Roger Corman, chance-taker

Roger Corman has seen a lot of things in Hollywood. He’s produced and directed horror movies and biker flicks, distributed foreign films by Fellini and Truffaut and nurtured the early directing careers of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Jonathan Demme, among others. But until now, he had never seen Jack Nicholson cry.

That came with his first viewing of “Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel,” a new documentary looking at the astonishing career of the veteran independent filmmaker known as “the king of the Bs.” Late in the film, Nicholson pauses during an interview with real tears of affection and gratitude for Corman, among the very first to see something special in the young actor, who would go on to win three Academy Awards.

“I was very surprised by how emotional it was,” Corman, 85, says of the film, which opens Friday at the Nuart Theater.

Those weren’t the only tears flowing at that first screening earlier this year. Director Alex Stapleton remembers sitting behind the filmmaker and his wife, Julie, as the documentary unfolded on the big screen.

“They didn’t move, they didn’t flinch the entire 100 minutes of the movie,” said Stapleton, who spent the screening digging her fingernails deeper and deeper into the arm of producer Stone Douglass. “Then it was over — I will never forget this — he turned around and his eyes were completely teared up and he gave me a hug. And I don’t think I had ever seen that kind of emotion ever come out of Roger.

“Of course, a few days passed, and then I got a call: ‘OK, it’s way too long. I think you should think about cutting 10 minutes out of it ... .’ He went back to the real Roger Corman.”

The documentary is a fittingly action-packed examination of Corman’s career and the influence he’s had — not just as a filmmaker, but as a crucial supporter of young talent that would go on to remake Hollywood. Ron Howard, Robert De Niro, Scorsese, Demme and many other vets of “the Corman school” are interviewed in the documentary.

After five years of work on the film, Stapleton, 31, says she feels like another graduate of Corman’s filmmaking school. As an adolescent, she was an obsessive fan of Corman’s blaxploitation films starring Pam Grier and later read his 1990 autobiography, “How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime.”

As a journalist in 2006, she secured an assignment to interview Corman for Tokion magazine. At the end of their talk, she asked if he would allow her to make a documentary on his life and career. To her surprise, he said yes.

“It was as simple as me asking him,” she said now. “But I don’t think he thought I was all that serious.”

It also wasn’t unusual for Corman to put faith in a young, untested talent. Countless others got their first jobs working on his productions.

“It’s definitely a banner of Roger’s — you learn by doing,” Stapleton said.

Even so, she nearly lost the film just as casually. For two years, Stapleton scraped together money and maxed out her credit cards to shoot some initial interviews. The sample reel she put together from that footage finally won her the financing she needed to complete the film, and Stapleton relocated from New York to Los Angeles.

At the airport, her phone rang. It was Corman, telling her that an Oscar-winning director was taking over the project and that she should now work with him. Some frantic calls later, Corman recommitted to Stapleton, but now she had help: veteran Hollywood producer-screenwriter-art director (and Corman alum) Polly Platt.

“She wanted to get the movie made just as badly as I did,” she said of Platt, who became executive producer of “Corman’s World.” “She sat there and wrote letters to every single person I interviewed. She legitimized the project to the Hollywood community that is hard to penetrate when you’re an outsider.”

Platt also appears on-camera, noting that after the breakup of her marriage to director Peter Bogdanovich, her phone stopped ringing. Her career was suddenly stalled.

“Roger was the only one who called,” Platt says in the film.

She died in July at age 72.

“I started this film thinking I was making this roller coaster ride about exploitation movies, and it turned into this very different movie right in front of my eyes,” Stapleton said.

Interviews would always begin with fun, crazy stories, then shift into something more personal.

“At the end, it was like, ‘What I really need to talk to you about is what this man meant to me.’ That’s how all of the interviews ended. It really changed the film from being so much about movies and more about a man and his influence and celebrating the gift of confidence that he gave all of these people.”

An early sign of his influence came at the Academy Awards ceremony of 1975, where screenwriter Robert Towne picked up his award for “Chinatown” and observed from the podium how the night looked to him like a “Roger Corman reunion.” Several other Corman alums were winners and nominees that evening, including director Coppola for “The Godfather: Part II.” And the winner of best foreign film, Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord,” was distributed by Corman’s New World Pictures.

Now Stapleton is following a similar tradition. Next year she is set to direct her first feature film — one with a familiar flavor.

“It’s a genre film. It’s a science fiction movie. It’s very Roger Corman.”

She couldn’t yet divulge many details but did entertain some casting possibilities.

“I’ve got to figure out how to get Pam Grier in this movie,” she said with a laugh, “kicking some butt.”

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