From How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime:
The obligatory first director's lunch before Caged Heat was the most extraordianry hour, just amazing. Not because Roger picked up the tab - although it was a free lunch at Cyrano's - but for the way he just machine-gunned the rules of directing at me. Like: Find legitimate, motivated excuses for moving the camera but always look for ways to movie it. The eyeball, he said, was the organ most utilized in moviegoing. If you don't keep the eyeball entertained, no way you'll get the brain involved. Use as many interesting angles as you can. Don't repeat composition in close-ups. Don't remind the eye it's already seen the same thing. Make your villain as fascinating as your hero. A one-dimensional villain won't be as scary as a complicated, interesting one. It was amazing. When I did Something Wild years later, I felt I was making a 1980s Corman picture.
Roger liked Caged Heat a lot and immediately put me to work on Fighting Mad, designed to cash in on the redneck revenge motif of Billy Jack and Walking Tall. He suggested strip-mining and independent disenfranchised farmers as the social backdrop and I got into it. I was looking at a $600,000 budget this time.
My first day in Arkansas, we were doing pass-bys of these eighteen-wheelers. While waiting for the truck to turn around this very unusual dog, a Texas spotted leopard hound, came by and smiled, hung around, did all these cute things.
So I asked the cameraman to take the camera off its tripod and get some kind of reaction shot of this dog for a cutaway I could cut in somewhere. So the truck is turning, the crew and cast are waiting, the cameraman's trying to make this dog smile for the camera. And now a car pulls up and out steps Roger Corman, making his traditional visit to the set on day one. A man who feels saying 'Thank you very much' after each setup is optional because it wastes two seconds. Everyone looked around and KNEW how ugly this would look to Roger. It was a real freak-out moment. "Wh-wh-what exactly's going on here?" he asked.
"Just trying to get a quick cutaway of this dog here."
Roger looked at the animal and sort of chuckled.
"Well, that's a good idea," he said. There was always that surprising twist to Roger. He helped us get the shot of the dog and seemed quite gracious, amused, and cute about the whole thing.
From How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime:
Let's face it, Roger is arguably the greatest independent filmmaker the American film industry has ever seen and will probably ever see. He has been the presence behind a massive, endless outpouring of product with a fairly consistent high level of imagination from essentially new people in virtually all areas. Roger simply characterizes this immense body of work. He's just a humongous filmmaker. A wildly gifted, masterful director - when he chose to be - in complete command of the medium: superb casting, camera work, and editing; graphic and brilliant use of the frame; amazing storytelling. There are hundreds of people who gained careers in the movie business as a result of being given an opportunity by him. He is a giant in all these areas. His contribution to motion pictures has been absolutely awesome.
ROLLING STONE: You started out making films with Roger Corman. What are some of the things you learned
from him?
JONATHAN DEMME: Roger used to refer to himself - and we heard this endlessly - as being 40 percent
artist and 60 percent businessman. That was soooo Roger - to have a formula, even
for that. But I'll be damned, 20-some-odd years later, boy, he's right. You'd better
be 60 percent businessmen, because if you don't have an eye, a passionate eye, on
getting the picture
done at the right cost, you just ain't going to get to make a whole lot more of them. So,
the terror of going over budget remains happily with me to this day. It's a healthy aesthetic.
Corman also stressed that movies should contain an element of social critique, something
that's obviously stayed with you. Even in a jail-girl titillation like Caged Heat, you had
a plot about the medical exploitation of prisoners.
This is before Cuckoo's Nest came out. I thought [laughs], "It may only be showing
in drive-ins, but it shows what's going on in prisons: We are lobotomizing patients to make
them non-violent." It's true, that's Roger's formula: Your picture must have action, nudity,
humor - and a little bit of social statement, preferably from a liberal perspective.
I'd love to get in deeper with Roger, as to "Is the social statement there because audiences
like it? Or, finally, is that a little bit of you getting in there?"
[Laughs.].
From The Guardian, October 10 1998:
THE GUARDIAN: I know you've talked a lot about your time in the Corman stable in the
1970s and your development through the work you did there and the movies you made with
Roger Corman. I wanted to ask you about what the single most important thing was that you
learnt from Roger Corman in terms of that background that really gave you the opportunity
to become a director?
JONATHAN DEMME: I think it was probably that it was completely understood that if you didn't
complete the day's work on any given day that you would be replaced. That instilled in me a
very strong discipline and a sense that first and foremost your priority was to keep the movie
on schedule and on budget, and that's one way you get to stay on the job. That was very
valuable. Roger also said something I'll never forget. He said that as far as he was
concerned the formula for a director was 40 percent artist, 60 percent businessman. He
also had a little pat speech that he'd give you before you did your first directing job,
a lot of really good rules - stuff that most movie goers know anyway - just ways to keep
the eye entertained, the value of well-motivated camera movement... that kind of thing. He
was great. We called it the Roger Corman school of film technique. You really did learn on
the job.
For more Demme on Corman, see the Crazy Mama DVD.