Roger Corman’s autobiography, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime
The Trip used leftover sets from The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre . The Terror was shot on leftover sets from The Raven with no script—they made it up daily. Never build what you can borrow. Never borrow what you can find abandoned.
In the high-stakes world of Hollywood, where massive budgets often lead to even more massive losses, Roger Corman stands as a mathematical anomaly. Known as the "Pope of Pop Cinema," Corman produced or directed hundreds of films, famously claiming to have never lost money on a single one (except for the 1962 social drama The Intruder ).
If you have a car chase, you don't close the street. You find stock footage of a car chase and insert close-ups of your actors in a parked car with a fan blowing their hair.
And that is the closest you will ever get to never losing a dime.