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I saw last night that Roger Corman died, for those that don't know of him he was probably the master of the B movie who made dozens of low budget films (50+), his production companies financed and produced hundreds more (IIRC 500+) and he had the claim that he never lost money on a film. You may not know his name, but you've almost certainly seen a bunch of films he was involved in.
He was famous for both being able to basically turn out a film for peanuts, often being if nothing else enjoyable (he made the original 60's Little Shop of Horrors in two and half days for a bet) and profitable, but possibly most importantly he gave a vast number of Hollywood actors, producers, Directors, Writers and Special effects people their first break in film, and was more than happy to have someone who'd signed on to do one job try out something very different in his next film (going by the commentaries I've watched, if for no other reason than it saved him money if someone could do two or more jobs
).
In later years he was largely working to produce cheap stuff for the likes of the sci-fi channel, stuff that was usually very low budget and stupid, but fun.
To give an idea of some of the people he worked with he gave Jack Nicholson one of his first/his first roles in a film (apparently Jack was invited to do 30 minute interview for a book/documentary on Corman and was happy to spend 5 hours talking about him), he gave James Cameron a job on set in one of his first Hollywood films (Rock and Roll high school from memory) where one of the leads in the commentary mentioned how James was bringing her coffee on set during that film, and about 3 months later he was directing her in another much bigger budget film.
Watching some of the films he produced/directed and the commentaries it seems a common theme is the phrase "and there is X in his/her first job, he/she went on to win an oscar (or was part of the oscar winning team) a few years later", things like an special effects guy who basically did a remarkably good job for pennies in one of his films then goes on to become one of the main people in Star Wars or Jurassic park etc (IIRC that happened repeatedly with different people).
He was also instrumental in taking a lot of foreign films to the US for distribution.
Variety has a good article on him here.
He was famous for both being able to basically turn out a film for peanuts, often being if nothing else enjoyable (he made the original 60's Little Shop of Horrors in two and half days for a bet) and profitable, but possibly most importantly he gave a vast number of Hollywood actors, producers, Directors, Writers and Special effects people their first break in film, and was more than happy to have someone who'd signed on to do one job try out something very different in his next film (going by the commentaries I've watched, if for no other reason than it saved him money if someone could do two or more jobs
).In later years he was largely working to produce cheap stuff for the likes of the sci-fi channel, stuff that was usually very low budget and stupid, but fun.
To give an idea of some of the people he worked with he gave Jack Nicholson one of his first/his first roles in a film (apparently Jack was invited to do 30 minute interview for a book/documentary on Corman and was happy to spend 5 hours talking about him), he gave James Cameron a job on set in one of his first Hollywood films (Rock and Roll high school from memory) where one of the leads in the commentary mentioned how James was bringing her coffee on set during that film, and about 3 months later he was directing her in another much bigger budget film.
Watching some of the films he produced/directed and the commentaries it seems a common theme is the phrase "and there is X in his/her first job, he/she went on to win an oscar (or was part of the oscar winning team) a few years later", things like an special effects guy who basically did a remarkably good job for pennies in one of his films then goes on to become one of the main people in Star Wars or Jurassic park etc (IIRC that happened repeatedly with different people).
He was also instrumental in taking a lot of foreign films to the US for distribution.
Variety has a good article on him here.
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