The prolific low-budget producer Roger Corman has died at 98, leaving behind a legacy far greater than the 491 titles that he produced. Corman’s great gift to us all is his mentorship of young and talented filmmakers. Filmmakers who got their first assignment from Corman (called “the Corman Film School”) include Oscar winning directors James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Curtis Hanson, Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese. Not to mention cult directors Paul Bartels and Monte Hellman. And Chinatown screenwriter Robert Townsend. And movie star Jack Nicholson In the 70s, Corman combined making lowbrow American movies with distributing highbrow foreign films, including Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, Fellini’s Amarcord, Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzawa and Schlondorff’s The Tin Drum. In one decade, he distributed more Best Foreign Film Oscar winners than all the Hollywood studios combined.
Robert Towne is best known, justifiably, for his Oscar-winning screenplay for Chinatown, one of my Greatest Movies of All Time; but director Roman Polanski perfected the script by changing the ending over Towne’s objections. However, Chinatown was only one of a string of brilliant screenplays penned by Towne between 1973 and 1982 – The Last Detail, The Yakuza, Shampoo and Personal Best. Starting in 1967, Towne was also the uncredited script doctor who polished Bonnie and Clyde, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Godfather and Heaven Can Wait.
Casting director and producer Fred Roos enhanced the films of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas by advocating for then unknown actors like Al Pacino, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss, Rob Lowe, Cindy Williams, Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon and Mackenzie Phillips.
In his second act, Marshall Brickman co-wrote Woody Allen’s two masterpieces: Annie Hall and Manhattan. Brickman had success before (creating Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent and co-writing The Muppets) and after (creating the Broadway shows Jersey Boys and The Addams Family).
Documentarian Morgan Spurlock broke through with his McDonalds exposé Super Size Me.
Eleanor Coppola was the wife of director Francis Ford Coppola and the mother of director Sophia Coppola. Eleanor Coppola herself directed perhaps the best ever documentary film about the making of a movie, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.