“I was very surprised”: the first-time director Roger Corman called the best he ever hired
Few people in Hollywood history have launched more legendary careers than Roger Corman, who became synonymous with creating a pathway that led many first-time filmmakers to greatness.
It wasn’t as if he had grand designs on becoming the industry’s most prolific mentor, though; he was just a bit of a cheapskate. Not in a bad way, since Corman forged his reputation as the B-movie’s resident doyen by repeatedly showing that if he had to pennies to rub together, he’d get a movie out of it.
Francis Ford Coppola has won five Academy Awards and helmed several of the greatest films of all time, and his first feature-length effort, Dementia 13, was a Corman production. Martin Scorsese’s sophomore picture, and his first to receive a wide theatrical release, Boxcar Bertha, was also a Corman flick.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Jonathan Demme’s first two movies were backed by the legendary producer, as was Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets, New World Pictures distributed Joe Dante’s first four credits as an editor or director, while James Cameron’s work on Battle Beyond the Stars helped him land further work on Piranha II, and he’s now responsible for three of the four highest-grossing releases of all time.
That doesn’t even include the actors who’ve credited Corman as the single most important factor in their rise to prominence, with Jack Nicholson and Sylvester Stallone among them, so it goes without saying that he was the most prominent king-maker in the business, but he had a softer spot for one of his proteges than the rest.
His first brush with Ron Howard came when he hired him as an actor in Eat My Dust, but the aspiring auteur was playing a longer game. “I didn’t really think I would get him,” the producer admitted. “But he agreed to do it, and I was very surprised.” Of course, it was all part of the plan; Howard was aware of Corman’s reputation and used it to leverage himself into the director’s chair for 1977’s Grand Theft Auto.
After the action comedy recouped its budget more than 15 times over at the box office, Corman did what Corman does and envisioned a sequel. However, Howard had a different idea. “He came in, and he said, ‘When an actor is asked to do a sequel, he wants more money,'” the former recalled. “‘I don’t want more money. I will take exactly the same deal I had on the first picture, and I’ll do another job for nothing.'”
The Eat My Dust follow-up never happened, but Grand Theft Auto did, with Howard finally realising his dream of directing a film, and he never looked back. “I told him he always looked like a director to me,” Corman added. “I will say that Ron was probably the coolest first-time-out director I’ve ever seen.”
Filmmaking was always Howard’s endgame; he just needed to find somebody willing to give him a chance. Corman was the perfect partner at the perfect time, and of all the first-timers he’d ever encountered, the future ‘Best Director’ winner was the most accomplished of the bunch.
