JOE BOB: Well you’re a well-known Hollywood liberal. You always put social justice causes into your movies. You made a passion project in 1962 called “The Intruder”, starring William Shatner, about racism in the rural south. An award-winning movie that you once told me was the only movie you ever made that lost money – and that became a turning point in your career.

CORMAN: Yes. It was the only film, at that time, that I ever made that lost money. And the reason was, I believe – although the film did win a couple of awards and the reviews were wonderful – but it lost money, and I think it lost money for two reasons. One, the public just didn’t want to see a picture about racial integration. And Two – and this is where my lesson came in – I was too earnest. I was delivering a message, I was not delivering entertainment.

JOE BOB: You always have a lot going on in the subtext in your films…is that accurate?

CORMAN: That is completely accurate. I am to the left, politically, but I never want to interfere with the entertainment quality of the film. At the same time, with the subtext of the film, there are thoughts that I would like to get in, personally. And I think it acts as a certain catalyst, to a certain extent with the combination. It makes the film more complex, and more interesting.

All of this amounts to revealing that Hollywood doesn’t think very highly of its fans and they express that sentiment in various ways. Sometimes it’s by cast and crew, sometimes it’s in the writing of the show itself, but it’s always going to paint the people creating the work as the enemy of the people meant to view it.

CORMAN: It led me to the themes of my films after that, where I made certain that I always delivered the entertainment value, and the themes I was interested in were always subtextual. They were all secondary.