ROGER CORMAN

Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I'd give it my best shot.

When I started in the late 1950s, every film I made - no matter how low the budget - got a theatrical release. Today, less that 20-percent of our films get a theatrical release.

Jim Cameron is proof that if you are good, you'll get promoted.

One of the worst things you can do is have a limited budget and try to do some big looking film. That's when you end up with very bad work.

Motion pictures are the art form of the 20th century, and one of the reasons is the fact that films are a slightly corrupted artform. They fit this century - they combine Art and business!

As a producer, I probably am a little stronger than most, since I was a director originally.

Somebody said, 'Roger doesn't know how to spend money.' And I thought, 'I don't spend money because I don't have it!' If I had it, I could spend money! That's about the only time I was told that!

The safest genre is the horror film. But the most unsafe - the most dangerous - is comedy. Because even if your horror film isn't very good, you'll get a few screams and you're okay. With a comedy, if they don't laugh, you're dead.

There was a fairly big difference between Detroit and Beverly Hills. I remember this. Detroit actually was a prosperous bustling city when we moved here in 1941. But the first day in Detroit, you always wore a shirt and a tie to school. And I wore a shirt and a tie to Beverly Hills High School, and a girl came up to me and said, "Where are you from?" And I said, "Detroit." And she said, "And you won't be wearing a tie tomorrow, will you?" And I said, "You're absolutely correct." So that was my first adjustment to a slightly more casual environment.

Martin Scorsese was one of the few who had not been an assistant. Most of the guys had been an assistant and worked their way up. But I had seen an underground picture he had made in New York, a black-and-white film. I had done a picture for American International, about a Southern woman bandit, the Ma Barker story, and it was very successful, and I had left to start my own company, and they wanted me to make another one.

Horror films have been with us forever, so you can't say I originated that in any way, but it sort of brought back a classical way to make a horror film.

I was young, so I was part of youth culture. The years went by, I became older and no longer part of youth culture, and I became more dependent upon the young people in the office and my own children.

When I started I had no knowledge of films whatsoever. I was an engineering major at Stanford. And I found out as a senior that they had two film critics on the Stanford Daily, and they got free passes to all the theaters in Palo Alto. So I thought, I'll do that, and I became a film critic. And then I became interested in films. But I had no time to study anything in that area because I was a senior, just finishing up as engineering.

I was called recently in some article "Hollywood's Oldest Established Rebel." So I'm sort of working from the inside now, with still a little bit of a rebellious spirit.

I think one of the reasons movies are the quintessential modern art form is that it is partially a business. The director needs a crew - the writer, the producer, etcetera - and to have that, he needs money.

When I started, every film got a full theatrical distribution. Today, almost no low budget films, maybe two or three a year, will get a full theatrical distribution. We've been frozen out of that, which means they must be aware that for a full theatrical distribution it either has to be something like Saw or some exploitation film of today or an extremely well made personal film.

I think the art film, or the auteur-driven film - and not only foreign, but domestic films following that path - can get a small share of the box office. And I think that small share may open up a little bit.

I think anybody who's working in a creative medium is working partially with their conscious mind, partially with their unconscious mind. So, my unconscious mind may be a little more distorted and violent than I am aware of.

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

My father was an engineer, .. But I found out that the film critics for the Stanford Daily got free passes for all the films. So I became first an assistant critic and then the main film critic. Those free passes changed my life.

I'm not going to shoot seven days a week. I think it's counterproductive. I think you're going to have people stumbling around after a couple of weeks.

Somebody who moved up very fast was Jim Cameron, who was a young guy out of - I think he came from Arizona, from some community college there, and he was building model spaceships, on a picture called Battle Beyond the Stars.

A great director, first, is highly intelligent. And he is also a dedicated and willing to work hard. Now those are easy things to identify. The third is the creativity, and that is very difficult to identify in advance. This is why so many of the directors who have started with me were my assistant - the first one was Francis Ford Coppola.

People gravitate occasionally to the brilliantly made art low budget films, which is maybe one out of every five hundred low budget films made.

There were two practical reasons we moved to Venice. One was that there was an artists movement and a countercultural movement. Lots of people we might want to hire lived in the area. We also wanted to buy in a lower rent area that looked like it was going to be gentrified so that we could eventually sell the studio for more money.