Live on Tape: Roger Corman and Me at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Talking with Roger Corman about Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, taking "a nice trip," and missing the chance to direct Orson Welles. (Of course, I look so huge here, he must have thought his dream finally came true.) The last time I had so much fun, I was interviewing Corman at the Bahamas International Film Festival for Variety.

Roger Corman and Me

It will be my pleasure and privilege to conduct a Q&A with the legendary Roger Corman on Friday, Jan. 3, following the 7 pm screening of his classic Masque of the Red Death at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. And I’m even happier to report this will occur just one night after the Houston Film Critics Society — of which I am a founding member — honors Corman with a special lifetime achievement tribute during HFCA’s annual awards show at MFAH.

You can purchase tickets for both the awards show and the Masque of the Red Death screening at the MFAH website. Or you can opt not to attend either event, and spend the rest of your life tortured by gnawing regret. The choice is yours.

For the benefit of those who tuned in late…

(Cue the cut-and-pastings from the mini-bio I have prepared for my film studies students.)

Roger Corman has earned millions and entertained millions more throughout his decades-long career as a director, producer and/or distributor of over 300 highly successful small-budget, high-concept films, and continues to regale audiences with a steady output of similar fare for theatrical, home video, streaming and cable platforms. Indeed, just three weeks ago, the remarkably spry 93-year-old legend presented his latest effort as an executive producer, the sci-fi action-thriller Abduction, at the Bahamas International Film Festival — where, not incidentally, he and his wife, producer Julie Corman, conducted mentoring sessions with budding screenwriters.

The titles of many of Corman's 1950s films -- The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), It Conquered the World (1956), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), War of the Satellites (1958) and A Bucket of Blood (1959) -- indicate why he earned early on the nickname “King of the Drive-in.” (In 1960, he produced and directed the cult classic Little Shop of Horrors, which reportedly was shot in two days and one night on a leftover set).

During the 1960s, however, he began to attract serious critical attention, domestically as well as internationally, as the auteur of several stylishly gothic horror films based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, including House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Raven (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963), and, of course, The Masque of the Red Death (1964), featuring such established actors as Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Ray Milland, and Peter Lorre. (If you are of a certain age, these films are more likely than all the English classes in the world to have sparked any interest you’ve ever had in Poe’s literary output.) But Corman is equally proud of The Intruder (1962), his socially conscious indie drama about a charismatic demagogue (brilliantly played by a young William Shatner) who stokes racial tensions in a small Southern town. The movie was boldly progressive for its time, and remains, in the words of critic-historian  Wheeler Winston Dixon, “one of the most brutal, honest, and unflinching examinations of American racism in cinema history.”

In 1970, Corman formed New World Pictures, an independent mini-major that produced the work of such up-and-comers as John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, and Peter Bogdanovich. New World's first film, The Student Nurses (1970), was shot in three weeks for $150,000 and grossed more than $1 million. Other early New World releases included horror, biker, and women-in-prison films. The profits from these low-budget features allowed Corman to act as the American distributor for a number of prestigious foreign films. In a 10-year period, New World released three Academy Award winners in the Foreign Language Film category: Federico Fellini's Amarcord (1974), Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975) and Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum (1979). It should be noted that when Corman told Ingmar Bergman that he had attempted to expand the potential audience for the latter’s 1972 masterwork Cries and Whispers by releasing it in some drive-ins, Bergman approved.

Corman’s influence on American cinema has been incalculably enormous, both as a filmmaker — his Poe films continue to inspire many directors of gothic horror movies — and as a nurturer of up-and-coming, destined-for-prominence actors, screenwriters and directors. (In addition to those previously mentioned, Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Fonda, Sylvester Stallone, Pam Grier, Bruce Dern, Gale Ann Hurd, Ron Howard and Robert Towne are among the luminaries he gave significant early-career boosts.) In 2009, the Motion Picture Academy’s Board of Governors voted to give Corman an honorary Oscar “for his unparalleled ability to nurture aspiring filmmakers by providing an environment that no film school could match.”

In short: Roger Corman has made an immeasurable impact on American movies — on movies, period — as a maverick and a mentor. And I would venture to say the secret of his success has been his savvy as an entertainer. He has always known that audiences will respond to a wide variety of films — everything from low-budget horror flicks to socially conscious dramas to slam-bang B-movies to challenging art-house fare — if they have access to, and are encouraged to sample, the full scope of that variety. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, Roger Corman understands and appreciates that cinema is large — it contains multitudes.  

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood and Marriage Story loom large among nominees for Houston Film Critics Society awards

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is the leader of the pack — but Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is not too far behind as they head toward the homestretch .

That’s the takeaway for anyone handicapping the 13^th annual awards of the Houston Film Critic Society. Nominations for the organization’s accolades were announced late Sunday evening, with winners to be revealed during a Jan. 2 extravaganza at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Tarantino’s audaciously entertaining and wish-fulfilling comedy-drama picked up a total of seven nominations — including one in the HFCS’s Best Movie Poster Art Category — while Baumbach’s intimate view of marital discord scored six nods. Both films have been nominated for Best Picture, along with 1917, The Farewell, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Knives Out, Parasite, and Uncut Gems.

“We’re a passionate, adventurous group,” says HFCS president Doug Harris. “This list of nominees represents the thousands of screening hours our members have devoted to uncovering the year’s most distinctive films so that we can bring the best of cinema from around the world to the audiences we serve.”

Because of unusually close voting tallies, Harris added, some categories have six, rather than the customary five, nominations. For example, six actresses will compete for Best Actress, including Charlize Theron of Bombshell, Awkwafina of The Farewell, Renée Zellweger of Judy, Scarlett Johansson of Marriage Story, Saoirse Ronan of Little Women, and Lupita Nyong’o of Us. 

Johansson is also up for Best Supporting Actress for Jojo Rabbit, along with Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell; Laura Dern, Marriage Story; Florence Pugh, Little Women; Margot Robbie, Bombshell; and Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell.

Best Actor nominees include Leonardo DiCaprio for Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Adam Driver for Marriage Story, Eddie Murphy for Dolemite is My Name, Joaquin Phoenix for Joker, and Adam Sandler for Uncut Gems.

Earlier this month, the HFCS announced its nominees for the Texas Independent Film Awards which honor films made in Texas: Bull, Building the American Dream, Nothing Stays the Same: The Story of the Saxon Pub, Seadrift and Sleeping in Plastic.

Winners in 18 categories will be presented at the Jan. 2 event. But wait, there’s more: Legendary producer, director and talent nurturer Roger Corman will be on hand to receive a lifetime achievement award. (The following evening, Jan 3, Corman will return to MFAH for a screening of his 1964 classic The Masque of the Death, and a post-screening Q&A conducted by... by... well, actually, by me.) And Ellyn Needham, wife of the late movie stunts pioneer Hal Needham, will present the HFCS’s inaugural award for Best Stunt Coordination Team.

Tickets for the 13^th annual HFCS Awards can be purchased on the MFAH website. Ticketholders will be invited to attend, at no additional charge, an after party across the street from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston at the Ultimate Ransom Room at the Hotel ZaZa Houston Museum District. 

The Houston Film Critics Society’s 13^th Annual Movie Awards are underwritten in part by Leonard Courtright and the Keystone Family of Companies, with additional support provided by Balcones Distilling. 

2019 Houston Film Critics Society Nominations

Best Picture

1917; The Farewell; The Irishman; Jojo Rabbit; Joker; Knives Out; Marriage Story; Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Parasite; Uncut Gems

Best Director

Bong Joon Ho, Parasite; Sam Mendes, 1917; Martin Scorsese, The Irishman; Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Lulu Wang, The Farewell

Best Actor

Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Adam Driver, Marriage Story; Eddie Murphy, Dolemite is My Name; Joaquin Phoenix, Joker; Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems

Best Actress

Awkwafina, The Farewell; Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story; Lupita Nyong’o, Us; Saoirse Ronan, Little Women; Charlize Theron, Bombshell; Renée Zellweger, Judy

Best Supporting Actor

Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse; Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes; Al Pacino, The Irishman; Joe Pesci, The Irishman; Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

Best Supporting Actress

Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell; Laura Dern, Marriage Story; Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit; Florence Pugh, Little Women; Margot Robbie, Bombshell; Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell

Best Screenplay

Knives Out; Marriage Story; Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Parasite; The Farewell

Best Cinematography

1917; The Irishman; The Joker; Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Parasite

Best Animated Feature

Frozen II; How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World; I Lost My Body; Missing Link; Toy Story 4

Best Original Score

1917; Joker; Little Women; Marriage Story; Us

Best Original Song

Glasgow, Wild Rose; Home to You, The Aeronauts; I Punched Keanu Reeves, Always Be My Maybe; (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again, Rocketman; Into the Unknown, Frozen II; Stand Up, Harriet

Best Foreign Language Film

Atlantics; Corpus Christi; Les Miserables; Monos; Pain and Glory; Parasite

Best Documentary Feature

American Factory; Apollo 11; Biggest Little Farm; For Sama; Hail Satan; They Shall Not Grow Old

Texas Independent Film Award

Bull; Building the American Dream; Nothing Stays the Same: The Story of the Saxon Bar; Seadrift; Sleeping in Plastic

Visual Effects

1917; Ad Astra; Avengers: Endgame

Best Stunt Coordination Team

Crawl; Ford v Ferrari; Furie; John Wick: Chapter 3 Parabellum; Shadow

Best Movie Poster Art

Birds of Passage; John Wick: Chapter 3 Parabellum; Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Parasite; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; The Last Black Man in San Francisco.

The Price of Poe

Roy Rogers isn’t the only luminary who’s getting a day-long tribute this month on Turner Classic Movies. This Friday, Aug. 10, Vincent Price will be remembered with a mini-retrospective that includes five – count ‘em, five! – of the stylish, small-budget Edgar Allan Poe adaptations Price famously filmed in the ‘60s with director Roger Corman: House of Usher (6:30 pm EDT), The Pit and the Pendulum (8 pm EDT), Tales of Terror (9:30 pm EDT), Masque of the Red Death (11:15 pm EDT) and the Tomb of Ligeia (1 am EDT).

Pit arguably is the spookiest of the lot, but I must confess to my preference for Masque, if only because it features the va-va-voom Hazel Court, whose heaving decolletage loomed large in my adolescent fantasies. Tales of Terror, a three-part anthology, contains an episode that's a splendidly seriocomic gem, a tongue-in-cheeky mash-up of Poe’s The Black Cat and The Cask of Amontillado featuring a roly-poly Peter Lorre as an alcoholic ne’er-do-well who gets medieval on a wine connoisseur (a self-parodying Price) when the latter makes moves on the ne’er-do-well’s improbably voluptuous wife (Joyce Jameson).

Also worth TiVoing: The Last Man on Earth (3:30 pm EDT), a budget-challenged version of the Richard Matheson story that recently inspired a rather more lavish sci-fi flick starring Will Smith.

R.I.P.: Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)

It's difficult to know where to begin when taking the final measure of an artist as inspired and awe-inspiring, as justly revered and pervasively influential, as Ingmar Bergman. Right now, I find my mind is swimming with too many memories of powerful scenes and indelible images for me to properly focus. I start to type something about, say, the extraordinary eroticism of Bibi Andersson's mesmerizing monologue in Persona, and I think, no, what I really want to describe is the melancholy grace of Victor Sjostrom's aged professor in Wild Strawberries... or the inconsolable despair of Gunnar Bjornstrand's rural pastor in Winter Light... the evanescent sensuality of Smiles of a Summer Night, or the terrifyingly chaotic civil war of Shame... or Max Von Sydow... Liv Ullmann... and, yes, of course, Death playing chess...

As usual, GreenCine Daily is the place to go for the most complete guide to eulogies and appraisals. The Guardian offers a very clever quiz about the man and his movies -- I can't help laughing out loud at Bergman's brusque dismissal of another noted auteur -- and here is a link to an interview with B-movie mogul Roger Corman, who delights in describing how he turned a tidy profit when his New World Pictures released Bergman's Cries and Whispers.

Regarding the latter: Corman recalled in his 1990 autobiography: "We were the first to get Bergman into drive-ins, the first to book him into multiple cinemas in the same city... The film took in $1.5 million in rentals, or a profit of close to $1 million... When I finally met Bergman years later, he mentioned that he thought it was great that we put his film in the drive-ins. 'Nobody ever thought of that before,' he said. 'I've always wanted my pictures to get the widest possible audience. That's an audience that never saw my pictures before New World.'"

Before there was 'Grindhouse,' there was 'The Independent'

If you’re not familiar with the ‘60s and ‘70s exploitation flicks that inspired Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to make Grindhouse, you might want to take a peek at Stephen Kessler’s The Independent to prepare yourself for the three-hours-plus epic opening Friday at theaters and drive-ins everywhere. And if you are a connoisseur of schlock cinema – that is, if you’re a guilty-pleasure-seeker who fondly recalls the low-budget, high-concept quickies of New World Pictures, American-International and other now-defunct manufacturers of full-tilt, down-and-dirty B-movies – well then you, too, likely will enjoy Kessler’s overlooked and under-rated pastiche.

As I wrote back in 2001: “A genially slapdash mix of sketch-comedy riffs, faux-documentary interviews and traditional sitcom-style narrative, The Independent surveys the life and career of Morty Fineman (Jerry Stiller), a notoriously prolific multi-hyphenate whose credits include Groovy Hippie Slumber Party, LSD-Day and Teenie Weenie Bikini Beach.

“Friends, admirers and former co-workers characterize the maverick moviemaker as an influential artist who somehow transcended tight budgets, marginal talent and an unfortunate tendency to put moves on his leading ladies…

“Not surprisingly, the funniest scenes in The Independent are the snippets and coming-attraction trailers used to illustrate the highlights of Morty's less-than-illustrious career: Brothers Divided (conjoined twins – one a pacifist, one a gung-ho warrior – are drafted for Vietnam duty), Christ for the Defense (a courtroom drama with a truly miraculous defense attorney), The Foxy Chocolate Robot (blaxploitation sci-fi with Fred Williamson and a mechanical co-star) and The Eco-Angels. The latter segment, a hilariously precise parody of 1968's The Miniskirt Mob, is a small gem of persuasive verisimilitude: The actors look, dress and sound just like regulars in mid-'60s B-movies, and the faded color appears to have degenerated for three or four decades.

“Working from a hit-and-miss script he co-wrote with producer Mike Wilkins, director Stephen Kessler strives for a similar kind of plausible fakery during the ‘interviews’ with Karen Black and other real-life notables. Maintaining a reasonably straight face, Peter Bogdanovich claims Morty ‘would try something, and two years later, somebody would copy it and win an Oscar.’ Ron Howard, Roger Corman and Nick Cassavetes also weigh in with testimonials.

“To link the inspired bits and pieces, Kessler and Wilkins spin a mildly amusing story about Morty's umpteenth comeback effort. Still doing what he does best (or, more precisely, worst) in the fifth decade of his filmmaking career, Morty is unable to complete his latest opus -- Ms. Kevorkian, the saga of a gun-wielding sexpot who supports assisted suicide -- because he is, once again, flat broke. Worse, his creditors want to claim his 427-film library, and sell off the individual titles – yes, even The Eco-Angels and Christ for the Defense -- for $8 a pound.

“Morty needs a miracle. What he gets is Paloma (Janeane Garofalo), his long-estranged daughter, who reluctantly takes command of her father's failing production company. Meanwhile, Ivan (Max Perlich), Morty's faithful assistant and tireless gofer, tries to elevate his mentor's profile by talking a film festival – any festival, anywhere – into honoring Morty with a retrospective tribute.

“Trouble is, few festivals are sufficiently desperate to even consider sponsoring such an event. The only encouraging response comes from a brand-new festival in a small Nevada town where, since the closing of a nearby military base, the only local industry of note is legal prostitution. Which, naturally, makes it the perfect spot for a tribute to Morty Fineman.

“The Independent doubtless would have worked better with a few more ersatz coming-attraction trailers and much less filler between the really funny bits. Even so, Stiller gives a robustly comical performance as the most enthusiastically self-deluded Hollywood fringe-dweller since Ed Wood. No obstacle, not even his own ineptitude, gets Morty down. Told that he's bankrupt, he cheerfully responds: ‘Then our creditors are screwed!’

“Garofalo shines as a dry-witted, common-sensible realist who can't help wanting to help her father, if only to repay him for producing Cheerleader Camp Massacre after she failed to make the grade as a high-school pom-pom girl. And Perlich brings a hangdog sweetness to scenes in which he dutifully recites words of wisdom he has received from Morty. On the subject of loyalty: ‘Milk the cow until it's dry. Then make hamburger and wallets.’”