R.I.P. Roger Corman

[danfrank]

I remember Corman on an interview where he talked about distributing Cries And Whispers.

Put it in drive-ins, in fact!

This gave me a good laugh. I’m trying to imagine the audience that would see Bergman at a drive-in. I suppose those who just went to make out and didn’t care what the movie was.

[Big Magilla]

Are his films with Vincent Price - the Edgar Allan Poe lot, and many others - considered to be schlock? Maybe back then but today they are considered to be classics. Also many of the earlier horror schlock have been re-assessed.

Take a look at the IMDb. ratings of his films. Those with a rating of 6 or above, including most if not all of his Vincent Price films, were major releases, not the schlock that he started out with. His 1961 version of The Pit and the Pendulum with Price and John Kerr was especially well-received by the critics as well as the public.

[dws1982]

I remember Corman on an interview where he talked about distributing Cries And Whispers.

Put it in drive-ins, in fact!

[Greg]

I remember Corman on an interview where he talked about distributing Cries And Whispers.

[Reza]

Are his films with Vincent Price - the Edgar Allan Poe lot, and many others - considered to be schlock? Maybe back then but today they are considered to be classics. Also many of the earlier horror schlock have been re-assessed.

And he was a producer / distribution producer on Amarcord, The Romantic Englishwoman, The Story of Adele H, Lumiere, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, A Little Night Music, Autumn Sonata, Love on the Run, Saint Jack, The Tin Drum, The Brood, Breaker Morant, Mon Oncle d'Amerique, Three Brothers, Quartet, Fitzcarraldo - an eclectic group of films by very famous directors.

But ofcourse he was more famous for producing the likes of hilarious titles like Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia and so many more.

[Big Magilla]

While most of the films Corman was associated with were pure schlock, he did have a classy side. His New World Pictures was the U.S. distributor of Amarcord which won the 1974 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, so he had a right to crow about that as well as his association with many of the year's other winners.

Although he had nothing to do with Ingrid Bergman's career, New World (which he still owned at the time) was also the U.S. distributor of Autumn Sonata for which she would receive her final Oscar nomination four years hence.

[Mister Tee]

Very few people in the history of the movie industry have had a better eye for talent than Roger Corman did.

On the night of the Oscars for 1974, when Jack Nicholson unexpectedly lost best actor to Art Carney, Corman jokingly said to him, You son of a bitch, you kept me from a clean sweep -- noting that, in addition to Nicholson, Ellen Burstyn, DeNiro, Coppola, Robert Towne had all worked for Corman in their early years (he obviously over!ooked Ingrid Bergman, but it was a good joke, anyway). Corman obviously worked in a different quality sphere from what we usually discuss here, but, just as you say, he knew which people could bring the highest level of talent to his exploitive films.

Has anyone else ever won an Honorary Oscar whose films were so far from standard Academy taste?

[Reza]

One of the recent rare occasions where the Honorary Oscar he was given was so well deserved

[dws1982]

Very few people in the history of the movie industry have had a better eye for talent than Roger Corman did.

[Big Magilla]

He hadn't directed a film since 1990, but he continued as a producer up to his death with two films in pre-production.

[Sabin]

He was 98. I thought he had already passed.

https://www.indiewire.com/news/obituary ... 67f4510774