My sincere thanks to the people who agreed to be interviewed for this book, many of whom also shared personal photos from their Corman years in addition to their memories and anecdotes. They are (billed alphabetically) Allan Arkush, Peter Bogdanovich, John D. Brancato, Deborah Brock, Cheri Caffaro, James Cameron, Steve Carver, Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Corman, Sybil Danning, Joe Dante, Allen Daviau, Jon Davison, Jonathan Demme, Robert De Niro, Bruce Dern, Frances Doel, F. X. Feeney, Todd Field, Peter Fonda, Carl Franklin, Scott Glenn, Menahem Golan, Pam Grier, Sid Haig, Curtis Hanson, Jonathan Haze, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Dennis Hopper, Ron Howard, Gale Anne Hurd, Amy Holden Jones, Jonathan Kaplan, Lloyd Kaufman, Gary Kurtz, Diane Ladd, John Landis, Frank Marshall, Richard Matheson, Dick Miller, Thom Mount, Jack Nicholson, Bill Paxton, Marky Ramone, Fred Olen Ray, Ivan Reitman, J. B. Rogers, Albert Ruddy, John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, William Shatner, Katt Shea, Tom Sherak, Penelope Spheeris, Sylvester Stallone, Andrew Stevens, Phil Tippett, Robert Towne, Harvey Weinstein, Haskell Wexler, Mary Woronov, Jim Wynorski, and Jerry Zucker. Most of all, I would like to thank Roger and Julie Corman for both their passion and their movies (and their passion for those movies). This book would not have been possible without their generosity. Throughout the process, they were gracious with their time and their archives and exceedingly patient with a New Yorker with a knack for getting stuck in Los Angeles traffic.
No author researches, writes, and publishes a book by him- or herself. So I would like to thank Michele Romero, who helped me navigate the labyrinthine intricacies of photo research and is a cool-headed friend; Sean O’Heir, who possesses the skills of a bloodhound when it comes to tracking down people who aren’t easy to track down; Thomas Golubic, whom I’m proud to call a pal of almost three decades and whose Silver Lake futon is better than any bed at the Four Seasons; and Germaine Simiens and Cynthia Brown at New Horizons Pictures for countless small kindnesses.
This book (including a small handful of the interviews within its pages) grew out of a November 2009 feature story I wrote for Entertainment Weekly, my employer for the past nineteen years. I owe my editors there an enormous debt of gratitude for their encouragement throughout this process, especially Jeff Giles, Jill Bernstein, and Jess Cagle. I would also like to tip my cap to Rick Tetzeli for being the first person to recognize that there might be a book in a four-page article. I am also grateful to Waxman Leavell Literary Agency; Violet Lucca at Film Comment, who provided helpful fact-checking; designer extraordinaire Jacob Covey and art director John Gall for their hard work; and the rest of the team at Abrams: Steve Tager, Michael Jacobs, Kat Kopit, David Blatty, Phyllis DeBlanche, and True Sims. They always made this project feel less daunting than it often was, especially Eric Klopfer—a tireless, wise, and understanding editor (always the best kind) who put up with my neuroses and missed deadlines. He not only knows and loves movies, he also cares about them.
I would like to thank my mom and dad, who took me and my brother Keith to the multiplex early and often and to whom an R rating was a suggestion to be ignored rather than a rule to be followed. Finally, I owe this book—and everything else—to my wife, Jen, who has been as involved in its completion as I have for the past year and a half. Through it all, she has been loving, patient, supportive, and the best source of laughter I know—especially after walking into the living room to find her husband watching the scantily clad coeds of Slumber Party Massacre engaged in a vigorous pillow fight. Without her, this book never would have been written.
