Farewell, Mr. Corman

The great Roger Corman is no longer with us

I had originally planned to devote this week’s newsletter to another topic (which will now have to wait) when the news hit: Roger Corman, the great producer and director known as the king of B-movies, passed away on May 9, aged 98. Twitter was immediately inundated with tributes from critics, film aficionados and countless directors, producers and actors who owe him the beginning of their careers.

Corman’s impact on the American film industry cannot be overstated, and while his frugality became a bit of a running joke (his cameo in Joe Dante’s The Howling was based on the gag that he could supposedly finance an entire movie with the change found in a phone booth), even his cheapest projects had a real drive behind them. He was endlessly creative on minuscule budgets, perhaps best exemplified by how he came up with the idea for The Little Shop of Horrors simply because he had two days to use the sets from a different movie before they were due to be dismantled.