CORMAN’S WORLD: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011)

In the ‘60 and ‘70, no one gave more future Hollywood machers a first shot at moviemaking than indie producer/mini-mogul/low-budget Schlockmeister Roger Corman, who just died at 98.  Sayles, Coppola, Demme, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Ron Howard, Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda barely scratch the surface, and Alex Stapleton’s well-handled documentary, loaded with clips & personal remembrances works like a charm.  Charm: a word not otherwise associated with any of Corman’s nearly 500 production credits.  Here, no encomiums from old associates trying to raise his modest directing abilities (usually focusing on the Edgar Allan Poe travesties, only Scorsese blathers away about them), instead confederates laugh at all the horrible films they were forced to make.  Corman knew the score, dropping the megaphone as soon as it made financial sense.  He’d seen enough of his early hires move to the A-list while he was stuck with the hoary Hollywood adage about B-pic guys: Sure, you know how to save a buck, but do you know how to spend one?  It helps explain why Corman, once he left the small-time goons who ran American International Pictures and started his own New World Pictures, surprised Hollywood by choosing to distribute art house product (Bergman, Kurosawa, Truffaut, Fellini), putting them in offbeat venues, even Drive-Ins as a way to scratch his itch for quality.  (You could make a Corman exploitation pic about horny teen kids making out at Drive-Ins showing CRIES AND WHISPERS.  Cut to a close up of those old metal speakers hanging on a car window and having an orgasm.)  This modest doc is a gem.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Probably the most interesting idea in here, one everyone seems to agree on, is how the one-two punch of JAWS/’75 and STAR WARS/’77, which mainstream studios always cite as a game-changer that made mid-list Hollywood fare economically marginal, was even more disastrous for Corman’s cheap pop exploitation.  Suddenly, his style of movie was available as quality product and he couldn’t keep up.  So long theatrical distribution; hello direct-to-video.