Roger Corman Quotations

My father was an engineer, ... But I found out that the film critics for the Stanford Daily got free passes for all the films. So I became first an assistant critic and then the main film critic. Those free passes changed my life.

I think The Blair Witch Project is an exceptionally well-conceived and well-made film.

Charlie Bronson, Peter Fonda -- worked with him a number of times. Sylvester Stallone. Bobby de Niro -- I guess he's put on a number of years, you'd call him Robert de Niro today. More recently, Sandra Bullock: She made 'Fire on the Amazon' with us (1993). She was young and the first actor who was really that good in years. We went right back to hire her again, but she'd already signed with Fox or Warner Bros.

The majors now have sort of semi-independent companies allied with them, making lower-budget films. They're competing with us. And television is a huge target for young people. So we don't quite have the monopoly on young writers, directors, producers and actors that we formerly did.

My father was an engineer, .. But I found out that the film critics for the Stanford Daily got free passes for all the films. So I became first an assistant critic and then the main film critic. Those free passes changed my life.

Jim Cameron is proof that if you are good, you'll get promoted.

As a producer, I probably am a little stronger than most, since I was a director originally.

There were two practical reasons we moved to Venice. One was that there was an artists movement and a countercultural movement. Lots of people we might want to hire lived in the area. We also wanted to buy in a lower rent area that looked like it was going to be gentrified so that we could eventually sell the studio for more money.

I've never made the film I wanted to make. No matter what happens, it never turns out exactly as I hoped.

I think one of the reasons movies are the quintessential modern art form is that it is partially a business. The director needs a crew - the writer, the producer, etcetera - and to have that, he needs money.

Somebody said, 'Roger doesn't know how to spend money.' And I thought, 'I don't spend money because I don't have it!' If I had it, I could spend money! That's about the only time I was told that!

I'm not going to shoot seven days a week. I think it's counterproductive. I think you're going to have people stumbling around after a couple of weeks.

When I started, every film got a full theatrical distribution. Today, almost no low budget films, maybe two or three a year, will get a full theatrical distribution. We've been frozen out of that, which means they must be aware that for a full theatrical distribution it either has to be something like Saw or some exploitation film of today or an extremely well made personal film.

There are eleven or twelve or thirteen cities in China with populations of over 10 million people and most people in the West have never even heard of these cities.

People gravitate occasionally to the brilliantly made art low budget films, which is maybe one out of every five hundred low budget films made.

Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I'd give it my best shot.

Maybe it's just a matter of getting older and being aware that the market for medium-budget and low-budget films, which is of course what I spent most of my life making, has diminished. And maybe the quantity of ideas has diminished a little bit.

Horror films have been with us forever, so you can't say I originated that in any way, but it sort of brought back a classical way to make a horror film.

I think the art film, or the auteur-driven film - and not only foreign, but domestic films following that path - can get a small share of the box office. And I think that small share may open up a little bit.

I love the process of making films and an incidental satisfaction is the fact that most of them made money.

In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady.

One of the worst things you can do is have a limited budget and try to do some big looking film. That's when you end up with very bad work.

The safest genre is the horror film. But the most unsafe - the most dangerous - is comedy. Because even if your horror film isn't very good, you'll get a few screams and you're okay. With a comedy, if they don't laugh, you're dead.

In order to create art today, you have to compromise your art somewhat and be a businessman.

When I started in the late 1950s, every film I made - no matter how low the budget - got a theatrical release. Today, less that 20-percent of our films get a theatrical release.

Motion pictures are the art form of the 20th century, and one of the reasons is the fact that films are a slightly corrupted artform. They fit this century - they combine Art and business!

You can make a movie about anything, as long as it has a hook to hang the advertising on.