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 It’s 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, he’s written the screenplay for the Joel Schumacher film Phone Booth (2002) and continues to write and develop screenplays and stories for film. He’s 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, you’ve had complete, or near-complete artistic control over your films. Do you think that’s still possible for filmmakers to achieve today?
Oh sure. Certain people get it, particularly if they’ve had a big hit, and then they get it on their next picture, and so, eventually they have a huge disaster and they don’t get it anymore. But you know, it’s 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 didn’t 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, that’s a great way to do it.
I got spoiled. I’ll tell ya, I couldn’t 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 couldn’t make my movie the way I wanted to make it and I wasn’t 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. They’re from a bank, and by the time you get an answer back it’s just too late to do what you wanted to do because you’ve moved to another location. You know, it’s a frustrating experience but a lot of people go through it and they like to have their name on the picture. And you know, that’s what they do and my career has been highly different. It’s been one where I make all the decisions and there is very little collaboration with anybody else.
That’s 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, I’ve 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 don’t have ‘em anymore. Now it’s all drugs, it’s 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. It’s 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 subversive…or considered that, anyway.
And believe it or not, let’s face it, the ISIS terrorists, their last words before they blow people up are, “God is good.” So, it’s pretty close to God Told Me To. I mean, you know, it’s very predictable that a mass of murders would come in the name of God because it’s nothing new, it’s been going on for centuries. Look at all the people that have been massacred over the years in the name of God. So, it’s just… that’s 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 couldn’t think of a more violent image than a man crucified…and it’s the basis for an entire religion. So, you know, there’s nothing as violent as religion and it’s caused more people’s 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 who’s still alive. We just had a showing in New York. He came and we enjoyed seeing each other again. But I reminded him that he’s the only surviving member of the cast.
That’s pretty ironic.
Young and old-they’re 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, you’re supposed to actually drink the blood of Jesus, aren’t you, as part of the ceremony? I mean, come on. If you think about it, it’s a pretty gory thought, that you’re drinking the blood of a crucified man. I’m not against any religion. I don’t practice any religion orthodoxy, but I think that any group that thinks that they’re the only ones and any everybody else is going to go to hell, I can’t abide that.
I concur. I can’t understand that either. There’s currently a documentary being made about you-King Cohen-which is awesome. I’m 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 didn’t advocate it or I didn’t or seek it. I didn’t 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, “Well…go right ahead. I will cooperate in whatever way you want me to but I don’t want to have any input into it.” As you can see in my other films, I have total control of my films and I didn’t 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, I’ll just stay out of it and let them make the movie and see what happens and, uh, I haven’t even seen the picture yet. I’ll be seeing it up in Canada in Montreal at the festival (Fantasia Film Festival).
That’ll be amazing because you’ll get to see it with a crowd for the first time.
That’s right. And I’ll see the reaction and uh, I’m sure there’ll be something in there I won’t like, but I’m sure there’ll be plenty that I will like, and so I’m just gonna go and be part of the audience and I’ll be surprised.
And I can’t wait to see the finished product, myself. The little snippets I’ve seen…I think they’re on the right track for sure.
I saw the trailer. The trailer looked pretty good. And they’ve 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 it’s so important and cogent today with all this fuss about the FBI and the president’s 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 Johnson’s 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 wouldn’t have been any Watergate, that’s 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 wouldn’t 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 it’s 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. It’s 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 don’t take sides, you’re 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 didn’t like it and the republicans didn’t like it.
Maybe they felt Kennedy was portrayed as…
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, didn’t come off too well. People just thought it was outrageous that we would make a picture like that. And unfortunately, the wonderful Washington Post didn’t 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 ‘em. They’re a wonderful newspaper. Everybody thinks they’re the greatest but you know, they’re really a tool of the democratic party and anything they can do to undermine the opposition they will do. So, you know they didn’t like our picture and they tried to destroy the picture and I thought that was quite unfortunate.
Me too. It’s really underrated.
You know, it didn’t 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 Allen’s 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 couldn’t 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 he’d been involved with the black list…
Right, because he had gotten in trouble…
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 we’re talking about my picture. Everybody talks with him about his pictures, but he wanted to talk about mine.
Wow, that’s 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, there’s 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 Hoover’s house, we shot in Hoover’s office. We shot at Clyde Tolson’s (Hoover’s 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 didn’t 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 Ford’s 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 film’s 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 “Oh I’ll have to close the picture down for a day but I got no place to shoot anyway.” 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 can’t 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 can’t shoot today because they’re at the White House with President Ford. He said, “Can I put you on hold?” He came back five minutes later and said, “When do you want to shoot at Quantico?” I said, “Tomorrow!” After that we got every location we wanted, thanks to Betty Ford.
That’s really cool.
I don’t know what we would have done if that hadn’t happened. I don’t think we would have been able to make the picture…Crawford/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 Rockefeller’s limousine to use in the movie.
That’s so cool, it just goes to show, things will come when you have faith in a project.
I’m telling ya, it was like God was our production manager.
I hear that there’s talk of a Maniac Cop remake. I know that’s 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 wasn’t a very good picture. They even fired Bill Lustig who was directing the pictures and it wasn’t a good film, the third one. I’m not proud of that one. And the remake, they didn’t 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 don’t know why they didn’t…but 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 I’m gonna try and take over the whole picture. So, he got somebody else. And they haven’t been able to raise the money to make the picture, so so far, it’s 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 now…
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 that’s what’s going on. And it’s amazing to me. I made Bone, which was my first picture, which was about racism. I don’t 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, it’s 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, it’s 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 to…
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, “This picture is a comedy.” And he said “Well am I gonna stand in the aisle and tell them not to laugh?” And I said, “Well what kind of statement is that?” When people buy a ticket to see a drama or an action movie and you give ‘em a comedy, their disappointed. That’s not what they paid to see. If you want vanilla ice cream and we give you chocolate, you’re not happy. You didn’t 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 “The most unintentionally funny movie we’ve seen this year.” 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 it’s the best acting he ever did in the movies, and Michael Moriarty said he did the best acting in my films that he’s ever done in the movies. And that’s what I like to hear. I like to hear that the actors had a great time doing the picture and they’re 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 couldn’t have done it. The executives would have said “That’s not a scene in the script. You can’t shoot that. You can’t change the schedule. You’re gonna go over budget.” So, the fact that it was all my show, I could do anything I pleased.
That’s 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 can’t 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 don’t 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. That’s why I’m going to enjoy going up to the film festival and seeing four of the pictures…I think are being shown to the audience. And that’s what I love. And with the advent of the DVDs and Blu-rays and Amazon and Netflix, there’s very little chance to make any money on your picture. You know, you work on the film for months and then there really isn’t any reward at the end because the box office results are meager and you don’t get anything for your work so, I’ve 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 can’t help it. I don’t mind taking the money. It’s 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 it’s 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, you’re 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 don’t want to make pictures like that, myself. I don’t 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 can’t tell them how to do it. I’m 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 don’t 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 “Well you can’t do this. You have to work it out with us first and we storyboard it and then you shoot the movie.” And I said “Well, you weren’t there. And I shot the movie and here’s where the monster goes and here’s where the stuff goes and I left room for everything and it’s all going to fit.” 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, “Look, this is it. Put the monster where I told you to do it and it’s going to work fine.” 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 It’s 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 don’t know if you remember…
Oh yes, the baby with the crib with the claw coming out of it.
Yes! I was like, I don’t know, five or six-years-old and that really gave me nightmares. Just the trailer…
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, “There’s only one thing wrong with the Davis baby. It’s alive!”
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 today’s market. So, it was a tremendous success and I’ve been getting money off that picture all these years. The checks keep coming.
That’s great. It’s such a great film. And it’s 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 “I didn’t order this. I don’t eat this kind of food.” They said to me, “Warner Brothers can’t put out a picture about a monster-baby. I mean, this is Warner Brothers Studios. This picture is in bad taste!”
They had already put The Exorcist out!
That’s what I said to them! “You 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?” 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, “You’re wasting your time. This is stupid.” I mean, this picture would have been destroyed completely in today’s market because it would have been put out on DVD or something immediately. But there was no home video in those days. Back when It’s 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 “You know, Warner Brothers treated your picture very badly. We’re gonna give it a new ad campaign and we’re gonna try it again.” And they did, with that ad campaign you’re 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 Brothers’ foreign division saying, “You’re not gonna believe it, but It’s Alive is the second highest grossing picture in the history of Warner Brothers Studios in Singapore.” I said, “Singapore? What? Who the fuck wants to be the number one picture in Singapore!?” He said, “The only other picture that Warner Brothers has ever had in Singapore that has exceeded you was My Fair Lady.”
So, I said “Well this is really great news. We’re big in Singapore. So, what can you do?”
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, “If you give us $100,000 we’ll give you the movie back.” $100,000 dollars. So, I went to a company in New York that had released The Texas Chain Saw Massacre…
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 “Okay, I’ll give you the $100,000” and then Byranston double crossed me and backed out. So, the picture remained dormant again. But I was lucky I didn’t get that deal with Byranston because they were a bunch of, you know, questionable people and the company went out of business so I don’t 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 I’ve 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 didn’t, you know, buy the picture back from Warners. And you know, things work out how they are. It’s 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 don’t know. I didn’t 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, don’t say that. I go into these meetings today with studio executives about projects and the first thing they say to me is “It’s such an honor to have you here today.” 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 I’m very wary of it because when people say they’re honored, they don’t make a deal with you. Maybe they’re scared of you. I tend to think people are wary of me because they think I’m gonna run the whole show and I’m not gonna listen to anybody. And they’re 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.
