Roger Corman famous quotes

04-17-2025

You can make a movie about anything, as long as it has a hook to hang the advertising on.
-- Roger Corman

#Long #Hook #Advertising
The safest genre is the horror film. But the most unsafe - the most dangerous - is comedy. Because even if your horror film isn't very good, you'll get a few screams and you're okay. With a comedy, if they don't laugh, you're dead.
-- Roger Corman

#Halloween #Genre Is #Laughing
In order to create art today, you have to compromise your art somewhat and be a businessman.
-- Roger Corman

#Art #Order #Today
I think one of the reasons movies are the quintessential modern art form is that it is partially a business. The director needs a crew - the writer, the producer, etcetera - and to have that, he needs money.
-- Roger Corman

#Art #Thinking #Directors
In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady.
-- Roger Corman

#Monsters #Fiction #Film
Motion pictures are the art form of the 20th century, and one of the reasons is the fact that films are a slightly corrupted artform. They fit this century - they combine Art and business!
-- Roger Corman

#Art #Facts #Film
When you're talking horror or sci-fi, you're working in a genre that has loosely certain thematic elements, or, you could even call them rules. But rules are there to be broken. I think that young filmmakers should go all the way back to the history of horror, from silent films like "Nosferatu", and through to today's horror films, so they understand the history of horror films and what has been done. Understand that, and then add something new or original.
-- Roger Corman

#Thinking #Broken #Done
Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I'd give it my best shot.
-- Roger Corman

#Giving #Directors #Film
I've never made the film I wanted to make. No matter what happens, it never turns out exactly as I hoped.
-- Roger Corman

#Matter #Film #Made
I love the process of making films and an incidental satisfaction is the fact that most of them made money.
-- Roger Corman

#Satisfaction #Facts #Film
You learn, of course, when you're working with something good, but you also can learn when you're working with things that are not good. You can see the reasons they're not good. I would sometimes suggest what could be done, but essentially say "It isn't worth the bother." So I learned from that process.
-- Roger Corman

#Done #Sometimes #Reason
I look for the ability to work. Directing is hard work. They don't teach you that in film school. Critics are not aware of it, but it is hard, physical work.
-- Roger Corman

#Hard Work #School #Film
I do believe motion pictures are the significant art form of our time. And I think the main reason is, they're an art form of movement, as opposed to static art forms of previous times.
-- Roger Corman

#Art #Believe #Thinking
A great director, first, is highly intelligent. And he is also a dedicated and willing to work hard. Now those are easy things to identify. The third is the creativity, and that is very difficult to identify in advance. This is why so many of the directors who have started with me were my assistant - the first one was Francis Ford Coppola.
-- Roger Corman

#Creativity #Hard Work #Intelligent
When I started in the late 1950s, every film I made - no matter how low the budget - got a theatrical release. Today, less that 20-percent of our films get a theatrical release.
-- Roger Corman

#Matter #Today #Film
I was called recently in some article "Hollywood's Oldest Established Rebel." So I'm sort of working from the inside now, with still a little bit of a rebellious spirit.
-- Roger Corman

#Rebel #Spirit #Rebellious
Somebody said, 'Roger doesn't know how to spend money.' And I thought, 'I don't spend money because I don't have it!' If I had it, I could spend money! That's about the only time I was told that!
-- Roger Corman

#Roger #Said #Know How
Horror films have been with us forever, so you can't say I originated that in any way, but it sort of brought back a classical way to make a horror film.
-- Roger Corman

#Forever #Way #Horror
When I started, every film got a full theatrical distribution. Today, almost no low budget films, maybe two or three a year, will get a full theatrical distribution. We've been frozen out of that, which means they must be aware that for a full theatrical distribution it either has to be something like Saw or some exploitation film of today or an extremely well made personal film.
-- Roger Corman

#Mean #Two #Years
My father was an engineer, .. But I found out that the film critics for the Stanford Daily got free passes for all the films. So I became first an assistant critic and then the main film critic. Those free passes changed my life.
-- Roger Corman

#Father #Film Critics #Criticism
I think the art film, or the auteur-driven film - and not only foreign, but domestic films following that path - can get a small share of the box office. And I think that small share may open up a little bit.
-- Roger Corman

#Art #Thinking #Office
People gravitate occasionally to the brilliantly made art low budget films, which is maybe one out of every five hundred low budget films made.
-- Roger Corman

#Art #People #Film
There were two practical reasons we moved to Venice. One was that there was an artists movement and a countercultural movement. Lots of people we might want to hire lived in the area. We also wanted to buy in a lower rent area that looked like it was going to be gentrified so that we could eventually sell the studio for more money.
-- Roger Corman

#Artist #Venice #Two

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