Roger Corman Cops an Academy Award

By Steve Evans

One of the great entertainers in Hollywood finally gets his due.

B-movie maestro Roger Corman, 83, received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement during a special ceremony this month hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Corman bragged in his 1990 autobiography how he made “100 Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime.” Although the claim is as redolent with hyperbole as the overripe posters for his films, truth is, the man directed and produced scores of profitable pictures on wee budgets for exploitation studios like American International Pictures. The famed AIP logo at the start of a picture was a guarantee that low-budget drivel was about to unspool.

My own misspent youth included hours squandered in front of the television watching Corman movies with irresistible titles like Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) and The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, made the same year as Crab Monsters and, incredibly, the seven other films that Corman directed in ’57.

Think about that. How does a man direct nine movies in a year? By knocking them out in a matter of weeks, including writing the script, casting and pre-production, shooting principal photography, cutting, scoring the film with public-domain music from the local library, making prints and distributing the finished product.

Corman could go from an idea to a premiere in less than a month.

This is not to say the films he made were particularly good. Sure, there were a few notable films of exceptional quality. The Fall of the House of Usher comes to mind. Ray Milland in X: the Man with the X-Ray Eyes (right) is another. But most of Corman’s oeuvre consists of exploitation schlock. His movies are the cinematic equivalent of a microwavable burrito from a convenience store; not good for you, but filling and maybe even tasty ’round midnight when your mood is just right.

So why does a man with a mediocre movie resume get an Academy Award?

I suspect the honorary Oscar Corman received was more for his magnanimous nature than for any innate talent he ever demonstrated as a filmmaker. Corman gave everybody a shot at the movie bidness. The list of individuals who got their break working on a Corman film is positively staggering. What this legendary producer-director developed early in his career – aside from an uncanny knack for tapping into the public unconscious to determine what would lure teenagers to drive-in theaters – was his ability to identify undiscovered talent and hire it on the cheap. When you’re working with a budget that barely covers the film stock, you’ve gotta find good people who are hungry and willing to work for nothing. Corman excelled at finding those people.

Francis Ford Coppola was shooting naughty sex movies before he made one of his earliest films for Corman, a psycho-killer flick set in Ireland with the lurid title Dementia 13. This was a rip-off of William Castle’s Homicidal, which in turn was a blatant copy of Hitchcock’s Psycho, so you see how far Corman’s productions ranked along the food chain.

The story of Coppola's first "serious film" is apocryphal, but fascinating. His boss, Corman, was filming The Young Racers in Ireland. Corman's 24-year-old second-unit director, who simply called himself Francis back then, banged out a story on a typewriter one night and handed Corman a script the next morning about an axe-wielding maniac.

Coppola asked for feedback.

Corman said, “Fine, Francis, you direct it.” Corman gave Coppola $30,000 and let him use the stars of The Young Racers. Coppola shot his horror movie around Corman’s production schedule, which meant filming mostly at night, and got his first legit directing credit. Critical success and Oscars would follow within a decade, beginning with The Godfather (1972) and continuing with the first sequel to the Corleone gangster saga. Look fast during the Senate committee hearings in The Godfather Part II (1974) to see Corman, in a cameo as a U.S. Senator, on the panel investigating Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) for criminal conspiracies. Coppola honored his mentor with a bit part in what is now routinely acknowledged as one of the greatest films ever made.

Coppola's Dementia 13 was originally to be titled simply Dementia, but an earlier picture already held that name. (No one seems to know what happened to Dementias 1 through 12, ho, ho.)

Director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) made his first film for Corman, a sniper thriller (with shades of Lee Harvey Oswald) called Targets, starring Boris Karloff in one of his last films.

Martin Scorsese’s freshman effort, Boxcar Bertha, was a Corman production. Corman even offered to finance and produce Scorsese's follow-up effort, Mean Streets (1973), provided that the young director jettison the Italian-American mafioso plot in favor of a blaxploitation picture featuring black gangsters. Corman was undoubtedly considering the success of recent hits like Shaft and Superfly. Scorsese declined.

James “Titanic” Cameron got his start making spaceship models for Star Wars rip-offs produced by Corman. Cameron’s directorial debut, Piranha Part 2: The Spawning, featured Corman’s name in the production credits. Little of the talent Cameron would later bring to The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies or Best Picture winner Titanic is on display in his first effort, but he got his Director’s Guild card and that was a start.

Oscar winner Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) made the sleazy women-in-prison flick Caged Heat for Corman.

Long before he won an Oscar for directing Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard directed his first movie, Grand Theft Auto, for Corman’s Concord Productions while Howard was still starring in the television sitcom Happy Days.

Before he made The Howling and Gremlins, the latter for Steven Spielberg, director Joe Dante was editing trailers for Roger Corman. Dante got his big break a few years before James Cameron by directing the first Piranha movie, which was a carbon copy of Spielberg’s Jaws, right down to the promotional poster.

Legendary screenwriter Robert Towne, who won an Oscar for writing Chinatown, launched his career as an actor and the scribe of Corman‘s The Last Woman on Earth.

Famed actors who jump-started their careers in Corman pictures include Charles Bronson, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Peter Fonda, Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone.

It is said that successful men stand on the shoulders of giants. Corman’s legacy proves that the opposite is true. Corman didn’t make great movies, but he supplied a successful training ground for those who would.

Copyright © 2009 by Cinematic Cteve // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

Yes, Virginia: Good Things Come in Threes

Revisiting The Godfather: Part III
Paramount // 1990 // 169 Minutes // Rated R

Reviewed by Steve Evans

Author’s note: I gallantly stepped in to review this DVD when my predecessor vanished mysteriously during a business appointment in the meat-packing district. Yeah, and it turns out this picture is a helluva lot better than I recall thinking on opening day, Christmas 1990.

“All the power on earth can’t change destiny.” ~ From the promotional poster.

Opening Shot
Vowing to take the family business legit, mafia godfather Michael Corleone seeks redemption in a business deal with the Catholic Church, realizing too late that the Vatican is as rife with corruption as organized crime. The film was savaged upon its original release almost 19 years ago, but time has a way of altering critical opinion. Today Part III can be seen as a fascinating but flawed coda to an absorbing, richly metaphoric and compulsively entertaining trilogy about the rise and fall of a mafia family in 20th century America.

Plot of Plenty…
Amassing incredible wealth from mob-owned casinos in Las Vegas and other criminal enterprises, Don Corleone (Al Pacino, Scent of a Woman) resolves to atone for his sins, including the murder of his brother Fredo. Michael gives $100 million to the church. With the help of a corrupt cardinal, he buys a controlling stake in Immobiliare — an international venture-capital consortium that is minority-owned by the Vatican. Vincent (Andy Garcia, The Untouchables) lurks on the fringe of the Corleone family, convinced that protecting their interests means clinging to the old ways of theft and extortion, backed by violent death. Vincent is the bastard son of Michael’s brother Sonny, who was machine-gunned to death at a toll booth 30 years ago. Michael’s naïve daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola) falls hard for Vincent, though he rebuffs her, knowing the Don would not approve. The family, including Michael’s conniving sister Connie (Talia Shire, Rocky, and with opera glasses, above right) and his ex-wife Kay (Diane Keaton), travel to Rome, where Michael will conclude his nefarious business and celebrate son Anthony’s premiere as an opera singer — all during a particularly savage performance of Cavalleria Rusticana.

The Corleone saga moves at a studied pace to an inevitably tragic conclusion, as Michael confronts his fate and faces divine punishment beyond the endurance of any man, no matter how evil.

Whew. That’s a lot of plot.

Historical Context and Significance
More than 14 years after The Godfather: Part III set a box office record for a Christmas Day premiere, and four years after the pricey DVD boxed set of the Godfather trilogy originally hit store shelves, Paramount Pictures released Part II and Part III as individual DVD titles (Keaton and Pacino flank George Hamilton during a night at the opera, left). The milestone original film, which established director Francis Ford Coppola as a formidable filmmaking talent, was issued as a separate DVD in 2004, shortly before Marlon Brando died. For film lovers who could not or would not buy the boxed set, the option of purchasing separate titles was long overdue. Now the only incentive to buy the box is the supplemental disc of extra features missing from these individual DVDs. For some consumers, this may not matter.

Coppola hasn’t had a hit in years. That’s why in late 2008 he went back to the editing suite, tinkered with the coloration and sound of his masterpiece trilogy and, by Gawd, Paramount soon after released a restored, director-approved, super-whoopie, definitive Godfather trilogy set, billed as a restoration. Fans of the film got the real bill, what by now is at least the fifth release of this seminal trilogy if we count VHS editions.

Nearly 19 years since the released of Part III, critical consensus remains virtually unanimous: It is the weakest of the Godfather films. In 1990 much of the vitriol (and it was considerable) centered on the thespian limitations of then 18-year-old Sofia Coppola, the director’s daughter (right, with Andy Garcia). Critics were not kind to her performance then, and time has not altered anyone’s judgment. She remains an amateur devoid of presence or conviction. While this child of a cinematic dynasty would evolve into an infrequent director and Oscar-winning screenwriter, anyone who saw her Academy Award acceptance speech for Lost in Translation witnessed proof positive that Sofia Coppola is a dull, inarticulate woman whose family name has clearly done more for her film career than any innate talent she may possess.

With that venom out of the way, let’s look at the uphill battle this unfairly maligned film received in 1990. Just by virtue of being a Godfather film meant expectations were running well beyond anything a mortal could deliver, even a master filmmaker like Coppola.

Part III also had serious competition on its initial release. Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas was an unexpected dynamite blast of energy and exuberance that reinvented the crime film while besting the French New Wave directors at their own stylistic game, albeit three decades later. The Godfather: Part III is positively stately, even sedate, when contrasted with the snap-crackle-pow of Scorsese’s kinetic vision of organized crime. Comparisons between the two films may have been unfair, but they were inevitable. Francis Ford Coppola had always taken the Godfather mythos quite seriously, but by 1990 he had confused solemnity with ominous foreboding. A generation had come of age since the original Godfather films were released, and audiences were ready to embrace the jittery, live-wire assault of Goodfellas. Never a director known for his sense of humor, Coppola remained mired firmly in the past, in both his material and his technique.In the end, as far as Oscars were concerned, it didn’t matter. Though it seems inscrutable today, Dances with Wolves would win Best Picture for the year Part III and Goodfellas were released.

Film lovers who keep up with cinema lore also know that Coppola signed on for Part III because he needed the money to keep his Zoetrope Studios alive after the 1988 commercial failure of Tucker: The Man and His Dream. And that Coppola lost a fight with Paramount to name the film The Death of Michael Corleone. And that Robert Duvall (Apocalypse Now) wanted too much money to reprise his role as concigliere (mafia lawyer) Tom Hagen, so Coppola killed off the character before Part III begins. And that Pacino wanted so much cash up front that Coppola threatened to open Part III with Michael Corleone’s death, and Pacino ultimately backed down, accepting a lesser fee. The same savvy viewers will also know that editing continued right up to the drop-dead point for striking and distributing prints to the premiere. So what does it all mean? All of these factors suggest that Part III was a work in progress rushed into theaters to meet contractual obligations.

None of this detracts from the fact that Part III is solid entertainment, a seriously good film, albeit a flaw in the cinematic jewel that the Godfather trilogy represents. There are only a handful of American films so poignant, produced so gorgeously, directed so brilliantly, that any films that attempt to remake or expand them will inevitably bring disappointment. The Godfather and its 1974 sequel are among the former — Best Picture winners that paint the death of the American dream in allegorical tableaux of greed, treachery, violence, and fate. And, it comes as no surprise, Part III is among the latter. Given the economic exigencies behind this final production, it is perhaps a small miracle of modern cinema that Part III turned out so good.

Coppola even remembered to include oranges, the presence of which always signifies imminent death in a Godfather film. Rich in detail and situation, the film falters on a convoluted script that tries too hard to condemn the governing powers of the Catholic Church. Left to its own devices, the church would ultimately condemn itself, as revelations of sexual abuse by priests and cover-ups by bishops have proven. Give Coppola credit for penning an ambitious and controversial script with Godfather novelist Mario Puzo.

The acting by the principals — Pacino, Shire, Keaton, Garcia, and Eli Wallach (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) as a wily, aging Don — is always competent and often inspired. Their interpretations suggest a logical evolution of the characters from the earlier films (Wallach’s Don is a new character in Part III). Secondary players like lawyer George Hamilton (Love at First Bite), newspaper reporter Bridget Fonda (A Simple Plan), and crime lord Joe Mantegna (Searching for Bobby Fischer) come off more as texture, as fleeting plot devices, than real human beings. Fonda is in the film no more than 10 minutes during the first act, then vanishes like a virgin on prom night. As Tom Hagen’s son, John Savage (The Deer Hunter) portrays a young priest in a glorified cameo. He’s around for three scenes and delivers a like number of lines. Who knows what was left in the chaos of the cutting-room floor as Coppola & Co. struggled to deliver a final cut to Paramount under an impossible deadline? But this is less a criticism of the actors’ work than it is of the overreaching and complicated script.

Gordon Willis’s cinematography is beyond reproach, captured in shades of burnt sienna and golden, autumnal hues, complemented by Dean Tavoularis’s achingly beautiful production design. Coppola’s direction is tight and purposeful; his primary misstep was the sentimental casting of his daughter in a key role originally intended for Winona Ryder (Girl, Interrupted), who bowed out during preproduction, allegedly due to exhaustion. As an infant, Sofia Coppola had appeared as Michael Corleone’s nephew in the famous baptism scene. Portraying a squalling babe in arms was precisely suited to her talents at the time. Casting her in Part III was the director’s supreme hubris, an act of nepotism that audiences would not forgive. During the film’s initial run, Sofia Coppola’s final scene was reportedly greeted at some screenings with cheers, hoots, and a smattering of applause. These were not compliments.

Part III climaxes with the signature montage of the trilogy: a massacre of villains in novel and excruciatingly violent ways. Juxtaposed with Pietro Mascagni’s exquisite opera, this sequence was obviously intended to finish the greatest trilogy in all American film on a high note — and very nearly succeeds, were it not for Sofia Coppola’s inappropriate and utterly unconvincing line readings at the vital climactic moment.

What’s on the Disc, Steve?
I’ll tell ya. The DVD is virtually flawless. Video and audio are sterling. Coppola’s running director’s commentary is insightful, if occasionally bitter, especially when he recalls the harsh critical treatment of his daughter. This commentary track appears to be identical to the audio recording that accompanied the disc in the original boxed set.

The Contrarian View
Extras are limited to Coppola’s commentary track. Given the wealth of supplemental material that came in the boxed set, Paramount is just being cheap to omit added-value content with these individual titles. Sure, a bare-bones disc may help hold down the price, but the boxed set has been on the market so long that any profit it was going to earn has long since been booked. Here’s hoping Coppola pocketed some of that cash, as he perpetually needs it.

Coda
The Godfather: Part III is a fascinating but flawed conclusion to one of the greatest achievements in American film. Michael Corleone’s final moment is deeply moving, even if it did not become the cinematic iconography that Coppola undoubtedly intended.

Better than most movie lovers probably remember, the picture improves on repeat viewings. See it again.

Copyright © 2009 by Cinematic Cteve // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

Nuclear Meltdown

The China Syndrome: Special Edition
Sony // 1979 // 122 Minutes // Rated PG

Reviewed by Steve Evans

“Today, only a handful of people know what it means…Soon you will know.” ~ From the promotional poster.

Opening Shot
An eerily prescient look at big business, politics and nuclear energy, The China Syndrome remains as exciting (and perhaps even more relevant) today as it was a quarter century ago. It’s still astonishing to recall that this film about a malfunctioning nuclear power plant opened less than two weeks before a major accident at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. The movie plays beautifully both as a taut thriller and social commentary, with inspired work from a perfect cast.

A Bit of Plot…
Jane Fonda stars as an ambitious TV reporter relegated to covering fluff stories in Southern California—until she discovers a massive cover-up at a nearby nuclear power plant. While doing a routine profile on the plant with her rebellious cameraman (Michael Douglas), Fonda witnesses an emergency in the control room. Technicians misread critical monitors, and the core of the plant begins to tremble and quake. The plant engineers barely avoid a nuclear meltdown, although structural flaws in the facility suggest that a much greater problem is waiting to erupt. The TV crew captures the incident on video, but the station owners suppress the footage, fearing a lawsuit from the powerful corporation that owns the nuclear facility.

The plant shift supervisor, Jack Lemmon, realizes there is something terribly, fundamentally wrong with the cooling systems that prevent the reactor from overheating and melting straight through the planet. A reluctant whistleblower, Lemmon at first refuses to talk to Fonda for a story that would expose the plant as a ticking bomb. But he soon has a crisis of conscience that compels him to speak before another accident engulfs Southern California with a lethal cloud of radioactivity. Problem is, the corporation behind the plant is not going to let an inflammatory and expensive issue like public safety get in the way of the bottom line.

Lemmon is the heart and soul of the film, offering a portrait of an anguished man struggling to do the right thing in spite of corporate bureaucracy, and threats to his career and life.

The film veers into thriller territory as shadowy thugs stalk plant employees and threaten the reporters, who are determined to uncover an explosive story of corporate negligence, graft, and corruption.

Historical Context and Significance
The China Syndrome (directed by James Bridges, Urban Cowboy) turned into a must-see phenomenon when the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred in Pennsylvania 12 days after the movie opened in March 1979. The movie is a fascinating product of its time because of the frightening (and from the producers’ perspective, fortuitous) similarity to the actual accident.

In the film, plant operators rely on an erroneous reading from a malfunctioning meter to gauge the water level used to cool the nuclear core. They come close to triggering a meltdown. This is virtually identical to what happened in Pennsylvania at Three Mile Island, based on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s report:

“The accident began about 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, when the plant experienced a failure in the secondary, non-nuclear section of the plant. The main feedwater pumps stopped running, caused by either a mechanical or electrical failure, which prevented the steam generators from removing heat. First the turbine, then the reactor automatically shut down. Immediately, the pressure in the primary system (the nuclear portion of the plant) began to increase. The accident was caused by a combination of personnel error, design deficiencies, and component failures.”

Because adequate cooling was not available, the nuclear fuel overheated to the point at which the metal tubes holding the nuclear fuel pellets ruptured and the pellets began to melt. Investigators later discovered that about half of the core melted during the accident. But plant operators managed to avoid the worst-case scenario: the melting of nuclear fuel could have breached the walls of the containment building and released massive quantities of radiation into the environment.

Tellingly, the NRC concedes that the accident caught state and federal regulators off guard. New regulations and security measures were put in place following Three Mile Island. Here is the juncture where art uncannily imitates life, as characters in The China Syndrome advocate some of the same safety procedures that federal regulators would later introduce. Perhaps inevitably, it took a real nuclear accident to put more stringent regulations in place.

What’s on the Disc, Steve?
I’ll tell ya. The China Syndrome is presented in a vibrant 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. It is a gorgeous print, rich in color and texture, with zero noticeable artifacts (although it is difficult to look beyond those ghastly 1970s fashions when the transfer offers such rich detail). Grain is evident in key scenes, a clear illustration that the film has been remastered in high definition. Audio options include a choice of remixed Dolby 5.1 or the original mono soundtrack in English or French. The 5.1 embellishment is well done, but offers little sonic benefits to the rear channels, as is often the case for older films that have been tricked out with a new sound mix.

Extras are solid, if not overwhelming, for a special edition package. Two documentaries, each running about 30 minutes, offer recollections from every major surviving cast and crew member. The filmographies are a handy reference. The disc also includes a trio of deleted scenes. Two are superfluous, and were wisely left on the cutting-room floor.

Cinematically speaking, Three Mile Island turned The China Syndrome into a blockbuster. If the film received favorable reviews on initial release, that praise paled in comparison to word-of-mouth buzz following a real nuclear accident. Producer-actor Michael Douglas seems to be the only person involved in the making of the film who doesn’t believe the Pennsylvania accident helped the box office. He is disingenuous, at best.

The Contrarian View
Though dated in its left-leaning politics, fashion, social mores and depiction of nuclear technology, The China Syndrome is a riveting thriller with a conscience. It may bleed liberalism (skeptics need look no further than the casting), but the film’s heart is in the right place. No intelligent person can doubt the overpowering influence of greed on business decisions, whether those decisions stem from Enron, Worldcom or the owners of a fictitious nuclear plant in California.

Coda
The China Syndrome remains provocative entertainment 30 years after its release. This special edition DVD is a recommended upgrade for those who purchased the original disc in 2001.

Copyright © 2009 by Cinematic Cteve // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.