Retro Bio: How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood...
© Michelle Troutman
How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime by Roger Corman with Jim Jerome
Da Capo Press1998
ISBN #: 0-306-80874-9
$14.95, paperback
237 pages, illustrations
"I had never thought of myself as doing Great Art. I felt I was working as a craftsman, and if, out of some good, solid craftsmanship, something transcended, some portion of art emerged, that would be fine with me. But this was low-budget stuff--fast schedules, five-figure productions, exploitation subjects. Art was not something I consciously aspired to create. My job was to be a good craftsman." --Roger Corman on his early films.
Since the 1950s, producer/director Roger Corman has parlayed his low-budget filmmaking techniques into a successful career. His autobiography contains some entertaining stories about how he made his films, using sets from other productions to cut costs and production time, employing actors in more than one role in the same film, and recycling scenes for use in later films.
True to form, he economizes his content, leaving space for paragraphs full of anecdotes from Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, and others. They have been added to the book much the same way he spliced stock footage into his films, however, they are well chosen and enhance his accounts. In his own book, film producer Sam Arkoff later mentioned some of the same accounts in his chapters about Corman's work for American International Pictures.
How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood... wavers, some parts not as engrossing as others. Corman's tales about making The Wild Angels form one of the best chapters. Even if you think his films fit for mockery on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (where many of them have been featured), you might find the details about them interesting. It's a good book for people who aren't acquainted with Roger Corman or his films; if you're familiar with them, you might enjoy the anecdotes instead.
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