I bought this book waaay back when I was actually working in independent film, but only got around to reading it now. I'm glad it exists. In the independent film world there is a myth that independent filmmaking was introduced in the 1970s and that before that there was nothing. Roger Corman sets the record straight by talking about his own independent filmmaking experience in the 1950s and 60s, and by enumerating every famous independent filmmaker he trained (Demme, Coppola, Scorcese, Dante, Bogdonovich...even Cassavettes comes up). He's not a particularly good writer, even with the collaboration of Jim Jerome, but his stories are so darn interesting that it doesn't really matter. The only times I felt the book got bogged down was when he felt the need to go into detail on the financials of distribution - and some people might find that useful or interesting.

The title of the book is, of course, a brag. Corman admits that some of his pictures didn't do as well as he was hoping, but the point is that he certainly never went bankrupt, was hardly ever sued, and found ways of staying afloat even during some of the bigger "crisis" moments for the major studios. I once heard or read someone claim that Roger Corman says he "never made a bad film." If so, it wasn't in this book. He admits that the end-product of his work is mixed, but, like millions of cult movie fans all over the world, he retains a certain affection for all of them, even targets for MST3K like "It Conquered the World." I would agree with him. The way I'd put it isn't so much a question of good/bad (which is always problematic), but more of whether there is something there which can be enjoyed. Some low-bux filmmakers (Jerry Warren comes to mind, as does Adrian Weiss) just don't seem to have _cared_ whether the product was any good; they had a distribution deal and a poster, and they got something, anything, done under budget to fit the need. Corman took the time to try to put whatever production value he could manage on the screen, in spite of shoestring budgets, and the sense comes through, both in the book and on the screen, that he cared whether what he had in the end was worth an audience's time. He did this without wasting his backers' money, and in the process managed to learn a great deal about filmmaking, and himself. That personal quest is what makes this book worthwhile.