Stephanie Rothman

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Stephanie Rothman (born November 9, 1936 Paterson, New Jersey) is a film director, producer and screenwriter, known for her low-budget independent exploitation films made in the 1960s and 1970s.

Career

Rothman was raised in Los Angeles and studied sociology at UC Berkeley. From 1960–63 she studied filmmaking at the University of Southern California and became the first female to be awarded the Directors Guild of America fellowship.

This, along with her academic qualifications, saw her receive a job offer from Roger Corman in 1964 to work as his assistant. (Corman chose her over another applicant, who later became his wife Julie)[1]

"I did everything: write new scenes, scout locations, cast actors, direct new sequences and edit final cuts," said Rothman. "It was a busy, exhilarating time."[2]

Corman had Rothman reshoot large segments of the movie that became Blood Bath (1966), which impressed him enough to give her her first full directing job on It's a Bikini World (shot in 1965 but not released until 1967), which he financed. However she did not enjoy the experience:

I became very depressed after making It's a Bikini World. I had very ambivalent feelings about continuing to be a director if that was all I was going to be able to do. So I literally went into a kind of retirement for several years until more than anything in the world, I wanted to make films.[3]

In 1970 Corman established his new production and distribution company New World Pictures and hired Rothman to write and direct its second film, The Student Nurses (1970). Although an exploitation movie, Rothman was given creative freedom to explore political and social issues which interested her such as abortion and immigration.[2] The Student Nurses was a considerable hit, leading to a cycle of "nurse" films and helping establish New World. She turned down Corman's offer to make both a sequel and The Big Doll House (1971)[4] because she was not enthusiastic about either project. Instead she directed The Velvet Vampire which has become a cult hit.[5]

Dimension Pictures

Rothman and her husband Charles S. Swartz left Corman in the early 1970s to help set up Dimension Films for whom she made a number of movies. While there she did not receive greater creative freedom or the opportunity to leave the exploitation field – however, she did receive more money and owned a small share of the company.[6] Rothman directed three films for Dimension, Group Marriage (1973), Terminal Island (1973) and The Working Girls (1974). These films – Group Marriage in particular – placed emphasis on female as well as male desire. Rothman stated in a 1973 interview that:

I'm very tired of the whole tradition in western art in which women are always presented nude and men aren't. I'm not going to dress women and undress men – that would be a form of tortured vengeance. But I certainly am going to undress men, and the result is propably a more healthy environment, because one group of people presenting another in a vulnerable, weaker, more servile position is always distorted.[3]

Film director and historian Fred Olen Ray later claimed that the best movies made by Dimension were the in-house productions from Rothman and Swartz.[7]

Later career

Rothman and Swartz left Dimension in 1975. She sold a script, Carhops, which was later filmed as Starhops (1978), but it was changed to such a degree that Rothman took her name off it. There are stories that she re-shot sections of Ruby (1977) but Rothman says these are not true.[8] Rothman did sign a three-picture deal with a producer but no films resulted.[5] She is not credited on a feature film after 1978.

Acclaim

"I was never happy making exploitation films," said Rothman later. "I did it because it was the only way I could work."[2] However her movies have come to receive much critical appraisal, particularly from feminist writers such as Pam Cook and Claire Johnson.[6] She was honoured with a retrospective at the 2007 Vienna International Film Festival.

Legacy

Feminist writers, especially Pam Cook and Claire Johnson, have noted Stephanie Rothman for creating feminist films in the exploitation genre. Cook stated that:

Rothman often parodied the codes of exploitation genres to expose their roots in male fantasies and so undermine them , and it is this use of formal play to subvert male myths of women that has interested some feminists and that, it has been argued, places Rothman's work inside the tradition of women's counter cinema.[9]

Terry Curtis Fox stated that:

Without stretching a point too greatly, one can see the influence of this feminism in such recurrent Rothman themes as the reorganization of society and the extension of options to otherwise disenfranchised individuals. A classic liberal, Rothman states her themes wholly in terms of disparate individuals whose needs propel them to make a common bond. Despite a growing bitterness in her later work, Rothman's films are not so much a cinema of social problems as one of social solutions. More than anything else (and perhaps even more commercially damning than working in restrictive genres), Rothman's films are contemporary comedies of manners, centered around attitudes, around the way that style serves as both an expression of and a screen for meaning. She may be a graduate of the Roger Corman School of Filmmaking, but her real model is Preston Sturges.[3]

In addition, Rothman also used her movies to comment on social issues of their time, like abortion in The Student Nurses.

Rothman later said of her work that:

A Stephanie Rothman film deals with questions of self-determination. My characters try to forge a humane and rational way of coming to terms with the vicissitudes of existence. My films are not always about succeeding but they are always concerned with fighting the good fight.[10]

Filmography

Unmade Films

  • Outlaw Mama – script by Rothman announced in 1971 for production by New World[11]
  • Mama Sweetlife' – project announced for Dimension but never made[7]

Further reading

  • Terry Curtis Fox (November/December 1976). "Fully Female". Film Comment. 
  • Peary, Dennis (1997). "Stephanie Rothman: R-Rated Feminist". Women and the cinema: a critical anthology. Dutton. ISBN 0525474595. 

References

  1. ↑ Roger Corman & Jim Jerome, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never lost a Dime, Muller, 1990 p 124
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 'Exploiting Feminism: An Interview with Stephanie Rothman (Part One)' Confessions of an Aca Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, Oct 16,2007
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Terry Curtis Fox, 'Fully Female', Film Comment 12. 6 (Nov/Dec 1976): 46–50,68
  4. ↑ 'Stephanie Rothman Sets Record Straight', Temple of Schlock July 31, 2010
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Sher, Ben. (2008). Q & A with Stephanie Rothman. UC Los Angeles: UCLA Center for the Study of Women
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 'Exploiting Feminism: An Interview with Stephanie Rothman (Part Two)' Confessions of an Aca Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, Oct 16,2007
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Fred Olen Ray, The New Poverty Row: Independent Filmmakers as Distributors, McFarland, 1991, p 155-157
  8. ↑ 'Charles S. Swartz, producer, dies at 67' AV Maniacs
  9. ↑ Cook, Pam (2007). The Cinema Book (3rd ed.). London: British Film Institute. p. 472. ISBN 978-1-84457-193-2. 
  10. ↑ Linda Gross, 'A Woman's Place Is in... Exploitation Films?: A Trend-Setter in the Youth Market Women in Exploitation Films', Los Angeles Times (1923–Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] 12 Feb 1978: p34
  11. ↑ Dori Lundy, 'Kill' Role Next for Mason, Los Angeles Times (1923–Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif] April 10, 1971: c11.

External links

The films of Stephanie Rothman
As director
Other capacities
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