ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF ROGER CORMAN (1926-2024)

(This short remembrance was written on May 11, 2024, in remembrance of Roger Corman upon his passing on May 9.)

In 1982, a friend of mine and I hopped in his Ford sedan, packed up his projector and a box full of movies we'd created together and made our way from our dull southern Oregon to Los Angeles, my first visit, to suss out the possibilities of getting work in the movie business. Much of that visit was spent just going to the movies and having fun, of course, but somehow-- oh, the fearless cold-calls of youth!-- we wrangled an audience with producer Mary Ann Fisher at Roger Corman's New World Pictures compound in Venice (which was an at least partially converted lumberyard, as I recall) to show her our stuff.

The screening went well, she liked our movies, and I was thrilled to get the opportunity to enthusiastically talk to someone about Hollywood Boulevard, Rock and Roll High School, Piranha, Death Race 2000, Caged Heat and even Amarcord, no matter that the Joe Dante/Allan Arkush/Paul Bartel/Jonathan Demme era at New World had already passed, and no matter than Federico Fellini was nowhere to be found on the lot (!) (Corman raised a lot of eyebrows in the early '70s when he acquired American distribution rights to Amarcord  and Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers.)

At the end of our visit, Fisher surprised my friend and me by dangling the possibility of our coming to work at New World Pictures, for very slim money, of course. Unfortunately, I was still operation under the misperception at the time that the fortunes of myself and my friend were joined at the hip, something that would soon change in a big way. And he certainly wasn't going to leave his girlfriend, or bring her to LA from Oregon, for $150 a week. As for me, I was still too young and immature, even at 21, and certainly not hungry enough to consider going it alone.

So we ended up chalking the whole thing up to experience-- to what end, I was never sure. But that visit was and remains a hugely important memory for me along the road to whatever self-realization I eventually arrived at (if I ever did). And as much as we were excited to be showing our Super-8 films to someone who actually worked in Hollywood (well, in Venice), to top the whole thing off, Fisher briefly interrupted our screening to take a call from Corman and, while we listened, told her boss how she was spending the afternoon, describing our movies to him as having "the kind of feel you like, Roger."

No, I never went to work for Roger Corman and New World Pictures, but as brushes with greatness go, that was a really good one.