“Wasp Woman,” like many Roger Corman movies, seems very slow-paced to the modern sensibility (and by modern I mean the post-Civil War era). But Corman prides himself on his claim that his movies have never lost a dime, so the question is: How is it that those hundreds of slow-paced movies he directed were able to succeed at the box office?  Had boredom not yet been invented? 

I think that in the 50s and early 60s the slow pace of Corman’s films was a huge part of their appeal. Corman made movies targeted at a teenage, adolescent audience.  As strange as it may seem in this day and age, there was a time when the adolescent teenage audience was considered a marginal, niche demographic, as opposed to now, when it’s the only age group that Hollywood has any interest in appealing to. But back in those days, monster, horror and sci-fi movies were made by people like Corman, who worked on the fringes of the movie-making establishment.  And back in that more innocent, more sexually repressed time, a lot of teens went to these kinds of movies to find a dark place to make-out.  And that’s where the slow pace of Corman’s films really did the trick. 

 With not much happening on the screen, it was the perfect atmosphere for the post pubescent guys on the make to remove the Bazooka Joe from their mouths, stretch their arms around their dates and get what passed as action back then. In those pre-sexual revolution days, the darkened sanctuary of a movie theater was one of the best places to get a little hormonal satisfaction, unlike now, when the kids send text messages through the whole movie, and then openly have sex in the parking lot in the hopes of getting discovered for a reality show.  My, how we’ve evolved.

So Corman did his job: he gave his action-craving public exactly what they wanted: no action!  

Funny story about “The Wasp Woman”-- turns out we were threatened with a lawsuit by Roger Corman for riffing on this movie, and it couldn’t have been and a more dramatic time.  It was the day before what was our most important live show to date at The John Ford Amphitheater.  The CT cast and I were at my house rehearsing “The Wasp Woman” and we’d heard that the event at the 1,200 seat venue was going to be sold out.  To do that in Los Angeles, where you are competing with all the other entertainment options available was quite a feat.  Anyway, while we were practicing at my house, I kept getting phone calls which I didn’t answer.  I instead turned off my phone, but then Frank started to get calls.  I was just about to say “Frank, c’mon man, this is for real, tomorrow’s the show, put your phone away,” when I overheard the conversation Frank was having with the guy on the other end.  It was Josh Opitz, our script supervisor for our studio shows, saying that he had just gotten an e-mail from Roger Corman’s attorney through the Cinematic Titanic website threatening us with a cease and desist for the show the next night, and not only had he sent the letter to us, but he had also sent it to the LA Film Festival, the company that had booked us, and also the venue, the John Ford Amphitheater, which is owned by LA County, and simply doesn’t take kindly to these kind of  threatening letters.  Roger’s lawyer even sent a similar letter to the USA Film Festival in Dallas, where two months earlier we performed “Wasp Woman” and was looking for damages. 

Well sir, within about 10 minutes I started receiving a cascade of phone calls from all the parties getting the letters asking me if: A. We had the rights to show the film, and B. Could we show paperwork demonstrating that we had the rights to show the film?  Now, when a film is public domain, you can’t really prove you have the rights, all you can do is prove that no one else has the rights to it, something I felt would be hard to demonstrate in such a quickly overheating situation with less than 24 hours before showtime. 

So I hung up the phone, and Mary Jo, Frank, Trace, and J. Elvis and I talked about it, and it took about 10 minutes for us to decide to drop the film, and instead run the last film we recorded, “Doomsday Machine”.  Calls went out to the parties involved letting them know that we wouldn’t be doing “Wasp Woman” and that we had an even better/worse movie to riff, which actually was true.  We then printed up copies of the script of “Doomsday Machine”, somebody bought some take out food, and we headed up to Frank’s place in Bel Air to do a late night rehearsal. 

Well sir, the show the next day was a very big success.  But more importantly, that experience really solidified us a group that could “roll” with it.  I think too, it was that night that Cinematic Titanic became a real live stage show. 

 Later, once the smoke had cleared, we went back and forth with Roger Corman’s lawyer and in the end, we were right-- the 1964 version of “Wasp Woman” is in the public domain, and available for anyone to use.  Always interested in being respectful, we agreed to Corman’s request and put up a disclaimer on the label of the DVD, so people wouldn’t be confused between our version and the 1981 cable version of the same name.  Which, as a side note, was the cornerstone of their dispute.  They claimed they owned the copyright on the 1964 version because they had the copyright on the 1981 version.  Not true.  In the end, we estimated that it cost Roger Corman about $2,000 in lawyers' fees, as it did us.  So, for the guy who’s famous for never losing a dime in Hollywood, that all changed the night Roger Corman decided to pick on the Cinematic Titanic.

 Now you know the rest of the story…