A Farewell to Gene Corman, Roger’s Kid Brother

 I’ve just learned the sad news that Gene Corman has left us at the age of 93. Both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter published respectful stories detailing Gene’s years as a talent agent and as the producer of such ambitious World War II films as Arthur Hiller’s Tobruk and Sam Fuller’s The Big Red One, In 1982 he won an Emmy for producing a TV movie, A Woman Named Golda, starring Ingrid Bergman as Israeli prime minister Golda Meir. But most of Hollywood, I suspect remembers Gene as Roger Corman’s younger brother. And so, of course, do I.

 I first met Gene circa 1973 at Roger’s New World Pictures: he was sharing a corner of Roger’s rather shabby Sunset Strip penthouse suite on behalf of his own small company, Penelope Productions. Here’s what I remember best: Gene’s unforced friendliness to one and all, his thick glasses, and the vivacious blonde wife (Nan) to whom he was married for 65 years.  On an ultra-hot day, when our office quarters felt like a steambath, Nan blithely invited Gene’s secretary and assistant to forget about business and come over to their Beverly Hills digs for a swim. (We employees of Roger hardly received a similar invitation from our hard-driving boss)

 I once wrote that “what’s most interesting about Gene is the way he diverges from the family code of personal austerity. Everyone who’s known the two Cormans remarks on the contrast in their lifestyles. Roger’s tastes run to contemporary minimalism, and his homes have always reflected this; Gene has lived for years in an venerable Beverly Hills Tudor-style house replete with antiques. Roger prides himself on wearing the same nondescript clothing for decades; Gene owns an array of handsome pullover sweaters. Gene was the family’s first art collector, bucking [their father] William Corman’s fears that paintings and sculpture were an extravagance, and much too risky to be considered a worthwhile investment.”

Frank Moreno, longtime New World head of sales, explained to me in late 1998 the essential distinction between the brothers: “Gene is going to enjoy every minute of life, and Gene’ll spend whatever it takes to do it.” Paul Almond, a later New World business executive, put it this way: “Gene was a total sport. Gene would pick up a tab. Roger never picks up tabs.” There may well be a significant link between Gene’s personal warmth and his liberal attitude toward money, which stand a world apart from Roger’s emotional reticence and tight-fisted approach.

 Former Corman folk differ on how well the brothers got along. When they were working together on low-budget drive-in flicks like Beast from Haunted Cave, tempers occasionally flared. But Gene proved his mettle when Roger and company traveled to Southern Missouri, just over the Arkansas border, to shoot The Intruder, a raw account of a mysterious rabble-rouser (a pre-Star Trek William Shatner) who shows up in a Southern town that’s grudgingly complying with a school desegregation order. The subject was a bold one in 1961. Threats of violence abounded, and law enforcement officers were frequently seen snooping around the set, where a number of the minor roles were being filled by locals. Roger, directing a movie about which he cared deeply, was wary of distractions. So Gene, in his role as executive producer, was charged with fast-talking the film company out of possible legal jams. Somehow they survived unscathed.

 When I was at New World Pictures, Gene was going through his blaxploitation period. I never had a hankering to see films like Darktown Strutters or The Slams.  But I always wished him well.

"Dolmedes is My Name": Eddie Murphy and Spike Lee

 Last year, when the world was still young and full of possibility, Eddie Murphy starred in a flashy but unlikely comedy called Dolemite is My Name. Who knew? I’m hardly in the demographic that remembered the real-life Rudy Ray Moore: the film taught me that he was a comedy and rap pioneer who in the 1970s used the persona of a folk hero loved by the Black community to entertain audiences tickled by outrageous language and even more outrageous behavior.

 The part of the film I adored shows Moore, turned down by every major studio, making his own Dolemite movie on his own dime, with a little help from his friends. These include a minor-league Black actor (D’urville Martin) coming aboard on the promise that he can  direct, as well as a gaggle of UCLA film students thrilled to be working on a real-life commercial production. It’s supposed to be a Blaxploitation flick with plenty of sex and kung-fu action: the fact that none of the cast and crew know what they’re doing makes for plenty of laughs. I laughed too: after all, I’ve been there.

  In the early 1970s, during my New World Pictures days, I worked on such vintage Blaxploitation staples as TNT Jackson. And I remember the excitement when my boss Roger Corman’s brother Gene was shooting a local production called Darktown Strutters. It was the talk of the office when a bank robbery scene was staged on the streets of Hollywood. In the interest of saving money (always a high priority in low-budget filmmaking), no rent-a-cops had been engaged to block off the city streets. So when the robbers emerged from the bank and jumped into their waiting get-away car, passersby naturally assumed that this was the real thing.  Other drivers panicked leading to a for-real car crash. Needless to say, the cameras kept on rolling, providing lots of useful action footage. Such is life when filmmaking newbies shoot on a down-&-dirty Roger Corman-type budget.

 A Dolemite-inspired character shows up in one of Spike Lee’s more recent endeavors, the loud and outrageous Chi-Raq (2015). Here Lee, in his usual eclectic fashion, addresses the issue of Black-on-Black street crime by taking a page from Aristophanes’ ancient Greek comedy, Lysistrata. In Aristophanes’ audacious 5^th century BC play, women put a stop to the Peloponnesian War by denying their husbands sex until the bloodshed ends. Lee borrows something of the Greek comic master’s plot as well as his audacious spirit: his tale of modern-day Chicago (known by some as Chi-Raq in recognition of its bloody streets) includes a spate of bawdy talk, unlikely musical interludes, and high-decibel rap battles. Our guide through this netherworld is the ultra-cool Samuel L. Jackson as Dolmedes, who functions as the story’s narrator or (in the ancient Greek sense) chorus. Like the rest of the characters, he tends to speak in rhyme, and his language is hardly PG-13.

 Lee, never shy about taking on artistic challenges, balances the tomfoolery with moments of genuine poignancy, encompassing the fate of children killed by stray bullets in the Chicago streets. (Angela Bassett and Jennifer Hudson nicely take on the role of bereaved mothers.) There’s also (surprising in a film by Lee) a good-guy white Catholic priest played by John Cusack. The wildly disparate elements of the story, and its radical tonal shifts, hardly help viewers like me. I grant I’m not the target audience, but I’m not sure just who is. It’s gutsy to use an ancient comedy to address a contemporary problem, but Lee’s experiment can be described by a classical Greek word: Chaos.