![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/70s-week-bug.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The story of film<\/a> in the 1970s (and beyond) could be told without Roger Corman<\/a>, but that story would be way more conventional, much less creatively exciting, a fraction as bold, and a lot less fun.<\/p>\n Bruce Dern, then just one of the fledgling actors to whom Corman gave crucial early roles, recalled asking Corman on the set of \u201cThe Wild Angels\u201d in 1966 how many films he had made. \u201cHe told me about 60,\u201d Dern told IndieWire. \u201cThat just knocked me out. He was a decade older than me, but I was amazed at the amount of movies he had done already.\u201d<\/p>\n Corman was just getting warmed up. For the King of the Bs, who tapped an underserved youth market with his biker, beach, and rock and roll films in the 1960s, the 1970s would prove to be his heyday. In 1970, he launched New World Pictures and focused on producing and distribution. Along with Corman\u2019s stock-in-trade drive-in and exploitation films, such as \u201cThe Student Teachers,\u201d \u201cCaged Heat,\u201d and \u201cDeath Race 2000,\u201d he imported masterworks by Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut (\u201cSmall Change\u201d), Ingmar Bergman (\u201cCries and Whispers\u201d), Akira Kurosawa (\u201cDerzu Uzala\u201d), and Federico Fellini (\u201cAmarcord\u201d), among others. For Joe Dante, who cut trailers for Corman prior to becoming a director, this was Corman\u2019s \u201carty period,\u201d he told IndieWire. \u201cWe got to create those kinds of trailers alongside \u2018Big Doll House.’\u201d<\/p>\n But Corman\u2019s lasting legacy is the launching pad he offered to a new generation of actors and filmmakers who were trying to find a way into the industry. New Hollywood, which transformed the art of film in that decade, has Corman in its DNA. The so-called Corman School of Filmmaking\u2019s illustrious graduates in the 1970s included Martin Scorsese<\/a>, Robert De Niro<\/a>, Ron Howard<\/a>, Joe Dante<\/a>, and Allan Arkush, to name just a few.<\/p>\n They would go on to bigger and better things \u2014 many, like Howard, Scorsese, and James Cameron, crowned by Oscar glory. (Corman, who died in 2024<\/a> at age 98, himself received an Honorary Oscar in 2009.) But in the \u201970s, it all began at New World Pictures. <\/p>\n IndieWire reached out to several Corman graduates and asked them to share a favorite memory or reflection of working with Corman that exemplified what it meant to be in the Corman-verse during this creatively fertile decade.<\/p>\n The below testimonies have been edited and condensed for clarity and length.<\/p>\n William Shatner (actor, \u201cBig Bad Mama,\u201d 1974)<\/p>\n I made two movies with Roger. One was \u201cThe Intruder\u201d (1962) [about a rabble rouser trying to incite racial tensions] and the other was \u201cBig Bad Mama.\u201d They couldn\u2019t have been more divergent in subject matter. We feared for our lives filming \u201cThe Intruder\u201d in the South. We did a lot of guerrilla shooting without permission and without permits. Then, Roger asks me to be in \u201cBig Bad Mama,\u201d which was open, sexual, and fun. <\/p>\n The script included a sex scene with Angie Dickinson. We all met at the Cormans\u2019 house to talk about the nudity. Roger said he would get rid of all the crew members except the cameraman and soundman. Production started a week or two before I came on, and my first day, Angie and I were going to get nude in bed. Roger began to clear the set of everyone who wasn\u2019t necessary to the scene, and large groups of people began to go outside. But Angie, who had been there a couple of weeks and made friends with the crew, said, \u201cOh George, you can stay, that\u2019s OK, Sam, you can stay\u2026.\u201d\u00a0She called all of her friends back. Roger worked wonders with a bedsheet that we had between us.<\/p>\n Martin Scorsese (director, \u201cBoxcar Bertha,\u201d 1972)<\/p>\n I learned so much from Roger that I don\u2019t even know where to begin. I studied film in college, and I learned a lot, but working for Roger on\u00a0\u201cBoxcar Bertha\u201d\u00a0was a\u00a0real\u00a0film school. It was the same for all of us \u2014 that includes Jonathan Demme, Allan Arkush, Paul Bartel, Jonathan Kaplan, Francis Coppola, and Monte Hellman before us, and so many others. You learned\u00a0as you worked, on pictures that were made to be shot and cut and finished and released on a real and extremely tight schedule. <\/p>\n Roger taught us all about economy, and I don\u2019t just mean the business end of moviemaking. He gave us a real sense of economy of\u00a0means. In other words, this was the schedule, this was the budget, these were the demands, and those were the conditions, that was your framework. Wishing for more days or more money was just so much wasted time. He taught us that if you looked squarely at what you had as opposed to what you\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0have, then what initially seemed like limitations became opportunities. And, within that framework, he gave us tremendous freedom. Roger understood the economics of the business perfectly, but he also understood the necessity and the beauty of individual expression. That was rare at the time, and it\u2019s almost unheard of now. That\u2019s why so many of us owe him so much.<\/p>\n Ron Howard (actor\/director, \u201cGrand Theft Auto,\u201d 1977)<\/p>\n Roger told me, \u201cWe make the movie based on what we hope it will be, but we have to come to terms with what we actually have, and the only way to do that is to share that with someone objective and see what works for an audience.\u201d I had never contemplated such a thing. <\/p>\n He tested \u201cGrand Theft Auto\u201d at the ASI testing house, which mainly tested commercials and television sitcoms; people would have a dial, and if they liked something, they turned to the right, and if they didn\u2019t like it, they turned to the left, and it created a printed graph. The day I showed up, it was all elderly women. I asked how this was our test audience. Roger told me, \u201cA laugh is a laugh, don\u2019t worry about it.\u201d\u00a0 Joe Dante, our editor, said that Roger screened the movies there for free on the days when they were only showing commercials because the volunteers got grumpy if that\u2019s all they saw. That day, they were testing commercials for Geritol. But honest to God, it led to some real insights into how our movie was playing. We screened it again with a more appropriate audience, and the reactions weren\u2019t that different, by and large.<\/p>\n Robert De Niro (actor, \u201cBloody Mama,\u201d 1970) <\/p>\n Shelley Winters introduced me to Roger. She was part of the Actors Studio when I was there. I was in an Off-Broadway play she wrote, [\u201cOne Night Stands of a Noisy Passenger\u201d]. I was not aware of Roger. I was just happy I got the job. It was the big time. He was a very nice, respectful, and decent guy, likable and a good director. He left it up to the actor, which was smart of him to do.<\/p>\n Joe Dante (co-director, \u201cHollywood Boulevard,\u201d 1976)<\/p>\n I was working in the trailer department with Allan Arkush. Jon Davison, who was doing Roger\u2019s advertising at the time, wanted to produce a movie. He made a bet with Roger that he could make the cheapest movie that New World had ever made, and this was no mean feat. It was a dodge to get Allan and I a chance to direct. Roger said, \u201cFine, $60,000 for 10 days, and you have to keep doing trailers at night.\u201d We agreed. The only way we could make anything releasable was to fill it with scenes from New World movies we had made trailers for, so with writer Dan Opatoshu, we made it a murder-on-a-movie-set thing that was loosely based on a Bela Lugosi movie called \u201cDeath Kiss.\u201d The film clips allowed us to include action scenes we couldn\u2019t afford to stage. There was a great deal of improv going on. The trick was to get the day [complete the shot list].<\/p>\n Roger didn\u2019t keep tabs. He gave us his blessing and had a great amount of faith in Jon. He never came to the set; there was no set to come to. It was all locations. I think he suspected he would not be able to release the movie, but when we showed it to him, he was actually quite beguiled by it. The only thing was, he wanted to call it \u201cHollywood Hookers.\u201d Allan and I were appalled; we didn\u2019t want our first movie to be called \u201cHollywood Hookers.\u201d <\/p>\n The picture opened in New York City on 42nd Street. My brother in New Jersey went to see it, and he said he had never been in a theater where they kept the lights on through the entire movie. It made back its money, so Roger was happy with it. We went back to making trailers. When \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 Roll High School\u201d and \u201cPiranha\u201d came up, Allan was crazed to do \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 Roll High School\u201d because he is a big music guy, so he got that one and I got the fish. It worked out well for both of us. We knew we weren\u2019t going to get much money, but we were going to get experience we couldn\u2019t get anywhere else because we weren\u2019t in a union. The only way to get into the movies was to make non-union pictures and learn your craft and hope something opened up. Everyone knew this was a stepping stone. It was a complicit agreement: He exploited us, and we exploited him.<\/p>\n Richard Whitley (co-writer, \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 Roll High School,\u201d 1979)<\/p>\n This is what it was like to enter Roger Corman<\/a>\u2019s orbit in the 1970s. I attended Southern Illinois University because they had a film department. After I graduated, I put everything I owned in my car and drove out to L.A. Russ Dvonch, with whom I made student films, graduated before me and was already there. The first night I drove into town, he took me to Hollywood Blvd. to have pizza. It was pretty\u00a0much of a dive by then. And the pizza was far inferior to anything I grew up with in the Chicago suburbs. Welcome to Hollywood.<\/p>\n We made our way to Roger Corman\u2019s New World Pictures. Hey, they gave first jobs to Martin Scorsese<\/a> and Peter Bogdanovich; why not us? We walked in with our 16mm films. They said, \u201cWe don\u2019t have any jobs.\u201d We asked to see Joe Dante and Allan Arkush because we had booked \u201cHollywood Boulevard\u201d for our college film society. They just happened to be right there in the lobby. We gushed over them and asked if they would look at our student films. They said, \u201cAbsolutely,\u201d because they were film school grads themselves and completely wonderful people. Finally, the lady at the desk said, \u201cDo you want to earn 15 bucks? Show up tomorrow at wardrobe, Griffith Park, at 7 a.m., and you will be mutants in \u2018Deathsport.’\u201d We showed up, and they said to immediately get to wardrobe. They cut ping-pong balls in half and glued them on our eyes. Raph and I looked at our rags they handed us to wear and a tag read \u201cPapillon\u201d; they were the rags worn by the lepers in the Franklin Schaffner film with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.<\/p>\n At 5 in the afternoon, they asked if anybody wanted to do any stunt work. We just had to hobble toward the camera, and when we got the signal, run backwards. That\u2019s in the movie. An hour later, it was dark. They wanted us to do more. Russ and I were the last two mutants, and we were supposed to try and grab David Carradine and Claudia Jennings. OK, when you\u2019re a kid and playing swordfights, the sword goes between your body and arm. They called, \u201cAction,\u201d and David rams his fucking sword into my stomach. He did that three or four more takes. And I swallowed the fake blood. I\u2019m lying on the ground with the wind knocked out of me, and David walked over and said, \u201cGood working with you,\u201d and walked away.<\/p>\n Allan called and said he liked our student films and then had us come in to talk with him and producer Mike Finnell.\u00a0He said that he had a script called \u201cGirls Gym,\u201d and he wanted us to add some comedy. We took those pages, and we went nuts; all those years of going to the York Theater in Elmhurst, Illinois, and seeing Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen and watching \u201cThe Three Stooges\u201d on TV. We went from playing mutants to getting into the Writers Guild. Allan said he wanted us on the set during shooting, which for first-time writers is as rare as Haley\u2019s Comet. I was spoiled for every other production I ever worked with.<\/p>\n I did meet Roger on the first day of shooting. He was pushing for an \u201cAnimal House\u201d R-rating, but he thankfully let us make the movie we wanted to, which was more of a live-action cartoon. Allan gifted me with a handwritten copy of Roger\u2019s notes on a sheet of yellow legal paper. I don\u2019t think he got some of the weirdness in the movie, because at one point, he wrote, \u201cMaybe I\u2019m getting too old for this.\u201d<\/p>\n Allan Arkush (director, \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 Roll High School\u201d)<\/p>\n There has never been an executive close to Roger\u2019s abilities because he was a filmmaker. \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 Roll High School\u201d began life as \u201cGirls Gym,\u201d and then \u201cDisco High.\u201d I had not done a solo movie and was interested in doing a high school movie. Joe McBride, who was writing it at the time, said that when his father was in high school, the school went on strike over the firing of a teacher, and wouldn\u2019t it be great if the students went on strike united around a similar cause? That appealed to my 1960s East Village NYU ethos. He said he had this idea they blow up the high school at the end. I said no, that\u2019s not funny. But for several days, I couldn\u2019t get the image out of my head, and I decided that is what should happen and would be the main image on the poster.<\/p>\n The time comes to get a band for the movie. Mike Finnell and myself had to go into Roger\u2019s office with a script that still said \u201cDisco High.\u201d We had to explain to Roger that if you want to blow up your high school, you have to have rock and roll music and not disco. I told him that The Who plays rock and roll with such intensity that you think that they may explode before they get to the end of the song. There is an air of danger. And I got up on the couch, and I mimed Pete Townsend smashing his guitar. I said that was the energy we need to justify blowing up the high school. \u00a0Roger said, \u201cHmmm, that\u2019s a really good image. Allan\u2019s right, let\u2019s do that.\u201d That\u2019s what made him so great. He didn\u2019t go to committee like other studio executives. This was New World; there was no committee, just Roger. He trusted us. He said, \u201c\u2018Blow up the high school.\u201d<\/p>\n Ben Vereen (actor, \u201cGas-s-s-s,\u201d 1970) \u00a0<\/p>\n It was quite a group of people. Cindy Williams, Talia Shire. I didn\u2019t know too much about show business. Roger made it comfortable for me by giving me the freedom to be myself. He didn\u2019t say I had to do something this way or that way. He gave me a line and how it related to the character and told me to just go for it. He was very organic. We were shooting on a Pueblo reservation. The Indians rented the property but kept to themselves and didn\u2019t get involved. One day, I was coming to the set, and I heard them praying over a grave in the cemetery. I thought it was disrespectful (to film during this), and Roger calmed me down. He stopped filming out of respect. After that, an Indian came up to ask me my name. I told him Benjamin, and he said his name was Benjamin, too. He invited me to eat with them. Roger came by, and they invited him to eat with them as well.<\/p>\n Bruce Dern (actor, \u201cBloody Mama,\u201d 1970)<\/p>\n I never finished college, but we all went to the university of Corman and learned how to make a movie in 10 days for under $300,000. He knew what he wanted, but he sometimes lacked the vernacular to tell an actor how to get there. But he was a very willing learner. He once asked me how I did what I did. He said he had a similar actor he used to work with named Jack Nicholson. I said I knew Jack. Roger said that early in his career, Jack never got work. I said neither do I, and that maybe I was up the wrong tree. And he said I was absolutely up the right tree. He said that I had to understand that the key words in this business are patience and endurance. <\/p>\n I ran on the relay team at the University of Pennsylvania, so I knew about endurance. And he said to me, \u201cDon\u2019t be impatient. You\u2019re not behind. You\u2019re not losing ground or time to anyone else. So don\u2019t panic.\u201d As we got to know each other a little better, he became interested in my connection to the Actors Studio. I arranged for him to be a guest so he could gain insight into what they were doing. He was intrigued by everything he did.<\/p>\n Allan Arkush<\/p>\n On the 45th anniversary of \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 Roll High School,\u201d I decided to throw a pizza party and make it a New World reunion. I had it at the house and invited as many of the original people, along with Roger and Julie. We all shared stories and watched New World trailers. Then, Roger made his entrance, which was just perfect. He sits down on the couch, and he\u2019s surrounded by all these people from the \u201970s. We put on \u201cHollywood Boulevard,\u201d and it\u2019s the sequence with the war footage and the actors have to fire machine guns. When it ended, Roger turns to me and says, \u201cAllan, that was really well cut.\u201d That made me feel so great that we were still in that kind of mentor relationship where he knew when to say we had done good work.<\/p>\n IndieWire\u2019s \u201870s Week<\/a> is presented by Bleecker Street\u2019s\u00a0\u201cRELAY<\/a>.\u201d Riz Ahmed plays a world class \u201cfixer\u201d who specializes in brokering lucrative payoffs between corrupt corporations and the individuals who threaten their ruin. IndieWire calls\u00a0\u201cRELAY<\/a>\u201d \u201csharp, fun, and smartly entertaining from its first scene to its final twist, \u2018RELAY\u2019 is a modern paranoid thriller that harkens back to the genre\u2019s \u201970s heyday.\u201d From director David Mackenzie (\u201cHell or High Water\u201d) and also starring Lily James, in theaters August 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The story of film in the 1970s (and beyond) could be told without Roger Corman, but that story…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[59926,64,63,447,134,1689,32559,30815,59927],"class_list":["post-78422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-70s-week","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-martin-scorsese","tag-robert-de-niro","tag-roger-corman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"IndieWire](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/70s-Week_When-The-Wave-Crashed-60s-to-70s-Cinema_Editorial-Graphic_2000x1200_081125.jpg\")
<\/a> ![\"'Good](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GOOD-BOY-Still-3.jpg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"BIG](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/MSDBIBA_EC016.jpg\")
William Shatner in 1974\u2019s \u2018Big Bad Mama\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"BOXCAR](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/MBDBOBE_EC020.jpg\")
\u2018Boxcar Bertha\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"GRAND](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/MBDGRTH_EC001.jpg\")
Ron Howard, who starred in and directed \u2018Grand Theft Auto\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"BLOODY](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SIJA017_EC006.jpg\")
\u2018Bloody Mama\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"Joe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/P10IZZ2.jpg\")
Joe DanteMichael Buckner\/Variety<\/p>\n![\"ROCK](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/M8DROAN_EC001.jpg\")
\u2018Rock n\u2019 Roll High School\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"ROCK](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/M8DRONR_EC004.jpg\")
\u2018Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll High School\u2019\u00a9New World Releasing\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"NEW](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2206744389.jpg\")
Ben Vereen, who starred in Corman\u2019s 1970 movie \u2018Gas-s-s-s\u2019Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"BLOODY](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/MBDBLMA_EC030.jpg\")
\u2018Bloody Mama\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"CANNES,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-1493833165.jpg\")
Roger Corman at the 2023 Cannes Film FestivalCorbis via Getty Images<\/p>\n