Roger "Just Do It" Corman
Being an industrial engineer by training, I tend to respect people who apply engineering efficiencies to all other professions. And when the single most prolific producer of movies, particularly Thursday Night Movie Club type movies, applies those very same industrial engineering techniques, I cannot help but sit up and take notice, and applaud!
Enter Roger Corman, the movie producer's movie producer. He has given birth to nearly 300 movies in his prolific career, and not a single one of them was over budget or late! Talk about a genius project manager! It's not surprising that he was trained as an Industrial Engineer, and used every trick in the book to make sure that we, the movie-going public, received our due of well-crafted flicks in a workmanlike manner. Who else would use the headlights of the cars of his crew to light a set to save production expenses?
Of course, his efficiency alone does not win him his eternal throne in the Thursday Night Movie Club Hall Of Fame; it is also his orientation toward the proper type of film. And when you look at his filmography, you realize that we are blessed to have this type of efficiency aimed at the genres that we so love: classics such as "Deathrace 2000", "Rock and Roll High School", "Frankenstein Unbound", the original "Little Shop Of Horrors", "The Trip", "The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre", and the classic Vincent Price Edgar Allen Poe series, and you thank god that he chose to apply his talents for efficiency in the furtherance of our own favorite styles. Toss in his occasional cameo acting roles (Scream 3, Silence Of The Lambs, Godfather 2, etc), and you know that this is a man to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude. Roger Corman, the Thursday Night Movie Club raises a huge glass of blood in your honor!
