Brooklyn native Steve Carver studied photography at the University of Buffalo and Washington University in St. Louis. He pursued a formal education in filmmaking at the American Film Institutes Center for Advanced Film Studies, also participating in the Directors Guild of America's apprenticeship program. Prolific motion picture producer Roger Corman hired Carver to direct four movies, including Big Bad Mama. Carver also directed American action star Chuck Norris in An Eye for an Eye and Lone Wolf McQuade.
Roger William Corman was born April 5, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan. Initially following in his father's footsteps, Corman studied engineering at Stanford University but while in school, he began to lose interest in the profession and developed a growing passion for film. Upon graduation, he worked a total of three days as an engineer at US Electrical Motors, which cemented his growing realization that engineering wasn't for him. He quit and took a job as a messenger for 20th Century Fox, eventually rising to the position of story analyst. After a term spent studying modern English literature at England's Oxford University and a year spent bopping around Europe, Corman returned to the US, intent on becoming a screenwriter/producer. He sold his first script in 1953, The House in the Sea, which was eventually filmed and released as Highway Dragnet (1954). Horrified by the disconnect between his vision for the project and the film that eventually emerged, Corman took his salary from the picture, scraped together a little capital and set himself up as a producer, turning out Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954). Corman used his next picture, The Fast and the Furious (1954), to finagle a multi-picture deal with a fledgling company called American Releasing Corp. (ARC). It would soon change its name to American-International Pictures (AIP) and with Corman as its major talent behind the camera, would become one of the most successful independent studios in cinema history. With no forma
C. Courtney Joyner is a writer whose first major output was a string of more than 25 movie screenplays beginning with The Offspring starring Vincent Price, and Prison directed by Renny Harlin. His novels include the new fantasy-adventure Nemo Rising and the Shotgun Western series, both of which have been optioned for television. A noted film historian, he lives in Los Angeles.
Stephen B. Armstrong, Ph.D., is a professor of English at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Film Quarterly, Film Score Monthly, Filmfax and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. His books include Pictures about Extremes: The Films of John Frankenheimer, Paul Bartel: The Life and Films and Andrew V. McLaglen: The Life and Hollywood Career. He also directed Return to Little Hollywood, an award-winning documentary about the history of motion picture production in southern Utah.
