Interview: Legendary Filmmaker Roger Corman Discusses DEATH RACE 2050

Racing onto Blu-ray, DVD, and digital platforms everywhere on January 17th is Death Race 2050, which was co-written and directed by G.J. Echternkamp and produced by the legendary Roger Corman, who was also the producing force behind Death Race 2000 back in the mid-1970s.

In late 2016, just a day or two after the 2016 Presidential Election, Daily Dead had the opportunity to speak with Corman about this latest iteration of the Death Race universe. During our conversation, Corman discussed the socio-political relevance of both Death Race 2050 as well as the original Death Race, why they chose to return to the retro-futuristic realm for this iteration, collaborating with Echternkamp, and what keeps him going after enjoying a successful career in Hollywood for over 60 years now.

Great to speak to you today, Roger. I have a feeling this conversation would have went a little bit differently had the election gone a different way. There are definitely some parallels here. Can you talk about resurrecting the Death Race franchise and why you guys felt like it was a good time now to re-set the wheels for these movies?

Roger Corman: The original Death Race 2000, which I shot in the ’70s, was a car-racing action picture set in the near future in which the drivers were scored on how fast they could drive from New York to New Los Angeles. If they could knock the other cars off the road they got points and above all—and I think this is one of the few times when I can say I did something that really was original—they got points for killing pedestrians. Now, when I came up with that idea, I thought, "It's a really good idea; you can't take it too seriously," so it added a certain amount of comedy.

It's a car-racing action picture with a little bit of comedy, but also there's the comment there on society. I thought back on the relationship between the violence of the entertainment and the audience. I went back to the Roman gladiatorial games, what they called bread and circuses. The idea was that if they gave this violent entertainment and just enough food to get by on, the lower classes, the working classes of the Roman Empire would not rebel. I thought of the idea of a near future society which is divided very heavily between a small rich group at the top and the working people and the use of Death Race as entertainment to take their minds off, at least for a little while, the conditions of society.

As we handle the new Death Race 2050, we have that type of society and we have a wild-talking president played by Malcolm McDowell, except he's not called the president anymore. I'm trying to project into the near future and the recent election might portend a little bit in that direction. So here we have a wild, fast-talking, charismatic chairman of the United States of America, which is now the United Corporations of America, giving these wild speeches to maintain his position and to keep the working people satisfied with the entertainment of Death Race and the small amount of food he allows them.

You can see some connection between a possible future of the way we might go after this election into Death Race 2050. I didn't know the election was going to go this way, but I thought of it as a possibility of a rich society, a rich group at the top, and the working people on a very low level, and a charismatic, shouting, yelling chairman of the board of United Corporations.

How was it working with G.J. Echternkamp? What did you see in him as a filmmaker that made him the right fit for Death Race 2050?

Roger Corman: G.J. is a very talented young director. He had done a very low-budget picture for me before that, and based upon that work, I engaged him as director of this. G.J. is very good because he was able to work well with the actors and also provide the action, because when we talk about the themes, the political situation and all of that, you have to remember that, above all else, this is still a car-racing film.

I did very much enjoy the last three Death Race films, but they have a very different aesthetic and they're very different movies than Death Race 2000. What I loved about this one is that it felt like it hearkened back to that era of your original, with that retro-futuristic feeling to it.

Roger Corman: Well, that was deliberate. What happened was I sold the remake rights because the original one actually won some poll as the greatest B-movie of all time. In fact, the B-movie makes me the king of the second-raters. At any rate, I sold the remake rights to Universal and they remade it three times. They used everything, but they took out the killing of the pedestrians because they wanted a more straightforward action film. I really felt that what made Death Race unique, because there are a lot of action racing films—I've made a number of them myself—is the concept of the killing of the pedestrians and the sociological reasons behind it.

I talked to Universal and they were receptive to making a version that went back to the original, including the killing of the pedestrians, and then updating it, just as I'd done before, to the future of the year 2000. We put this in 2050, so it would be close enough to the present day that the world would be, to a large extent, pretty similar to the present-day, but there's enough time left in between so that we could put in various aspects of a possible futuristic dictatorial society.

We're over 40 years removed from Death Race 2000, and there's a lot of that movie that still feels timeless to me. Did you realize when you were doing the original just how much it would continue to resonate for decades? And did you ever imagine that some of those things that you put in there would still be things that we would be trying to deal with even today?

Roger Corman: Well, that was a reason for putting it just at that time, just 30 years into the future. I felt then, as I do feel now, that by making it a few decades into the future, much of the world that we have is still going to be there. People can relate to the year 2050 as much as the year 2016, because there will be changes, but it will not be Star Wars; it won't be that type of change, an entirely different world. It's a recognizable world taking certain trends.

As a result of the election, the trends may be accelerated as to what might take place. That's one of the beauties of science fiction; you can make—I don't know if you want to say political, sociological, whatever kind of statement you want to make—and have it to relate to today's world, but since it's science fiction, you're a little bit freer to go deeper into certain areas.

You’ve been a big part of this industry for so many years now, so I'd love to hear a little bit about what keeps you excited these days in terms of work. The longevity you’ve experienced in your career is amazing.

Roger Corman: Well, essentially it's because I love making motion pictures. One of what we consider to be our graduates is John Davison, who came out of the NYU Film School straight to being one of my assistants. He went on to produce Airplane!, RoboCop, Starship Troopers—a lot of big pictures. With his money, he bought a ranch in Colorado and he spends part of his time there and part here. I was having lunch with him a few weeks ago when he came back and he said he was retiring, and I said, "John, I always thought of you as the kid in the office, now you're retiring. If you're retiring, it's time for me to retire." He said, "You're too old to retire." And maybe he’s right.

NSFW trailer: