There hadn't been one done since the late 70s. I was living in Brooklyn, had no connection to Roger Corman, to no one in this movie. I didn't go to film school. I'm like the person who should have never made this film. But I just decided to put one foot in front of the other. I was writing film articles for magazines at the time. I convinced an editor from one of the magazines that I was working for to give me a shot to do a piece on Roger. This was an excuse to go meet him.
Alex StapletonI'm a big genre fan. I'm a big science fiction nerd and horror film nerd. I'm obsessed with Pam Grier. I wanted to be her for all of my teenage years.
Alex StapletonFirst of all, on a cinematic [level], the film answer to that is that Roger Corman was creatively responsible for a lot of cinema history.
Alex StapletonWe need to take a step back and realize that what happened in the 1950s, when he started his career, is exactly where we are today. Everything goes in a cycle, and right now, distribution is changing. Audiences might be kind of sick of these giant blockbuster movies with all these special effects where blue people are running around and the hero is some non-human entity. These are all great movies, but I think that there's definitely room for new voices to come out.
Alex StapletonFilms are a very tangible thing. It's making something with your hands. I think all of these guys - Roger and the whole cast of this movie - what they did was they were willing to make mistakes. They were willing to make movies that were really bad. But they learned.
Alex StapletonFrancis Ford Coppola didn't come out of the womb with The Godfather. He had a whole build up until he got to that point. I think it's okay to fail. That's how you learn. I think that's hopefully what people can take away from this movie.
Alex StapletonThere's all of the DVD extra material and all these other pieces of information that don't fit into a 90-minute experience, but it's still content and people still want to see it. It's being open to [the fact that] the business is changing and being open to how you can make money to afford you to stay in business to keep making new things. I think you just have to have an open mind and be really smart about stuff and not be so locked into the conventional way of how the process used to go.
Alex Stapleton