Larry Cohen Read online

  Washington Heights was a very nice neighbourhood. There was a huge park there called Fort Tryon Park, and at the top of the park was a reconstructed church called The Cloisters that the Rockefellers had shipped over from Europe and reassembled back in the 1930s. It looked just like a medieval castle and had drawbridges and all kinds of turrets. My friends and I used to play Robin Hood there and games like that. We would be duelling with each other and excitedly running around the parapets and it was a truly wonderful, magical place. The park was great during the wintertime and there would be sleigh-riding through the snow. In the summertime, it would be beautifully lush and green and I enjoyed that place very much. I actually made my first 8mm movie in Fort Tryon Park.

  What was that first film about?

  It was about Russian spies and I actually shot it on the very same day that Stalin died. [1] The whole idea of the story was that Russian spies were using the park as a place to drop off top secret microfilm. This one defecting Russian spy wants to destroy the microfilm but he is captured. He has the microfilm rolled up in the barrel of his gun, so he wants his enemies to shoot him as they will inadvertently destroy the microfilm when he is killed. That was the gimmick of the movie. It was a real Larry Cohen story even though I was only ten years old when I made it. I used my father’s 8mm camera, and you had to wind it up and it ran for about forty-five seconds or a minute before you had to wind it again. All the cuts were done inside the camera. I’d do a master shot then cut in for a close-up; followed by another master shot, another close-up, an over-the-shoulder shot, and so on. When the picture came back after being sent away to be processed, the whole movie was right there with all the different cuts and angles. Then, a couple of years after I made this film, the most remarkable thing happened: the FBI arrested a man named Rudolf Abel, who was the number one spy for the Soviets in the United States. Abel was the spy ringleader and, after he was captured, it turned out that he was actually using Fort Tryon Park as the drop-place to pick up secret microfilm from other spies — just like in my movie! I was amazed at this coincidence. Unfortunately, today, I don’t have a copy of my first little film and I don’t even remember what it was called.

  Did you make any other 8mm movies around this time?

  As a matter of fact, that was probably the only one I made that was completed. I got friends from school to be in it and gave them comic books as a salary. I literally paid them off in comic books! [Chuckles] The film wasn’t scripted as I would simply tell the kids exactly what to do and say. Of course, it was also a silent movie. 8mm movies had no sound in those days and so you’d have to place a title card in there every once in a while to illustrate the dialogue and action.

  Was yours a happy childhood?

  I thought so. We didn’t have a lot of money but I always had enough to go to the movies. I used to carry packages for the customers at the local grocery stores and supermarkets. I would wait out in front and if I saw a woman coming out with a big bundle of groceries, I’d ask if I could carry her bags home for her. When my good deed was done, she would then give me a quarter. If I’d managed to collect 25¢ or 50¢, I could then go to the movies. I would also collect empty soda bottles as in those days they gave you back a deposit on them. So, I would bring the bottles in and collect enough dough to go to the theater. That was my main preoccupation as a child — going to the movies. If I could, I’d sit through the movie twice because in those days it was all double features. I’d watch the movies a couple of times and it was great. I guess that I was subconsciously studying them; trying to figure out how these wonderful stories and images were put together, but I always had a good time at the theater.

  What are some of your earliest memories of cinema?

  Well, my mother said that the first picture I ever saw was The Wizard of Oz, but I don’t remember that occasion. She also told me that the first time she took me to the movies there was some kind of skiing movie playing with Ann Sheridan. [2] When I entered the theater, there was a scene where these people were skiing downhill and all that motion scared the hell out of me! I suddenly started screaming and Mom had to take me out of the theater. She then waited a while and took me back again to watch The Wizard of Oz. Apparently, I managed to sit through that without panicking but, again, I don’t remember it. I started going to the movies when I was four or five years old. The first film I think I actually saw on my own — unaccompanied by an adult — was a Bob Hope picture. My mother put me in the theater and came back later and got me. I do recall seeing movies like The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and all those kinds of swashbuckling action pictures. I particularly liked that kind of stuff. Growing up, I always loved the Warner Bros. movies the best as they were the quickest moving pictures with a lot of hardboiled characters and fast-talking dialogue. They always featured actors that I liked, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and James Cagney, performers with considerable screen presence who really made the dialogue stand out. Also those pictures often featured the distinctive music of Max Steiner [3] and I always loved them.

  I imagine there were a lot of theaters in your neighbourhood.

  Oh, I think we had about six theaters. We had the Loews Inwood and then there was the Alpine Theatre, which was the smaller theater that ran the pictures a week later. Those movies usually played the RKO Coliseum on 181st Street which was a bit of a walk, but not so bad. Also on 181st Street they had the Heights Theatre which ran foreign films like The Wages of Fear and Rififi, and also British films. Then, there was the Lane Theatre and the Gem Theatre which played revivals. So you could go there and see Boris Karloff in Frankenstein and Bela Lugosi in Dracula, as well as a lot of the classic movies that they re-ran. There was also the Dyckman Theatre, which was a little bit further away, and the Loews 175th Street Theatre. These were all movie theaters that carried double features and they changed the picture every week, sometimes twice a week. In the old days, the movie would open on a Wednesday — that would be the big star picture featuring somebody like Clark Gable or Errol Flynn — and that would run from Wednesday through to Sunday. Believe it or not, as of the Monday, they would then take the A-picture out of the theater and would put in a B-picture like a Boston Blackie [4] movie, or a Frankenstein movie, or a Charlie Chan movie, or a Western with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. They would be the Monday and Tuesday movies and would play for just two days. Then, on the Wednesday, they would open the A-picture again. It was very infrequent that they ever carried a film over more than one week. It would have to be a big, successful picture to play more than seven days. Usually it would only play for five days, so if you wanted to see the movie you had from Wednesday until Sunday to catch it. It would then move to a second-run theater which played the pictures that had played the previous week at the first-run theater. Many of these movies had also played downtown for a couple of weeks at the major Broadway theaters but when they came uptown to the local theaters, they only played for five days. So, theoretically, you could easily see four pictures a week — two main features and two second features.

  Was cinema more than a means of escape for you?

  Oh sure, absolutely. Movies were a means of escape, but they were also something that I was passionately interested in. Remember, there was no television back in those days. This was quite a while before television really got started and movies were the main source of entertainment for people during World War II. For me, movies were like discovering whole new worlds of excitement and adventure.

  What were some of the first films that really had a profound or formative effect on you as a child?

  All of them! I’m not kidding. Every movie I saw as a child meant something to me. When I look back now at the kinds of movies I enjoyed as a kid, I realize that a lot of my favorite pictures were directed by Michael Curtiz. [5] He was just one of those unique filmmakers who seemed to be adept at every genre he ever tried his hand at. Curtiz made gangster pictures, musicals, melodramas, Westerns, action films. He could make any kind of movie you want
ed to see. If you look at pictures as diverse as Casablanca, The Sea Hawk, Mildred Pierce and Yankee Doodle Dandy, they are all very different films. Curtiz made several movies with Errol Flynn and, being an Errol Flynn obsessive, I also loved Captain Blood and, again, The Adventures of Robin Hood. So, the whole experience of seeing movies at that age was profoundly formative for me. I really enjoyed going to the theater and would watch the movies more than once. In fact, I would have been there all night long if the managers hadn’t have come down and said, “You’ve got to go home, son. It’s getting to be nighttime and your parents will be wondering where you are.” Of course, they weren’t. My parents were just as happy that I was out of the house, frankly! [Laughs] Later on, when I was a little older, I would visit the sets of movies that were being shot in New York City. If I heard that a movie was being made nearby, I’d make my way over to wherever they were and watch them shoot. I saw Martin Ritt directing Sidney Poitier on the set of Edge of the City. Then, I discovered that Sidney Lumet was shooting That Kind of Woman with Sophia Loren in locations around New York and I went to that set, too. I was also present when Alfred Hitchcock shot the Grand Central Station scenes in North By Northwest. I followed Hitchcock around various locations in New York just to watch him work. I actually played a little joke one day: Hitchcock had filled Grand Central Station with a lot of extras and at one point, over the loudspeakers, I started paging John Robie, who was the character Cary Grant played in To Catch a Thief, and Huntley Haverstock, who was the character Joel McCrea played in Foreign Correspondent, to “please pick up the telephone.” I thought it would be fun and a way for Hitchcock to notice me, but he showed no reaction or recognition to those names whatsoever. He was so totally immersed and concentrated on directing his film, I’m sure he never heard a thing. But it was thrilling to me, being physically in the presence of these great moviemakers.

  Do you think it is an advantage for a filmmaker to have seen more films or possibly even a disadvantage?

  Today, with television, cable, and Netflix, there are thousands of movies available simply at the push of a button. People literally have the entire history of the motion picture industry at their fingertips. You can see almost every movie ever made and most of them for free. I think that’s an incredible educational advantage over previous filmmakers, particularly those of my generation who never enjoyed that level of unprecedented access to movies when we were first starting out. In America, you can get Netflix for $7.95 a month and view thousands of films. That’s quite amazing when you think about it and is something that people take for granted today. I sometimes look at the technological developments in home video and entertainment formats and say to myself, “I wasted my childhood!” I spent my entire youth paying to look at all of these movies and now I can see them all for nothing! And in my own home! I mean, this is really my childhood dream come true. I used to lie in bed at night as a kid and dream about such a thing happening. I’d think, “Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a big movie screen on my wall, so that I could look at movies in my own bedroom.” I used to have this recurring dream that there was a hole in the floor of my apartment that led to a movie theater downstairs. I could simply look through this hole and see all the movies that were endlessly playing there — for free! It was a beautiful dream. Of course, I can now see every available movie on a screen on the wall of my home. The dream has finally become a reality. It’s interesting, but I don’t know what this luxury will do to the minds of the kids today or how it will impact on them. I’m very concerned that audiences are now becoming stupider as time goes on. I don’t see any educational benefits or gains for potential filmmakers if they don’t search out the classics. If all they are consuming is movies with car chases and big explosions and special effects, cinema is doomed! Any modern film that makes demands of the viewer’s intelligence and concentration is now frankly an oddity. Whereas, back in my youth, movies were simply better, that’s all.

  What did your parents do for a living?

  My mother managed the house. In those days, women stayed at home and took care of the kids. My father was in real estate. He managed apartment buildings, but his hobby was photography. He was a very gifted photographer and took all of his own pictures. He would blow them up, touch them up and mount them. He submitted his photos to various places and won a lot of awards. He was a brilliant photographer, and would have been very successful as a professional, but he chose not to pursue it as a career. In his way of thinking, you weren’t supposed to earn your living doing anything that you enjoyed or liked. He believed, as many of his generation did, that your job should make you miserable every day of your life. My father had a job that made him miserable every day and he saved all of his happy times for his photography. When I saw the way he lived, I was determined not to follow in his footsteps. I was going to do what I wanted to do with my life. I was going to get satisfaction out of something that I really liked doing. Of course, your parents are always likely to give you a negative response when you tell them you want to go into show business. I mean, nobody else in the family was in show business, so it was completely alien to them. They believed it was not something I could ever make a living out of doing. They thought you could never succeed as a writer or a comedian or a filmmaker, and that I’d simply be wasting my time and energy in the attempt. As a matter of fact, it didn’t take me much time to get started selling scripts. By the time I was twenty-one, I was already selling scripts. I was out of college and was really rolling along. Actually, I believe I was even in college when I first started selling scripts.

  You just said that “nobody else in the family was in show-business,” but I understand that your grandfather was a Vaudeville performer.

  Yes, that’s true, he was. I’d heard from members of the family that my grandfather had apparently been in Vaudeville and, before that, had also been a minstrel in travelling shows back at the turn of the century. He and his brother were eccentric banjo players. They would tell jokes, perform comedy skits, and there would be various acts of dancing and music. In the minstrel shows, they’d both be in blackface and would perform as the end men, Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo. At the time, I’m sure the minstrel shows were already beginning to wane as a popular entertainment form for people, but my grandfather later played in Vaudeville on a bill that included Jimmy Durante. [6] He toured the west extensively, moving from place to place. He once performed in a saloon that was owned by Frank James, Jesse James’ brother. When his mother was on her deathbed, she made my grandfather promise that he would give up show business and do something else. So, he placed his banjo in a closet and never played it again for the rest of his life. He had made this solemn and rather strange promise and he intended to keep it. All through my childhood this instrument was just sitting in the closet, gathering dust. As a kid, I kept trying to get Grandpa to play the banjo for me. I must have asked him a million times, but he never once took it out of the closet. I suppose it brought him some pain to think about those days and he didn’t want to revisit old memories. All of this had happened to him by the time he was twenty-one. Then, for the rest of his days, he lived a rather conventional existence, running a men’s furnishings store on 125th Street. He made his living that way and never showed any inclination towards returning to show business. In fact, when my mother once expressed an interest in becoming an actress, she was strongly discouraged from doing so. I guess it wasn’t regarded as a suitable profession. When I think about all this now, it’s certainly very odd that my grandfather did blackface performances. I mean, the fact that my father would end up managing buildings in Harlem and I actually went to school in Harlem. Who would have believed it? On top of that, I later ended up making several Black movies such as Black Caesar, Hell up in Harlem and Original Gangstas. I don’t know. It’s peculiar how these traditions just seem to occur. It was never planned that way, but that’s how it all worked out.

  Did you enjoy a good relationship with your mother and father?

  It
was alright. It certainly got better as time went on, particularly my relationship with my father. He mellowed as he got older, but he was an unhappy man. He was unhappy with his work and was basically dissatisfied with his life, really. I think my father felt that family was a trap. He believed himself fortunate not to have been drafted in World War II because he had a kid. But the Army could have actually provided him with a great opportunity as they might have made him a military photographer. He could have had some great life experiences, that’s if he hadn’t got himself killed, of course! I think my father would have enjoyed going to Europe or Asia, visiting these historic places and taking pictures. I think it would have reinvigorated him. As it was, he stayed at home. My Dad was one of the few people who didn’t go in the Army and didn’t make any money out of it either. Most of the people who got out of military service during World War II made money because they were at home and took advantage of the economy and everything, but not my father. I was determined not to waste any talent that I might have or fail to seize any opportunities that were presented to me. In a way, I felt sorry for my father, too. I had sympathy for this man who basically had to support other people. My father had to go out to work every single day and bring home money to feed my mother, me, and eventually, my sister. I felt bad that this entire burden was placed solely on his shoulders and he had to do something for a living that gave him no pleasure.

  Do you see any echoes of your parents in any of the characters in your work? Do they reappear in any of your films in some form or another?