September 6, 2018

A Q&A with Larry Cohen: Why the “King of B movies,” really dislikes the term “B Movie”

Larry Cohen is the physical embodiment of the phrase, “if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.” If you offered the man a multi-million dollar budget for a film, but said he’d need to strictly adhere to the rules and rely on over a dozen different departments, he’d probably turn you down, preferring to handle everything in his own way. 

Wait, you’ve never heard the name “Larry Cohen” before? Well, maybe you’ve heard of his disciples: Quentin Tarantino, James Wan, J.J. Abrams, Joe Dante, and Martin Scorsese. 

Yes, all of these powerhouse directors were influenced by Mr. Cohen, who has been described as the top authority on B movies and cult classics. From Black Caesar, to Q, to God Told Me To, to The Stuff, Cohen’s sci-fi, horror, and exploitation pulp put down some deep roots in Tinseltown and the minds of budding moviemakers. 

And it wasn’t just the content of his projects, it was the way in which he made them. A true Daredevil, Larry Cohen wasn’t one for big crews or coloring inside the lines. He didn’t wait to get a permit to drive car onto the sidewalk and sure as hell didn’t shy away from shooting machine guns from the top of the Chrysler Building, while his crew was supported by nothing but ropes. 

To celebrate such a renegade of the industry, Steve Mitchell (writer of 1986’s cult classic Chopping Mall) made a documentary about Cohen’s illustrious career, King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen. It’s got interviews with some of the biggest names in Hollywood and chronicles some of the wackiest things that Cohen ever got away with while exercising his guerrilla style of filmmaking. 

In honor of the documentary, I spoke to Mr. Cohen ourselves, discussing he projects he’s most proud of, some of the nuttiest anecdotes that spring to mind, and why he doesn’t think B movies should be described as such.

JOSH WEISS: So just to start off, can you talk about how your love of sci-fi and horror began?

Larry Cohen: I guess as a child. I mean, there weren’t as many science fiction and horror films back in those days. But I couldn’t go to the films like Frankenstein and Dracula and all that—my parents wouldn’t let me go. I could see the coming attractions, but I couldn’t go see the pictures. But I started to like the genre when I saw pictures years later like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and stuff like that. My interest in writing has always been much more general, I was interested in political drama and social drama and detective stories and thrillers of all kinds. Horror and science fiction [were] only a small part of it. 

JW: Going off that, what drew you toward the B-movie/exploitation side of filmmaking?

LC: Well, I never even thought of them as B movies. To me, a B movie is a [misunderstood] movie. You look back, and some of the films that were considered B movies have been much more enduring and influential than the A movies that have all just been forgotten. All the big, puffy [studio] movies have been forgotten. Quite a few of the horror and genre movies still live on and [any] remake cheapens [the property]. [It’s] usually not as good as the original. 

JW: Do you have a movie of yours that you’re most proud of?

LC: It’s like asking somebody which one of their children they like the best. Some of the worst ones were the most enjoyable to make and made some of the most enduring friendships. So, who can say? But I do like making movies and I did like shooting [them] and I did like actors. A lot of the directors that I’ve known over the years don’t really like actors. 

They’re scared of em’ and they try to dominate them by being authoritarian and giving orders and they don’t even enjoy the experience of shooting the movie that much. I loved making movies and I loved actors, so I always had a very good time and everybody on the set had a very good time, I think…although the hours were merciless and the crew was always complaining, but as soon as I announced another movie, the same people were always back, wanting to work again.

JW: Speaking of friendships, you’ve got these huge heavy-hitting Hollywood personalities in the documentary, like Yaphet Kotto, Joe Dante, J.J. Abrams Martin Scorsese. What does it feel like to have worked with these legends and then having them reflect on your career?

LC: Well, it’s nice to know these people and know that they like your work. [The production] missed out on Tarantino and James Wan and a lot of other people that are big fans of mine that [they] weren’t able to contact for the film. I didn’t have anything to do with the making of the picture, I just left it all up to the director and the producers. I knew nothing about what was going on—I didn’t want to interfere in any way. Usually, when I’m working on a picture of mine, I write, produce, and direct, and do everything; I’m a kind of control freak and I didn’t wanna infringe on their creativity, so I just kept out of it. So, there were quite a few people that they didn’t get, but I will do that when make the sequel, Cohen Strikes Back. 

JW: In the film, we get anecdotes about you driving cars on the sidewalk and shells raining down in NYC. What’s the craziest thing you’ve gotten away with while making a movie?

LC: That would be hard to figure out, but there were quite a few of em’. I suppose, if I have to pick one, I guess [it would be] firing the machine guns off the top of the Chrysler Building. [It was] the most bizarre because we were [over 1,000 feet] above the street, dangling there on ropes and no security, really. You could fall off the top of the building easily because [there are] no windows in there, it’s all those big triangles you see at the top of the Chrysler Building. … 

It was quite an event and I didn’t think at first that the crew would follow me up there. I thought they were gonna chicken out because you had to climb these little, rickety ladders to get straight up, and you could feel the building moving from side-to-side. I thought they were gonna say, ‘No!,’ but they didn’t. They came up there, they were very, very brave and we shot the thing and started firing those machine guns and it was quite wild. That was the most spectacular, but that wasn’t entirely without permits or anything—we had mostly off-duty New York police officers firing the machine guns. They knew what was going on. 

JW: Are there any other anecdotes that really stick out in your mind?

LC: We had some crazy things that happened. One time, we were making a picture called God Told Me To [and] we had this sniper up on the roof of a water tower. We were all set to shoot, except the production assistant, who was supposed to show up with the rifle, [had] not appeared. We’re on a rooftop of an apartment building with a big water tower in mid-Manhattan and no rifle. We got the actor up there, Sammy Williams—who won the Tony Award for Best Actor on Broadway in A Chorus Line—he’s a very brave kid and he’s up on top of the water tower. We’re waiting to shoot the thing, but we’ve got no rifle! Where’s the telescopic rifle? 

So, finally, the kid shows up [and] he says, ‘Well, I have to tell you, the guy that was supposed to loan me the rifle changed his mind.’ I said, ‘Why didn’t you let me know before?’ He said, ‘Well, I didn’t wanna upset you.’ I said, ‘What do you think you’re doing now? How can I shoot a scene where a sniper is shooting people and there’s no rifle?’ I turned around and there was about half a dozen people up on the roof, who lived in the building and they were residents. They’d come up to see the film being shot. And for some reason, I looked at them and I said, ‘Any of you got a telescopic rifle?’ A girl puts her hand up [and says,] ‘My boyfriend has one.’ I said, ‘Where is it?’ She said, ‘Downstairs.’ I said, ‘Would you mind going to get it for us?’ So, comes back up five minutes later with a telescopic rifle and we shoot the scene. Who ever thought anything like that could ever happen? That the person on the roof watching [the shoot] would just happen to be a person, who owned a telescopic rifle? You gotta believe that G-d is your production manager.

JW: So, you’re described as this Daredevil of filmmaking. What’s been your guiding principle all these years?

LC: The idea never was to be the Daredevil of the movies, it was to get the production values that we really couldn’t get any other way. In order to do some of those sequences, we would have had to close down many, many city blocks and had a tremendous amount of security and a tremendous amount of trailers and dressing rooms and all kinds of support people that would have made the whole thing tremendously difficult. The more people you have and the more equipment you have and the more area you close off, the more attention you attract. Pretty soon, you’ve boxed yourself in and there’s no place to shoot because you’re looking at your own equipment. We shot with virtually no backup at all. In fact, the first picture, Black Caesar, we shot out the back of a taxi cab; there was no crew to speak of and no trucks. We just used the cab that was in the movie and had the equipment in the trunk and shot and moved on. We couldn’t have gotten all that same stuff in a week’s time and we shot it all in one day. It was the first day of the shoot … and I wanted to break the back of the movie by doing some of the most difficult stuff right away and we got away with it. The cameraman, James Signorelli, he was a little astonished when he showed up. [He said], ‘Where’s the rest of the crew?’ I said, ‘You’re it, kid.’ 

JW: If you could make any sci-fi or horror movie you wanted today, what would it be?

LC: I have quite a number of scripts that are written already and ready to go that I’m trying to put together. [I] have one right now that’s out called The Last Comic Book, which is a bit of fantasy-thriller and [it was] just submitted it to Clint Eastwood over the weekend. We’ll see what happens. [I’m] still trying to put these things together and I’m still writin’ em’ and I get a great deal of pleasure out of writing. 

One thing that’s nice about it is you don’t have to have anybody else involved. You can do it all by yourself. I’ve tried to make [my] motion picture career as personal as possible, have as few people involved and do it as much of it myself. I have written, produced, directed, art directed the set, I was even the prop man. Everything I did, I did myself because it was easier than designating stuff and explaining things to people. By the time it took me to tell people what to do, I could do it myself. 

JW: What are some of the sci-fi and horror properties that you admire?

LC: Tarantino told me that he thought Reservoir Dogs was Q without the bird.