Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 674: 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 IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
- 0:13Film Hustle Podcast, Episode number six seventy four. Don't let small minds convince
- 0:18you that your dreams are too big. Anonymous broadcasting from the back alley in
- 0:24Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to
- 0:29survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz.
- 0:33And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of
- 0:38the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari.
- 0:41Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent
- 0:46film into a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers
- 0:51to make money with their films from predatory film distributors ripping them off to huckster
- 0:56film aggregators who prey upon them. The odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker.
- 1:00The old distribution model of making money with your film is broken, and
- 1:03there needs to be a change. The future of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial
- 1:08filmmaker or the film entrepreneur. In Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, I break
- 1:14down how to actually make money with your film projects and show you how to
- 1:18turn your indie film into a profitable business. With case studies examining successes and
- 1:23failures. This book shows you the step by step method to turn your passion
- 1:27into a profitable career. If you're making a feature film, series, or
- 1:32any other kind of video content, the Film Entrepreneur method will set you up
- 1:36for success. The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course
- 1:41audiobook. If you want to order it, just head over to www dot
- 1:45film bizbook dot com. That's film bizbook dot com. Enjoy today's episode with
- 1:53guest host Jason Buff. Thanks for joining us here today. We have a
- 1:59superst on today. We're talking with one of my heroes, mister Roger Corman.
- 2:05Now just between us, I was scared as hell to just give Roger
- 2:09Corman a call. I was sitting in my office and I got his very
- 2:15nice secretary told me a time to call in. And it's kind of like,
- 2:20all of a sudden, I was on the phone with one of my
- 2:22heroes. Roger Corman really is someone who all indie filmmakers should know about and
- 2:29should definitely understand his contribution to the world of independent film. He's also responsible
- 2:35for giving the first break to a lot of people that my generation considers the
- 2:38filmmakers that really influenced them, like Scorsese, Francis Ford, Coppola, Jonathan
- 2:46Demi, Joe Dante, and Ron Howard. So what I want to do
- 2:51is listen to some of them talk about how Roger Corman influenced their filmmaking.
- 2:57The first interview I want to go to is with Jonathan who said this about
- 3:00Roger Corman in the documentary Roger Corman Hollywood's Wild Angel in nineteen seventy eight documentary.
- 3:07Well, in any film that I've ever worked on with Roger, there
- 3:08are three main elements that he's looking for. One is humor, which he
- 3:13considers tremendously important. Another is action, which he considers very important, and
- 3:17another is sex, which he considers important but not quite as important as the
- 3:21other two elements. I don't think. But it's funny the way these things
- 3:23pop up, because, for example, in my script for Caged Hand,
- 3:28your script in and what Roger does is sometimes he'll give the notes right on
- 3:30the script and hand it back to you. So you get the script back
- 3:34and you get little little marginal references like breast nudity possible here question mark,
- 3:38which yes, you realize, yes it is possible here, and you don't
- 3:42want to get two idealistic because actually you don't have negative feelings about nudity anyway,
- 3:46So you go, yes, Roger, indeed it is. And that's
- 3:47the bargain you make with Roger. If you buy his it's never articulated,
- 3:52I don't think, but if you buy his concept that pictures that audience is
- 3:54like contain these three major elements action, humor, and sex, and you
- 3:58really buy it, and you're kind of commit to getting as much of that
- 4:01stuff as possible in there. And if you will also want to make a
- 4:04good picture and tell a good story, then the best of both worlds happens.
- 4:09He gets a movie that contains these things, and he's confident of releasing
- 4:12it, and you get a chance to make a picture very much the way
- 4:14you want to make it. I know that you've worked with you gave so
- 4:17many people their start, so many great talents or start. Francis Ford Coppola
- 4:24worked with you before he really worked with anyone else, isn't that true?
- 4:27Yes? Right. As a matter of fact, he was a sound man,
- 4:30the second assistant director, and a shot second unit all on one picture.
- 4:34Really very versatile. Okay, and you know then this kid's going places.
- 4:39Actually I knew he was good. I had no idea that he was
- 4:42going to go to the heights. He did, okay, Ron Howard.
- 4:45I think also Howard's first correcting jobs with you is right. He started with
- 4:48as as an actor and the picture was called Eat My Dust Car to film.
- 4:55It was a big success, and he came into the office and he
- 4:58said, I know you want to do a sequel. Whether a star plays
- 5:02a role in a successful film, you always ask for more money. I
- 5:06will star in the next picture, no more money, and I will do
- 5:12an additional job. And I said what is that? And he said,
- 5:15I'll direct. And I said, Ron, you will always look like a
- 5:17director to me. Now, you influenced the way film trailers are made.
- 5:24I think many people, especially young people, think that film trailers have always
- 5:27been similar. But no, you really changed the way they were made with
- 5:30a certain innovation. What is it you did well? It was Joe Dante,
- 5:34who went on to become a very well known successful director, who started
- 5:39cutting trailers for us. And he was cutting one trailer and I looked at
- 5:44it and I said, Joe, is this a fairly dull trailer. What
- 5:46can you do to jazz it up? He said, come back this afternoon.
- 5:50I went back this afternoon and there was the same dull trailer. In
- 5:56the middle was an exploding helicopter. It made the trailer. I ask you
- 6:00a question, was there an exploding helicopter in the film? There is no
- 6:03law that says everything in the trailer that that's fantastic the balls Man that was
- 6:15incredible. So I mean, what isn't what this show would be jazzed up
- 6:19by a helicopter crash occasionally, you know, that's the kind of thing that
- 6:23would help a talk show, which they should do it everywhere. We could
- 6:26give you the stock footage. Would you charge me for it? Very little?
- 6:32You've got great titles, great titles for your films. One of my
- 6:36favorites, Attack of Crab Monsters and UH. And there's the of course the
- 6:41UH, the title for it. As so many amazing titles over there.
- 6:46Do you come up with the title first and then decide to shoot the film.
- 6:48How does it work? Sometimes? For instance, Grand Theft Auto,
- 6:53which was Round Howard's first film as a as a director, the title came
- 7:00first. But if oh the film he did before, Eat My Dust,
- 7:02I've forgotten the title. We were shooting a car chase somewhere out in the
- 7:06sam Fernando Valley and dust was flying all over the place and the director who
- 7:11said we had to call this picture eat My Dust, I said we will,
- 7:14and he said I'm joking. I said, I'm not joking. That's
- 7:16a great title. So the title, now, of course that was Conan
- 7:19O'Brien. And now here's Ron Howard talking about working with Roger Cormick. Conversations
- 7:25that were really significant during the course of making Grand Theft Auto. The first
- 7:30was he sat me down and said, Ron, I'll come visit you on
- 7:32the first day of filming and if you're productive, and you know you're making
- 7:40around twenty setups a day and you're making your days, you won't see much
- 7:43of me in all candor, if you're not achieving those those kind of results,
- 7:47you're going to see one hell of a lot of me. That was
- 7:50his little warning. I had a great moment on the Paramount Lot. I
- 7:56was finishing up the season of that season of happy Days walking along and uh,
- 8:03as soon as Hiatus came in March, I was gonna go h direct
- 8:07Grand Theft Auto and Jonathan Demi called me from out out the window at the
- 8:16the second second story office. He was getting ready to do Citizen Band.
- 8:20I think um and uh uh And of course I knew him as a Roger
- 8:26Corman veteran. And he came bounding down the stairs and he said, I
- 8:31heard you're gonna direct a picture from Roger. Come upstairs. And I went
- 8:35upstairs and he talked to me for about twenty minutes. He gave me these
- 8:37sheets that he would use to sort of plan out the shot lists and in
- 8:41the day, and gave me great advice. Here's this young guy saying,
- 8:45make sure you get plenty of sleep, you know, this hipster guy.
- 8:48And I and I and uh, you know and and and uh and he
- 8:52basically said, you know, um, Roger will let you creatively do whatever
- 8:56you want to do. That's the fantastic thing about working for Roger. Uh
- 9:00and uh but uh uh, you know, you just have to make sure
- 9:03that you you're efficient, and here's how you do it, and remember to
- 9:07think ahead, and just lots of good fundamentals, but also encouraging me to
- 9:11explore and be creative and really, you know, take advantage of this.
- 9:15This opportunity that Roger was was was given me. I finally carried my end
- 9:20of a great tradition and cast Roger in Apoul thirteen. He had a very
- 9:24nice scene playing a senator with U with Tom Hanks, and uh, it
- 9:30was a really wonderful day to reconnect with Roger, have him come. We
- 9:35had you know, it was a big day with green screen and uh,
- 9:39you know it was we were doing visual effect shots and and it was,
- 9:43you know, just a plus Hollywood filmmaking. And he just smarked and said
- 9:48that, well, we could do this for a hell of a lot less.
- 9:50Uh, and you know he could. All right, and now my
- 9:54interview with Roger Corman. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
- 10:03and now back to the show. I was watching the documentary Corman's World
- 10:09recently, and the thing that I thought was very interesting to see is that
- 10:11you're still going down and being on the set. Do you find the same
- 10:15excitement being on a set these days, it's always exciting to being on the
- 10:18set. I'm probably not as excited as earlier, but the stimulation is still
- 10:24there after you've done it. I've made around three hundred films. There's a
- 10:28certain routine, but there's something always a little bit new. Is how things
- 10:33changed. I mean now that you are working in the digital world and video
- 10:37on demand and the sci fi channel, has your system changed and the way
- 10:43that you go about distribution, it's changed a little bit. When you mentioned
- 10:46distribution, it's changed for the better in production, and it's changed, at
- 10:52least for those of us working in medium budget and lower budget films. It's
- 10:56changed for the worst end distribution. Production production is easier the new digital cameras,
- 11:03sound equipment, the lighting equipment, everything is lighter, more portable,
- 11:09easier to use. So you can shoot more unnatural locations and you can shoot
- 11:13faster and more efficiently. So production is better today. The conditions of production,
- 11:20the conditions of distribution, however, are not good for the independence the
- 11:26major studio is today with their one hundred million dollars and two hundred million dollars
- 11:31budgets in their thirty forty fifty million dollar marketing campaigns have dominated theatrical to such
- 11:39an extent that very few medium or low budget independent pictures get a theatrical distribution.
- 11:48Primarily we're on DVD, streaming, cable, some broadcast television, and
- 11:56only occasionally in theaters. Today, there are a certain period of time that
- 12:01you look back on in your career and kind of reminisce about as being the
- 12:05glory days of filmmaking, probably for me the sixties and seventies. The sixties
- 12:11when I was having most fun and most success as a director. I started
- 12:18directing it around fifty eight or something like that. First a couple of years
- 12:22you sort of learn what you're doing, and then things started to move forward.
- 12:26Me in the sixties and in the seventies I started my own production and
- 12:31distribution company that I moved from directing to producing and distributing, and that was
- 12:35a whole new world as well. So for that about a twenty year period,
- 12:41I was probably having the most fun and the most success. Things still
- 12:46work out. I'm still producings, still distributing, but I make fewer films
- 12:52today, and just that I make fewer films, they get a limited distribution
- 12:58and I'll continue for a few more years. You started out working as a
- 13:03writing notes on screenplays, right, and you eventually did some notes for the
- 13:07guns Actually, I started a graduator from Stanford with a degree in engineering,
- 13:13and I was a failure of the Stanford engineering class. I got the worst
- 13:18job of anybody. I got a job as a messenger at Fox for thirty
- 13:24two dollars and fifty cents a week, and I rode the bike around the
- 13:26studio delivering message system. And then I worked fairly hard, did some extra
- 13:35work and became a reader in the story department, and that was where I
- 13:41got a little bit of minor recognition for my work on the Gunfighter. I
- 13:48didn't like various things that were going on, so I had some college time
- 13:54left on the GI bill, so I went to Europe, went to Oxford
- 13:58briefly, and then came back and became a literary agent and sold my own
- 14:03script under an assumed name, and I took the money from that and started
- 14:09my production company. How did you did you know how it was all going
- 14:13to work, and were you going to sell the film or did you just
- 14:16kind of go into it like a leap of faith. It was a total
- 14:18leap of faith. I think back, and I wonder how I had the
- 14:24nerve to do it well. I think that you know, your career has
- 14:28shown that you've you've taken a lot of leaps of faith like that. And
- 14:31now did you when you first started, did you have the idea that you
- 14:35could keep a career going as long as you were making films at a low
- 14:41enough price that you could always sell them. It wasn't quite that easy.
- 14:46I financed my films with my own money, and since I don't have that
- 14:50much money, I can't make a giant film. So the budget level was
- 14:56more or less predetermined. And I don't think or ever thought of it as
- 15:01how long can I keep going? I just felt that everything is going well,
- 15:05I'll continue making films. So there was a little bit of a sort
- 15:09of a long term plan, but to a large extent, it was day
- 15:13to day. I'm going to make this film, I'm shooting this film,
- 15:18I'm planning the next film, and so forth. What did you learn from
- 15:22making films that people really wanted to see? You obviously tapped into something in
- 15:26the marketplace that was selling tickets and got people coming in and got people excited.
- 15:31Are there any sort of things that are specific to your films. That
- 15:35really kind of you developed and learned how to sell a phone. Well early
- 15:39on, I appeal to a teenage audience. I was very much aware that
- 15:46the audience was a young audience. In the major studios were casting their great
- 15:54stars, which meant, to a large extent, a fifty year old leading
- 15:56man making love to a forty year year old leading lady, and the average
- 16:02age of the audience was eighteen. So I felt, and I toldally understood
- 16:07why they did it. Their stars were the equivalent of brands. The stars
- 16:12were famous and could sell tickets. But I felt if I went with young
- 16:17people, I could peel directly to a young audience. And I worked in
- 16:22genres. I not always, but generally I was doing action pictures, horror
- 16:29films, science fiction films, sometimes deliberately straight teenage films and so forth.
- 16:36Were there any other movies like genre films? They were fairly non mainstream back
- 16:41in those days. I mean, nowadays it seems like horror movies are very
- 16:44mainstream, and especially science fiction and everything, especially after Star Wars and all
- 16:48those sorts of movies. But back in those days, was it something that
- 16:52was more of like a drive in movie theater or more like B movies.
- 16:56Yes, the drive ins were very important, they weren't quite as important as
- 17:00people think they were. Our main money still came from what we called the
- 17:06hardtops, enclosed theaters, but drive ins were of major sorts of income,
- 17:11and the drive in audience was even younger than the hardtop audience. Although drive
- 17:18in did attract some families on the basis that young family with children who couldn't
- 17:23afford a babysitter or something could just go to the drive in, put the
- 17:27children in the back seat, watched the picture, and the children would maybe
- 17:32just go to sleep, so it was an inexpensive night out for them.
- 17:37It still was primarily a young audience. You think we've missed something now that
- 17:42we don't have theaters and we don't like go out and see movies now that
- 17:45everybody's watching movies on iPads and on TV. Yes, I think there's something
- 17:51to be said for seeing a picture, particularly a comedy, with an audience.
- 17:56You pick up the vibes, as it were, unconsciously from your audience.
- 18:00It becomes a communal or a shares experience. I was watching the nineteen
- 18:04seventy eight documentary called Corman Hollywood's Wild Angel. You can actually it's actually on
- 18:10YouTube, and it was one of probably one of the most I learned so
- 18:14much in two hours of just watching that. It's incredible. And there's a
- 18:18great scene where they're talking with Jonathan Demi and he's talking about the advice that
- 18:23you gave him as a filmmaker, and I thought it was really interesting and
- 18:26I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. And he said that the
- 18:30three most important elements in a film were humor, action, and sex,
- 18:36and sex was last, but it was still important. Do you still feel
- 18:38like I think, I think that I would put in the narrative storyline I
- 18:45should have said that that was probably that was probably understood. What are yours
- 18:49some of your favorite movies that you have seen lately? You know more contemporary
- 18:55people. Yes, as a man of fact, possibly the most interesting him
- 19:00I saw last year was a film that for three quarters of the way through
- 19:06I thought was one of the most brilliant films I had ever seen, and
- 19:10then it started to fall at the end and it was never recognized in any
- 19:15way. I think for special effects, Interstellar, which I thought was really
- 19:21a brilliant of film, particularly as I say my degree was in engineering,
- 19:25that I had a minor in physics, and maybe it was unique to me.
- 19:30I try to stay up with physics, and it was really very accurate
- 19:33from all the concepts of physics today. The last quarter or so it started
- 19:41to get a little questionable, didn't totally hold up. But I think for
- 19:47the reason that, as I say, it was so brilliant so far through
- 19:52and then still I still think of it as possibly the best picture of the
- 19:57year. But nobody else seems to agree with me, or a few people
- 20:02agree I agree with me. We'll be right back after a word from our
- 20:07sponsor, and now back to the show. One of the things that I
- 20:15had heard that you mentioned was that after the film The Intruder, you had
- 20:18decided that you didn't want to be as which is a brilliant film. But
- 20:22I actually just saw it for the first time a couple of days ago,
- 20:26that you had decided to try and not have a movie that was commercial,
- 20:30but have a movie within that movie that actually had a message and was a
- 20:34good movie within a movie that was sellable. Yes, I felt that I
- 20:37had become too serious with The Intruder. It got a lot of critical acclaim
- 20:44on a couple of minor film festivals, but was commercially not successful, and
- 20:48I felt I was too serious. I was lecturing the audience, and I
- 20:52felt what I would do would be to make a film and entertainment with as
- 20:59we say, a method acting, a text and the subtexts. A text
- 21:03is the entertainment of the film, and the subtext would be whatever was important
- 21:08to me or whatever I wanted to say, but it would be always be
- 21:12secondary to the text of the film. Now, were you one of the
- 21:18first people to take the camera off the tripad and go out into the streets
- 21:25and kind of shoot off of sets. Was that something that you felt was
- 21:30you know, would bring more realism to your film, say in the sixties.
- 21:34Yes, I was one of the first. I wouldn't say I was
- 21:37the first. There's I know a number of people were doing it before me,
- 21:42but I was one of the first to do it. And I liked
- 21:45that concept very much. I'd been doing my Edgar Allen Poe pictures was vincent
- 21:51price, and those were deliberately studio bound. I wanted to have total control
- 21:56everything within a studio, leaving thing to chance, and I wanted to and
- 22:02when I I had done enough of those films. I wanted to go completely
- 22:07away from that, go into the streets and shoot the world around me as
- 22:14I interpreted it during the sixties, which of course, was a very volatile
- 22:18decade. You mentioned working with Vincent Price and the post films. Can you
- 22:22talk a little bit about horror and you're feeling about horror movies? Well,
- 22:26horror is very complex. It's exceedingly complex. You can get horror very easily
- 22:33by cutting off somebody's arm or something like that. I'm not talking about that
- 22:36kind of horror. I'm talking about horror as a psychological concept, and I
- 22:44think the roots go so deep into a person's individual experience, into the whole
- 22:51experience of humanity, that it's a fascinating genre in which to work. You
- 22:56were distributing a lot of films from filmmakers. I was wondering if you had
- 23:02any favorite filmmakers from that, you know, like Kurosawa or Bergman. What's
- 23:07your favorite films were? Um from that kind of well of people, I
- 23:12would pick a few some of the filmmakers, uh Fellini, Bergman, a
- 23:18number of others. The first one I had was Cries and Whispers from Bergman,
- 23:26which was I thought a brilliant film. Let me see Kurosawasa Husula,
- 23:33which is an unusual film for him to which one Academy Award Best Foreign Film
- 23:40Fellini's picture. I've forgotten the title of it, but I had a film
- 23:45from Fellini that also won the Academy. We won, I think in a
- 23:51certain numbers six or seven years, we've won more a Foreign Academy Awards than
- 23:56everybody else can bin. Now, you were you able to meet with those
- 24:02directors, did you, you know, have any relationship with them, and
- 24:04did you learn things from them? Yes? I met. I met several
- 24:08of them, talked with some several of them. Felini said you should get
- 24:11out of distributing and go back to directing. I remember that he said,
- 24:15why did you ever leave you? You've obviously had a great influence on a
- 24:22lot of the people that my generation considers the best filmmakers of you know,
- 24:26the seventies and the people who really influenced us moving into the eighties. Now,
- 24:30when I when I watch a movie by you know, Martin Scorsese or
- 24:34Francis Ford Coppola, do you when you watch movies that they make, do
- 24:37you see your influence in what they make. I mean, for example,
- 24:41camera movement and you know, keeping things going a little bit. But basically
- 24:47they are their own people. Uh, they were good before they even met
- 24:53me. They had the talent. I may have taught them a few things,
- 24:56but basically they're brilliant film makers. They would have been brilliant filmmakers if
- 25:02they'd never met me. What do all these people have in common that the
- 25:04great filmmakers, the James Camerons and all these guys that you work with.
- 25:08What is there's something that you saw in them that just made them great.
- 25:11Well, I've been asked that question before, and I would say there are
- 25:15three things. One, every one of them was intelligent. I've never met
- 25:22a successful writer, producer or director who's been successful over a long period of
- 25:27time who wasn't intelligent. The second was the ability to work. Making films
- 25:34to a certain extent is glamorous and exciting, but also it is very very
- 25:41hard work. Those two things you can kind of figure out. The third
- 25:45is creativity. They are all creative, and that you only learned about a
- 25:53person by working with them. And I also watched Death Race two thousand and
- 25:57I was wondering if you when you watch The Hunger Games. I definitely had
- 26:04that reaction both in Death Ray and its follow up picture death Sport. Death
- 26:10Sport. The number of things went wrong. It's not a good picture,
- 26:12but the thoughts in it, and a Death Rays, on the other hand,
- 26:18was pretty good picture one s Poll was the greatest B picture of all
- 26:22time. I think, without question, some of the thoughts and death Race
- 26:26and death Sport are in the Hunger Games and some other things. On the
- 26:30other hand, as far as I know, death Race and death Sport were
- 26:34totally original. But if I say that, there's gonna be somebody who would
- 26:41say you're forgetting. The German expression in this film of nineteen nineteen had the
- 26:47same concept, so you can never say you were really the first. And
- 26:51it's very possible that I think whatever wrote The Hunger Games had never seen a
- 26:57death Sport or death Race. They probably thought they were doing something totally original
- 27:03as well. Well. It also reminded me a lot of Mad Max and
- 27:07uh actually more like Mad Max too. You know, did you did you
- 27:11ever see that connection? Yes, it was the Actually in that case it's
- 27:15an Australian direct He told me he had seen he had seen Death Rays.
- 27:19George Miller. Yeah, yes, Joe, Yes, and he said he
- 27:23had seen Death Rays and he said he was inspired by but he didn't compliments
- 27:27that he got a general idea of a genre and did two brilliant original films.
- 27:36Right, yeah, I mean well, I mean the thing that that
- 27:41that you feel when you watch that is just the danger. You know,
- 27:42you feel the speed and you feel like I mean, that's one of the
- 27:45things that films I think have lost a lot nowadays, is just the actual
- 27:49you know, you're doing everything in camera. There's not really any visual effects.
- 27:53I mean there might be. There was like a Matt painting I remember,
- 27:56but other than that, I mean, everything is real and not like
- 28:00dual effects. So you can when I watch movies like that, it's a
- 28:02lot realer than watching you know, some of these movies that are like the
- 28:06superhero movies, where you know that they can do it all in a computer.
- 28:08Yes, I think the audience unconsciously knows that they can sense if to
- 28:15a certain extent, the stunts that can be done today are far superior to
- 28:21what we were doing in camera. What you can do with a computer are
- 28:26just light years ahead. Yet at the same time, the audience almost senses
- 28:30they're too good. They know this can't really be Now, I wanted to
- 28:34talk for just a second about if you could give a little bit of a
- 28:37lot of people to listen to this, or first time filmmakers and people that
- 28:41are trying out there trying to make, you know, their first independent films.
- 28:44Can you talk a little bit about what people can do to have success
- 28:48in the film industry and make a film that's, like you said, a
- 28:52movie that is good, but also a film that will sell and that can
- 28:56keep them going well. As William Goldman once said, nobody knows anything.
- 29:03He's partially true, but I would say this, a lot of people have
- 29:07a general idea. You don't know, but you have a general idea.
- 29:11So I could see a few things, and even before I say am,
- 29:14I will know that somebody will go up and do something totally opposite from what
- 29:18I say you should do and have a giant success and do it verily.
- 29:22So it really depends upon the ability of a filmmaker. But probably to not
- 29:27get into a deep, long discussion, the one thing that I would say
- 29:33is most important is preparation, particularly if you have a short schedule or a
- 29:40small budget. You want to do as much of your thinking as you possibly
- 29:45can before you ever appear on the set. You want to have your story
- 29:52worked out. You want to have talked with your actors. Will be right
- 29:57back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
- 30:07Worked out the basic red line. As Stanislavsky said of the actor's performance,
- 30:15you want to have your own shots sketched out. Knowing however, you will
- 30:18never follow your plan exactly. Something that will happens that causes you to change,
- 30:26sometimes the better. Sometimes you'll get a better idea. But I put
- 30:30heavy, heavy emphasis on preproduction planning. Is that how you were able to
- 30:34do Little Shop of Horrors in two days? Yes, we rehearsed three days.
- 30:38What happened? Studio had these sets. We just shot on sets that
- 30:44were there. That's the reason I made the picture, and I knew that
- 30:48if the screen Actress Guild at that time, I think it's still this way.
- 30:52Hiring an actor for five days for a week is not much more expensive
- 30:57than hiring amount of it. It's about as expensive it was to hire an
- 31:02actor for a week as for three days on a daily rate. So I
- 31:06hired all the actors for a week. We rehearsed three days and then went
- 31:10an shot for two days, having worked everything out in the first three I
- 31:15actually I have to ask you this now I know that you you're a fan
- 31:18of Stanley Kubrick. Yes, I was wondering, how did you feel about
- 31:22The Shining when you saw that? And did you talk to Jack Nicholson about
- 31:26that after I did? I thought the shot. I think que because one
- 31:30of the great great directors, and I think The Shining is one of his
- 31:34best films. I'm not sort of his best film, but it's one of
- 31:37his best films. So I have total admiration for Stanley and for that picture,
- 31:42and Jack was brilliant at it. I do have one story that Jack
- 31:47Pilby. When we were working, people used to say, I printed the
- 31:51first take. I sell them did, but I printed generally the second or
- 31:53third take or something like that. Stanley is famous for shooting and shooting and
- 32:00shooting. He went over one hundred takes on one shot with Jack, and
- 32:07Jack as a good guy, he stood there and he went until Stanley printed,
- 32:12you know, one hundred and twelve, three hundred and thirteenth take,
- 32:15and when he was finished, he went over to Stanley and said, Stanley,
- 32:19I'm with you all the way, but you have to know I generally
- 32:22peek around the seventieth or eightieth take. Did you ever have a chance to
- 32:30meet Stanley Coopert. I met him once, just talked to him briefly.
- 32:34Early in his career. He had done his first film was a crime story
- 32:40built around a race track, and it was a medium, low budget film.
- 32:46And I remember it was after he had done that, and I was
- 32:51just talking to was and I said, this is one of the best,
- 32:52if not the best, first films I've ever seen, And it was clear
- 32:57from there that he was going to have a brilliant career. Was that The
- 33:00Killers? Yes, that's what I forgotten, right, That had a brilliant
- 33:05ending too, with the suitcase and the money flying out of it and everything.
- 33:07Yes. I always in my interviews with two questions. One is do
- 33:13you have a resource like a book or something that's been very influential to your
- 33:16life or something that you can recommend the filmmakers. Well, I'll give you
- 33:22an answer that doesn't apply exactly. The most influential book to me was when
- 33:28I was in college studying math, and I studied calculus, the whole concept
- 33:34of a calculus, which is to a certain extent, could be described as
- 33:38some mathematics of movement. The problems with the calculus that want to get I
- 33:44won't get it, and all of that calculus, the problem and the solving
- 33:49of the problem, I thought was so brilliant and such an example of what
- 33:53the creative mind can do that that's probably influenced me more than any other book.
- 34:00If you could go back in time and talk to yourself when you were
- 34:02twenty years old, what advice would you have for yourself? I would probably
- 34:07say, at the age of twenty to try to get as broad and varied
- 34:13an education as you possibly can. I think the fact that I majored in
- 34:21engineering caused me to specialize too much in a certain branch of knowledge, where
- 34:29as a liberal education encompassing literature, art, philosophy, economic, psychology,
- 34:36all of that is the best preparation for a full life, whether professionally or
- 34:42personally. Did you follow that because you felt like you had to have something
- 34:45to kind of fall back on and to have a career. Well, my
- 34:49father was an engineer, and I simply started off to follow in his footsteps,
- 34:55and it wasn't until I became the film critic of The Standard Daily and
- 35:00I started analyzing films that I realized this is what I wanted to do.
- 35:06But I'd spent four years a studying engineering. Did you ever use any of
- 35:13that knowledge for filmmaking? Well, as I say, going back to calculus,
- 35:15I use some of the knowledge, but I also use some of the
- 35:20way in which you think as an engineer or a physicist or a mathematician.
- 35:25There's a thought process of problem solving which can be very creative and very satisfying
- 35:32and very useful at the same time. Well, I really appreciate you taking
- 35:37the time and talking with me. Very good. Thank you. All right,
- 35:42that's going to do it for today. I want to thank my guests,
- 35:44mister Roger Corman for coming on the show. Thanks a lot. I
- 35:46want to thank Jason so much for doing such an amazing job with this episode.
- 35:51If you want to get links anything we spoke about in this episode,
- 35:52head over to the show notes at any filmuscle dot com forward slash six seventy
- 35:58four. If you haven't already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com.
- 36:02Subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us
- 36:07out a lot, guys. Thank you again so much for listening. Guys,
- 36:09as always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay
- 36:13safe out there, and I'll talk too soon. Thanks for listening to the
- 36:15Indie Film Hustle podcast at Indie Film hustle dot com. That's I N D
- 36:21I E F I L M h ustl dot com