Stephanie Rothman

Stephanie Rothman (born November 9, 1936 in Paterson, New Jersey) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter, known for her low-budget independent exploitation films made in the 1960s and 1970s, especially The Student Nurses (1970) and Terminal Island (1974).

Rothman was raised in Los Angeles and studied sociology at UC Berkeley. She says she became interested in filmmaking after seeing The Seventh Seal (1957), "what is still my favorite film of all time... I didn't, at that point, know how to become a filmmaker. I didn't even think it was possible. When I saw it I thought to myself, "This is what I would like to do. I would like to make a film like this." Highly thoughtful, European-like, [laughs] small films. I wanted to be a writer-director."

From 1960 to 1963 Rothman studied filmmaking at the University of Southern California where she was mentored by the chairman of the cinema department, Bernard Cantor. She became the first woman to be awarded the Directors Guild of America fellowship, awarded annually to the director of a student film. This, along with her academic qualifications, saw her receive a job offer from Roger Corman in 1964 to work as his assistant. (Corman chose her over another applicant, who later became his wife Julie.)

"It was rare for anyone who did not have family connections to find employment in the film industry, in or outside of the jurisdiction of the labor unions," recalled Rothman later. "It was even rarer for a woman to be hired. It was traditional to exclude us from nearly all types of work behind the camera."

Rothman worked in a variety of jobs for Corman, on films such as Beach Ball and Queen of Blood. Rothman:

I did everything: write new scenes, scout locations, cast actors, direct new sequences and edit final cuts. It was a busy, exhilarating time. Roger did not teach me these skills, I learned them in film school. But he did share his greater experience with me, giving me useful criticism and, equally important, information on how to efficiently organize work on the set so that a film could be shot on schedule. The schedules he set were much shorter than those of the major studios. Since it was his own money he was using, Roger did not want a film to go either over schedule or over budget. He also taught me a valuable lesson in psychology: he encouraged me, often expressing his confidence in my abilities, and I therefore tried to do the best work for him that I could.

...
Wikipedia