Hello, my name is Justin the Cluinen. I'm here today with Will Sloan. And today, we're talking

about Monty Helman. You know, Roger Corman, the legendary exploitation producer, wrote a memoir

called How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. Well, that title is not entirely accurate because he did lose a few dimes on Monty Helman. I feel like Monty Helman is one of those directors, though, that if you mention his name and the person you're talking to knows who he is, they'll go, oh yeah, I love that guy. Yeah, there's no in between. You either do not know him at all, or you were a super fan. Where do you think that came from?

Like, when did that connection get made where Monty Helman got his cult audience?

I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I first became aware of him, as I and many

cinefiles of my age did for a lot of things, through his connection to Quentin Tarantino. Because in 1989,

Monty Helman directed a movie for a company called Live Entertainment called Silent Night,

Deadly Night 3, Better Watch Out. And that's a movie that even his staunchest fans tend to

dismiss. But Hellman famously read the script for Reservoir Dogs and liked it and wanted to

direct it, but Tarantino wanted to make it himself. So Helman hooked him up with his bosses at

live entertainment, and the rest was history. So when I was a teen, there was this Reservoir Dogs DVD

that had an interview with Tarantino where he was talking about his influences, and that's where

I first heard of Monty Hellman. I remember Tarantino in that saying something like, well,

everyone's favorite Monty Helman movie is Tulane Blacktop. And I thought, wait, like, who's this

everybody? Who knows who knows who knows who Monty Helman is? I need to be one of those everybody

people. I mean, even though he has that Tarantino connection, and even though Helman started his career

working with Roger Corman, and he made Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, he is anything but an exploitation

filmmaker.

I feel that my connection with Monty Hellman came about, even before I saw any of his movies,

because he is the king of like put upon directors that like every project that he did was either not a success or it fell

apart or he was just about to do this one thing and then it didn't happen. Did you know that

Monty Halman shot the opening car chase sequence in Robocop as a

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