Gary Kent Innerview........... ........................................page 2.   Later you worked with many of the talented Roger Corman directors. What do you think made this early group of "stand-outs" so special? Was it a lack of caring because of inexperience, a willingness to abandon the then boring (as today!) studio flick mentality, or just too many drugs? Fortunately, I was a little handy, and started getting some good work with fellows who would later make names for themselves in the business, such as Richard Farnsworth. I doubled Jack Nicholson, worked for Richard Rush on several ground-breaking films, got to direct some action scenes and fights for directors like Monte Hellman (above right) and Paul Lewis. Corman's gift was -- he knew talent, and hired us. The pay was ridiculously low, the movies frequently flawed. Corman was not interested in art or social change, he was interested in the $$ -- but, if you were good, he would give you a job, and jobs were scarce then as now. So, you got to learn the making of movies by making them. The drive-ins and second-run houses needed product, a social revolution was beginning, and movies, which had been mired in the muck of the Breen office for decades, began to change also. Richard Rush, Cassevettes, and others ignored the rules and actually changed the face of movies forever. Men and women could take off at least some of their clothes and sleep in the same bed, sailors and longshoremen could curse for real, homosexuals were let out of a dark and desperate closet, black and Mexican actors were freed from stereotypes, women got some "cajones" and, appalled as the parents were, the kids loved it. The films in America were at last beginning to grow up and become honest. And it was the low-budget, independents that were doing the growing. You said you and your partner got the idea for THE PYRAMID while on the set of FREEBIE & THE BEAN. I'm wondering if the subject matter was through a personal belief or practice at the time, or..? The idea for THE PYRAMID germinated in my background in news-reporting in Texas, and the whole New Age scene, which at the time, was in full flower. You lit a joint or dropped a little acid, not to party, but to find the "inner self" or whatever. The literal meaning of Pyramid is "the fire in the middle," which sounded to me like a good handle to fasten on to a film about waking up spiritually and expanding your consciousness. Sound high-falutin' and full of it? Probably...but we were sincere, and some of those films about peace and love and getting it together are perhaps even more relevent today than back then. Many psychotronic fans remember you as 'the good guy' in Al Adamson's psychosleaze classic SATAN'S SADISTS. Was Adamson as crazy to work for as his movies apparently make him seem, or was the insanity reserved only for the celluloid itself? Al Adamson was a "white socker." The last guy to get a date for the prom. His pants were too short, and his shirts were from Sears. He never smoked a joint in his life. He never drank more than a beer now and then, and was as square as a checkerboard. He really wanted to make movies like "they did in the forties." It was his partner, Sam Sherman (below right, w/ Al), who talked him into filming the outrageous, the daring, and the ridiculous. Sherman told Al they had to if they wanted to stay in business in the sixties and seventies. Al's charm was "employment." He knew so little about actual acting that you pretty much got to do what ever came into your head. Pay was low, but if he said he'd pay a hundred bucks for so and so, you could count on it. A lot of actors that were on their way up or down got their medical benefits and a turkey on the table at Thanksgiving because Al Adamson had a job for them (such as Lon Chaney, left). Do you remember where you were when you heard the news about..? I was devastated when I heard of his murder. I had moved on to better films over the years, and we had lost touch. Out of the blue, Gary Graver called me and said, "Al Adamson is at his place in Palm Springs and would appreciate a call from you."

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