Everything worth learning, I learned from Corman. I started with cockroaches. I was hired by Roger Corman to adapt a novel about killer cockroaches called The Nest, and I was given three weeks to complete it. But there was no script. The Nest or the 90-million Cutthroat Island, the intensity of a movie in preproduction without a script creates its own kind of delirium.
People go a little insane.
They get nasty and throw things, especially at the writer. And yet under these extreme circumstances, I found I thrived. The adrenalin rush kept my eyes focused. Panic reduces options. It's the difference between a hiker faced with five potential paths, and a hiker faced with five potential paths with a dam breaking behind him.