This year I had an idle thought: who is my favorite director? I know what some of my favorite films are (Fright Night, Silence of the Lambs, Death Proof, that one movie where Orson Welles plays a planet), but I wasn't sure which creator aligned with my soul so well that I'd see anything they worked on. In the past I've had flings with directors like Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Ishiro Honda...but nothing that lasted.
Then this month it occurred to me: it might be Joe Dante. Dante is what I'd call a troperrific director. He pulls his influences from all over the place and wears them proudly on his sleeve. He came from the Corman school but he never really left it behind - even when he hit big studio success his films still featured weird creatures and aliens and B-movie themes. And Dick Miller. Lots of Dick Miller.
I already knew I loved most every Dante film I'd seen - Small Soldiers in particular sent me back to the theater again and again. And it seemed like I kept learning about more and more material he'd made, stuff I'd either seen and forgotten about or hadn't ever watched. And the other thing about Dante is he's got lots of interesting stuff to say - if you've ever tuned into Trailers From Hell or listened to a commentary of his, you know what I mean.
So I decided to put my little personal revelation to the test and watch all of Joe Dante's films in chronological order, starting with 1976's Hollywood Boulevard.
⚠ This trailer is definitely NSFW!! ⚠
In the 70s, Dante and his friend and fellow future director Allan Arkush worked for Roger Corman. If you somehow haven't heard of Corman, in the 60s through the 80s he was the king of the B-movie. His whole concept was to produce lots of broadly appealing movies as cheaply as possible. Whenever there was a new sensation in Hollywood, Corman ripped it off, and sometimes rip off his own movie if he could get away with it. If this sounds bad, well, in some ways, it was. It depends on how much you like B-movies. Corman produced lots of schlock, and he knew it.
But more importantly for us, lots of great Hollywood creators had their start at New World. James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, and lots more. And of course Joe Dante.
Which brings us back to Hollywood Boulevard. Dante and Arkush approached Corman one day and made a bet with him. They said "Corman, we bet we can produce the cheapest film New World has ever seen." Corman took them up on it. And they did it! They did it by raiding Corman's garage for as much stock footage as possible, then making a movie around the footage they had. This meant incongruent car chases from films like Big Bad Mama, random sky diving, Vietnam war film footage shot in the Philippines, random alien sex monsters built by Francis Ford Coppola, commercials, and more car chases from Death Race 2000.
So how'd they fit all this junk together? Well, fittingly, they made a movie about movies. The film follows a young lady named Candy (played by Candice Rialson) trying to make it in Hollywood. At her wit's end, her agent (Dick Miller, of course) signs her up to work for Miracle Pictures ("Where they make a picture a week, and if it's a good picture, it's a miracle!"). Miracle was of course a thinly veiled parody of New World itself. Candy bounces from film set to film set, and actors pretend they're interacting with scenes from other films. There's a non-sequitur music video. After 35 minutes of rambling like this, the film's plot finally kicks in, with Candy's actor friends mysteriously dying during shoots. Then there's about 60 more minutes of whodunit interspersed with more stock footage, goofy humor, and T&A.
In the commentary, Dante admits, "there's basically no reason for this film to exist." He and Arkush never expected to have a chance to direct again, so they loaded the film with in-jokes. They paid out of their own paychecks for a Robby the Robot cameo. ("You been working much lately?" Miller asks the robot. "Not really," he replies. "I don't do nude scenes.") If there's any reason to watch this movie, it's just to see how creative the directors got on splicing in their stock footage, and for the raw scenes of 1970s Los Angeles that they shot without permits. Candy spends a lot of time hanging under the big Hollywood letters, which in the 70s were decrepit and covered in graffiti. There's a scene where they go to watch Candy's first film at a drive-in, but first they watch The Terror, a 1960s film which also stars Dick Miller, who sees himself on screen and tells his friends that he "used to be an actor."
It's fun and pointless trash, and a neat place for Dante's career to start. But don't watch it unless you already have some vested interest in B-films, Corman, or Dante.
Then this month it occurred to me: it might be Joe Dante. Dante is what I'd call a troperrific director. He pulls his influences from all over the place and wears them proudly on his sleeve. He came from the Corman school but he never really left it behind - even when he hit big studio success his films still featured weird creatures and aliens and B-movie themes. And Dick Miller. Lots of Dick Miller.
I already knew I loved most every Dante film I'd seen - Small Soldiers in particular sent me back to the theater again and again. And it seemed like I kept learning about more and more material he'd made, stuff I'd either seen and forgotten about or hadn't ever watched. And the other thing about Dante is he's got lots of interesting stuff to say - if you've ever tuned into Trailers From Hell or listened to a commentary of his, you know what I mean.
So I decided to put my little personal revelation to the test and watch all of Joe Dante's films in chronological order, starting with 1976's Hollywood Boulevard.
In the 70s, Dante and his friend and fellow future director Allan Arkush worked for Roger Corman. If you somehow haven't heard of Corman, in the 60s through the 80s he was the king of the B-movie. His whole concept was to produce lots of broadly appealing movies as cheaply as possible. Whenever there was a new sensation in Hollywood, Corman ripped it off, and sometimes rip off his own movie if he could get away with it. If this sounds bad, well, in some ways, it was. It depends on how much you like B-movies. Corman produced lots of schlock, and he knew it.
But more importantly for us, lots of great Hollywood creators had their start at New World. James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, and lots more. And of course Joe Dante.
Which brings us back to Hollywood Boulevard. Dante and Arkush approached Corman one day and made a bet with him. They said "Corman, we bet we can produce the cheapest film New World has ever seen." Corman took them up on it. And they did it! They did it by raiding Corman's garage for as much stock footage as possible, then making a movie around the footage they had. This meant incongruent car chases from films like Big Bad Mama, random sky diving, Vietnam war film footage shot in the Philippines, random alien sex monsters built by Francis Ford Coppola, commercials, and more car chases from Death Race 2000.
So how'd they fit all this junk together? Well, fittingly, they made a movie about movies. The film follows a young lady named Candy (played by Candice Rialson) trying to make it in Hollywood. At her wit's end, her agent (Dick Miller, of course) signs her up to work for Miracle Pictures ("Where they make a picture a week, and if it's a good picture, it's a miracle!"). Miracle was of course a thinly veiled parody of New World itself. Candy bounces from film set to film set, and actors pretend they're interacting with scenes from other films. There's a non-sequitur music video. After 35 minutes of rambling like this, the film's plot finally kicks in, with Candy's actor friends mysteriously dying during shoots. Then there's about 60 more minutes of whodunit interspersed with more stock footage, goofy humor, and T&A.
In the commentary, Dante admits, "there's basically no reason for this film to exist." He and Arkush never expected to have a chance to direct again, so they loaded the film with in-jokes. They paid out of their own paychecks for a Robby the Robot cameo. ("You been working much lately?" Miller asks the robot. "Not really," he replies. "I don't do nude scenes.") If there's any reason to watch this movie, it's just to see how creative the directors got on splicing in their stock footage, and for the raw scenes of 1970s Los Angeles that they shot without permits. Candy spends a lot of time hanging under the big Hollywood letters, which in the 70s were decrepit and covered in graffiti. There's a scene where they go to watch Candy's first film at a drive-in, but first they watch The Terror, a 1960s film which also stars Dick Miller, who sees himself on screen and tells his friends that he "used to be an actor."
It's fun and pointless trash, and a neat place for Dante's career to start. But don't watch it unless you already have some vested interest in B-films, Corman, or Dante.