reconnect with Roger, have him come. We had you know, it was
- 9:18a big day with green screen and you know it was we were doing visual
- 9:22effect shots and it was, you know, just a plus Hollywood filmmaking.
- 9:28And he just smirked and said, well, we could do this for a
- 9:31hell of a lot less, uh, And you know he could, all
- 9:35right, And now my interview with Roger Corman. I was watching the documentary
- 9:39Corman's World recently and the thing that I thought was very interesting to see was
- 9:43that you're still going down and being on the set. Do you find the
- 9:46same excitement being on a set these days? It's always exciting to be on
- 9:50the set. I'd probably not as excited as earlier, but we'll be right
- 9:56back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. The
- 10:05stimulation is still there after you've done it. I've made around three hundred films.
- 10:09There's a certain routine, but there's something always a little bit new.
- 10:15Is how things changed. I mean now that you are working in the digital
- 10:18world and video on demand and the sci Fi channel has your system changed,
- 10:24and the way that you go about distribution. It's changed a little bit.
- 10:28When you mentioned distribution, it's changed for the better end production, and its
- 10:33changed at least for those us working in medium budget and lower budget films.
- 10:39It's changed for the worst end distribution. In production, production is easier the
- 10:43new digital cameras, sound equipment, the lighting equipment, everything is lighter,
- 10:50more portable, easier to use, so you can shoot more unnatural locations and
- 10:56you can shoot faster, more efficiently. Self production is better today. The
- 11:01conditions of production, the conditions of distribution, however, are not good for
- 11:07the independence. The major studios today, with their one hundred million dollars and
- 11:11two hundred million dollars budgets in their thirty forty fifty million dollar marketing campaigns,
- 11:18have dominated theatrical to such an extent that very few medium or low budget independent
- 11:28pictures get a theatrical distribution. Primarily were on DVD, streaming, cable,
- 11:37some broadcast television, and only occasionally in theaters today. Is there a certain
- 11:43period of time that you look back on in your career and kind of reminisce
- 11:46about as being the glory days of filmmaking? Probably for me the sixties and
- 11:50seventies. The sixties was when I was having most fun and most success as
- 11:58a director. I started directing it around fifty eight or something like that.
- 12:03First a couple of years you sort of learn what you're doing, and then
- 12:07things started to move forward me in the sixties and in the seventies I started
- 12:11my own production and distribution company, and I moved from directing to producing and
- 12:16distributing, and that was a whole new world as well. So for that
- 12:20about a twenty year period, I was probably having the most fun and the
- 12:26most success. Things still work out. I'm still producings, still distributing,
- 12:31but I make fewer films today, and just that I made fewer films,
- 12:39they get a limited distribution and I'll continue for a few more years. You
- 12:43started out working as a writing notes on screenplays, right, and you eventually
- 12:48did some notes for the gun Gay Right. Actually, I started a graduator
- 12:54from Stanford with a degree in engineering, and I was a failure of the
- 12:58Stanford engineering class. I got the worst job of anybody. I got a
- 13:03job as a messenger at Fox or thirty two dollars and fifty cents a week,
- 13:07and I rode the bike around the studio delivering messages. And then I
- 13:13worked fairly hard, did some extra work and became a reader in the story
- 13:20department, and that was where I got a little bit of minor recognition for
- 13:26my work on the Gunfighter. I didn't like various things of going on,
- 13:33so I had some college time left on the GI bill, so I went
- 13:37to Europe, went to Oxford briefly, and then came back and became a
- 13:43literary agent and sold my own script under an assumed name, and I took
- 13:48the money from that and started my production company. How did you did you
- 13:54know how it was all going to work? And were you going to sell
- 13:56the film or did you just kind of go into it like the leap of
- 14:00faith? It was a total leap of faith. I think back, and
- 14:03I wonder how I had the nerve to do it well. I think that
- 14:09you know, your career has shown that you've taken a lot of leaps of
- 14:13faith like that. And now did you when you first started, did you
- 14:16have the idea that you could keep a career going as long as you were
- 14:20making films at a low enough price that you could always sell them. It
- 14:26wasn't quite that easy. I financed my films with my own money, and
- 14:31since I don't have that much money, I can't make a giant film.
- 14:37So the budget level was more or less predetermined, and I don't really think
- 14:41or ever thought of it as how long can I keep going? I just
- 14:46felt that everything is going well, I'll continue making films. So there was
- 14:50a little bit of a sort of a long term plan, but to a
- 14:54large extent, it was day to day. I'm going to make this film,
- 14:58I'm shooting this film, I'm planning the next film, and so forth.
- 15:03What did you learn from making films that people really wanted to see?
- 15:07You obviously tapped into something in the marketplace that was selling tickets and got people
- 15:13coming in and got people excited. Are there any sort of things that are
- 15:16specific to your films that really kind of you developed and learned how to sell
- 15:20a film? Well? Early on, I appeal to a teenage audience.
- 15:26I was very much aware that the audience was a young audience. In the
- 15:33major studios were casting their great stars, which meant to a large extent of
- 15:37fifty year old leading man making love to a forty year old leading lady and
- 15:43the average age of the audience was eighteen, So I felt, and I
- 15:48told me understood why they did it. Their stars or the equivalent of brands.
- 15:54The stars were famous and could sell tickets. But I felt if I
- 15:58went with young people, I could peel directly to a young audience. And
- 16:03I worked in genres, not always, but generally I was doing action pictures,
- 16:10horror films, science fiction films, sometimes deliberately straight teenage films, and
- 16:17so forth. Were there any other movies like genre films? They were fairly
- 16:22non mainstream back in those days. I mean, nowadays it seems like horror
- 16:26movies are very mainstream, and especially science fiction and everything, especially after Star
- 16:30Wars and all those sorts of movies. But back in those days, was
- 16:33it something that was more of like a drive in movie theater or more like
- 16:37B movies. Yes, the drive ins were very important. They weren't quite
- 16:41as important as people think they were. Our main money still came from what
- 16:47we called the hardtopsy enclosed theaters, but drive ins were of major sorts of
- 16:52income, and the drive in audience was even younger than the hardtop audience.
- 16:59Although ivan did attract some families on the basis that a young family with children
- 17:06who couldn't afford a babysitter or something could just go to the drive in,
- 17:10put the children in the back seat, watch the picture, and the children
- 17:14would maybe just go to sleep. So it was an inexpensive night out for
- 17:18them. It still was primarily a young audience. You think we've missed something
- 17:25now that we don't have theaters and we don't like go out and see movies
- 17:27now that everybody's watching movies on iPads and on TV. Yes, I think
- 17:32there's something to be said for seeing a picture, particularly a comedy, with
- 17:37an audience. You pick up the vibes, as it were, unconsciously from
- 17:41the audience. It becomes a communal or a shared experience. I was watching
- 17:47the nineteen seventy eight documentary called Corman Hollywood's Wild Angel. You can actually it's
- 17:51actually on YouTube, and it was probably one of the most I've learned so
- 17:56much in two hours of just watching that. It's incredible, and there's a
- 18:00great scene where they're talking with Jonathan Demi and he's talking about the advice that
- 18:06you gave him as a filmmaker, and I thought it was really interesting and
- 18:10I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. And he said that the
- 18:12three most important elements in a film were humor, action, and sex,
- 18:18and sex was last, but it was still important. Do you still feel
- 18:22like I think, I think that I would put in the narrative storyline,
- 18:26I should have said that I was probably I was probably understood. What are
- 18:32yours? Some of your favorite movies that you have seen lately? You know
- 18:36more contemporary people. Yes, As a matter of fact, possibly the most
- 18:40interesting film I saw last year was a film that for three quarters of the
- 18:47way through I thought was one of the most brilliant films I had ever seen,
- 18:52and then it started to fall at the end and it was never recognized
- 18:57in any way. I think special effects Interstellar, which I thought was really
- 19:03a brilliant of film, particularly as I say, my degree was in engineering,
- 19:07that I had a minor in physics, and maybe it was unique to
- 19:11me. I try to stay up with physics, and it was really very
- 19:15accurate from all the concepts of physics today. The last quarter or so it
- 19:22started to get a little questionable, didn't totally hold up. But I think
- 19:29for the reason that, as I say, it was so brilliant so far
- 19:33through and then still was I still think of it as possibly the best picture
- 19:40of the year, but nobody else seems to agree with me, or a
- 19:44few people agree with me. One of the things that I had heard that
- 19:47you mentioned was that after the film The Intruder, you had decided that you
- 19:52didn't want to be as which is a brilliant film. But I actually just
- 19:56though it for the first time a couple of days ago. We'll be right
- 20:00back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show,
- 20:07that you had decided to try and not have a movie that was commercial,
- 20:12but have a movie within that movie that actually had a message and was a
- 20:17good movie within a movie that was sellable. Yes, I felt that I
- 20:21had become too serious with The Intruder. It got a lot of critical acclaim
- 20:26when a couple of minor film festivals that was commercially not successful, and I
- 20:30felt I was too serious. I was lecturing the audience, and I felt
- 20:36what I would do would be to make a film an entertainment with as we
- 20:41say, a method acting a text and the subtext. A text is the
- 20:45entertainment of the film, and the subtext would be whatever was important to me
- 20:52or whatever I wanted to say, but it would be always be secondary to
- 20:57the text as a film. Now, were you one of the first people
- 21:03to take the camera off the tripad and go out into the streets and kind
- 21:07of shoot off of sets. Was that something that you felt was you know,
- 21:12would bring more realism to your film, say in the sixties, Yes,
- 21:18I was one of the first. I wouldn't say I was the first.
- 21:21S I know a number of people were doing it before me, but
- 21:26I was one of the first to do it, and I liked that concept
- 21:29very much. I'd been doing my Edgar Allen Poe pictures was Vincent Price,
- 21:33and those were deliberately studio bound. I wanted to have total control of everything
- 21:40within a studio, leaving nothing to chance, and I wanted to and when
- 21:45I thought I had done enough of those films, I wanted to go completely
- 21:49away from that, go into the streets and shoot the world around me as
- 21:56I interpreted it during the sixties, which of course was a very volatile a
- 22:00decade. You mentioned working with Vincent Price and the post films. Can you
- 22:04talk a little bit about horror and you're feeling about horror movies? Well,
- 22:10horror is very complex. It's exceedingly complex. You can get horror very easily
- 22:15by cutting off somebody's arm or something like that. I'm not talking about that
- 22:18kind of horror. I'm talking about horror as a psychological concept, and I
- 22:26think the roots go so deep into a person's individual experience, into the whole
- 22:33experience of humanity, that it's a fascinating genre in which to work. You
- 22:40were distributing a lot of films from foreign filmmakers. I was wondering if you
- 22:44had any favorite filmmakers from that, you know, like Krosawa or Bergman.
- 22:49What's your favorite films were from that kind of well of people. I would
- 22:56pick a few some of the filmmakers Felini, Bergman, a number of others.
- 23:03The first one I had was Cries and Whispers from Bergman, which was
- 23:08I thought a brilliant film. Let me see Kurosawa's Derza Huzla, which is
- 23:15an unusual film for him to which one Academy Award Best Foreign Film Fellini's Picture
- 23:25I've forgotten the title of it, but I had a film from Fellini that
- 23:30also won the Academy. We won I think in a certain numbers six or
- 23:34seven years, we've won more Foreign Academy Awards than everybody else combined. Now,
- 23:42were you able to meet with those directors, did you, you know,
- 23:45have any relationship with them, and did you learn things from them?
- 23:48Yes, I met I met several of them, talked with several of them.
- 23:52Felini said you should get out of distributing and go back to directing.
- 23:56I remember that, he said, why did you ever leave you? You've
- 24:03obviously had a great influence on a lot of the people that my generation considers
- 24:07the best filmmakers of you know, the seventies and the people who really influenced
- 24:11us moving into the eighties. Now, when I when I watch a movie
- 24:15by you know, Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola, do you when you
- 24:18watch movies that they make, do you see your influence in what they make?
- 24:22I mean, for example, camera movement, and you know, keeping
- 24:26things going a little bit. But basically they are their own people. They
- 24:33were good before they had met me. They had the talent. I may
- 24:37have taught them a few things, but basically they're brilliant filmmakers. They would
- 24:42have been brilliant filmmakers if they'd never met me. What do all these people
- 24:45have in common that the great filmmakers the James Cameron's and all these guys that
- 24:49you work with, What is there's something that you saw in them that just
- 24:53made them great. Well, I've been asked that question before, and I
- 24:56would say there are three things why every one of them was intelligent. I've
- 25:03never met a successful writer, producer or director who's been successful over a long
- 25:10period of time who wasn't intelligent. The second was the ability to work.
- 25:15Making films to a certain extent is glamorous and exciting, but also it is
- 25:22very very hard work. Those two things you can kind of figure out.
- 25:26The third is creativity. They are all creative, and that you only learned
- 25:36about a person by working with them. I also watched Death Rays two thousand
- 25:41and I was wondering if you when you watch the Hunger Games you reaction to
- 25:45that. I definitely had that reaction both in Death Rays and its follow up
- 25:51picture, death Sport. Death Sport. The number of things went wrong.
- 25:53It's not a good picture, but the thoughts in it and a Death Ray
- 26:00the ol M was pretty good picture. One some poll was the greatest b
- 26:03picture of all time. I think, without question some of the thoughts and
- 26:08death Race and death Sport are in The Hunger Games and some other things.
- 26:12On the other hand, as far as I know, death Race and death
- 26:17Sport were totally original. But if I say that, there's gonna be somebody
- 26:22who would say you're forgetting the German expression in this film of nineteen nineteen that
- 26:29had the same concept, So you can never say you were really the first.
- 26:33And it's very possible that I think whoever wrote The Hunger Games had never
- 26:38seen a death Sport or death Race. They probably thought they were doing something
- 26:45totally original as well. Well. It also reminded me a lot of Mad
- 26:48Max and actually more like Mad Max too, you know, did you ever
- 26:53see that connection? Yes, it was the actually that in that case it's
- 26:59in Australia direct. He told me he had seen he had seen Death Rays.
- 27:03George Miller, Yeah, yes, Joe, yes, and he said
- 27:06he had seen Death Rays and he said he was inspired by but he didn't
- 27:10copy. He got a general idea of a genre and did two brilliant original
- 27:17films. Right yeah, I mean, well, I mean the thing that
- 27:22that you feel when you watch that is just the danger. You know,
- 27:26you feel the speed and you feel like I mean, that's one of the
- 27:29things that films I think have lost a lot nowadays. Is just the actual
- 27:32you know, you're doing everything in camera. There's not really any visual effects.
- 27:37I mean there might be. There was like a Matt painting I remember,
- 27:38but other than that, I mean, everything is real and not like
- 27:41digital effects. So you can when I watch movies like that, it's a
- 27:45lot realer than watching, you know, some of these movies that are like
- 27:48the superhero movies, where you know that they can do it all in a
- 27:51computer. Yes, I think the audience unconsciously knows that they can sense if
- 27:57to a certain extent, the stunts that can be done today are far superior
- 28:03to what we were doing in camera. What you can do with the computer
- 28:07are just light years ahead. Yet at the same time, the audience almost
- 28:11senses they're too good. They know this can't really be now. I wanted
- 28:17to talk for just a second about if you could give a little bit of
- 28:21a lot of people to listen to this or first time filmmakers and people that
- 28:22are trying out there trying to make, you know, their first independent films.
- 28:26Can you talk a little bit about what people can do to have success
- 28:30in the film industry and make a film that's, like you said, a
- 28:34movie that is good, but also a film that will sell and that can
- 28:38keep them going well. As William Goldman once said, nobody knows anything.
- 28:45He's partially true, but I would say this, a lot of people have
- 28:48a general idea. You don't know, but you have a general idea.
- 28:52So I could see a few things, and even before I say, I
- 28:56will know that, somebody will go up and do self totally opposite from what
- 29:02I say you should do and have a giant success to do it brilliantly.
- 29:06So it really depends upon the ability of a filmmaker. But probably to not
- 29:11get into a deep, long discussion, the one thing that I would say
- 29:15is most important is preparation, particularly if you have a short schedule or a
- 29:22small budget. You want to do as much of your thinking as you possibly
- 29:26can before you ever appear on the set. You want to have your story
- 29:33worked out. You want to have talked with your actors, has worked out
- 29:40the basic red line, as Stanislovsky said of the actor's performance. You want
- 29:47to have your own shots sketched out. Knowing, however, you will never
- 29:52follow your plan exactly. Something that will happens that causes you to change will
- 29:59be back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
- 30:07Sometimes it was the better, sometimes you'll get a better idea. But
- 30:11I put heavy, heavy emphasis on preproduction planning. Is that how you were
- 30:17able to do Little Shop of Horrors and two days? Yes, we rehearsed
- 30:21three days. What happened? A studio had these sets. We just shot
- 30:26on sets that were there. That's the reason I made the picture, and
- 30:30I knew that if the screen actors guild at that time, I think it's
- 30:33still this way. Hiring an actor for five days for a week is not
- 30:38much more expensive than hiring amount of it. It's about as expensive it was
- 30:44to hire an actor for a week as for three days on a daily rate.
- 30:48So I hired all the actors for a week. We rehearsed three days,
- 30:52and then win any shot for two days, having worked everything out in
- 30:56the first three. I actually I have to ask you this now. I
- 31:00know that you you're a fan of Stanley Kubrick, right, Yes, I
- 31:03was wondering how you did you feel about the shining when you saw that?
- 31:06And did you talk to Jack Nicholson about that? After I did? I
- 31:10thought the shot. I think que because one of the great great directors.
- 31:15And I think The Shining is one of his best films. I'm not sort
- 31:18it's his best film, but it's one of his best films. So I
- 31:22have total admiration for Stanley and for that picture. And Jack was brilliant in
- 31:26I do have one story that Jack toldby When we were working, people used
- 31:32to say, I printed the first take I saw him did, but I
- 31:34printed jen b the second or third take or something like that. Stanley is
- 31:41famous for shooting and shooting and shooting. He ran over a hundred takes on
- 31:48one shot with Jack, and Jack as a good guy, he stood there
- 31:52and he went until Stanley printed, you know, one hundred and twelveth or
- 31:56one hundred and thirteenth take, And when he was finished, he went over
- 31:59this Stanley and said, Stanley, I'm with you all the way, but
- 32:02you have to know I generally peak around the seventieth or eightieth take. Did
- 32:12you ever have a chance to meet Stanley Cooper? I met him once,
- 32:15just talk to him briefly. Early in his career. He had done his
- 32:19first film was a crime story built around a race track, and it was
- 32:27a medium, low budget film, and I remember It was after he had
- 32:31done that and I was just talking to was the I said, this is
- 32:34one of the best, if not the best, first films I've ever seen,
- 32:37And it was clear from there that he was going to have a brilliant
- 32:42career. Was that The Killers? Yes, that's what I'd forgotten, right,
- 32:45I had a brilliant ending too, with the suitcase and the money flying
- 32:49out of it and everything. Yes. I always in my interviews with two
- 32:52questions. One is do you have a resource like a book or something that's
- 32:58been very influential to your life, or something that you can recommend the filmmakers.
- 33:02Well, I'll give you an answer that doesn't apply exactly. The most
- 33:07influential book to me was when I was in college studying math, and I
- 33:13studied calculus. The whole concept of a calculus, which is to a certain
- 33:20extent, could be described as some mathematics of movement. The problems of calculus
- 33:24I want to get I won't get it. In all that calculus, the
- 33:30problem and the solving of the problem, I thought was so brilliant and such
- 33:35an example of what the creative mind can do that that's probably influenced me more
- 33:40than any other book. If you could go back in time and talk to
- 33:44yourself when you were twenty years old, what advice would you have for yourself.
- 33:47I would probably say, at the age of twenty to try to get
- 33:52as broad and varied an education as you possibly can. I think the fact
- 34:00that I majored in engineering caused me to specialize too much in a certain branch
- 34:08of knowledge, where as a liberal education encompassing literature, art, philosophy,
- 34:16economic, psychology, all of that is the best preparation for a full life,
- 34:22whether professionally or personally. Did you follow that because you felt like you
- 34:27had to have something to kind of fall back on and to have a career.
- 34:30Well, my father was an engineer, and I simply started off to
- 34:36follow in his footsteps. And it wasn't until I became the film critic of
- 34:42the Stanford Daily and I started analyzing films that I realized this is what I
- 34:46wanted to do. But I'd spent four years a studying engineering. Did you
- 34:54ever use any of that knowledge for filmmaking? Well, as I say,
- 34:57going back to calculus, I use the knowledge, but I also use some
- 35:02of the way in which you think as an engineer or a physicist or a
- 35:07mathematician. There's a thought process of problem solving which can be very creative and
- 35:14very satisfying and very useful at the same time. Well, I really appreciate
- 35:20you taking the time and talking with me. Very good. Thank you.
- 35:23All right, that's going to do it for today. I want to thank
- 35:25my guests mister Roger Corman for coming on the show. Thanks a lot.
- 35:30I want to thank Jason so much for doing such a great job on this
- 35:32episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this
- 35:36episode, head over to the show notes at Bullproof Screenwriting dot tv Forward slash
- 35:39three twelve. If you haven't already, please please please head over to Screenwriting
- 35:44podcast dot com subscribe and leave a good review for the show, or subscribe
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- 35:53it truly truly helps us out a lot in getting this information out to
- 35:58more and more screenwriters, creatives and filmmakers. Thank you again so much for
- 36:02listening. As always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to
- 36:06you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.