How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, by Roger Corman
Review by Jeffrey M. Anderson
Buy How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, by Roger Corman
Other filmmakers like Orson Welles, D.W. Griffith, and Alfred Hitchcock
have been stylistically influential to younger filmmakers, but Roger Corman
has been influential in a more concrete sense. He's a savvy businessman
and possesses a keen eye for talent. This autobiography not only tells the
stories behind such B-movie classics as The Little Shop of Horrors,
The Masque of the Red Death, The Intruder, and Creature
from the Haunted Sea, but tells the story of how Corman launched the
careers of actor Jack Nicholson, directors Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan
Demme, James Cameron, and Ron Howard, screenwriter Robert Towne, and producer
Jon Davidson, as well as many others. Although his story is inspiring, this
book has its faults. Corman is more than a little pleased with himself,
and the book lacks any kind of index or filmmography to help the reader
keep track of his phenomenal career as a director/producer. But any book
on Corman is worth reading, and this is the best one so far.
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