[xoxoxoBruce]

From a Flavorwire interview with Roger Corman, the king of B movies, with 600 low budget films to his credit.

One of your first films for New World Pictures, which you co-founded in 1970 after AIP, was Student Nurses, directed by Stephanie Rothman. You gave a lot of well-known directors their start in the industry, but you gave a lot of women directors their start in the industry when no one else would. Can you talk a little bit about your decision-making with that?

People have praised me for going out of my way to hire women and being at the forefront of the feminist movement in Hollywood. It wasn’t exactly that way. It wasn’t that I was looking to hire women. I was looking to hire the best person available for the job. And it made no difference to me whether they were men or women. So, very often, the best person was a woman. I would hire that person, simply on the basis of ability. When you figure that the population is roughly 50% women — I’m making this number up, but you know what I mean — roughly half the time you’re going to be hiring a lot of women.

Do you consider yourself a feminist?

I have two daughters. I support them, and I think in general I would be a bit of a feminist. But, I still only hire on the basis of ability.

The Slumber Party Massacre has two women behind it. The film was directed by Amy Holden Jones and written by Rita Mae Brown, who was an activist in the feminist movement. There’s so much subversive feminist commentary in this film, it’s fantastic. It’s great to see some exploitation directed at men and male bodies. I know it was written as a parody of sorts, but I’ve read that you filmed it straight. Can you talk about this?

It started off simply as horror film. Rita Mae Brown wrote the script. Amy Holden Jones directed it, but worked with Rita and me — although it was primarily their work. They put together a picture that satisfied what the requirements were. And we did have nudity in that picture. But, they also put some personal thoughts of their own in it, and they put a little bit of humor in it as well. Rita is an excellent writer. And Amy has gone on to have a very, very good career. These were two very talented women working on a subject that in other hands could have been a cheap exploitation film. It is still an exploitation film, but it has a quality that enabled it to stand alone. They understood they were making an exploitation film, but they also knew they had a great deal of freedom.

You are known for some degree of sex and female exploitation in your movies, but your handling of female sexuality in your films has always been pretty straightforward. As my editor and I once agreed, everyone has their fair share of sleazy moments.

Laughs.

You also offer us some social commentary in films like Student Nurses where women enjoy sex, and they’re liberated, but there’s also an abortion subplot. I know your wife Julie has worked closely with you behind the scenes. Has she been a source of advice about your depiction of women or women’s subjects?

These pictures started before Julie was working with me. But I remember with the scripts for a number of them, for quite a while, I would explain to the writer what I wanted. And I would get back — always in treatment form, I believe in treatments before going to the screenplay — the girls set up the way I wanted. They would have a problem to be solved. But in these scripts, their boyfriends would solve the problem. And I remember how many times I would say to the writer, ’No, they must solve the problem themselves.’ It killed the whole idea if their boyfriends come in and solve it. That was something that seemed, to me, self-evident, but I remember many times having that same discussion.

Sounds to me like he's doing it right.