“The diciest moment of my life”: when Roger Corman got Peter Bogdanovich beat up by The Hells Angels
Revered by many as one of the godfathers of independent cinema, Roger Corman was a trailblazing force in the film industry who created run-and-gun filmmaking with low-budget classics such as The Little Shop of Horrors, The Wild Angels and The Intruder. He also later went on to produce hit films such as Caged Heat, Grand Theft Auto, and Killer Instinct and mentored some of cinema’s most influential directors at the beginnings of their careers, working with Francis Ford Coppola and James Cameron as younglings in Hollywood.
However, the director has endured his far share of controversies over the years, with a businesslike approach to filmmaking that has both helped him win and lose a lot of money after an unfortunate feud with his children and a dodgy hedge-fund manager.
However, Corman is not afraid to take risks, which is no doubt how he was able to make over 400 movies throughout his decades-long career. One of his more bizarre risks was involving Peter Bogdanovich in the production of The Wild Angels, which harmed the director in a very physical way.
After scraping together some money by roping in his college friends and selling a script, Corman defied the odds and was able to make his first feature film, Monster on the Ocean Floor, in 1954. Due to his cunning negotiations and financial savvy, the young director managed to pull together a deal with a film lab that offered to defer his payment until the release of the film. Miraculously, the film managed to double its budget in sales, sparking the beginning of a long love affair with independent filmmaking.
One of Corman’s most successful projects, though, was The Wild Angels in 1966, starring Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern. It was shot with a budget of $360,000, and after earning over $5million, made it one of his most commercially successful films at the time. However, the production was put together in a very haphazard way, with the director always finding a way to cut costs and save money, even hiring real-life Hells Angels to be extras in the film.
Of course, Corman was also a key figure in launching the career of Bogdanovich, with uncredited roles in many of the director’s early films, later stating that Corman’s way of working was “to throw you into the water”. This was certainly the case when he collaborated with Corman on The Wild Angels, who later recalled one dicey incident on set, describing, “The Hells Angels weren’t very fond of Roger, and they hated me because I was always standing next to Roger, whispering in his ear. So they started to beat the hell out of me. That was the diciest moment of my life with Roger.”
Bogdanovich is always described as the clean-cut and sensible one from this period of auteurs, and so the image of him being beaten up by a gang of Hells Angels for merely whispering to Roger is undeniably hilarious. But they always say that a baptism by fire is the best way to start, especially in Hollywood.
