Roger Corman

“Here is Targets, Peter Bogdanovich's first film. Peter had been my assistant on several pictures and shot second unit on a few. He was clearly very talented and I had a very strange commitment with Boris, Boris Karloff to do a few days on another film. The result was Targets, with Boris at a drive-in where one of his pictures was premiering, and there was a shooter on top of the drive-in. And the idea was to more or less combine fictional violence with real violence. It was a brilliant and is today a brilliant film.”

“Here is The Gunfighter, which was a personal film for me. I had just become a story analyst at 20th Century Fox. I finally got a script called The Big Gun. The Big Gun was about a famous gunfighter whose reputation precedes him wherever he goes. I wrote a number of notes on it and I suggested changing the title from The Big Gun to The Gunfighter. I submitted this to the story editor who recommended it to one of the producers at Fox. He produced the film and the film, starring Gregory Peck as The Gunfighter, was a giant success. The story editor got full credit for all the notes that I wrote. I said, "That's it for my career at 20th Century Fox. I'm out of here." So I applied to Oxford, was accepted and went to Oxford on the G. I. Bill. So I got something out of The Gunfighter.”

“Here is Fellini's picture Amarcord. This is one of the foreign films we distributed. I remember that Allan Arkush and Joe Dante, our trailer editors, had just finished editing the trailer for some wild exploitation film, and they said, "This is a different kind of film. How should we build the trailer?" I said, "With the same style you use for the exploitation films." They did it and Amarcord was the biggest opening film Fellini ever had in his career.”

“Here is the Russian film of War and Peace. This is one of the greatest film adaptations of a novel, in my opinion, ever made. The way Bondarchuk photographed those battle scenes going on into the distance in long shots and then cutting to individual shots, as you took in the concept of the grandeur of the forthcoming battle and the beginning of the battle and then brought you in to the terror of the real battle, is brilliant.”

“This is Raging Bull, directed by Marty Scorsese. Marty actually directed his first feature film for me. It was called Boxcar Bertha. I had previously produced and directed a film called Bloody Mama. The picture was a major success for American International. A little later, they wanted a sequel to Bloody Mama and they wanted me to produce and direct it. By that time, I had my own company and I said, "I'll produce it, but I don't want to direct for another company, but I'll pick a new director." And I picked Marty. They were somewhat dubious and I said, "I don't care. A good director can direct anything." That's more or less true. Anyway, I convinced them to let Marty direct it and Boxcar Bertha became a solid success, both critically and commercially, and it started Marty's career. And Raging Bull is a great example of the way he was able to combine violence and at the same time explore the life of Jake LaMotta, who was the Raging Bull.”