All language subtitles for 2017 King Cohen (Steve Mitchell).en

So I get a phone call
out of the blue,

from Larry Cohen.

He had seen on television
a piece about Bad Robot,

our production company,
where they showed this...

the "It's Alive" baby.

And Larry was calling
to find out if I'm a fan

and where I got
the baby and, you know,

I told him
I bought it online years ago

from a guy who apparently
makes a living

making "It's Alive" babies,

and, uh...

and he was just
so sweet and gracious.

I said,
"You know, we actually...

we've met before."

He's like, "What?"
I said, "I was 15 years old,

and I was going
to the bus stop

to go into Westwood
to go see a movie...

Was in L.A...

and there at the bus stop

is Larry Cohen,
which I couldn't believe,

and I'd seen him
in an interview before,

so I recognized him,

and I got to introduce myself

and say I was
a huge fan of his work,

and he was sort of in a state

because he was, you know,

needing...
his car had broken down.

He needed to go somewhere.
That's what I remembered.

But of course I didn't expect
him to remember that meeting.

And what he says to me is,

"You were with Dom DeLuise's son",
which is true.

I was with Peter DeLuise,
my friend at the time,

and he said,
"You gave me directions."

He was apparently
on his way to a meeting

with Sidney Poitier
and Gene Wilder.

His car broke down.

He was freaking out,

uh, sweating bullets,
as he says.

And he was at the bus stop,
and he said,

"You guys gave me directions

to how to get
to the meeting."

So, anyway,
now Larry Cohen and I

are going to have lunch
next week,

which I couldn't be
more excited about.

And I might bring this.

Here I am walking down
the corridors

of the convention,

lonely as a cloud,

unrecognized, unrewarded

for my lifetime achievement

on the cinema screen.

If you had never seen
a Larry Cohen film,

and asked me
what you were in for,

you're going to be in for

some really radically
unique entertainment.

A true filmmaker legend...

"The Stuff,"
"God Told Me To,"

"Q, The Winged Serpent."

There's so many.

I would hardly call him
the John Cassavetes

of exploitation movies,

but he does have
a certain raw, visceral,

realistic style.

Yeah, shut up.
We don't need all this bullshit.

His movies have this energy

and this attack

that's uniquely Larry.

It's like a student film,
a lot of money,

and a real good script.

It's a...

Pow. What was that?

They're not made
with a lot of money,

but they pack
a hell of a punch.

He's a one-man movie studio.
He's ready.

He can produce them.
He can write them.

He can direct them.

Together we can start
a new species.

He's a mad man, but he makes
these great little films,

and there's really
nobody like him.

Oh, shit!

The greatest daredevil
Hollywood has ever seen.

Perhaps over the top, but...

There's a brilliance.
There's a child...

sort of a childish
naughtiness about him.

He's pretty delicious.

I'm just sitting here
waiting to be adored by people.

Anybody here like me?

I grew up in New York City
in Manhattan.

I was born
in Lenox Hill Hospital

on the east 70s,

then we lived
in Washington Heights

for most
of my formative years.

It's erroneous
on the Internet.

It says I was born
in Kingston, New York.

I... I know nothing
about Kingston, New York,

so it's all wrong.

When I wanted to go
to the movies as a kid,

I used to carry groceries

in front of supermarkets

till I got enough money
to go to the movies,

And he went to every movie
that ever was.

He knew who was making
the pictures,

what pictures played
at Loews,

what pictures played
at the RKO, all of that.

Back in those days,

people went
to the movie theater

any time they felt like it.

The picture was usually
on already,

and usually it was a double
feature in those days,

so you end up seeing
four movies in one afternoon

until they finally turned
the lights on

and threw me
out of the theater

and said, "Little boy,
you have to go home now.

It's dark outside."

At home nobody noticed
I was missing anyways,

so, you know, I was the only
really creative one

in the immediate family,

although my grandfather
had been in show business.

He'd been
an eccentric banjo player,

and on her deathbed

his mother made him promise

that he would give it up,

and I think he was sad

that he didn't get to do
what he wanted to do,

so I knew when I saw that,

that I was going to do
what I wanted to do,

and I'm not going to let
anybody talk me out of it.

I went to CCNY,

New York City College.

I had a good time in college,

doing my thing

rather than paying
much attention

to what they were teaching.

His early life desires,

I'm sure, was to be a writer

but also, really to be
a stand-up comic.

He'd be in front of the mirror

doing, like,
Danny Kaye songs.

You know? All by himself.

That's what he really wanted
to do, I think.

I used to put a show on
every other Thursday afternoon

where I thought I was
Sid Caesar or someone.

I had this fixation
I was on television.

Back in New York I used to play
Monday nights upstairs at the Duplex,

which was
in Greenwich Village.

He has a very wacky
sense of humor.

I don't know that everybody

would expect or know that
about him.

And he is like
the Borscht Belt comic

that he once aspired to be.

Now to introduce
your master of ceremony,

your M.C. for the evening,
Mr. Larry Cohen.

All right!

And of course there's
another film being prepared.

It's about a young producer

attempting to collect
his net profit participation

from Paramount.

It's entitled
"Mission: Impossible."

I changed my mind
after a while.

I wanted be off and have
a good time and have fun

and socialize at night.

Larry was definitely
a frustrated comedian.

Well, I think he decided
not to do it

because it wasn't
as successful as he had hoped.

And if I couldn't
have my own show every week,

I thought right away I should
have my own show on television.

And it was just a drag.
You know?

It wasn't fun for me.

- Here at New York's
- Rockefeller Center

is homesite and hearthside

for the NBC family.

I had got a job
as an NBC page,

so these were
rather low-paying jobs,

but somehow maybe
you'd bump into somebody

that would give you a chance.

He wouldn't stop. He kept taking his
scripts and he would go in and say,

"I want to write for you."
"Well, write about this."

And the guy who gave me
the chance was Al Levy

at Talent Associates.

He was partners
with David Susskind.

Four days later
he would show up

at the producer's door
with a full script.

I figured if I kept... keep writing
stuff for this guy for nothing,

some day he's going
to feel bad enough about it

to give me a job.

Larry was getting in on
the Golden Age of Television

and is really one of the only
people I know personally

who was there.

One thing that's very striking

when you look
at the timeline

of Larry Cohen's life

is that he sells his first
story to television

when he's, like,
17 years old.

...play with a fine cast

on the Kraft Television
Theater.

The first thing
that actually got on the air

that I got paid for

was "87th Precinct,"
Ed McBain,

but at that time there was only
one of them, "Killer's Choice."

So I wrote an original,

and the next thing I knew
they were building the sets.

That was a big thrill,
going over to the studio

and seeing the scenery
being built

that I had thought up
in my head.

Clearly Larry was a prodigy.

You can see that
in his TV work.

I mean, you can see that he
was fully formed early on,

that he was working
at the highest level,

that he was as good
in these scripts

as the people who had been
writing dramatic anthologies

for a decade before him.

- "The United States
- Steel Hour,"

live from New York.

In the days when
they're doing live TV,

the writer was always around

because you had to be there
for rehearsals,

to do rewrites,

and then the day of the show

you had to be there
for the run-through

and the dress rehearsals.

So the writer
had to be there,

and you were welcome,

and you felt like you were
part of the production.

That was what was great
about live television.

I was happy as could be,

and I knew there was
a future ahead.

Writing is his first identity.

He has never ceased to be
a good idea man.

I've worked
with Larry on scripts,

I've worked with Larry
on projects,

and he comes up with stuff,

full of fascinating ideas,

and he's an idea machine.

There are
eight million stories

in the naked city.

This has been one of them.

I wrote a story
for "Naked City."

I tried to get them
to buy it.

They didn't buy it.

I was very disappointed.

30-some years later,

I sold the same story

to "NYPD Blue."

And it was a big success.

In show business,

every success is followed
by a rejection.

There's no guarantee

that you're going to be
accepted.

I built up an immunity

to having any hard feelings

about rejections

and just slough it off.

Who cares?
What do they know?

The best sign you can have

that you've written
something good

is if it gets turned down
by everybody

because that means
it's original, it's different.

It's really impossible

for him to pump out
anything that's boring

or that's been done before,
and I think he knows that,

and I think that's one
of the frustrations

he has with Hollywood today.

Larry Cohen is so much
the invisible man,

in relation
to mainstream Hollywood,

that it's entirely possible
to have seen a lot of his work

without knowing
you were seeing his work.

I've created a couple of shows

for Talent Associates,
but those shows never got on.

Although one of them
did get on,

but they didn't acknowledge
that it was my show.

That was a show called
"N.Y.P.D."

And that was more or less based
on the series pitch

that I wrote,

but they weren't crediting me,

and I wasn't going to do
anything about it

because they'd been
very good to me,

giving me my start,

and I wasn't going to sue
them or anything.

We're both,
on a personal level,

really enormous fans.

"Branded,"
especially the early episodes,

was truly a source
of inspiration.

If you could take
all of the TV episodes

from all the different shows
from the '50s and '60s

that were written by Larry, and
watched them all in a row,

you'd see a lot of themes
and fully-formed techniques

that are common to them

no matter what the show was
or who the producers were

and left an imprint
to a greater or lesser degree

on a lot of them.

Larry was the main force
behind "Branded."

It ran for quite a while, and
it had this great theme song,

which I'm not going to sing
for you.

♪ What do you do
when you're branded ♪

♪ And you know you're a man? ♪
You know?

♪ Branded,
scorned is the one who ran ♪

♪ What do you do when you're branded
and you know you're a man? ♪

You know,
you got Chuck Connors

holding up that
pointy little broken sword.

♪ Wherever you go,
for the rest of your life ♪

♪ You must prove ♪

♪ You're a man ♪

I was sitting
in a waiting room

to pitch something,

and there was
a catalog of old movies,

and I saw a movie
called "Four Feathers,"

about a guy who was branded
a coward by his friends.

So I went in the meeting,
I said,

"How about a Western about
a guy who's branded a coward?"

They went for it right away.
So that's how it came about.

I didn't have any idea what I was
going to sell them until I got there.

Larry Cohen is the master
of the premise.

And that's why those shows
he created

stick with you.

"The Invaders."

Alien beings
from a dying planet.

Well, "The Invaders"

is probably
the most fully-realized

Larry Cohen concept

out of the four TV shows
that he sold

in the late '60s.

It's truly paranoid.

It really has this foreboding
in every scene.

There's danger.
There's menace.

For a TV series to sustain
that kind of feeling

I think was unprecedented

when "The Invaders"
debuted in '67.

I just don't think anyone
had tried to do that.

Everybody thought
the communists where everywhere

and spying on everybody

and infiltrating our society.

Well, you can't do
a show about that,

but suppose you turn them
into aliens?

You know, if you think
about what he was dong

and what the rest of the TV
landscape was at the time,

it was really
quite remarkable.

"The Invaders."

Then Quinn Martin came
into the picture.

...A Quinn Martin Production.

And he was one of
the top producers at ABC.

Quinn Martin and Larry Cohen

were going to be
oil and water.

I mean,
that was not going to be a mix

because Larry was
this sort of very opinionated,

very brilliant maverick,

and Quinn Martin was a real Hollywood
establishment kind of guy.

He was not going to go for some
of Larry Cohen's wilder ideas.

I guess he said,

"I want to distance myself
from this guy.

I wanna run the show,
not this young Larry Cohen."

The pilot script
that I'd written

was kind of reworked
into what they did.

I really had
very little to do

with the actual
show after that.

There is a narrative of Larry

sort of getting forced out of
these shows against his will,

but there's also the fact that
he got what he wanted out of it.

And, hey,
he's got plenty of other ideas

that he can work on tomorrow.

Can't remember anything
except two words...

"coronet blue."

Coronet blue.

♪ Coronet blue ♪

I was one of the few who
watched "Coronet Blue."

It was a serial. I mean, you
really had to keep watching it

in order to be able
to follow it.

It was supposed to be
about a guy

who's found floating
in the Hudson River,

and he has amnesia,

and nobody can identify him.

And, to my recollection,
it just stopped.

It didn't... They never had
an ending for it.

It just... It got cancelled,

and nobody ever found out
what happened.

It was because he wasn't
really an American at all.

He was really a Russian

who'd been trained to pass
as an American,

and he was part
of a subversive group

called "Coronet Blue."

He decided to defect,

and now they're trying
to finish him off

before he can get
his memory back

and name the other members

of the the spy organization.

"Bourne Identity" before
"The Bourne Identity."

So that's
what "Coronet Blue" was.

The solution
never was revealed

because the show didn't stay
on the air long enough.

I think the show
may have been a hit,

but Frank Converse's contract
had run out,

and he went off to do
the other show

that I had come up with
originally also,

"N.Y.P.D."

They couldn't get him back,

and so they couldn't do
any more of them.

Larry was not going
to become someone

who was a rank-and-file
TV producer.

I just didn't want to write
the same show every week.

You know, people stay
with shows three, four years.

They're so sick of writing

because they've written
the same show

over and over and over again.

He was going to work
outside the system

and not get stuck
on that grind.

He doesn't really need to be
producing 26 episodes

of even a good TV show.

He's got better options.

"El Condor" was
an interesting event.

The company National General
called me in.

"We need someone
to go over to Almería

and write a new screenplay

based on the sets
that they've already built."

When I arrived in Almería,

I was the guy who was
going to save the picture.

My job was to save
their jobs.

Then there was a problem when
I got back to Los Angeles.

They said, "Lee Van Cleef
won't get on the plane.

He won't do the picture."

There's a story that Lee Van Cleef
had to be talked into "El Condor"

and that Larry Cohen was the
one that talked him into it

by saying,
"Lee, it's a comedy."

"Well, that's great!
I'll play it without my toupee."

I said, "Now, that's an idea.
That's great."

Next thing I know
he's on the plane,

he's happy as a clam,
and he made the picture.

That's all.

He just managed to safe crack

something that Lee Van Cleef
had always wanted to do

and didn't realize
that this was the opportunity.

And that's
what really convinced me

to go ahead
and start directing films.

I remember him
complaining about

directors ruining
his material,

especially after
"Daddy's Gone A-Hunting,"

and he was so frustrated.

You could see
the pain he felt.

I was so sick and tired
of writing good material

and having it ruined
by people.

I just figured,
I gotta do my own pictures

because, after all,

I can go through
the next 30 years of my life

with all these awful pictures
to show for it.

And I remember saying to him,

"Larry, why don't you direct?"

He basically said,
"No one's going to hire me,"

and I said,
"Why don't we hire you?"

He would start
out with our money,

then raise money.

I wrote the script for "Bone"

in maybe a week
or something.

I didn't have an outline.

I didn't have a plotline
or anything.

It all just came about
as it was written.

You're from the exterminator.

Well, of course.

What a coincidence.

That's why it was great,

because when you work
at the studios

with, uh, TV or movies,

they always wanna know
the whole story

before you start,
and that's what I did.

And I had a good time
writing it,

and then afterwards I really
had to make the picture.

I was hooked.

In a way it's sort of like
a racial version

of something like
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf".

And he's sort of turning
those ideas upside down

and seeing how far he can
push his characters around,

but it's very funny,
and I think it shows

a more character-driven
side of Larry

where he isn't trying to sort
of deliver action sequences

or horror thrills.

Why didn't you listen to me?

You listen. You got the biggest
house here in the neighborhood.

Bones is a strange character.

Even though he was black,
he wasn't black.

He was like a spirit
of some kind.

I don't even know
if Larry knew

who or what Bone was

or where he came from

or what he was about.

No one knows.
To this day I don't know.

The first picture of Larry's
I saw might have been "Bone",

uh, a.k.a. "Dial R for Rat",

which is certainly one
of the great titles of all time.

I never saw that title
or heard that till now.

I probably
would not have done it

if I knew that was the title.

I found a producer
named Nick Vanoff,

who wasn't really interested
in producing the movie

but was willing
to give me the money,

and I said, "Look, Nick,

"If you don't get
your money back,

I'll write you
a free screenplay."

The first time I really had
the freedom

to do anything I wanted
with a film

without worrying
about dealing

with the director
or producers or anybody.

This house was built
in 1929

by the family
of William Randolph Hearst.

The house was often used
in a lot of the movies.

It turned out to be even
a better investment

than I thought
it was going to be.

I knew it was
a darn good investment.

I didn't know it was going
to be a studio as well.

I think Larry bought his house

based on what
he could get away with

in shooting scenes.

I had this house before I ever
made the first movie,

so when I made "Bone,"

I was already living here
for a few years.

We shot a couple of days
in 16mm

with Pippa Scott
as the wife.

At the end of the three days,

I didn't like
the way it looked.

I said, "If I'm going
to make a movie,

I want to make it 35mm,
Panavision cameras,"

and that's when I got
George Folsey.

People didn't want to hire
old people to work.

Folsey was an MGM cameraman.

The crew was all old guys.

They had done
hundreds of pictures.

I mean, Gene Kelly
and Fred Astaire

and Larry Cohen.

I can't believe it.

I said, "This is...
This is wonderful."

Larry is not
a pretentious man.

He doesn't come
with a chair and nine guys.

There isn't all kinds of
assistant directors around him.

I don't want to confer
with people.

I don't want to collaborate
with people.

I want to do
the whole picture myself.

That's it.

Larry gives you the script,

and he disappears.

You're on your own.

He was allowing me
to do something

that few directors would let
me do... let me be myself.

Oh, come on. I'm not gonna
fall for that old leg.

- I think there really is something wrong.
- No, are you ready? Hey.

And I had a lot of question

in my mind
what they were going to do

with the scenes
where there's a black man

making love to a white woman

or, as it really was,

a white woman making love
to a black man

because she was the aggressor.

This is called...

the superior position.

A black guy's wrestling

on the couch with this woman
and threatening right after.

It's got sales potential?
Are you crazy?

Isn't it different?

People were shocked
by the movie

and amazed
by the performances,

but they were terrified

of the idea of trying
to distribute it.

There it is on the screen.

How about that?

Mixed couples
all over the place.

When the picture was finished,
then I had to try and find

somebody who would
distribute the film,

and I took it
all over the place.

And finally I got
to California

and showed it
to this Jack Harris.

And we tried it,

and the white audiences...

it wasn't working.

We went
to the black audiences,

and to
my great disappointment,

that didn't work either.

They were first
trying to do it

as a black exploitation
sort of movie.

It's nothing like that.
It's not "Shaft."

And then the review came out

that the film was laughed at.

One of the critics wrote,

"The most unintentionally
funny movie of the year."

He was furious,
I was furious,

and... wanted to destroy
the reviewer,

tell you the truth.

It was... it was ridiculous.

Some day people
will see the picture

and finally appreciate it

and be amazed that
it could've been made in 1970.

It's pretty timeless

with all the racial stuff
going on now.

For a debut movie,

it doesn't get much better
than this.

"Bone" is kind
of intellectual in a way

that some
of his later films aren't.

I mean, it feels like
it starts with an idea.

It's like,
"Oh, I have something to say

about race and gender."

All the themes
that it's dealing with

are still incredibly relevant,

maybe even more so
or more pronounced.

It contrasted
the haves and have-nots

in a way
that was gonna continue

through a lot of the things
that Larry would do.

You know, Larry started
as a writer,

eventually became a director

to protect Larry the writer,
eventually became a producer

to protect Larry the director
and Larry the writer,

and thus became
a triple threat.

Larry Cohen is very rare
for being a triple hyphenate.

There are very few
writer-producer-directors.

How could Larry move
between mainstream TV

and independent filmmaking?

And I think it's because
he was a commercial artist.

He was a very intelligent,
clever, smart,

weird, idiosyncratic
commercial artist,

but he worked in modes
that were saleable

and that were able to reach

a popular audience.

Sam Arkoff of AIP

called me up and said,

"We wanna make
black movies here.

Have you got
anything like that?"

So I said,
"It just so happens

there's a treatment
for a 'Black Caesar, '

a project
that I was developing

for Sammy Davis Jr."

So when Arkoff said,
"Show me a black movie,"

I had a black movie for him,

and we made the deal
the same afternoon.

♪ I paid the cost
to be the boss ♪

♪ Look at me ♪

♪ You know what you see ♪

♪ You see a bad mutha ♪

Because of "Bone"

and because
of "Black Caesar,"

a whole avalanche

of so-called
black exploitation movies

started to roll out.

I don't what
"blaxploitation" means.

Every movie's exploitation.
So what?

So what if a few black actors

got a job for a change?

Why was that bad?
Why was it harmful

that it was the same movie

as James Cagney
in "Public Enemy"

or Edward G. Robinson
in "Little Caesar,"

except that the actors
were black. So what?

Larry Cohen was like
the white Martin Luther King

for movies.

He had kicked the door
completely off its hinges

when it came
to the black character.

Blaxploitation pictures

were crossover pictures.

It was part of the atmosphere
of the time.

They called them
blaxploitation

because they had largely
African-American casts,

but everybody
went to see them.

A lot of the feel of Larry's
blaxploitation movies,

for example,
come out of the fact

that he's a New Yorker
and not a Hollywood guy.

That's what's so special
about him.

When he's really firing
on all cylinders

is that he actually makes you
see New York through his eyes.

I mean, New York
was the greatest.

In "Hell Up in Harlem"
and "Black Caesar"

we ran rampant over that city

Larry would not only shoot
in the streets of New York.

He would drive cars up on the
sidewalk on the streets of New York.

"Well, suppose somebody
gets run over?"

I said,
"This is New York City.

They just get out of
the way when you're coming."

He would do things that were...

I guess you could call
them dangerous,

and he almost always
got away with it.

Larry and I did have
a fight about that after.

And I said to him,

"Did it ever occur to you

we could lose everything!

Everything!

When you do a thing like this?

You've got to have
traffic control.

You can't do
this sort of thing."

You can't just go to Larry and say,
"You know, you're being reckless.

You know, you're be... You know, this is not safe.
This is not that."

"Don't tell me
what I can and can't..."

You know,
And so it was one of those.

And we... we got
in a fight over it.

He's not trying
to hurt anybody.

He's not trying to not care
about anybody.

He's just trying
to do what he believes

in his passion,

and he doesn't want to go
over all the hoops to do it.

Larry was the most creative
on the spot.

He wrote it on the run
because that's how we shot it.

Larry is the greatest thief
director in the business.

I learned a great deal about
how to steal from Larry Cohen.

Fred Williamson is shot
in front of Tiffany's,

and you know that Larry
stole the footage.

Clearly, because
he didn't have permission,

so he just stole the footage.

- Nobody's helping me.
- People step over me.

They don't see a camera

because we had
the camera up high.

Nobody said, "Are you all right?
Can I help you?"

They stop and they look

and then they move on.

Crowd gathers and we got
hidden cameras everywhere.

Everybody thinks
the guy was really shot.

They don't know
that this is a fake.

And you see people, you know,

go, "Are you all right?"
Like try to help him.

They were going ape shit.
They were...

They were screaming,

"Uh, the... the cop shot him!
The cop shot..."

And I'm walking away.

I learned guerilla
filmmaking from Larry.

He is the best
guerilla filmmaker

in the business.

He is the true independent
filmmaker.

He is jump out of the chopper,
he is run-and-gun,

and not what they call
independent filmmaking today.

I mean, he was the real deal.

This is not something that he just did
for a little while and then stopped.

It was part of his ethos.

He always did this.

That was the way he worked.

Now, today with terrorism

and the fear of terrorists

and the police everywhere

and the cameras everywhere,

we'd never be able
to get away this.

Jesus Christ, man,
they got guns!

Every time there'll be
a stunt that had to be done,

I would have to do it first.

Say, "Okay, Fred,
you're in this cab.

When you get to the corner,

open the door
and throw yourself out

onto the sidewalk."

"Throw myself out
on the sidewalk."

"Yeah, yeah, that's it.
You'll be fine."

"Okay, Cohen,
you do it first."

Then I go in the cab.

I'd throw myself
out of the cab

onto the sidewalk.

"Well," and that was it.

"No problem."

Well, he didn't fall out of no cab.
I promise you that.

Larry did not fall
out of a cab.

Then I go around the corner

where he couldn't see me
anymore.

"Aah!

Christ, this is terrible."

Larry Cohen is no athlete.

No matter how he jumps out
of a cab, it's gonna be wrong.

So it don't really matter.

He's going to hurt himself
no matter what does.

Stepping out of the cab,
he might hurt himself.

So, "Okay, let's do it, Fred."

Then he'd go
around the corner.

He'd throw himself
out onto the sidewalk.

He'd get up.

"You're right.
Nothing to it."

And he'd go around the corner

where I couldn't see him,

and, "Aah! Gee, that Cohen,
I hate that bastard."

That's a Larry myth.
That's a Larry myth.

That's the whole picture.

We just... one-upping
each other all the time.

I'd say, "I'll do any stunt
that you want first."

Larry Cohen did not fall
out of a cab,

and if he told you that he
fell out of the cab first,

he's a liar.

We had a preview
of "Black Caesar"

at the Pantages Theater
in Hollywood.

Picture was playing great.

And then the ending came.

The audience hated that,

particularly the black people
in the audience.

Well, they're cheering
and going on.

Man, they're loving
this movie.

And at the end, he dies.

I thought we were going to have a
riot right there in the theater.

I was never intended
to be killed.

You never saw me die in the fi...
in "Black Caesar."

Well, I called Arkoff
up on the phone.

I said,
"Sam, it's a disaster.

Picture's going over great,

but the ending
they don't like."

He said,
"I told you not to kill him."

The fan reaction
was really bad.

They didn't really
like the idea

of seeing Black Caesar
go down anyway

because they knew that would
be the end of Black Caesar.

I said, "Well, I made
a mistake. Can I fix it?"

He says,
"What do you mean fix it?

The picture opens in New York
in a couple of days."

"I'll go to New York,

and I'll cut off
the last scene."

He says, "Can you do that?"

I said, "Yeah, sure.
Don't worry about it."

That was it.
Picture opened.

Huge hit.

Lines around the block.

"Black Caesar"
is still making money.

I'm still getting checks
for four-fifty.

That's $4.50.

Arkoff said, "Wait a minute.

You'd better make a sequel
because this is a big hit."

Who made up all that bullshit

that black people don't know
how to swim, huh?

I said, "Okay,
we'll start shooting

the other one right away."

- The script for "Hell Up in
- Harlem" was in Larry's head.

It wasn't as fully scripted
as "Black Caesar" was.

This one was really
kind of off the hip.

Larry's creativity
was impromptu.

There was very little
that was scripted.

Most of it I was making up
as we go along.

If he saw a character
was really happening,

he would just let him go

and write a scene
right there on the spot

for that actor
to let him shine.

Usually at the beginning
of a shoot,

I have occasion to say
to the actors,

"Wait a minute.
I got another idea."

And then I'd sit down
in front of them

at a table, with a pad,

and I'd write
a whole different scene.

He had sort of a playfulness

and sort of
a sense of awareness

that I don't think
other filmmakers quite have

where he actually uses
the locations as characters,

you know, and he actu... and he sort
of morphs them into his own vision.

You could call him the
quintessential New York filmmaker.

He has an eye for getting
these angles

that other filmmakers
wouldn't get.

Oh!

"This is perfect!"
That's a Larry location scout.

Yeah, that's... that's how we do it.
And that's how he does it.

Described by witnesses
only as a black man

in his early 30s.

All the actors and everything

are off, standing around

with their mouths
hanging open to say,

"What the fuck
is he going to do next?"

Larry always believed that
things would never work out

on the day
the way you planned them,

so why bother planning them?

One of the big problems
in low-budget filmmaking

is too much preparation.

Then when something
goes wrong,

nobody knows what to do.

There's no prep.
You cannot prep when you steal.

'Cause then people know
you're shooting a movie.

When we get to California,

we went out to the airport,

and Fred has to run
across the terminal.

We shot that in the parking lot.
No permission.

Normally you have to have

19 permits to shoot
in an airport.

We had none.

We shot all of this stuff
on the steal.

That's my suitcase!

Nobody reached for their bags.

Everybody, like, backed away.

They thought
it was a real fight

'cause, again,
the camera was kind of hidden.

Every now and then somebody would pretend
to try to reach and get their bag,

and we'd roll over their bag, and we
were throwing bags all over the place.

Nobody came.
Security didn't come.

Look out!
He's got a gun.

- And then, finally,
- I said to him,

"You see where the luggage
is coming down? Run up there."

So we just did it.

We just ran up,
and when we go up there,

we waited for Larry Cohen
to come up there

so we could decide
what to do next.

As a matter of fact,

when we finished
fighting and roll...

and ran up the thing,

we could hear applause.

People down there
are clapping,

like, "Damn,
that was really good.

That was really real."

Let's face it.

Anybody will put up
with anything

if they think
a movie is being shot.

The idea of "It's Alive,"

that a monster baby comes out

and shreds everyone
in the delivery room

but its mother upon its birth,

is pretty crazy.

And the fact that it went on
to do two more sequels

after that is even crazier.

"It's Alive" derived

from my just viewing
the behavior of babies,

how angry they get.

It's pure id.
It's pure anger.

You know, pure frustration,

so I said, "Well, that's
an interesting idea."

I love the exploration,
though, he did

about that relationship,

of a parent,

his struggles,
his views of being a father,

but also his being the child.

He was a gifted child.

A gifted child is as unusual

as a monster child,
for instance.

You know, you don't think that,
but it's true.

They don't fit
into the normal pattern.

But he also meant it to be
a commentary on ecology.

You know, it's all about
what we're doing to-

polluting-at least that's
what he said at the time.

I didn't want
to specifically say,

"This is why
the baby was born."

Nobody knows
how this thing happened.

It... It's really
a matter of speculation,

and I think perhaps
that's for the best.

The reality of life is you
don't know all the answers.

You don't know why
these things occur.

Larry's subversive nature

just comes
from that writer radar

that you have, of,
"Wouldn't it be interesting"

if this innocuous thing

was turned on its head?

You'll see that
in a lot of his movies,

even in his non-genre movies.

When Larry came up with
the idea for "It's Alive,"

which was a movie that

was just on the border
of bad taste,

depending on what you think
about babies.

And he got Rick Baker to work with
him, and it was a milestone thing,

which Rick did
for very little money.

I think I got 250 bucks
or something.

I was actually working on
"The Exorcist,"

living in Dick Smith's house
in New York

when Larry tracked me down
and said to me,

you know, "I'm never going
to show the baby.

I just want something to have on the set for
the actors, and we need it, like, now."

I designed as I sculpted
this thing.

And Larry loved the baby.

And he goes, "Well, let's shoot
a scene with it."

And it's like,
"You know, we discussed this.

You said you were
never going to show it.

I just made something
that was repositioning..."

He goes,
"I love this thing.

I want to show it.
What can we do?"

The first thing
I came up with,

I said, "Since you don't wanna
show it too much,

maybe what we can do

is I can do a makeup
on someone

and do like a big head,
that you can see a mouth move,

and, like, hands
and parts of some shoulders,

and you could just get some
shots in front of black velvet

and just a person
going like this,

and you could cut that in."

In fact Elaine Baker
is the killer baby,

his ex-wife.

A few close ups.

And my girlfriend had to,
like, lay on her stomach

and try to crawl along

and not show the parts of the
suit you weren't supposed to see.

Fortunately
it was kind of dark.

There wasn't
a lot of discussion about it.

And it was fast-paced.

"Okay, we're going in the basement
now to shoot this thing.

Now we're going outside
to shoot this.

We're going up here."
You know.

I got to see
Larry's house really well.

Larry Cohen did
a beautiful job

of holding the monster away
from our direct line of vision.

You feel it moving
through the grass.

We see things
from its point of view.

I felt, the more you see
a monster,

the less scary it is.

Once you see it
and you get used to it,

then you say,
"Oh, look how well done it is,"

and, you know,
"What a nice job."

But it's not scary anymore.

There are so many
great scares in it,

but it's not really
a very graphic film,

but you think
it's a graphic film

because you're filling in
all the blanks on it.

The milkman scene
reminds me very much

of Hitchcock's shower scene
from "Psycho."

If you're Larry Cohen

and you've just made a
half-a-million dollar movie,

and 10% of that budget

is going to the music

and you get Bernard Herrmann,

you're gonna say,
"Do what you want."

That almost never happened
in that era.

In fact, it almost
never happens today.

It's a measure
of great respect

for a director to say
to a composer,

"You have way more experience
in this realm than I do."

It was a time of discovery

a time of realizing

that many of these people

that we had admired

from the classical
Hollywood system

were still around
and were working.

It's not surprising to me
in retrospect

that he hooked up
with Bernard Herrmann

because he would appreciate that Bernard
Herrmann was not only Hitchcock's guy,

he was Orson Welles' guy.

Cohen was back
in Los Angeles,

creating a title sequence.

Herrmann was over in London
working on the score.

Herrmann said to Cohen,

"I need 90 seconds
for kind of an overture."

Larry comes over to London

and brings this
minute-and-a-half sequence,

this title sequence.

We gave him the footage

of the flashlights
going on and off

and we put it up
and we ran it with the music,

and it was amazing.

All the beats
were right on time.

When those flashlights kept
popping on,

every time they popped on,

it was right on Bernard
Herrmann's beats.

So we looked at each other.

We said,
"Isn't that amazing,

how that worked out?"

And we were friends for life
after that.

A serious score
for a movie like "It's Alive"

is a pretty remarkable
achievement,

and it's a really good score,

and it's one
of the last two he did.

That and "Taxi Driver"

were the last two
Herrmann scores.

Can you hear me?

It can't be saved.
It's gotta die!

Well, we had a screening
over there

on Hollywood Boulevard,

some... one of the
big theaters there.

The audience liked it, but they
didn't want to put it out.

They thought
it was beneath them.

So suddenly, you know,

we had these Warner Bros
executives saying,

"Well, you can't expect us
to release a movie

about a monster baby
that kills people."

"It's Alive" just kind
of offended everybody

when it came out,
didn't it?

"A monster baby?
What are you talking about?

And I said, "What's your
biggest picture of the year?"

Don't you have a girl
masturbating with a crucifix?

Is this in good taste?

He always compares
"It's Alive" to "The Exorcist"

because they both came out
around the same time

from the same studio.

What's going to happen?

Why can't I forget this?

Why do I have to keep pestering
Warner Bros about this?

But I just couldn't stop.

He just didn't give up.

He didn't give up on things.

He's gonna do it
no matter what.

Everybody tells him
not to do it,

then he's
really going to do it.

So now, next thing I hear,

everybody's fired.

A whole new administration
at Warner Bros.

He went after them,

and finally they put it out
a second time.

Very unusual.

They kept working with it,

and just with the tagline,

"There's something wrong
with the Davis baby...

It's alive!"

That beautiful graphic image

of a baby carriage
with a little clawed hand

hanging out the side.

I couldn't believe
that after three years

of playing on double bills,

they opened the picture
as a first-run picture.

Now it was playing
at top prices,

big ads,
saturation television.

Before you knew it,

the picture was the number-one
box-office picture in America.

In 1976, May,

it was top
of the box-office charts.

Unbelievable.
Could never happen again

because today any movie
will be put out

on home video after 90 days,

so this picture could never
have had a second chance.

I was astounded.

I think he took me to
a film festival in France,

and I saw "It's Alive,"

and I remembered looking
at him and saying,

"Oh, my God, Larry, who are you?
You're so weird."

I couldn't believe what had
come out of his imagination.

There was motion

and the soft sound of engines,

and... I think I floated.

"God Told Me To"

is a really original
and unique vision,

and not only that,

no more crazier
than Scientology.

A crazy, pseudo-religious,

science-fiction horror film

about Catholic guilt,
made by a Jew.

Your children
would've been like me.

If you hadn't
willed them to die.

I didn't!

Brothers with someone
who comes

from a mating from an alien
from outer space,

and his brother
could be Jesus,

but he has a vagina
in his side,

and wants to procreate
with you and cre...

you're gonna go,
"What the fuck?"

It's like,
"Larry, what were you smoking?

I mean, wha... what?"

First of all,
all the movies I do

are all basically
taking something

which is considered benevolent

and turning it into
some kind of monstrosity.

Larry Cohen confronting faith

and religion and God.

While we might get
some sprinklings of that

through
some of his other films,

this one is definitively
all that.

And then the definition
of what is God,

you know,
is maybe a little lofty

for the exploitation markets

that the picture played.

But if you see the movie,

you see
this great intellect at work,

with an outrageously dark
sense of humor,

but a logic that, if you pick
it apart on its own terms,

it makes perfect sense,

but it may not be
on your terms.

That's a good example of where
he's hiding his real message

sort of inside the genre,

or in this case two genres,
in "God Told Me To."

And you think you know
what you're getting,

then it sort of does
this left turn,

and you find out
it's actually

a dissertation on faith
and religion.

- Throws you for a loop.
- It's all about misdirect.

He thinks you're going one way,

and then he throws you
with something else.

I love "God Told Me To."

And it begins
with Andy Kaufman!

How great is that?

Well, "God Told Me To"
of course is especially clever

because in a way that's
his most guerrilla film.

Obviously the parade scene

is one of the standout
sequences of his whole career,

that he had the nerve
to actually do that.

That's just insane.

And Larry got
the brilliant idea

of dressing Andy up
in a police uniform.

And Larry pushes Andy
in the middle of the thing,

and Andy starts marching
along with the... the real cops.

Couple of guys recognize him.
"Hi, Andy."

And they keep walking.

Only I would go down
to an area

with 5,000 policemen,

with the police commissioner,
the mayor,

and shoot a movie
without permission.

And you know something?

Because of that,
everybody thought

we had permission.

But Larry gave himself
permission,

and Larry never gives up
an opportunity

to get a shot
that gives his film

production value

without it costing anything.

For me it was a lot of fun.

I like working fast.

And I like working
Larry's way.

I like working
right at the edge.

Can you tell me
why you did this?

God told me to.

Don't!

The music in Larry's movies

is almost always good.

There's a guy
named Frank Cordell

who does a great
Herrmann imitation

in "God Told Me To."

It's a terrific score.

The whole picture is deepened

by the choices
that the composer has made,

so Cordell's choral score

really helps to make the film

even more compelling.

Bernard Herrmann
was supposed to do the score.

As a matter of fact,
I ran the picture for him

the night he finished
"Taxi Driver."

I loved Benny Herrmann.

He was a sweet man to us.

He could be
a cantankerous old man.

There's no question about it.

I think he was kind of a
grandfatherly figure to Larry.

Then we drove him back to
the Universal Sheraton hotel,

and that's where
he passed away that night,

in his sleep.

He was in good spirits and...

And he had died during
the night in his sleep.

And it was very odd.

He was lying in bed
like this,

with his two hands
under his cheek,

like a little angel
in a painting.

And of course it was Larry

who took the situation
under his wing

and dealt with the
beautiful service, funeral,

and it was
a very, very sad time.

And I can't... I just have
such great admiration

for what Larry did
at that point.

Then the rabbi said,

"Hey, we have to have a circle

of ten Jewish men
to say a prayer,"

and so we had to go
in the living room,

and we didn't have ten Jews,

so the Italians
all put on yarmulkes.

De Niro and Scorsese
and De Palma

all were wearing yarmulkes,

standing in the living room
in a circle

while the rabbi
said the prayers,

and De Niro said to me,

"What do I do?
How do I act Jewish?"

I said, "Well, no matter
what the rabbi says,

just keep nodding your head.
Just..."

- You know,
- I'd always been a fan

of those FBI movies
ever since I was a kid.

So I thought, "Well, how
about doing an FBI movie

that really tells you about
what the FBI really was like?"

Yeah, we carry guns now.

It has that absolutely direct
relationship with the audience.

I mean, no budget.

Uh, actually very little
in the way of period detail.

It's just coming right at the
audience in a very honest way.

And what you see
is what you get.

Broderick Crawford
is really very good as Hoover.

You see all these people

who'd won Academy Awards
in the past

sitting on their mantelpiece,

but the phone never rings.
Nobody calls them.

There's a lot of wonderful
actors around,

and they're just looking for
somebody to give them a job.

The way Larry cast his movies
was kind of interesting.

"Who's available?

Who's behind on their rent?

Who... you know, who maybe owes
a mortgage payment?

Who can I get cheap?"

- A distinguished
- Oscar-winning cast

in a true story
of political intrigue

at the center of power

from World War I to Watergate.

I did something really crazy.

I hired the actors

and I took everybody
down to Washington, DC.

I had about enough money
to shoot for a week.

And I figured
somewhere along the line,

I'm gonna get the money
to make this picture.

And I called up Arkoff,
of course,

my usual sucker.

And I said, "Sam, I'm making
this movie down here."

I said,
"I got three Oscar winners,

but I won't tell you
who they are."

He said, "You want me
to give you the money,

but you won't tell me
who they are?"

I said, "That's right."

Next thing,
he sent me $400,000,

so I made the picture.

That's it.

I got away with it.

If it wasn't for the files,

there might never have been
a J. Edgar Hoover

or an FBI as we know it.

We were in Washington,

and Larry was doing
his thing,

running around,
stealing shots,

guerilla movie-making,

just the way we did it
in New York.

We first called up
various facilities

and told them we were shooting
a movie, and they all said,

"Yes, okay,
you can shoot here."

And then when they found out
it was about the FBI

and J. Edgar Hoover,
then we get a phone call back,

saying, "I'm sorry
but we changed our minds.

You can't come."

Something's gotta happen.

So the phone rings.

The White House is calling.

Betty Ford's office.

Betty Ford
used to be a dancer

and in shows,
and a chorus girl.

And her favorite actor
was Dan Dailey.

And Betty and her husband,

the President
of the United States,

would like to invite them
for lunch at the White House.

Well, isn't that nice?

The two stars are going
to the White House.

So now I get on the phone,
I call up.

"Excuse me,

we'd like to use
your facilities at Quantico,

the FBI Training Academy.

We can't shoot Wednesday

because the two stars
are having lunch

with the President
at the White House.

But we'd like to come
the following day."

That was it. We got permission
issued every place in Washington,

all thanks to President Ford
and Betty Ford.

I don't care
what you say, boss,

it doesn't look
like real grass to me.

Larry found out

where J. Edgar Hoover's
house was.

And we shot
a couple of scenes

in J. Edgar Hoover's
own house,

without anybody's permission.

If people told me
these stories,

I'd tell them
they were full of shit,

I gotta tell you.
I couldn't...

I wouldn't believe it
if I hadn't been there.

I think it's the greatest
steal in filmmaking.

The fact that Rózsa creates

a kind of sympathetic feel
for this guy,

a little bit of an
understanding of who he is

and why he's made
the choices that he has made.

- And a wonderful man,
- Dr. Rózsa...

I called him Mickey.

He was different
than Bernard Herrmann.

He was soft-spoken
and gentle,

and never looking for
an argument from anybody,

a wonderful composer
and a sweetheart.

I'll bug and burglarize
whoever I please.

I'll be damned if I let
somebody else do it.

Self-appointed cop
for president.

That's right, junior.

Larry's movies are not
necessarily subtle

but they are
very detailed.

They're thoughtful.
They're serious.

And they're reflections
of the world around him

and the problems
in that world.

A man doesn't have much
in the way of morality

unless he's
scared of somebody.

And I gave them somebody
to be scared of.

I mean, my belief
is that Washington, DC

is totally corrupt,

every way, shape and form.

Whatever he did,

he's no worse
than any of the others.

You gotta watch those guys
in the White House.

I don't mean just Nixon,
all of them.

Given what we now know about
Hoover's real private life,

which we didn't know
in that time,

the picture's actually
kind of mild

in its treatment of Hoover.

But for whatever reason, it
didn't appeal to the exhibitors,

and people
just didn't want to book it,

especially
after it opened soft.

It was one of the
less-distributed AIP pictures.

Most people saw it as a second
feature at the drive-in

than ever got to see it
at a hard-top theater.

And I think what was
interesting about the film,

it had another danger to it, the
way Larry's pictures usually do,

but another kind of danger,
and I look back now,

and I think it's probably
because of being tied directly

to the Nixon era,
and there it was on television.

And it was the first time
two stories

about J. Edgar Hoover
were getting out.

Whatever we say,
whatever we do,

the next morning it winds up
in the "New York Times."

This had a resonance to it

and a prophetic nature
to it.

It would have had a different
resonance or accent to it

if it'd made it
in a different era.

But it's
a very special picture.

Larry Cohen does
a Mickey Spillane,

"I, The Jury."

And he's got Armand Assante
playing Mike Hammer.

I didn't know Mike Hammer
was Italian.

Mikey Spillane's Mike Hammer

could have been
a big, big series,

much like James Bond.

In fact, when James Bond
first came on the screen in "Dr. No",

the "New York Times" said,

"This picture owes a great deal
to Mickey Spillane."

And I wrote a screenplay.

And we ended up putting it
together with a company,

American Cinema.

Larry was not someone
that worked well

within the constraints
of the Hollywood system.

Even though he was very good
at Hollywood,

he didn't work well
within it.

Any time you wanted to do
anything innovative or clever

or set up an interesting shot,

all they wanted you to do was just
shoot the basic coverage and move on.

He's earned
a sense of cynicism

and a little bit of bitterness
about Hollywood,

and yet he doesn't
really express it.

I'm not sure how many days
they actually got through,

but at a certain point,

there was a blow-up,
and Larry was fired.

I'd never seen Larry
like that before.

He was terribly upset.

So it hit him pretty hard.

But that
didn't knock him down,

didn't knock him out-
knocked him-

might have
knocked him down briefly,

but he was right back up.
It wasn't a TKO.

He was back on his feet
and ready to go.

He called me up and he said,

"Paul Glickman said that you're a
good production manager,

and I'm gonna stay here
in New York

and make this movie
that I want to make.

And I'm determined
to finish it

before they finish
'I, The Jury.'"

Aren't you tired of
being cooped up in the office?

Why? Am I being fired?

No, no, no.
I got work on the outside,

- prove a lot more interesting.
- Okay.

It's just impossible
to believe

that somebody could come up
with another story

and already be shooting
that quickly

after what happened.

Conversely,
I was not surprised

because the man is a genius.

The one thing about Larry
is that he has his conviction.

And he really is a filmmaker,

and he's serious about that.

And as a writer as well.

And so when he believes
something,

or believes in something,

nothing's gonna change
his mind.

So he put himself
in a foot race

with the new director
of "I, The Jury,"

to make a picture called "Q".

I know you love me.
I know you love me.

I wish you'd take a walk.

Huh? Hey.

What're you looking for?

Looking for the head.

Did you ever drop
a cantaloupe from 40 stories?

So here you have

the familiar New York urban street
crime cop-versus-criminal movie.

Suddenly, you've got

a monster landing on the top
of the Chrysler Building.

That's the reality that
everybody's dealing with.

The idea was...

what if there was a nest
of a giant bird

on the top of
the Chrysler Building?

And I think that gave rise

to this whole Quetzalcoatl
mythological script.

I just thought it'd be
an interesting idea

to combine cinema noir with a
science fiction monster picture.

I thought the Chrysler Building

was better-looking
than the Empire State Building

and deserved its own monster.

One day after I was fired,

I was shooting
the other picture.

I wasn't working that day,

and we were sitting
outside a restaurant,

and a man and his wife
were sitting next to us,

and we just
started talking to the guy.

It was Michael Moriarty.

Then he says,
"I got a script...

I got a role you might like."

You better let us know
real soon, Quinn.

Oh, you're not
the only action in town.

He says, "Can I send
the script to you?"

I said, "Yeah",
and I give him my address.

I fall madly in love
with Jimmy Quinn.

And it was only 60%
there at that time.

Wow, can I eat this alive.

He's just
a Shakespearean actor

and an incredible
jazz musician,

which most people don't know.

I found out that he wrote
music and played the piano.

♪ Go away, evil dreams ♪

We'll make up a scene

where he goes and auditions
for a job,

taking him and basically
putting him into the picture

and taking facets
of his personality

and bringing it
into the character.

You have a script, but there's
always a possibility,

a wonderful possibility,
which I'd never had before,

of a director, writer,
producer

who had all the freedom
in the world

to throw me
anything he wanted.

When I saw "Q" and "The Stuff,"

I was kind of intrigued by how
he worked with Michael Moriarty

and kind of guided him
as he went along the course

and around the bend

and out over the bend,
so to speak.

I mean, you feel like he really
could spin out of control.

19 years old, I was bum-rapped
by a cop like Powell

because he
wanted to get a conviction.

That wonderful sense of really
about to spin out of control,

maybe go out of control,
on-screen, maybe off.

And that kind of
erases the line

between the picture
and the actual experience.

He's been set free
inside himself

by this director
who he trusts.

He can fly without a net

because the director's got
the net, got his back.

In the '70s, we would say,

you know that expression,
"He's far out"?

We don't use
that expression anymore.

But Michael is far out.

He's somewhere else.

And I found out his
concentration was so intense

that you could actually talk
to him while he was acting

and give him new lines

and give him pieces
of business to do.

When I'd say, "Tell them to eat
'em, tell them to eat 'em,"

and he'd just say,
"Eat 'em, eat 'em," you know,

and he went
into that whole tirade.

Eat 'em! Eat 'em!

Neither Larry nor I
could do no wrong.

We couldn't make a mistake.

Feeding me these lines.

And it's heaven.

It's every actor's heaven.

And we're just burning it up.

It's almost like you're
watching something

that has a truth to it
that you don't expect.

Eat 'em! Eat 'em!

And that's somewhat dangerous,
and it's always exciting.

Yeah, Larry's ability
to really observe the actors

and bring in
what's special to those actors

into their parts
makes actors just love him.

The next big job was to get
to use the Chrysler Building.

It turned out that
at this particular time,

the Chrysler Building
was under renovation.

So they had baskets
on all sides.

I said,
"Who's in those baskets?"

They said,
"They're steeplejacks.

They do repairs and stuff
on skyscrapers."

He goes, "See if they
want to be in a movie."

They're the people that are
qualified to get into those buckets

that are hanging off
of the pinnacle anyway.

Otherwise, we're gonna have
to pay a bunch of stuntmen

and it's
not gonna be affordable.

Then we hired a bunch
of off-duty police officers

because they'd come
in uniform.

The cops bring their uniform,

they just get their extra pay.

Looking good.

So cops were easy to come by.

Let her have it!

Empty shell cartridges.

It was blanks, of course,

but they were raining down
into the streets of New York.

The brass fell
but there was canopies up

because there was some construction
going on the lower floors.

I told him, I said,

"People in the street
are panicking

because they think that there's a
terrorist attack," and he goes,

"Get a cameraman
and get on the street

and shoot somebody panicking."

I said, "Okay."

I was shooting "Trading Places"
in New York City,

and we were on Park Avenue

in front
of the Waldorf Astoria,

so I had a lot of cops.

And all the cops went,

"We're very sorry,
Mr. Landis, we have to go."

"What?" And all the cops
went roaring off.

And they were back, like,
45 minutes later.

"What's going on?"

"Oh, some lunatic
was shooting machine guns

on top
of the Chrysler Building."

The police were summoned.

Lots of stuff happened.

And eventually,
the city shut us down

because we created
such an uproar.

Who's not gonna love

"Hollywood Terrorizes New York"

on the front page
of the "Daily News"?

And then the next day,
there were articles about it.

And I went,
"Oh, Larry," you know.

We did scare people, I guess,

but only because the newspapers
and the television stations

tried to make something
more out of it than it was.

I took an ad
in the trade papers,

apologizing to the city
of New York

for scaring them.

It didn't mean anything.

I think maybe Larry couldn't
have had the career he had

if it was post-9/11.

I think the stuff
that Larry did

you just would never get away
with today.

There are so many incidences

where we would be doing
dangerous things,

and I think back now,

and Larry must have had
angels on both shoulders.

This one was a wing
and a prayer,

flying blind.

I'd never see
a ruffled feather.

I mean, just... the riskier
it gets, the calmer he gets.

That's Larry Cohen.

But it turned out that I was
saved once again by fate

because had they not had
the canopies,

I might be just getting out
of jail now, so...

It's a very hip sort of non-Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen movie.

I didn't think I could afford
Ray Harryhausen,

but I didn't think about it
when I shot the picture.

I knew where the monster's
supposed to be,

and I shot all the scenes.

There's a way in which plates
are usually shot

that allow
the stop-motion guys

to be able to do their best.

And Larry, of course,
ignored all of that stuff.

He shot stuff handheld,
he didn't lock down anything.

They said, "Well, that's not
how it's done."

I said, "I keep hearing
that all the time.

Every time I make a movie,
no matter where I go,

they always tell me,
'That's not the way it's done'."

But I do it and it works.

And it saves a lot of money
and a lot of time.

It was a nightmare

to get this dragon to look
as good as it does,

but it's pretty good.

You don't want to be
thought of

as being dictatorial

or an unpleasant person
or anything,

but if you don't
exercise authority

and have confidence
in your own ideas

and your own judgment,

then you're gonna be
completely lost.

It's called pushing
the envelope,

and Larry does it
all the time

with the actors
and with...

with the environments
and the world,

and God bless him.

I would certainly say
that "Q" is probably

the best big monster movie
after "King Kong."

Okay, everybody hold
their positions.

Everybody stay right
where you are, okay?

Don't move.

Whew.

- Big.
- Yes.

Bastard. You bastard!

- Cut. Print.
- "Special Effects"

and "Perfect Strangers"

were similar in their style
and their look.

And that's probably because they
were similar in their budget.

When I was a child, I asked
my mother about commerce,

and she said, "Well, you make a
pair of shoelaces for five cents,

and you sell it to people
for ten cents."

It always made good business sense
for Larry, what he was doing.

He's just really
a savvy show-biz mind.

I had the scripts
for "Special Effects"

and "Perfect Strangers,"

and they were both makable
at a reasonable price,

so I made the two pictures
back-to-back.

There was a whole shooting
thing going on,

which was "How do we do this
as cheaply as possible?"

One of Larry's favorite
techniques

was to get a
cameraman up on a fire escape

where none of the people
in the street actually knew

that a scene was happening.

There's a moment where Larry jumps in,
just stops the guy and, you know.

Somebody figured he was
running off with the child,

and I saw that somebody's gonna
beat the hell out of him

if I didn't do something.

It's okay, folks. Do you want
me to call a cop is that...

- Stay out of it.
- You're gonna...

Larry was not above having

his Alfred Hitchcock moments
in his films.

I think he recognizes the way,
you know,

a good Italian
neo-realist does,

that people and
their environments are one.

He understands what it meant
to be capturing value,

whether that was in shooting
his movies in New York,

which is the greatest location
in the world on the cheap,

which you're getting
for nothing,

all this production value.

Or finding a young talent, like
Anne Carlisle or Eric Bogosian,

who were just breaking
at the moment,

and nobody knew them.

Paul Kurta had rounded me up
for this feature.

I don't know what I thought
a movie set was supposed to be

but whatever was going on
on the Larry Cohen set

was different than
what I had imagined.

I remember it was like 2:00
in the morning one night,

and Larry said, "You should
be paying me to be here

because you're learning
so much."

And at the time,
I resented that comment,

but I actually
do think I learned...

I learned a lot, fast.

A lot of
our photographic choices

were predicated on the fact that
we found this fantastic house

and it was owned by an artist
named Lowell Nesbit.

He was obsessed with flowers.

We put this dialog in

where the detective
asks the director...

Why are you so crazy
about flowers?

I don't know.

They're just so beautiful,
and they die so quickly.

I'm open to whatever happens,
whatever comes along,

I'm happy to grab it
and put it into the picture,

like it's meant to be,

like it was there
for me all along

but I didn't know
it until I saw it.

A guy like Larry,

he's working in
a meat-and-potatoes style,

and probably thinks
it's pretentious

to not work in that style.

Basically, everybody
on the film crew

is the assistant
to the director.

And if the director
is a filmmaker

and is telling a story,

that's really
all you can be.

I think that's why
his movies are so special,

especially
with "Special Effects"

because it's so gritty.

I mean, he even takes
Zoë Tamerlis from "Ms. 45",

and she's sort of like the muse
of New York underground cinema.

And here you have Larry
sort of fracturing her

into sort of two parts,
which is really interesting.

He's sort of doing
Hitchcockian dual-nature woman,

but he's doing it
in a very Larry way.

I think people think that it's
easier to make a genre movie.

But in some ways, it's
harder to make a genre movie

because the audience knows
where you're going.

You have to keep
surprising them.

I'm sorry, I mean,
what am I asking you for?

How would you know?

Oh, I know.

Oh. Charlie.

Charlie, what's the matter?

Let go!

Hello, everyone.

Genius.

I've loved it since 1985.

I love it. I still love it now.
It's one of those rare films

that you loved when you were a
kid and you love as an adult.

A little faster pace, okay?

Let's get a little movement
into this.

Talk about your
high-concept movie.

- ...wonderful smiles.
- This was gonna require an art department.

This was gonna require
some product development

in order for it not
to be laughable.

What's also terrific is you've
got that "Stuff" jingle.

I mean, you watch it,

and you can't get that damn thing
out of your head after a while.

♪ Enough is never enough ♪

♪ Enough is never enough
of The Stuff ♪

Larry had a friend
in the advertising agency.

He hired him to develop
the Stuff cups,

so this was very different
for a Larry Cohen movie

because we were doing
a lot of thinking ahead.

Gosh, let me, uh...
That's a sweaty palm.

That's two sweaty palms.

Let me feel you.

Oh, that's
another sweaty palm.

When I wrote the script,

I didn't have Moriarty
in mind.

But after I had done
the picture with him

that was so successful

and we'd gotten along
so well,

I thought, "Why don't I use
Moriarty again?"

Uh, when you talk
to the FBI,

would you tell them this
for me?

He's sort of like Larry's
version of James Bond.

And we'll make up a name
for him like Mo Rutherford.

You know
why they call me "Mo"?

'Cause every time
somebody gives me money,

I always want mo'.

And I got him a new hairpiece
for the part

and he looked much younger

and more like a leading man.

And then every picture
we did afterwards,

I had to get him a hairpiece.

Stop. Not true, not true.

How dare he say that?

He wanted the hairpieces.

I didn't want... I never wore
a hairpiece until then.

But he wouldn't wear the same
one for each picture.

He insisted I spend the money on
a different hairpiece each time.

So he buys me another hairpiece.
What's your problem?

I think I've got them all stashed
in the closet somewhere.

"The Stuff"
was a great concept.

At that time, everybody was
health crazy over yogurt.

And the fact that the yogurt
was eating you

instead of you eating it
was amazing.

I love "The Stuff" because
it's this great satire.

We don't really think
about what we eat.

If it was something horrible,

we don't find out until after
the fact when they do a recall.

And then everybody's, like,
"Oh, my God, am I gonna die?"

It's very tough to take
material that's absurd

on its surface,
make it threatening

but have the right kind of elbow-in-the-ribs
moments at the same time,

without parodying yourself
to the point of complete farce.

That's why we have the term
"black comedy,"

which is what that is.

"The Stuff" is so hilarious.

You know,
living killer yogurt.

What the hell are they doing?

That stuff comes right out
of the center of the earth

and straight into
our supermarkets.

If you're a good horror
director,

you use horror to kind of hold
up a mirror to society.

And you reflect either
some of the anger

or or some
of the political turmoil,

and you use that to channel
and say something

about what's going on in whatever
times the film is being made in.

To Larry, what's important
is the moment,

the idea, the concept,

the thing
that he wants to say.

It's always important that he's
saying something in a movie.

It was about consumerism

and the unscrupulous practices
of big business

and the fact that people
will sell you anything,

even if they
know it's gonna kill you.

Look at the new campaign
for "The Taste."

Only 12% of Stuff in it,

just enough to make
the public crave more.

And Madison Avenue doesn't care

it's killing people.

Madison Avenue will only do
what they got to do,

which is make it look like a
lovely thing to get addicted to.

These people at companies

that manufacture cigarettes
and products that kill you.

Are you eating it?

Or is it eating you?

They're bad people.

They go back to their big homes

and their kids
and their Ivy League schools

and all the other bullshit.

They're the ones who
belong in jail.

If we speak about Larry
as a prescient guy,

as a guy who's
very foresightful,

I think
what you're really seeing

is somebody who looks deeply
at the present moment.

That's why I would like to see
what Larry comes up with now

because we'll have
a good template

for what's going to go wrong,
like, ten years from now.

This is your wake-up call,
your honor.

Shit! We've been had.

I would compare Larry
to Sam Fuller

in that style
of filmmaking,

where it's deeply personal
and it's very visceral.

They both grab the audience

with a kind of movements
that are...

actors' movements and camera
movements and gestures that,

you know, feel like,
you know, bold headlines.

There was an audacity
and a wild maverick sense

that was certainly in the tradition
of the handmade picture,

of a film
that had to be made

because he felt
the passion for it.

So I did my own pictures,

and I did them the only way
I could do them at a low price.

If I'd made them
for a higher price,

I could never have made my own
pictures the way I made them.

The price of a higher budget
is interference from a studio,

executive producers
or somebody.

I didn't want anybody around.

Fuller himself

was sort of a do-it-all-
yourself kind of filmmaker,

which was very much what
Larry Cohen was known for.

And he was having
financial troubles.

Like so many people
in the business,

he got old and
out-lived his money.

I felt badly for him.

And then I was writing
this script,

and I decided I write
a part in for him.

And I sent it to him, and he
called me up and he said,

"Gee, there's so much dialog."

I said,
"Don't worry about it, Sam.

I'll be there. I'll make
sure you get to say it all."

He and Larry had
a very special relationship,

very much a teacher-student
relationship,

enormous amount of respect.

I'm used to dealing with
those son-of-a-bitches

that made a deal with the devil.
You see that?

Now, there is
a legendary experience,

the great Sam Fuller.

Just massive energy,

and I was just, oh,
I'll stay out of the way.

I'm not a Nazi hunter.

I'm a Nazi killer.

And I remember some
of the scenes that Sam did.

Larry's, like, "Yes."
You know what I mean?

He just got it.

But unfortunately, because
of his energy and his passion,

he can't hit his mark.

So I was his mark.

So he'd walk up to the spot
where I was.

I'd be lying on the ground.

And then he'd stop
right when he hit me.

Mister, you still not lost?

He could do his lines,
but he was not very good

at cheating left
or cheating right

or doing anything
like that, so...

I was amazed that
all the pictures he had done,

he wasn't aware
of all that stuff.

Fuller's participation
in the film

certainly reflects maybe
Larry casting himself.

You can't look at any other
film in Cohen's library

where you go, "That's Larry",
or "That's Larry."

I think maybe
in this instance,

Fuller's character is
definitively Cohen's persona.

What do you mean
it's not approved?

You gotta approval
this goddamn license,

or else I'm gonna blow
your goddamn brains out!

When Larry was in control
of his movies,

then things would work well.

We'd end up making the movie.

Spread your legs, baby.

But if it was an
outside company,

trying to manage Larry,

that usually went poorly.

Originally, I was gonna do
another Mike Hammer film,

but when the first one
was such a disaster,

then I rewrote it into
a different private detective.

And apparently
the Staten Island Ferry

is stuck in the mud here
in the channel.

Reason being...

Stuck in the shit
is more like it.

We're trapped here in the
middle of New York Harbor.

What happened was
it got stuck on a sandbar

in middle of New
York Harbor

because it was so heavy
on one side.

The entire crew and cast

were trapped on the ferry
for the entire day,

where the Coast Guard
and the Harbor Patrol

tugging on us, trying to get
us off the fucking sandbar.

I said to the captain,

"Any chance this
thing would sink?"

He says,
"What're you talking about?

We're on the bottom now."

You realize the star
of the picture now is trapped

on a tugboat because
he stepped on for a shot.

Just as he stepped on,
the tugboat pulled away.

And I called the producers
on the phone.

"I don't know whether
we can shoot this or not.

Are we insured
for something like this?"

They didn't get back
to me and they left the office.

Can't be contacted.

So now,
whatever I do is wrong.

If I shoot, I'm wrong.

If I don't shoot, I'm wrong.

They've thrown it
all back in my lap.

Last summer I wrote this.

Last summer I wrote
this scene.

It was supposed to originally be
a street fair.

Little did I know I was going
to suffer the same fate

on this one as I suffered
on the first one

that I was gonna only
direct a portion of,

but before I would
be summarily dismissed.

I was Larry's friend,

and I felt it was unjust,
what was happening.

I said, "Well, Larry,
you know, I'm going with you."

And he asked me
to stay on the picture.

- At that time,
- I said to myself, that's it.

I'm now gonna make these
producers so fucking miserable,

they'll have to fire me.

One thing
that really did shock me

was the frustrations
that he expressed openly

about dealing
with producers and studios.

The producers of this picture
were so stupid.

God bless it.

No wonder I was able to make
all these movies on my own

that I didn't have to deal
with these people.

Most people don't know
a damn thing about producing.

I got married.

With who?

Well, here's my gal.

Call me Mom.

I went to
a Golden Globe award.

Bette Davis came out.

She was so skinny and
dragging one leg behind her.

And I said, "Oh, Jesus,
poor Bette Davis.

Look what's happened to her."

And yet, here she is, she has the
courage to come out on stage

in front of everybody
at the Golden Globes.

So I had a lot of respect
for her.

And then I started seeing her
on all these talk shows.

And I said,
"She wants to work.

That's why she's doing
these talk shows

is she's hoping
someone will give her a job."

You know, God bless her.

He wrote the script for her

because nobody
was giving her any work

and she was, you know,
the ultimate legend.

That's another thing
that's pretty special about him

is that he has
tremendous compassion,

especially for the elderly.

And for movie stars.
He loves movie stars.

So I had a tape recorder

and I dictated
"Wicked Stepmother"

into the tape recorder.

And the phone rang.

And who the hell
was on the phone

but Bette Davis
calling me up

and saying, " Mr. Cohen,
I read your script,

and I certainly had
a few laughs.

You wrote it specially
for me, didn't you?"

And I said,
"Yes, Miss Davis,

I wrote it
especially for you."

And she says, "Well,
when can we get together?

Come on over and have a drink."

He decided to have
us all come to his house

before we started to shoot

so we could all meet
Miss Davis, Bette Davis.

Of course, I had gotten lost
and I was very late.

I know this is an ungodly hour
to show up, but...

So I arrive
and there she was

and I threw myself
in front of her

and hugged and said,

"I am so, so, so, so,
so sorry I am late."

And her body
was like a rock.

So stiff.

And I saw something
in her eyes that was fear.

I saw fear in her eyes.

You have to keep in mind,
she was, I think, 81 years old

or 83 years old
at this point,

and had a stroke.

She was
in pretty rough shape.

When I met her here
a couple of times...

I met her here
and read with her.

I thought that she had cancer,
right away.

Unbeknownst to us, she actually
was terminally ill at that time,

and she knew it.

We didn't know it
but she did.

She couldn't even get
the words out of her mouth,

and it was nothing to do
with the dentures,

which is the real reason
she quit the movie,

because her teeth
kept falling out.

She was afraid to admit

something
was the matter with her

because maybe the picture
would be cancelled.

When she found out
she couldn't perform,

then she said
she had to leave to go

to New York to go
to the dentist.

And I think maybe Larry
may have made a mistake

in showing her
some of the dailies.

She saw the rushes.

She saw how bad she looked.

And I think
that when she saw herself,

she couldn't take it,
and so she walked off.

She decided she wasn't
gonna be in the picture.

She didn't look right.

Any ideas I had
about performance,

well, he just wasn't
interested in that at all,

so that whole first week,
I was playing she's away.

Really, I wasn't comfortable
and I was mad.

She opted to go
in a different direction

as to why she quit the film.

I knew I couldn't go back.

I knew I could not finish it.

And then he started hearing
on the news

and through the media
and so forth

that she quit the movie

because it was
a Larry Cohen script

and she decided she didn't
like the movie at all.

And that devastated him.

She finally testified
at a sworn statement

that she had to give at a
deposition

for the insurance company

and admitted
that her dentures broke

before the picture started.

Once again,
I'm facing disaster,

so I've got to come up
with some kind of a solution.

And what did Larry Cohen do?

Gave the lines
to Barbara Carrera.

Changed the script
around a little bit.

And we finished the picture.

I know there was a fear
there for a while

that they would just shelve
the whole project.

And I know Larry worked very
hard to do rewrites

and politic
with the executives

to get it still on track.

I said to the people at MGM,

every video store
has a Bette Davis section.

That means you'll sell
enough videos

to get back
your $2.5 million.

As disastrous as "Wicked Stepmother"
may appear to be,

the investors got
all their money back.

And even made a profit
on this movie,

believe it or not.

So it all worked out well.

What he did was
a labor of love for her.

And perhaps she never knew it.

But those are the facts.

That's what happened.

- Josh!
- Okay, I'm out here.

I had never heard
of Larry Cohen

before I got the offer
for "The Ambulance."

And my manager
at the time said,

"They're offering you a great
deal of money

for this really weird film."

And I read the script.

Thought it was really funny
and really weird.

Larry told me
that he wrote the script

because of his own
experience in an ambulance

that was a ride
he'll never forget.

And when I got out of that
ambulance, I thought,

"This was one of the worst things
to ever happen to me in my life,

riding in this ambulance."

It had very bad springs

and I was bouncing
up and down.

I was going crazy back there.

Any injury you had
felt 100 times worse

when you got out of
that fucking ambulance.

So I guess that's what gave me
the idea for "The Ambulance."

What'd I do wrong?

You weren't particularly
convincing.

Oh, thanks.

And you're not very observant.

Not a good witness at all.

Larry did not take himself
too seriously,

which is a great
quality, I think, in anyone.

Certainly in any artist.

And he was kind of a big kid.

It's like going to camp
working for Larry Cohen.

It really is.
It's fun.

And every day's different.

And every day is
some kind of cool event.

And you have to keep that
alive in yourself, I think,

in order to do any kind
of interesting work.

And his movies are fun.
They're fun to watch.

It kind of invites you in,
you know.

Larry sets the stage
for that because Larry...

"You know, I don't really know
what I want in this,

so I'm gonna try this.
Do you have any ideas?"

That's how Larry is.
Larry's, like, "Well..."

One of my bad habits that
I've gotten from Larry Cohen

is not prepping for shows.

I still have it to this day

and I have Larry Cohen
to thank for that.

Kill myself.
Kill myself!

He came in prepared

just enough so that
we could start the shoot

and then the rest just...
just evolved.

You just see him. You just see his
head just, you know, going, thinking.

And then all of a sudden, he
starts telling you this stuff,

and it works.

I mean, sometimes
you're looking like,

what's he talking about?
Is this the same movie?

Next thing you know, it's some
of the best stuff in the movie.

What're you in for?

Who the hell knows?

They say cardiac.
I say indigestion.

Red Buttons
used to love to spend

a whole evening with Larry,
talking about old movies.

They would be
in bliss together.

He always wanted to be
friends with me.

During the show, he liked the way I was
kidding around and all that stuff.

And I knew all the old jokes
and everything.

Why did she have to go
before me?

Aw, come on. Come on.
We have to go...

41 years, she cooked for me,
she cleaned for me.

She made love to me.

- I should have married her.
- That's enough.

I didn't want to start
in a friendship with him

and then have him be
pissed off

that he didn't like
the picture.

So after the picture
was finished and he saw it,

and he loved it.

He was the best man
in our wedding

and we spent
a lot of time together.

And it was really
a beautiful relationship.

And then I helped him
with his Broadway show,

"Buttons on Broadway."

I wrote a lot
of the routines for him

on "Buttons on Broadway."

It was a big loss for Larry
when Red died

because I think he was,
you know,

Larry's dad died
when Larry was 19 or so.

And Red was very paternal
and admired him.

Before he passed away,

I kissed him good-bye
and sang him a little song.

And that was
the last time I saw him.

Larry doesn't get enough credit
for how kind he is.

You know, Larry is one
of the sweetest, kindest,

most considerate people
on our planet.

Drop your gun.
Get back. Drop your gun.

Back up!

Get back, get back!

Get back!

Fred Williamson came to me.

He said he wanted to make
a picture in his hometown,

Gary, Indiana,

which happens to be
gang capital of the world.

Murder capital of the world.

Gary, Indiana.

It was a rough place to be,

especially if you lived there.

Law of the jungle.
Life for a life.

Suppose I want more.

"Original Gangstas"
was produced by me

and I had intended
to direct it.

I decided at the last minute

to let Larry Cohen direct it
as a favor to Larry Cohen.

I had no anticipation

that he'd ever be able
to come up with the money.

Maybe because my name was
attached to it,

he ended up coming back
and saying he had the money.

He didn't know that I had
already raised the money

from pre-selling the film.

Had nothing to do
with Larry Cohen.

Larry Cohen's name
came up at the end.

So then I thought to myself,

do I really want to go to Gary,
Indiana in the summertime?

It was really, really bad,

and Larry does not do well in
extreme cold or extreme heat.

It was so hot, you could
barely even think and function.

Oh, and the actors
were on oxygen

when they were off camera.

It was an experience,
I'll tell you.

Larry wasn't someone who would
direct other people's material.

You know,
with "Original Gangstas,"

he took the script and
essentially made it his own.

I did rewrite
a lot of the script.

I didn't want to take credit
away from anybody

so I didn't try and arbitrate
it or put my name on it.

It's not a New York film, but it
does have a very urban feel to it.

In this case,
it's Gary, Indiana.

Might as well be New York,
actually.

The change in setting alone
makes it more interesting

that you're doing this sort of
Midwest take on a New York film.

And Larry started
inventing stuff.

He started inventing Larry Cohen
stuff, you know,

which is... the script
started to go like this.

And I'm saying,
"Wow, man, we can't do that."

So, you know,
we had some battles there.

That's the only way
I could work.

I couldn't make the picture
any other way.

He didn't see me
as a producer.

He saw me as somebody
he had worked with.

But I was the man and I was
the one who had the final say.

And the truth of the matter is I
was just working for the movie.

I was just trying to make
the movie as good a movie,

a coherent movie,
as possible.

So it wasn't fatal,
so I didn't kill him.

I didn't beat him up,
so it wasn't fatal.

We had a conversation,
and we moved on.

And we hired
about 101 gang members

to work on the crew and then
the picture as cast members.

They all came on time, they all did
everything they were asked to do.

He gave them something to do

and a reason to get up
and make a time clock.

They were probably the
safest people in Gary, Indiana

because of these gang members

that were kind of protecting
the turf.

And they were
very friendly to me.

And sometimes
they'd come to my trailer

and they would hand me a bag of
Famous Amos cookies or something.

During the four or five weeks
we were in Gary, no crime.

Day after we left,
it started again.

Ten days later, it was so bad,

they had to send
the National Guard in.

They were killing each other
right and left.

But when we were there,
nothing.

Fred did it all.

It couldn't have been made
except for him.

And he deserves
all that credit.

The reviews on that picture,
by the way,

were extremely good.

It actually doesn't feel
completely like a Larry film.

It feels a little more muted.

Of course, you do realize
eventually it is making a message.

It is about gang violence.

It's about the older generation

actually teaching something
to the younger generation

and showing them
the way to go.

It's just not
immediately clear.

So that's very Larry.

Well, here we go.

Oh, no. No.

You offering me a ride?

That's the way it's supposed
to go, isn't it?

You sure you got room?

Yeah. Sure.

Get in.

"Masters of Horror"

was an interesting experiment
in television.

In 2005,
Mick Garris decided

that he would have
this anthology series.

But the title
has two meanings.

"Masters of Horror"

refers to both the director
and the writer.

I had never adapted
my own short fiction

to any other medium,

like a screenplay
or a teleplay,

so this was news to me.

The purpose
of "Masters of Horror"

was to give people
an opportunity to have

an unfettered hand
when they're films.

That, creatively,
they could be the final voice.

And he asked me
if I would do one,

and of course
I said I would.

He may not say so now,

but he was
a little nervous about it.

Even said to me, "I'm not sure
if I'm up to it."

And I knew he would be.

And it took
a little bit of coercion,

but not much for an
entertainer like Larry.

In fact,
he actually brought Dave Schow,

who wrote the short story,
in,

and then Larry would run
his own ideas by him

and brought him out to
Vancouver to consult with him.

I walked on to the set,
met him for the first time

and learned the first lesson
of Larry Club.

Always do what Larry says.

I said to him when I met him,

"I'm gonna ask you
to come every day

and be on the set and be
part of the production."

Just like I'd like
to be treated

as the writer
on other people's sets.

The great thing about coming
out of writing into directing

is that you do learn the value
of having a writer around.

He and I came up with stuff almost
collaboratively in the moment.

Sometimes, we came up with
stuff at the same time.

Hm. See this?

It's a hollow point.

Makes a teeny little hole
going in, but coming out.

Oh. It's a big slice
of cherry pie.

Of all my performances
in horror films,

my best performance
is this one,

because it takes a long time
to find that perfect balance.

The way Larry worked with me,

he senses how far he can go,

and then I go
and he's got to back off.

He's made all the other
experiences with directors pale.

They pale by comparison.
Why?

Well, an actor wants to be around
someone who understands performing.

And of all the directors
I know,

the one who understood performing
better than any of them

was Larry Cohen because
he's a performer, so...

And when you say, "Stella,"
I mean, you gotta say it.

Stella Adler we're talking now.

- Stella.
- He teaches you

how to improvise
in a certain way.

"Let's try it this way"
or "how do you feel this way?"

So it's really directing you

and making the moment natural

and real and that's
what he's great at.

Good directors throw you
a little bit of license

and make you responsible
for being the author

of that character.

He knows what he wants,

but he gives everyone
their freedom and space.

He trusts his actors
and they trust him.

And they make magic.

You know when
you're eight years old

and you make plans
with your friends,

and it's all very complicated
and it's all very detailed.

Well, that's Larry.
That's working with Larry.

It's like you're working
with an eight-year-old friend.

It's really fun.

I think he struggles
with the whole hardship

of directing a picture.

That's the part
that makes him feel

like it's easier for me
and more pleasant for me

just to write the script

and then give it
to somebody else.

I don't mourn a filmmaker

who's left
the director's chair

and is just writing,

if they're content that way,

because directing
is a physically demanding act.

One...

Fuck...

This will count as a hang-up.

- Fucking expensive...
- I can make him stop.

Just say the word.
Can you hear me?

Yes!

- ...by the neck.
- Whose street is this?

- Yeah, that's right, man.
- Oh, my God. Holy sh...

He was fucking shot!

Oh, my God.
He ain't breathing, man.

"Phone Booth" falls
into that category

of Larry riffing
on Hitchcock,

in this case,
taking a narrative challenge,

sort of doing
"Life Boat" basically,

where you have your character
stuck in one setting.

In this case,
doing it as extreme as possible

where your hero is literally trapped
in a glass cage for the whole movie.

I didn't like the voice
of the sniper.

So I went
to the Fox executives.

"Oh, we can't do anything
about that.

That's Joel's choice."

I said, "Well, I don't care
what you say to Joel.

I can say anything I please to him.
It's a free country.

I'm gonna tell him."

So I call him up on the phone.

I said, "I don't like the
voice of the sniper."

He says, "You
really think so?"

I said, "Yeah."
He says, "Okay."

Picks up the phone,
calls Kiefer Sutherland.

The next day,
there's a new sniper.

Without him, that picture
wouldn't be half as good.

He really made the picture.

Well, you could ask her
to forgive you, Stuart.

You could confess your sins

and beg for absolution.

Come clean.

He takes these pulpy ideas

and sets them
in the real world.

And he never loses
that sense of reality,

no matter how bizarre
that things can be.

I mean, Larry
is wonderfully fertile.

He's an idea guy.

He's always coming up
with stuff.

And then, okay,
I've created this

and now I'll go through
with it.

You know,
I wish I was fertile as Larry.

He was doing
lots of spec scripts

and selling them
at a million dollars a pop

at an age where
very few people

are selling screenplays,

and just had been doing it
so consistently.

Always trying to do
something every day,

like send a script
out to somebody

or make a pitch to somebody

or make contact
with somebody.

Try to do something that,
you know,

keeps the career going,

keeps it alive.

Enter the little office.

The little orifice,
as they say.

You know,
every couple mornings,

I go into Larry's bathroom

and I see these little pieces
of paper of ideas.

So the house is littered with all
these little pieces of paper.

This is where it all happens.

Here, there, upstairs,

in the other room,
in the other office,

in the living room,
and in the dining room.

The whole house is my office.

Never stop.

Now I write longhand.

I just enjoy writing
with a pen and pad.

I feel the dialog running down
my arm on to the page.

It's astounding to me,
in 27 years,

this man writes every day,

and there's never
a complaint.

It's complete joy.

Well, over the years,

even though I was making
my movies,

I was still selling
screenplays to other people

and I was still selling
pilots for TV series.

I mean, Larry can pump out
a script in a week.

20, 25 pages a day.

In a week, it's done.

I fucking hate him.

I mean, that's...
what a great gift.

What a gift to be able
to do that on the fly.

Larry just sits his butt
in a chair

and either picks up
the Dictaphone,

little tape recorder,

or the pen and legal pad,

and it just flows
out of him.

Well, sometimes
when I write a script,

I just start with one of the most
interesting scenes in the script

because I want to get myself
interested in the material.

And the way to do that is to
bring the characters to life.

And he's pacing

and he's playing the parts
of the woman,

the man, the policeman.

He... all of the characters,

he is speaking
and role-playing.

I know how a guy talks.

I know how he thinks.

I know who his girlfriend is.

And the back-story gets
filled in.

And the future
starts to happen.

I don't know
what's gonna happen next

but I want to find out so...

then I go back and start
from the beginning again.

But now I know
who I'm writing about.

You know, Larry can go knocking
on a kazillion doors

and have people say, "I didn't
like it, I didn't like it."

But he knows he likes it
and it's good and somewhere...

Larry always says, "Every script
has a history and a journey.

And this will get made
some day."

And just before we start
the actual reading,

I'd like to introduce
the real star, Larry Cohen.

We had an event at a place
called Jump Cut Café.

And they read a screenplay
of mine called "Movie House."

It was a terrific evening.

And everybody seemed to have
a very good time.

"The artwork depicts
a beautiful young woman

with a pair of gloved hands
wrapped around her throat

"against the background
of the New York City skyline."

"When I was younger,
going to the movies,

the shows were continuous,
usually a double feature.

Back then,
you had to do some thinking.

It was more like life.

You're thrown
in the middle of things.

It all happened
before you got there."

His dialog is amazing.

And it may not read that way,

but the minute you hear it,

it's, like, oh, well, yeah.

That's how that had to go.

"And you did a fine job,
proving once again

that real people can
outperform actors any time."

If you asked me to define
a Larry Cohen film,

It's that it earns its keep
minute by minute.

Everything in it
is always interesting.

I think the fact that he has
faith in humanity,

that he actually puts
some trust in the fact

that people will try
to make themselves better

because there's always
that sense

that somehow people
will find a way.

They will survive and endure.

Well, the era through which

his most wonderful movies
were distributed,

that has come and gone.

But his ability
to tell stories,

his ability to think pictures,

is still with us,
still with him.

"Murder at the Festival."

Wouldn't it be great
if somebody ran amok here

with a hatchet

and started chopping people up
for real?

Wouldn't that be a good movie?

It's delightful
and it is surprising

that he is still as innocent
as he is in some ways

and that he is as childlike.

He's got that, yes, I'll dance
in the rain thing about him.

And I think that is
an amazing attribute

to have as a person.

But certainly as a filmmaker
and as a director.

I can't imagine having
a better collaborator

and friend and
teacher than he was.

Working with Larry
is a freeing experience

because there are
no mistakes.

It's important, I think,
for any creative person

to not be afraid
of mistakes.

And he's not.

All right,
they don't like the picture.

So what?
Pictures are rough.

I don't care.
You don't like my movies?

So what? But do you like me?
That's the question.

With really creative people
who have a gift,

if they're not doing
that gift,

there's just no life.

Like Larry's always said
to me,

"If I didn't, you know,
sell that first script,"

he says, "I don't know
what I woulda done."

Larry is a creative artist
that has to do his art.

He would be doing it
if it didn't sell.

He would have to do it.

If you look back
at his filmography

and you see the variety
of the stuff,

much of it low budget
and much of it exploitation,

but still, all really
interesting and different

and trying to do something
that nobody else has done.

Well, they're individualistic.

They're clearly
Larry Cohen movies.

I mean, that's what...
that's what's interesting

about a filmmaker
where you can see...

A movie
doesn't tell you anything.

But seven or eight movies
tells you a lot.

You know, I miss the pictures
that he made.

I miss his spirit.

And I miss this spirit
of the times,

which we can say was
truly the renegade spirit.

And that's it.

What do you mean, that's it?

My career's over?

The moral of it
is never give up.

If you think
you have a good movie,

you just can't listen to
other people

and let them dissuade you

and let them get you
discouraged.

You just have to keep
annoying people.

The only thing that's
important is your own film.

This is my epitaph.

But I'm gonna live.

So you'll be sorry
you didn't do a part two.

"Part Two...
Larry Cohen Lives Again."

"Cohen's Alive".
How's that?

I like that.

You can't possibly get all
of this into one documentary.