Roger Corman: The Mogul of the Margins

Sun, 11 May 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Roger Corman liked to say he never lost money on a film, and for most of a career that spanned more than fifty years and hundreds of pictures, it was true. That statistic alone would make him a curiosity — a producer who cracked the economics of the exploitation film so completely he turned a genre most of Hollywood sneered at into a reliable machine. But the reason his name outlasts the films is stranger and more important. The cheapest producer in America was also the greatest talent scout in the history of the medium. The people who learned the trade on Corman’s dime went on to make The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Jaws, The Terminator and Silence of the Lambs. He built the margins, and the margins rebuilt Hollywood.

Val Lewton: The Producer as Author

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 14:00:00 +0000

The auteur theory has a blind spot, and Val Lewton is standing in it. Critics love to credit the director, sometimes the writer, occasionally the star. They rarely credit the producer, because the producer is supposed to be the money man — the one who counts pennies and worries about running times. Lewton counted pennies too. He had no choice; RKO gave him almost nothing to spend. But between 1942 and 1946 he ran a horror unit that produced a run of films so consistent in mood, method and intelligence that they can only be the work of a single controlling sensibility. That sensibility was his.

Producers - vo.rs

Roger Corman: The Mogul of the Margins

Val Lewton: The Producer as Author