Jason Souza chats with Larry Cohen…
Larry Cohen is a lot of things entertainment. He is the rare storyteller who has straddled the line between multiple genres since the 50s, and still retains an active career in Hollywood. His exploitation output almost always comes with nuanced social analyzation and critique. He was a massive influence in blaxploitation cinema with Black Caesar and Hell Up In Harlem (both 1973). He has had several grindhouse horror hits, starting with the mutant baby-run amok film Itâs Alive (1974), prescient shocker God Told Me To (1976), high concept monster movie Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), and consumer-critical satire The Stuff (1985). More recently, heâs written the screenplay for the Joel Schumacher film Phone Booth (2002) and continues to write and develop screenplays and stories for film. Heâs been doggedly independent for fifty plus years, and is currently the deserved subject of a documentary entitled King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen. Mr. Cohen was very gracious in breaking with his busy schedule to have a conversation with Flickering Myth…
My first question is, youâve had complete, or near-complete artistic control over your films. Do you think thatâs still possible for filmmakers to achieve today?
Oh sure. Certain people get it, particularly if theyâve had a big hit, and then they get it on their next picture, and so, eventually they have a huge disaster and they donât get it anymore. But you know, itâs always been the case that you can get autonomy at the very pinnacle or at the very bottom rung, where nobody cares. So, you know, I generally had a lower budget. The studios just didnât have time to supervise me and they let me go off and make my movie and deliver it. So, nobody had any input while we were shooting. Nobody came on the set, nobody looked at dailies, nobody gave me notes. It was just a matter of going off and making the picture.
Wow, thatâs a great way to do it.
I got spoiled. Iâll tell ya, I couldnât do it any other way. When I tried to work with producers who interfered all the time I just, in a couple of cases, I just walked off the picture because I couldnât make my movie the way I wanted to make it and I wasnât interested in making it their way.
I would imagine making films by committee is not satisfying, really, at all.
Every time you make a decision you gotta check it out with people and now they have to run it by executives who have no film experience at all, usually. Theyâre from a bank, and by the time you get an answer back itâs just too late to do what you wanted to do because youâve moved to another location. You know, itâs a frustrating experience but a lot of people go through it and they like to have their name on the picture. And you know, thatâs what they do and my career has been highly different. Itâs been one where I make all the decisions and there is very little collaboration with anybody else.
Thatâs sounds like a dream.
As long as the pictures turn out okay.
Your films are more socially conscious than many, especially in exploitation. Does the social commentary in your films naturally present itself as a byproduct of the story? Or do you have a social statement that you want to make and then kind of build the story around that?
Well, I like to make a picture about something. And you know, Iâve dealt with abortion and racism and many subjects, and consumer abuses like in The Stuff, where the product is being put out on the market that kills people. Every day I watch television and there used to be cigarette commercials but now they donât have âem anymore. Now itâs all drugs, itâs all medications of some kind and every one of them has side effects which may very well ruin your life, or kill you. And they announce them, too, at the end. It could cause terminal illnesses, and they still advertise them back to back on television. Itâs almost a comedy routine to listen to the disclaimers at the end of the commercials. So, The Stuff was really about something like that. About the cynicism that big business has. That they will sell you anything-even if it kills you-and then deny it.
Yes. And I feel like your films have been really prescient in almost predicting the proliferation of these social issues. Like in God Told Me To, it opens up with a sniper attack, which, if that film were made now, opening it with a scene like that I think would be really dangerous, or subversiveâŠor considered that, anyway.
And believe it or not, letâs face it, the ISIS terrorists, their last words before they blow people up are, âGod is good.â So, itâs pretty close to God Told Me To. I mean, you know, itâs very predictable that a mass of murders would come in the name of God because itâs nothing new, itâs been going on for centuries. Look at all the people that have been massacred over the years in the name of God. So, itâs just⊠thatâs why I made the picture, actually. After I had gone to the art museum in London and looked at all the classical paintings of religious themes. Because at one time all the artists were subsidized by the church, and they were told to do religious paintings. And they did some magnificent religious paintings with some of the most violent scenes ever imagined. With people being stabbed through and shot through with spears and people with dozens of arrows coming out of their bodies and pardon me, but even the image of Jesus⊠nailed up to a cross. I couldnât think of a more violent image than a man crucifiedâŠand itâs the basis for an entire religion. So, you know, thereâs nothing as violent as religion and itâs caused more peopleâs deaths than anything. And today we have another religion that is terrifying people, so, God Told Me To is as effective or as meaningful today as it was when we made it forty years ago. Incidentally, Tony Lo Bianco is the only member of the cast whoâs still alive. We just had a showing in New York. He came and we enjoyed seeing each other again. But I reminded him that heâs the only surviving member of the cast.
Thatâs pretty ironic.
Young and old-theyâre all gone.
I grew up Catholic, and I remember as a kid going into church and we had a very graphic depiction of that at the altar, of Jesus being crucified with the blood coming through the crown of thorns and everything.
Well, youâre supposed to actually drink the blood of Jesus, arenât you, as part of the ceremony? I mean, come on. If you think about it, itâs a pretty gory thought, that youâre drinking the blood of a crucified man. Iâm not against any religion. I donât practice any religion orthodoxy, but I think that any group that thinks that theyâre the only ones and any everybody else is going to go to hell, I canât abide that.
I concur. I canât understand that either. Thereâs currently a documentary being made about you-King Cohen-which is awesome. Iâm so excited to see this. What were your thoughts when you were told a movie was being made to honor your legacy?
Well, it came as a complete surprise to me. I didnât advocate it or I didnât or seek it. I didnât know the people who were making the picture. They just called me and said they wanted to make a film about me and I said, âWellâŠgo right ahead. I will cooperate in whatever way you want me to but I donât want to have any input into it.â As you can see in my other films, I have total control of my films and I didnât want to go in there and try and take away their autonomy and tell them what to do and I knew that if I got involved I would be doing just that, so I thought, Iâll just stay out of it and let them make the movie and see what happens and, uh, I havenât even seen the picture yet. Iâll be seeing it up in Canada in Montreal at the festival (Fantasia Film Festival).
Thatâll be amazing because youâll get to see it with a crowd for the first time.
Thatâs right. And Iâll see the reaction and uh, Iâm sure thereâll be something in there I wonât like, but Iâm sure thereâll be plenty that I will like, and so Iâm just gonna go and be part of the audience and Iâll be surprised.
And I canât wait to see the finished product, myself. The little snippets Iâve seenâŠI think theyâre on the right track for sure.
I saw the trailer. The trailer looked pretty good. And theyâve got very good people like Martin Scorsese and J.J. Abrams and Rick Baker and you know, a lot of very wonderful people who were kind enough to participate.
I know that you are hands-off with the film, but what aspects of your career would you like the documentary to focus on the most? Do you have any preference for that?
Well, I mean, I’d like them to talk a little bit more about my Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover movie that I made back in 1973-74, because itâs so important and cogent today with all this fuss about the FBI and the presidentâs involvement with the FBI director and all that nonsense. You know, Mr. Hoover was very close to the presidents, particularly people like Lyndon Johnson. And some of the others. I mean, Lyndon Johnson lived down the street from Mr. Hoover and they were great friends and spent a lot of time together and president Johnsonâs dog was named J. Edgar. He called his dog after his FBI director. And sometimes when he was out in the street calling the dog, Mr. Hoover would come out of the house thinking the president was calling him!
They were great friends and in all the depictions of their relationship, including the wonderful movie that was made about Lyndon Johnson on HBO, they made them appear as adversaries, which was not true. And if anybody ever had private conversations, it was Hoover and the presidents. Because he was bringing them the dirt on their opposition all the time and covering up their mistakes and their faults and if Hoover had lived there wouldnât have been any Watergate, thatâs for sure. And the descent into Watergate all came from Mark Felt, who was Deep Throat, who was the acting director of the FBI after Hoover, and so all the information came directly from the FBI that brought down Nixon and Woodward and Bernstein have been taking credit for that and dining out on that for forty-five years, and the truth of the matter is they wouldnât have gotten nearly that much attention if the world had known that the information came from the FBI-the despised FBI. Mark Felt also provided the exact same information that brought down Spiro Agnew who was the vice president, and they had to get rid of Spiro Agnew before Nixon because no one ever would have deposed Nixon if they thought they were gonna get Spiro Agnew as president. So, once they got rid of Spiro Agnew, then Nixon was fair game after that. And Hoover died leaving explicit instructions that the Nixon administration was to be brought down, and they did it. And itâs a legacy to Mr. Hoover. None of that was in the Clint Eastwood movie and none of that has ever been mentioned in any of the press over the years. They just have not dealt with any of that. Itâs like it never happened. No one ever correlates the descent of the vice president Spiro Agnew prior to Nixon and ties it all together and follows it back to the FBI. You know when they finally revealed Mark Felt as the Deep Throat, they never really went into the fact that he was the acting director of the FBI at the time. He was just an FBI agent as far as the press handled it, but he was actually the acting director of the FBI at the time.
How was the film received at the time?
Well, the problem with that picture was, we were not very kind to the republicans and we were not very kind to the democrats. So, if you donât take sides, youâre in trouble. When we premiered the picture at the Kennedy center in Washington, that was a mistake because nobody liked the picture because the democrats didnât like it and the republicans didnât like it.
Maybe they felt Kennedy was portrayed asâŠ
Yeah, Kennedy was portrayed as very self-serving and Lyndon Johnson was portrayed as kind of a despot and a bad guy in a way and Nixon as well. And Roosevelt, even, didnât come off too well. People just thought it was outrageous that we would make a picture like that. And unfortunately, the wonderful Washington Post didnât like the fact that we exposed the fact that Deep Throat was the FBI and they deliberately went out of their way to try and undermine the picture. So, God bless âem. Theyâre a wonderful newspaper. Everybody thinks theyâre the greatest but you know, theyâre really a tool of the democratic party and anything they can do to undermine the opposition they will do. So, you know they didnât like our picture and they tried to destroy the picture and I thought that was quite unfortunate.
Me too. Itâs really underrated.
You know, it didnât get a very big release in America but it was a big hit in England. It premiered at the London film festival-had a wonderful response. They filled up the theater, it was the Odeon Theater in Leicester Square, the biggest movie theater in England, and we packed the house. And then the picture played for about eight weeks at The Screen on The Hill, which is a very nice theater where all Woody Allenâs pictures play, and then the BBC picked it up and played it a number of times. So, the picture was well received in England because they had no axe to grind with the politics and you know, we got reviews that you would have thought the picture was Lawrence of Arabia. I mean, the reviews were ecstatic. I couldnât believe the reviews. They were just astonishing reviews by some of the harshest critics in England. So, look, that was satisfying to me. And when I went to London for the premier and they had a dinner, they seated me next to Elia Kazan so that was one of the thrills of my life, to spend two hours chatting with Elia Kazan at lunch. That was worth the whole trip. And all he wanted to talk about was the movie because heâd been involved with the black listâŠ
Right, because he had gotten in troubleâŠ
Right, and he had some very strong opinions and he was interested in that picture quite a bit and I was happy to talk to him but I kept thinking, here I am with Kazan and weâre talking about my picture. Everybody talks with him about his pictures, but he wanted to talk about mine.
Wow, thatâs so cool.
Yes, it was. It was one of the high points of my life.
At the beginning of that movie, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, thereâs a statement that the film was shot on actual locations at the FBI, but without the approval or censorship of the Bureau. Did you get in trouble with the FBI, too?
Nobody bothered me. We actually shot in Hooverâs house, we shot in Hoover’s office. We shot at Clyde Tolsonâs (Hooverâs best friend and purported lover) apartment. We shot at Quantico, at the training academy. We shot at the restaurant where Hoover ate lunch every day at the Mayflower Hotel with his own waiter. We had the barber who cut his hair play himself in the picture. It was as close to authenticity as you could imagine, and at first when we got to Washington we got accepted to use locations in a number of places that were withdrawn a few days later because people found out the movie was about J. Edgar Hoover and they didnât want to get involved with it. So here I was in Washington with all these actors with no place to shoot. And then the phone rang and it was the White House calling and apparently president Fordâs wife had been a former chorus girl and she just loved Dan Daily who was a big star in musicals with Betty Grable at Fox for years and a great song and dance man, and Betty Ford wanted to meet him and the President did too so they asked my filmâs two stars Broderick Crawford who played Hoover and Dan Daily who played Clyde Tolson to come to lunch at the White House, so I said âOh Iâll have to close the picture down for a day but I got no place to shoot anyway.â So off they went to the White House the next day and I got on the phone calling up everybody again and saying we want to shoot at your facility in the worst way, but we canât do it today because the two stars are having lunch with the President at the White House. I called the FBI also and told the public relations people, we canât shoot today because theyâre at the White House with President Ford. He said, âCan I put you on hold?â He came back five minutes later and said, âWhen do you want to shoot at Quantico?â I said, âTomorrow!â After that we got every location we wanted, thanks to Betty Ford.
Thatâs really cool.
I donât know what we would have done if that hadnât happened. I donât think we would have been able to make the pictureâŠCrawford/Hoover and Tolson/Daily, they had lunch with the President and Kissinger and Rockefeller and Mrs. Ford at the White House and we even got Rockefellerâs limousine to use in the movie.
Thatâs so cool, it just goes to show, things will come when you have faith in a project.
Iâm telling ya, it was like God was our production manager.
I hear that thereâs talk of a Maniac Cop remake. I know thatâs not one that you directed-you wrote the screenplay.
I wrote three of them. The first two were fine. The third one, they started monkeying with the script and they screwed it up and it wasnât a very good picture. They even fired Bill Lustig who was directing the pictures and it wasnât a good film, the third one. Iâm not proud of that one. And the remake, they didnât even ask me to write the script. They got somebody else. And the script is okay, but I wish they had asked me to write it. I donât know why they didnâtâŠbut Nicolas Winding Refn was involved in it as an executive producer, and I guess he decided he wanted somebody else, rather than me. I guess people are scared of me in some ways, that Iâm gonna try and take over the whole picture. So, he got somebody else. And they havenât been able to raise the money to make the picture, so so far, itâs in limbo.
Do you think it would cause serious controversy considering the current political climate? I mean, all the negative press the police have been getting lately. Putting a movie out like that right nowâŠ
Well right. I mean, even Black Caesar, the villain was the police, the vicious police captain, who committed a number of murders against black people. That picture really holds up today because thatâs whatâs going on. And itâs amazing to me. I made Bone, which was my first picture, which was about racism. I donât know if you ever saw it.
I did see it.
And you know, that picture is very hot stuff. I mean, racial relationships between white people and black people, itâs even advanced beyond today. The picture is just a little too much even for today, forty-five years later. I never thought when I made it that forty-five years later the country would still be so divided racially that people would be so furious with one another and the police would be at such odds with the black community and you know, itâs been a long, long time and still that movie is extremely apropos and you know when they show the picture, the last time it played was an engagement in Chicago, the black audiences really enjoyed it but the white audiences were offended by the picture.
We see a lot of that now. The Thought-Police you know, are trying toâŠ
What can I tell you? But when we first made the picture, you know, it would have been a much bigger success if the distributor had distributed it as a black comedy, which is what it is, instead of trying to sell it as an action picture like Super Fly or Shaft. I said to the distributor, âThis picture is a comedy.â And he said âWell am I gonna stand in the aisle and tell them not to laugh?â And I said, âWell what kind of statement is that?â When people buy a ticket to see a drama or an action movie and you give âem a comedy, their disappointed. Thatâs not what they paid to see. If you want vanilla ice cream and we give you chocolate, youâre not happy. You didnât order chocolate. So, you gotta give people a picture as what it is, not try to sell them something and disguise it as something else because the word of mouth is bad. And when Bone opened, a couple of the reviewers said âThe most unintentionally funny movie weâve seen this year.â Unintentionally. So, what can I tell ya? I mean. But the picture still plays today and every place it opens in terms of Blu-ray or DVD we get listed as the pick of the week and it gets excellent reviews. And the picture is 45 years old. And it still plays just like it was made yesterday.
It really holds up, and the acting in it is fantastic.
Yaphet Kotto says itâs the best acting he ever did in the movies, and Michael Moriarty said he did the best acting in my films that heâs ever done in the movies. And thatâs what I like to hear. I like to hear that the actors had a great time doing the picture and theyâre more than satisfied with the results.
And I think that speaks to your ability to have everything under your control and to have that independent spirit.
Well, I try and tailor the part to the actor. I find out what the actor can do and something about them and try to work it into the script. And when I found out that Michael Moriarty wrote his music and played the piano I immediately changed the character and made him a piano player and shot a scene the next day with him auditioning unsuccessfully in a little bar, and none of that was in the script. If it had been a studio picture I couldnât have done it. The executives would have said âThatâs not a scene in the script. You canât shoot that. You canât change the schedule. Youâre gonna go over budget.â So, the fact that it was all my show, I could do anything I pleased.
Thatâs why we have such a great filmography from you.
Well, I made a lot of movies, but I wish I could have made more.
Do you plan to direct any more?
Well, the business has changed to such a degree that you canât get a theatrical release on most of these pictures. They end up being put on Netflix right away or being put out on DVD or Blu-ray. I mean, you donât get a theatrical run like you used to. I love to go to the movies and see my picture in the theater with an audience. Thatâs why Iâm going to enjoy going up to the film festival and seeing four of the picturesâŠI think are being shown to the audience. And thatâs what I love. And with the advent of the DVDs and Blu-rays and Amazon and Netflix, thereâs very little chance to make any money on your picture. You know, you work on the film for months and then there really isnât any reward at the end because the box office results are meager and you donât get anything for your work so, Iâve been selling scripts for more money than I was getting for the whole picture. When I sold Phone Booth and Cellular, I got more money for those scripts than I got for delivery of the entire film before. So, I said, well, what can I do? I canât help it. I donât mind taking the money. Itâs so much easier than getting up every morning at 5 o’clock in the morning and working eighteen hours every day. So, I must admit, it was an easier way to make a living and a lot more money⊠by not making the pictures but by selling the scripts. Even though I was always disappointed with the movies that got made.
What advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers now? Because the landscape obviously has changed so drastically.
Well, of course, you know, you have to start where you can start and you have to start at the bottom. But itâs been proven constantly that if you make a good low-budget picture that gets some attention you can go on to direct some big pictures. So, I mean, some of the biggest blockbuster pictures have been directed by young people who only made one or two independent films before, and got scooped up into the system. Now when you make a big blockbuster movie with, you know, tremendous CGI and special effects, I mean, youâre just only making a portion of the movie. The movie is farmed out to five, six, seven different special effects companies and they make the picture. Look at the credits at the end of these movies. They go on for ten minutes. You see all the companies that were involved in making the movie. I guess the director of the picture is kind of caught up in the middle of it all. I donât want to make pictures like that, myself. I donât want to be in the hands of a whole bunch of different production companies that turn out effects and know more than I do about how to do it. I canât tell them how to do it. Iâm not a boy genius when it comes to that stuff. So, you more or less have to go ahead and do what they want to do. You donât really have the autonomy that I always want to have on my films. Even on special effects movies like Q and The Stuff, I was involved in how the effects were created. I shot the movie first and told them where to put the effects. They were aghast when I walked in with the movie and they said âWell you canât do this. You have to work it out with us first and we storyboard it and then you shoot the movie.â And I said âWell, you werenât there. And I shot the movie and hereâs where the monster goes and hereâs where the stuff goes and I left room for everything and itâs all going to fit.â And sure enough, it did.
It looks great.
It looks great. And I mean, they made it work. At first, they were very reluctant and I said, âLook, this is it. Put the monster where I told you to do it and itâs going to work fine.â And they did it. And they came back and worked for me the second time on The Stuff. And I did it the same damn way the second time, too.
This last question is kind of a fanboy question for me because one of my first images in relation to what you do is the very creepy teaser trailer for Itâs Alive. I was a young kid at the time and I was kind of traumatized by that because they were playing that on TV all the time. I donât know if you rememberâŠ
Oh yes, the baby with the crib with the claw coming out of it.
Yes! I was like, I donât know, five or six-years-old and that really gave me nightmares. Just the trailerâŠ
Well that was the whole point, it was supposed to. It started out like a commercial for baby powder or something. With little tinkling music and the camera moving around the crib, and you thought it was going to be some kind of a diaper ad or something like that, and then the claw came out and it said, âThereâs only one thing wrong with the Davis baby. Itâs alive!â
Yeah!
I must credit Warner Brothers. They made that up. It was a terrific trailer and the picture became the number one box office picture in America and it really did a tremendous amount of business. It grossed about 37 million dollars in 19— whatever it was, 1976 and that would be like nearly a hundred million dollars in todayâs market. So, it was a tremendous success and Iâve been getting money off that picture all these years. The checks keep coming.
Thatâs great. Itâs such a great film. And itâs a sad film, too.
Yeah, it was a tragic film. The truth of the matter is, it was really about the parents. About the father and mother. And the monster was not on-screen for very long. You know, it was a tragic emotional experience and it was a parable about people who have been victimized by medication, again, and have children who are unfortunately in some way so different and so traumatized that their lives are questionable afterward. So, that was what we made. And the original Warner Brothers people that ordered the picture, the executives were fired before I delivered the picture, so when I showed up with this movie, it was like a waiter coming out of the kitchen and finding all new people at the table saying âI didnât order this. I donât eat this kind of food.â They said to me, âWarner Brothers canât put out a picture about a monster-baby. I mean, this is Warner Brothers Studios. This picture is in bad taste!â
They had already put The Exorcist out!
Thatâs what I said to them! âYou just put out a picture, your biggest movie, had a little girl who was masturbating with a crucifix! Is this in good taste? What are you talking about?â So, anyway, the picture got a very, very minor release and played around as a second feature at drive-ins and even at the bottom half of a triple feature on Hollywood Boulevard and, really, nobody was paying much attention to it. Although, it was a success overseas, in France. And so, finally three years later, the administration changed at Warner Brothers and new people came in. So, I went back. Everybody said, âYouâre wasting your time. This is stupid.â I mean, this picture would have been destroyed completely in todayâs market because it would have been put out on DVD or something immediately. But there was no home video in those days. Back when Itâs Alive was released there was no home video at all. Not even cassettes. So, the picture languished around in theaters playing on triple bills and stuff and then all of a sudden the new administration-Terry Semel was the name of the new guy-he looked at the picture and called me up and said âYou know, Warner Brothers treated your picture very badly. Weâre gonna give it a new ad campaign and weâre gonna try it again.â And they did, with that ad campaign youâre talking about. And the picture became the number one picture in the country. Lines around the block. Back on Hollywood Boulevard as a single feature at the Pantages theater or whatever, and nothing but box office. And actually, over in Asia the picture was an enormous success. I got a ridiculous phone call from Warner Brothersâ foreign division saying, âYouâre not gonna believe it, but Itâs Alive is the second highest grossing picture in the history of Warner Brothers Studios in Singapore.â I said, âSingapore? What? Who the fuck wants to be the number one picture in Singapore!?â He said, âThe only other picture that Warner Brothers has ever had in Singapore that has exceeded you was My Fair Lady.â
So, I said âWell this is really great news. Weâre big in Singapore. So, what can you do?â
I never let go of this picture, though. I kept pestering the studio and they flew me out of the meetings and my management people told me not to bother them anymore and stop annoying Warner Brothers. At one time they said to me, âIf you give us $100,000 weâll give you the movie back.â $100,000 dollars. So, I went to a company in New York that had released The Texas Chain Saw MassacreâŠ
Bryanston?
Yeah. And I went to them and I said, you know, will you give me $100,000 so I can play this picture? And they said they would. And then I went back to Warner Brothers and said âOkay, Iâll give you the $100,000â and then Byranston double crossed me and backed out. So, the picture remained dormant again. But I was lucky I didnât get that deal with Byranston because they were a bunch of, you know, questionable people and the company went out of business so I donât know that I ever would have seen a cent out of the movie. Whereas, after the three-year period, when Warner Brothers finally released the picture properly, it became so popular it became number one and went into profits immediately, and Iâve been receiving millions of dollars of profits over the years, so I was able to buy a Brownstone in New York city on 79th Street off Park Avenue with the money off this picture. So, I would have gotten nothing from Bryanston. I was again lucky that Bryanston backed out of the commitment and I didnât, you know, buy the picture back from Warners. And you know, things work out how they are. Itâs just like the phone call from the White House. You just do nothing and you wait for something magical to happen to save your ass. And it always seems to happen to me. I always seem to get rescued.
Like a cat, you land on your feet.
Yeah, I guess so. I donât know. I didnât fall off the Chrysler Building (when shooting Q: The Winged Serpent) so I guess I gotta be lucky about that, too.
Well man, it is not hyperbole for me to say that this is one of the great honors of my life, talking to you.
Oh, donât say that. I go into these meetings today with studio executives about projects and the first thing they say to me is âItâs such an honor to have you here today.â And then after I give them the pitch, I go home and I get a call from the agent saying they passed on the project. But they give me such a welcome and then they walk me to the elevator with their arm around me and tell me again what an honor it was. So, every time I hear this honor stuff I get screwed in the end. I know you mean it but Iâm very wary of it because when people say theyâre honored, they donât make a deal with you. Maybe theyâre scared of you. I tend to think people are wary of me because they think Iâm gonna run the whole show and Iâm not gonna listen to anybody. And theyâre probably right.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you!
King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen is currently playing at film festivals around the world.