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Samuel Arkoff: Schlockmeister Extraordinaire
| Article
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19286 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1991 |
1,834 Words |
| Author
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David D'Arcy
David D'Arcy broadcasts on cultural matters on National Public
Radio. |
Depending on how one looks at it, Samuel Z. Arkoff, the cofounder of American International Pictures (AIP), can be seen either as the hero of America's postwar film industry, or the villain who helped create the most terrifying monstrosity to emerge from Hollywood: the blight of trend-marketed teenage pictures that the country has endured for more than three decades.
Even if many of the films fall far below today's or even yesterday's production standards, they did more than simply bring a world of juvenile delinquents, monsters, bikers, and beatniks to the screen that hadn't been there before. AIP's strength was in getting a topical script into the theaters in a matter of months, if not weeks. (Television, which plays that role today, still takes longer and spends for more money doing it.)
More importantly, AIP showed that films could be made for next to nothing, and that those films could make money. No wonder that American independent filmmakers and several generations of European directors, from Jean-Luc Godard to Wim Wenders to Aki Kaurismaki, have taken inspiration from AIP films. If John Cassavetes is one of the godfathers of independent film, Sam Arkoff may be another.
The much-maligned Arkoff method was simple enough: Arkoff and his partner Jim Nicholson would choose a title for the film. Then they designed a poster, and tested the idea on a small circle of exhibitors and press before commissioning a script.
"Why did we get the title first and then the ad, the art-work before we wrote the script? Because we wanted to know if there was a market for it. We wanted to know that without starring great stars and without going through millions of dollars of advertising that people would be interested," Arkoff explained, holding the perennial cigar between his teeth in an interview at the time of a retrospective of American International Pictures' early years at New York's Film Forum.
"That's true exploitation," says Arkoff, accepting the description that's been thrown his way derisively by critics since before Reform School Girls hit the drive-ins in 1957. "A lot of people think that's an evil word, but I gotta tell you this--Jaws, at its cost, is just as much an exploitation picture as something that cost one-twentieth, one-fortieth. It's just that nobody calls it that when it comes out from a major company and has a big star in it. Exploitation is an honorable word. The circus does it all the time and so do stores and
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