Tell me about the genesis of Little Shop of Horrors.
ROGER CORMAN: I would take advantage very often of what is called a scene dock in a studio. When a picture is finished, they break down the flats and store the flats.
So, I would be aware of what was in the scene dock, so that I could pull out existing flats and re-arrange them to fit. In that way, I didn't have to spend money building the flats -- we would assemble the sets for what we wanted, generally from flats in the scene dock.
In the Edgar Allen Poe pictures, we built the first sets, then we broke those sets down, stored them, then used those and built new ones for each film; so each film got a little bit bigger as we used what we had before and then added to it.
So, in essence, you had the set for Little Shop and built the movie around it. I understand you paid the actors for five days on that film and spent three of those days rehearsing.
ROGER CORMAN: I'm a strong believer in rehearsals and in pre-production and preparation. I want to be able to come onto the set and shoot. Ideally, everything is worked out in advance; practically, it never quite works that way. You always are faced with new problems, or maybe you get a better idea. But at least you have your framework before you shoot.
If you don't have time for a full rehearsal, I like to have at least a reading with the actors, in which we read and maybe do some improvisations and do some loose rehearsals -- not on the set -- taking at least one day before shooting for that.
What’s one of the best ways to save time while shooting?
ROGER CORMAN: What I do, and what I tell my directors working with me, is that you waste a lot of time after you get a shot, where you're congratulating everybody, discussing the shot, and so forth. And that shot is already yesterday's news. You've got it.
So what I do is I say, 'Cut, print, thank you.' Then maybe one sentence saying how good it was to the actors. And then, 'The next shot is over here.' And we're on to the next shot.
Why do you think Little Shop of Horrors is still so popular today?
ROGER CORMAN: It's partially the idea. It's such a wild idea: A plant that eats people and the little guy who, for reasons not necessarily important, has to murder to feed the plant. It's just a wild, original idea.
And then I think it was the spirit in which the film was made. The fact that nobody took the work that seriously; we took it with humor, and even the crew were laughing and joking. I think that spirit permeated the film.
What key lesson did you take away from that experience?
ROGER CORMAN: The main lesson: I sacrificed too much by shooting that fast. For instance, I was using two cameras, simultaneously, photographing from two different angles. If two people were talking, I'd have a close-up on one person and a close-up on the other. Because it was a comedy-horror film, you could use flat lighting, but the lighting clearly suffered. In any other type of film, the bad lighting would have hurt the film.
It was done partially as an experiment, partially as a joke. It succeeded, and then I went back to a normal style of shooting, because you really can do better work with a little more time.
You gave Peter Bogdanovich his first directing assignment with Targets. How did that come about?
ROGER CORMAN: As a result of various complications in a contract, Boris Karloff owed me several days' work. So, I wanted to do a horror film, starring Boris Karloff, in which he would only work for those days.
Peter Bogdanovich had been my assistant. (My assistant before that was Francis Coppola and after Francis had worked for me on a few films, I gave him a chance to direct.) I did the same thing with Peter. I said, 'Here's the problem: The picture must star Boris Karloff, but he can only work for these days.'
And Peter came up with the idea of Boris as an actor doing a traditional horror film, and in that way, we could take some footage out of some of the horror films that Boris had done for me before, and also cut away to the boy and tell a parallel story.
Bogdanovich has a couple sequences in the film that are long, continuous takes, with—apparently—no coverage. That would appear to go against your preferred style of shooting.
ROGER CORMAN: It goes a little bit against my rules, but on the other hand, all rules are made to be broken. I do like to get coverage, to get as much coverage as possible. Yet, at the same time, when you're on a very tight schedule, sometimes you have to sacrifice coverage. And when you do that, sometimes you can make a virtue out of necessity.
Peter is highly intelligent, and he had a great knowledge of film. He had written some added scenes for me on previous pictures, and had directed some second unit, so I was aware of his ability as a second unit director and his ability as a writer. I had the feeling that he had the talent.
You mentioned giving Francis Coppola his first chance at directing, with Dementia 13. How did that come about?
ROGER CORMAN: I hired Francis out of the UCLA film school as an editor. I had bought the American rights to two Russian science fiction films, which had wonderful special effects, but they were filled with outrageous anti-American propaganda. And so I hired Francis to re-edit those films, and delete the anti-American propaganda.
And then he went along and worked with me on several films as my assistant, and particularly on a Grand Prix Formula One race car picture, called The Young Racers, in which we traveled from track to track.
Francis and our key grip built racks and various compartments into a Volkswagen microbus, so that the microbus was actually a traveling small studio. We used that, with a crew of six or seven professionals, and then we would hire local people.
When the picture was finished, I had to go back to do a picture in the United States, but it occurred to me we had efficiently functioning crew and everything in microbus, so we could stay and do another picture.
We were finishing at the British Grand Prix, which that year was at Liverpool, but the problem was that British labor laws were very difficult. We only had permits to work in and around the track. But I knew that the Irish labor laws were looser. So I said to Francis, 'If you can come up with an idea for a horror script, you can take the microbus and several of the crew and just put it on a ferry and go across the Irish sea and shoot there.'
He came up with a very interesting idea for Dementia 13, and he contacted some people he'd been with at the UCLA film school and they flew over to Dublin and everybody lived in a big house there while he shot the picture.
It was a very interesting psychological suspense story. We took one idea from Hitchcock, which was that the leading lady would die early in the film, just as she did in Psycho. I always thought that was great, because nobody ever expects the leading lady to die halfway through the film!
You also gave Jonathan Demme his first directing credit, with Caged Heat.
ROGER CORMAN: Jonathan was working out of England, writing publicity for United Artists. I did a film in Ireland for United Artists, and he came over on behalf of UA. It was clear he was a very intelligent young man. He said he was writing publicity but was interested in writing screenplays.
I told him a couple ideas I had and I said, 'If you're ever write anything on this, let me know.' He and his partner, Joe Viola, wrote the script and Jonathan produced and directed. They did one more for me, and then they did Caged Heat, on which Jonathan made his debut as a director.
He had been doing some second unit directing when Joe was the director. I've always liked the idea of a new director shooting some second unit. He gets a feel for what's going on, and I get a chance to judge what he can do.
If you can give a filmmaker only one piece of advice, what would it be?
ROGER CORMAN: Be flexible. Even though you've done all your preparation, don't stick absolutely to the preparation if it doesn't seem to be working. Know that you've got the preparation, but situations change, so be prepared to change with the situations.
Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!
"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control."
Roger Corman, Producer
★★★★★
It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!
Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos
John Sayles: Writing to your resources
Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes
John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots
Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals
George Romero: Casting
Kevin Smith: Skipping film school
Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection
Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity
David Lynch: Kill your darlings
Ron Howard: Pre-production planning
John Carpenter: Going low-tech
Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking
Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!
It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!
Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.
"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
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John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.
The book covers (among other topics):
Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories
Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature
Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period
George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget
Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories
Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations
Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive
Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous
Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget
Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget
Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror
Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget
Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting
L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting
Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing
Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres
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