Simon Abrams Interviews Legendary Producer Roger Corman

One of my favorite critics interviewed Hollywood’s legendary producer, Roger Corman, for New York Magazine’s Vulture, and it is a treat to read. Corman is by many measures the most successful filmmaker of all time because he made ultra low-budget films that were very popular with moviegoers, including “The Man with X-Ray Eyes,” “Little Shop of Horrors” (the original, with Jack Nicholson, that inspired the Broadway musical) and a series of adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe stories. At 89, he is still going strong, producing some of the SyFy channel’s nuttiest and most entertaining monster movies, like “Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf.”

Corman spoke to Abrams about the one that got away (“Easy Rider” went to another studio because one of the studio executives insulted Dennis Hopper) and the difference between making a theatrical release and a TV film.

“In a motion picture, you can wait a while, build suspense. I always preferred to hint at the creature and not disclose it until later. But Tom ‘s theory — and I think he’s right — is that in the theater, people have paid money to come in, so they’ll sit and wait, and expect the suspense to build. But in television, within the first five to ten minutes, they’ll simply change the dial. It’s a totally different concept.”