The documentary film Corman's World was released on Blu-ray/DVD this week, and we were offered the opportunity to talk with producer Stone Douglass about the making of the film. While it was only a brief chat, I learned about the first attempt at starting this project, the difficulties of editing, and the possibility of unused content showing up in book form.
Were you part of the project from the beginning or did you come in after director Alex Stapleton had started working on it?
Stone Douglass: The project was about 5 and a half years total for Alex, and there was a year or so when she worked with just Jared Moshe and Rich Lim, and another guy named Josh Levin. The three of them had provided some small seed cash to help Alex interview a few people and put together a sizzle reel.
They took it to Berlin to see if they could get some traction and it just didn’t work. Alex came back and got hooked up William Morris Endeavor, who represents me and my company. They put us together and that is we put together a proper budget to make the film.
When I had read that this project was 5+ years in the making, I figured that it could take that long to get all of these people on camera.
Stone Douglass: That was part of it. The other part is the editing, which is equally as important as the other areas of making the film. It is incredibly fun and a great way to work with storytelling. On this documentary, we were adamant that it was not going to have a narrator that's pretty challenging. It’s like a giant mad lib game, trying to match tenses and all of that kind of stuff. It can take time.
Without a script, it’s difficult because you have to write the narrative after everything is shot.
Stone Douglass: Totally and I have to give Alex so much credit. She worked tirelessly to do it and obviously I was there working with her on it, along with our talented team of editors. No one editor could have done it. These guys were all tremendously talented editors who helped find that story. They did a great job.
Roger Corman has been in Hollywood for a long time and influenced so many careers. What do you think kept something like this from happening sooner? He’s the kind of subject where you’d think someone would have already worked on this.
Stone Douglass: When the project was brought to me by Alex, I did my due diligence on this for a week, thinking: “Why hasn’t this been done already?”
The reason is that Roger has said no to a lot of people. While you could do it without his approval, I think it is a much better idea to have him on your side with this.
There was a film made in the 70’s by Christian Blackwood, called Hollywood’s Wild Angel. Christian since died and his brother licensed the film to us so that we could use it. If you notice older looking footage in Corman’s World, it’s from that film. That film never got a proper release and it’s amazing. It’s one of those sort of rare films I’m sure Quentin Tarantino has a secret reel of in his private theater.
With Roger Corman being involved with the film, it is not as intimate as I was expecting.
Stone Douglass: He wasn’t involved with the shooting of the interviews and during editing. We didn’t see him for a year and a half, until we showed him a rough cut. Something we learned about Roger is that he’s a very private person and he keeps it close to the vest. It’s not because he has anything to hide. It’s just who he is and I think he’s one of the most intelligent and fascinating personalities out there. The same goes for his wife Julie. They are smart to keep it private. They are family people, with wonderful kids and they are very close with them. We did get stories about their proposal and stuff like that, but we left it out of the film.
Talking about what didn’t make it into the film, did you think about putting all the extra material into a book?
Stone Douglass: Absolutely. It is something we’re exploring now and we’d love to do a proper book encapsulation of Roger. We have all the transcripts and we just need to find a publisher.
Daily Dead's Official Podcast! Daily Dead's Official Podcast!
