Peter Fonda was just this clean, cookie-cutter kind of a guy. Roger Corman turned him into the motorcycle man with The Wild Angels. Jack Nicholson, all of them, they all had these images that Roger Corman fueled, and Easy Rider, it was a big surprise to understand how much creative influence Roger had. A lot of people dismiss him as just launching famous people's careers or being a penny pinching producer, but he's so much more than that.
Alex StapletonI feel like I'm a graduate of the Roger Corman School of Filmmaking. I went and visited Roger on the set of Dinoshark and that's in the movie. That's where I really got a big whopping taste of what it's like to be on one of his sets.
Alex StapletonPeter Fonda was just this clean, cookie-cutter kind of a guy. Roger Corman turned him into the motorcycle man with The Wild Angels. Jack Nicholson, all of them, they all had these images that Roger Corman fueled, and Easy Rider, it was a big surprise to understand how much creative influence Roger had. A lot of people dismiss him as just launching famous people's careers or being a penny pinching producer, but he's so much more than that.
Alex StapletonI shot a lot of stuff that no one will ever see. That was my student work. What also happened was there was a big jump in technology.
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 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 StapletonThere's a rumbling with young artists and young filmmakers that are dying to get different points of view, different stories, out there. It's all changing and happening and they're able to maybe not play their movies in theaters but get them on the internet. This is the new wave, the new world.
Alex Stapleton