Stephanie Rothman

Early life

Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Rothman was raised in Los Angeles after her family relocated there in 1945. She studied sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles for two years before transferring to the University of California, 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."

Later career

Rothman and Swartz left Dimension in 1975. She almost directed a film for AIP which was going to be produced by Lou Arkoff but the project fell over. She tried to break out of the exploitation field, but struggled.

I had good agents and together we tried very hard to get me work, but we repeatedly discovered I was stigmatized by the films I had made. The irony was that I made them in order to prove that I had the skills to make more ambitious films, but no one would give me the chance. Then there was the other reason, the so-called elephant in the room: I was a woman. No one told me directly, but I often learned indirectly that this was the decisive reason why many producers wouldn't agree to meet me. If that sounds exaggerated, remember that I worked in the American film industry from 1965 to 1974, and some of those years I was the only woman directing feature films.

She later elaborated:

I couldn't get any work in television. No one would even meet me... When it came to feature films, I was once invited by an executive at MGM to go and meet her, which was in the days when there were very few female filmmakers at all. I went and met her and she said to me, "We were in a story meeting yesterday. We're getting a new script ready for a first time director who we want to use and we were talking about the fact that we would like it to be a vampire film. Something, you know, like The Velvet Vampire that Stephanie Rothman made." My response when I heard that was, "Well, if you want a vampire film like Stephanie Rothman made, why don't you get Stephanie Rothman?"

Rothman sold a script, Carhops, which was later filmed as Starhops (1978), but it was changed to such a degree that Rothman took her name off it. There are stories that she re-shot sections of Ruby (1977) but Rothman says these are not true. Curtis Harrington did say she shot some additional scenes for the TV relief. Rothman did sign a three-picture deal with a producer but no films resulted.

In 1978 Rothman said she still hoped "to make a major motion picture. I never give up hoping... If I hang in there long enough my time will come." However she is not credited on a feature film after 1978.

She later reflected:For the next 10 years, I tried to find work making more ambitious films. My husband and I collaborated on a couple of challenging treatments and scripts that were well received, but never sold. I did sell a few options on scripts and screenplays on my own. I got a few offers to make more exploitation films, but I was never happy making them and I didn't want to repeat myself. After enduring a decade of barely making a living, I gave up.

Rothman ended up leaving the industry. She says, "for a few years I ran a small proto-union for a group of University of California professors, doing their lobbying and writing a political newsletter about labor issues of concern to them. Then, starting with a small inheritance, I began to invest in commercial real estate."

Rothman says she looks back on her career with:

Satisfaction and regret. Regret that I couldn't have made more films. Regret that I couldn't have made films that gave me a larger platform unto which to work in terms of finances, in terms of not having certain obligations to a certain kind of audience, to just to make a film that was dear to my heart in every respect. Not that the films I made don't have aspects that are very dear to my heart, I mean, they're not the complete films I would have liked to have made.