A to Z Challenge: A is for Allan Arkush, Rock 'n' Roller

Today is the first day of the annual A-to-Z Blogging Challenge. I’ll be spending the month of April blogging daily (except Sundays), with each date assigned a different letter of the alphabet. For my inaugural effort, I’ll confine myself to the movies and cast of characters surrounding the career of the one and only Roger Corman, my former boss and the subject of my newly updated biography, Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers. And by the way, a tip of the hat to A to Z founder Arlee Bird, whose birthday is April 1 – and I’m not fooling.

Hollywood has always cottoned to actors whose names feature double As: I’m thinking about Alan Arkin, Alan Alda, and Amy Adams. Then there’s AA as in Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization that many show biz types know all too well. (Years ago, when I got lost while looking for an event in a large church complex, I stumbled upon an AA Meeting on the premises, and a very famous singer-actor welcomed me in.)

But in the Roger Corman world, AA means Allan Arkush, a tall, curly-headed fellow with a sardonic take on life. When I first met Allan at New World Pictures, he was a young film editor and trailer cutter, toiling in a decrepit editing suite alongside his crony, Joe Dante. In 1976, he and Joe made the leap into directing with Hollywood Boulevard, a pastiche of old Corman clips reassembled to tell a story of a starlet come to Tinseltown. The following year, having graduated into the position of second-unit director for Ron Howard’s New World debut film, Grand Theft Auto (1977), he discovered the horrors of going on location Corman-style. Allan has vividly described for me the on-set catered lunch that was so foul that his crew ran it over with a prop automobile while the cameras rolled. Still, location shooting had its up-side: “You went out in the desert all day, you wrecked cars.”

Allan’s New World Pictures highlight was Rock ‘n’ Roll High School(1979), a film that showcased his knowledge of the pop music scene. First order of business was to persuade Roger that disco music of the Saturday Night Fever ilk would not be appropriate for a plot that culminates in the blowing up of a high school by a rampaging student body. In a salute to down-and-dirty rock ‘n’ roll, Allan got the Ramones on board, and the rest is history. True, the film nearly killed him. Shooting 45 musical numbers in a mere 23 days, he collapsed at day 20, and was carted off to the hospital with a heart attack. Fortunately he survived, and has gone on to a directing career that includes an Emmy for TV’s The Temptations. And, of course, lots of music videos.