Roger Corman, independent film legend, dead at 98

“The Pope of Pop Cinema” is also responsible for the big breakthroughs of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron and Ron Howard

Roger Corman, the influential independent film director, producer and studio head, has died aged 98.

Corman, known as “The Pope of Pop Cinema,” made hundreds of low-budget independent films over the course of his seven-decade career. His notable credits included: The Little Shop of Horrors, Rock and roll high school, Death Race 2000, A bucket of bloodAnd X: The man with the x-ray eyes.

As a producer, Corman also gave many young directors and actors the opportunity to become future Hollywood legends in their own right. Directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Ron Howard and Jonathan Demme all worked with Corman early in her career. Later, these directors brought Corman into their own films: he made cameo appearances in Scorsese’s film The Godfather Part IIDemme’s The silence of the Lambs And Philadelphiaand Howard’s Apollo 13.

“He was like a great professor,” Scorsese said of working with Corman in the 1972s Bertha freight car. “I learned from him how to put a picture together. He taught you the realities of the market: there had to be a chase here; There must be a hint of nudity. He didn’t apologize for that. You had to accept that if you wanted to make a film for him. I didn’t mind adopting the Corman formula.”

An equally impressive list of actors appeared in Corman’s films, including Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Charles Bronson, Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones, William Shatner and Sandra Bullock, among others.

“I mean, there’s no one … that he hasn’t essentially supported. “He was my most important connection, my lifeblood for everything I wanted to be as a person,” said Nicholson, who appeared in several of Corman’s films in the 1960s.

Corman also founded several film studios, including New World Pictures, Millennium Films, New Horizons and Concorde Pictures. New World Pictures, in particular, was responsible for distributing hundreds of foreign films in America

For his efforts, Corman was awarded the Honorary Academy Award in 2009 ^{“For his rich production of films and filmmakers.”}