Samuel Z. Arkoff
Birthday: 1918-06-12 Place of Birth: Fort Dodge, Iowa, USA
Synopsis
Acting
Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies
Hollywood is a town of tinsel and glamour; but there is another Hollywood, a place where maverick independent exploitation filmmakers went toe to toe with the big guys and came out on top.
It Conquered Hollywood! The Story of American International Pictures
A 60-minute salute to American International Pictures. Entertainment lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff founded AIP (then called American Releasing Corporation) on a $3000 loan in 1954 with his partner, James H. Nicholson, a former West Coast exhibitor and distributor. The company made its mark by targeting teenagers with quickly produced films that exploited subjects mainstream films were reluctant to tackle.
Mario Bava: Maestro of the Macabre
Director Garry S. Grant’s insightful documentary celebrates the work and legacy of auteur filmmaker Mario Bava, the grand master of Italian horror and the man known by many as “the Italian Hitchcock.”
Some Nudity Required
A woman working in the B movie industry begins examining the industry and the damaged, desperate people who work in it.
Playboy: The Story of X
The Story Of X takes you to the earliest days of adult films when men peddled stag reels and projectors out of the trunks of their cars, then through the movie house years to the arrival of the home video business, and now the Internet. Meet the men behind the camera, such as "King of Sexploitation" Dave Friedman and the preeminent breast man Russ Meyer. Considered pariahs at the time, they're now hailed as pioneers in the fight against censorship. The Story of X visits the 60s when women's rights, not nudity, became the issue and recounts porn's arrival in Hollywood, led by director Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris. In the 70s, several groundbreaking films, including Behind The Green Door featuring Marilyn Chambers and Deep Throat featuring Linda Lovelace, took the genre to a new level.
Pitch
A Canadian documentary featuring two young filmmakers attending the Toronto Film Festival to pitch a film concept to various celebrities. Their film idea, titled "The Don", concerns a Mafia don who goes for a hernia operation but gets a sex change instead. During the 1996 Toronto Fest, they approach Roger Ebert, Norman Jewison (at a packed press conference), Eric Stoltz (leaving a limo), Al Pacino, and others without much success. On a roll, they leave Toronto for Hollywood, getting advice from Arthur Hiller and Neil Simon and finding an agent who expresses interest in their pitch.
