There are movie announcements that sound too good to be true. Ones that seem almost too perfect for movie freaks like me. Sometimes they happen: Tim Burton directing Johnny Depp in Ed Wood, Terry Gilliam directing Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore, and James Franco as Tommy Wiseau.
Sometimes the Movie Gods deny us the projects we crave. One such instance is The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes. This film was to chronicle the making of Roger Corman's The Trip. The Trip was Corman's followup to his countercultural hit, The Wild Angels. This time Rog was taking on an even more controversial subject: LSD.
As legend has it, and any decent movie scholar knows, Roger ingested acid as research for The Trip. It's a story too juicy not to be true.
Famed film historian Tim Lucas wrote a screenplay with the delicious title, The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes. Fan favorite Joe Dante was announced as director. Film geeks everywhere prayed.
Tragically, the project stayed in development and to date has never been produced. Maybe someday? Please?
I'm not exactly sure how the gestation of The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes from script to book happened, but Lucas seems to have novelized his own screenplay into a wonderful novel.
The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes is beautifully written. Tim Lucas has intimate knowledge of his subject and obviously a tremendous amount of affection for it.
I've never met Roger Corman, but I've seen enough interviews and other footage to have a pretty good handle on the man. Lucas nails him to a tee. Other participants of the era are represented, such as Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, and Peter Bogdanovich. Each character is exquisitely drawn and I could hear them in my mind's ear speaking the completely authentic dialogue.
The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes will assauge the acute disappointment we all felt when the movie project stalled.
As far as we know Corman did LSD once, but it obviously had a large affect on the man. His directing days were numbered after The Trip's disappointing release. Roger Corman started up New World Pictures a few years later.
Corman came into direct contact with his psyche on his trip. From there he became kind of a movie demigod. He owned his own studio and from there he helped us all face our fears, our desires, and our innate potential for violence. We the drive-in public, who for my money are the best movie fans in the world, confronted archetypes of our primal souls. He did so with considerable wit and a strong social conscience.
It's sad the movie never got made, but who even remembers Roger Corman anymore? If they do, what is his reputation? A schlockmeister? A cheap huckster of vulgar exploitation?
A few years ago I attended a screening of Roger Corman's A Bucket of Blood at a local University. A prof was showing monthly B-movies on the ceiling of a planetarium. We watched the movie, and when it ended a young student was regaling her knowledge of Mr. Corman to her instructor. She claimed that his best movie is CobraGator. Jesus didn't weep, he puked.
Some of us consider Roger Corman a seer, a maverick who courageously revealed images of our deepest terrors and our gravest concerns about life and our species. He acted like a therapist to generations of eager fanatics. I expect to hear the bad news about his demise sometime soon . The man is, after all, ninety-six years old. When I do I will be both happy and sad. Sad that such a visionary is gone, but deeply grateful that we had him for so long.
Written by Mark Sieber
Sometimes the Movie Gods deny us the projects we crave. One such instance is The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes. This film was to chronicle the making of Roger Corman's The Trip. The Trip was Corman's followup to his countercultural hit, The Wild Angels. This time Rog was taking on an even more controversial subject: LSD.
As legend has it, and any decent movie scholar knows, Roger ingested acid as research for The Trip. It's a story too juicy not to be true.
Famed film historian Tim Lucas wrote a screenplay with the delicious title, The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes. Fan favorite Joe Dante was announced as director. Film geeks everywhere prayed.
Tragically, the project stayed in development and to date has never been produced. Maybe someday? Please?
I'm not exactly sure how the gestation of The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes from script to book happened, but Lucas seems to have novelized his own screenplay into a wonderful novel.
The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes is beautifully written. Tim Lucas has intimate knowledge of his subject and obviously a tremendous amount of affection for it.
I've never met Roger Corman, but I've seen enough interviews and other footage to have a pretty good handle on the man. Lucas nails him to a tee. Other participants of the era are represented, such as Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, and Peter Bogdanovich. Each character is exquisitely drawn and I could hear them in my mind's ear speaking the completely authentic dialogue.
The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes will assauge the acute disappointment we all felt when the movie project stalled.
As far as we know Corman did LSD once, but it obviously had a large affect on the man. His directing days were numbered after The Trip's disappointing release. Roger Corman started up New World Pictures a few years later.
Corman came into direct contact with his psyche on his trip. From there he became kind of a movie demigod. He owned his own studio and from there he helped us all face our fears, our desires, and our innate potential for violence. We the drive-in public, who for my money are the best movie fans in the world, confronted archetypes of our primal souls. He did so with considerable wit and a strong social conscience.
It's sad the movie never got made, but who even remembers Roger Corman anymore? If they do, what is his reputation? A schlockmeister? A cheap huckster of vulgar exploitation?
A few years ago I attended a screening of Roger Corman's A Bucket of Blood at a local University. A prof was showing monthly B-movies on the ceiling of a planetarium. We watched the movie, and when it ended a young student was regaling her knowledge of Mr. Corman to her instructor. She claimed that his best movie is CobraGator. Jesus didn't weep, he puked.
Some of us consider Roger Corman a seer, a maverick who courageously revealed images of our deepest terrors and our gravest concerns about life and our species. He acted like a therapist to generations of eager fanatics. I expect to hear the bad news about his demise sometime soon . The man is, after all, ninety-six years old. When I do I will be both happy and sad. Sad that such a visionary is gone, but deeply grateful that we had him for so long.
Written by Mark Sieber
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