"WHAT, are you gonna stop me?" That was Max Rosenberg's retort after being asked if the management of the building had given him permission to smoke mini-cigars in his cluttered fourth-floor office during broad daylight. "They don't say anything. They're afraid of me," he explains.
You better believe it. After 60 years in the movie game, first as an art-movie distributor, then as a producer of such B-movie horror classics as "Tales From the Crypt" and "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors," Rosenberg long ago stopped being afraid of anyone. The feisty 88-year-old producer ("I'm not 88, I'm almost 89," he boasts) may walk with a cane these days, but he isn't afraid to speak his mind on any number of subjects. Those would include today's movies (" 'franchise' is such a disgusting word, don't you think?"), his onetime partner, the late Joseph E. Levine ("I was fascinated by him, but not for too long") and producer Joel Silver, who revived "Tales From the Crypt" but earned Rosenberg's enmity by making him cool his heels on a set and then giving him the brushoff -- or as Rosenberg put it: "The meeting was over so fast I'm still waiting for him to finish his first sentence."
Rosenberg has been back in action in recent days, thanks to the American debut of "Langrishe, Go Down," a Harold Pinter drama starring Judi Dench and Jeremy Irons initially broadcast on the BBC in 1978. Another art-house effort, "The Wannsee Conference," a German-made reenactment of the 1942 Berlin meeting at which the Nazis approved plans for what became the Final Solution, will play Aug. 2 and 3 at 11 a.m. at the Laemmle Fairfax. Rosenberg will be on stage Aug. 12 at the Egyptian Theater when the American Cinematheque presents "The House That Dripped Blood" and "Horror Hotel," both products of his Amicus Films horror-film factory.
It would be folly to imagine Rosenberg resting on his laurels. Even though his output has trailed off in recent years, his desk is stacked with scripts and outlines for projects, which include an Alan Plater adaptation of Al Alvarez's novel "Day of Atonement" and an original script called "The Black Madonna." But even if he never gets another project off the ground, his reputation as a resourceful producer with a keen eye for talent is safe, at least among B-movie fanatics.
"Max is a real gentleman who's incredibly erudite and funny, and who managed to make some very good movies," says director Joe Dante, a fan of Rosenberg's films since he was in high school. "His horror films were never tied to a formula.... They felt classy without giving the impression that anyone was slumming."
Born in 1914, Rosenberg grew up in the Bronx, where his father, as he likes to tell it, was a particularly unsuccessful furrier. "He'd cut five suits and one had three arms and another was only fit for a midget. Everyone who worked in his shop had the same nickname -- meshugeneh," he recalls over lunch at Canter's Deli, a favorite haunt that's on the site of the old Esquire Theater, where Rosenberg saw the first Los Angeles run of David Lean's "Brief Encounter."
Wearing a racing cap, tie and black glasses with frames as big as Arnold Schwarzenegger's biceps, Rosenberg looks like one of those dapper track habitues at the $2 betting windows at Del Mar, except he's more likely to be reading Proust or Eliot than the Daily Racing Form. A widower, Rosenberg arrives at lunch with his "dearest companion," Arlene, a vivacious woman who doubles as his designated driver. They behave like kids with a schoolyard crush, as Max whispers various witticisms to Arlene that are clearly not meant for public consumption.
As a filmmaker, Rosenberg did his business at Hollywood's $2 window as well, making movies on budgets that wouldn't cover "The Matrix's" catering bills. In 1943, Rosenberg had his first success, spending $1,500 on unwanted newsreel footage and fashioning it into a compilation hit called "The Good Old Days." In the course of selling the film to exhibitors, Rosenberg met Levine, a fabled hustler who was involved with every type of movie from muscle-man epics like "Hercules" to "The Graduate." The two men formed a distribution company that handled such art-house imports as "The Blue Angel" and "Open City."
Eventually they went their separate ways. "Our partnership ended with a whimper, not a bang, largely because Joe owed me $30,000," Rosenberg recalls. "Joe's biggest contribution to the film industry was the 28-course meal." But the alliance left a mark. When Rosenberg moved to London in the mid-1950s and teamed up with writer-producer Milton Subotsky, the team took a similar high-low road approach, mixing their low-budget horror films with classier fare.
