angeles, i am tavis smiley, tonight our first conversation with roger corman, the director responsible for more than 400 f films during his long career. he joins us to discuss his sa tief tire of the films and keb moe talks to us. we are glad you join us, all of that in just a moment. ♪

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ please welcome our legendary film producer roger corman back to this program. his latest release was "death rate" which is on netflix and dvd. a trailer from "death rate" 2050. my fellow citizens of this great country of ours.

the united corporations of america. welcome to that death race. what about frankinstein. >> i see frankinstein will be extinct tomorrow. ♪ >> by the way, just for the record my hair -- >> the leader there, the chairman, the president does have a sort of an interesting hair hairdo. were you trying to make a particular statement mr. corman? >> they were sort of an inside joke. we shot the picture earlier in the primaries, we had no idea f

that trump would be president. we thought it was a little joke and we ended up of the first picture which donald trump was featured. >> tell me about "death race 2050." >> it is the follow up to my old picture "death race 2000s." it is trans continental road race and the drivers are rated on how fast they can drive and how many pedestrians they can kill. >> wow. [ laughter ] only from roger corman. >> you are now 91. >> 91. are you not going to stop? >> i have no intentions of stopping. i think i will be dictating the script at the cemetery. >> what's about the artistic work that you love so much first

of all. >> i would say both ours and the business which is one of the reasons the that makes it so fascinating. what i love is simply the creativity that each picture is a new project, you are coming up with new ideas. it is exciting. >> yeah. >> the business start which has changed, i was just kind of reflecting on this myself preparing for our conversation today that this project is now on netflix. >> yes. >> when you started decades ago, there was no netflix. >> yes. >> so this is an interesting so right turn of new way to release projects. what do you make of the way businesses have changed and given again this is a netflix project? >> well, between 100 to 200 medium pictures. "death race 2050 went out on dvd

and remember giving an interview it goes out on dvd and it will be on netflix. it was a nice publicist from universal says roger, it is going out on netflix of the same day it goes universal. i have not thought about that. it shows me the change and distribution of the power of companies like netflix. >> what do you make of that of the project coming out of netflix and dvd on day. what do you make of it. >> it is very strange. i love to see motion pictures on the big screen. >> for instance, "death race 2050" is dvd and netflix of the whole business is changing and i was talking to somebody and it was an executive at a major studio and i said what do you

think and he said, "i don't know what's happening." i don't think anybody knows other than the fact that it is changing faster than anybody anticipated. >> how do you think the art just a pure notion of the art. how is the art being served or not served by these kinds of changes. >> the art is still there. from the director's standpoint, you are shooting differently. you are not looking so much for a long shot. it belongs on the big screen and television and computers or wristwatch or whatever. you don't need that shot. you are directing in a little tighter, more close ups and more medium shot and so forth. the basic art of cinema remains. >> speaking of directing, you have mentors so many people gone onto become great directors themselves. there is a long list of them. one of them was a personal

friends of both of ours and the last i saw you, the last time i saw you at a private screening he was doing for the rickey flash movie, the meryl streep's film. >> yes. you and i talked closely to that event. i know you were troubled and saddened by the loss of your student, jonathan deming. >> yes, jonathan and i were friends and worked together for around 40 years. he was a wonderful man and progressive way of his thinking and private life just, wonderful, wonderful human being. >> he loves you and spoke highly of you. i recall that right of how honor he was, it was a great deal to him to have you there that night of that screening. >> well, it was an honor for me to be there. >> because you have done so many films, how have you decided what

genres of films and fan box that you wanted to play in over the course of those 400 years, for your films. >> feels like 400 years. >> like mel brooks. >> i want to play in all -- >> i knew you are going to say that. >> i have done science fiction and horror picturepictures. i have done a couple of musicals and comedy. i keep oncoming back to science fiction such as in "death race," you can do an entertaining picture and at the same time you can present some themes or some ideas that are important to you and under the science fiction, it becomes entertainment and death race it becomes a comedy

as well as an action film. what are those messages, those issues you are trying to get us to wrestle with through watching dea "death race 2050". >> i am very progressive on my films. went all the way back to the roman coliseum and roman gladiators and everything up to football and martial arts and everything today, today i started with the idea of futuristic racing and i thought about the audience and how do i integrated the audience into this and that's how i came up with the idea of killing pedestrians. you cannot take it seriously

unless you are a pedestrian. >> if ru you are in a way of a . at that point, i am turns into a comedy makiewipicture. it is a little bit of a message but i always make a point and the message is possibly of an over used word, a theme, a concept that's important to me but that's always secondary to the entertainment >> what's the trick of balancing out empowering the audience since you are progressive with entertaining the audaudience. what's the trick of balancing that. >> i think you have a subject matter when you have medium and low budget picture, such as i do when you cannot depend on a star to bring in the audience. it is a subject matter that's interesting to the audience and then you deliver the subject matter that's an action picture and science fiction picture, you

deliver the action and the science fiction and underneath is is your theme. the audience gets the theme but it is really a kind of a bonus that gets primarily the entertainment they came to see. >> what do you hope your legacy on films will be? what do you hope it will be? >> my legacy is going to be a footnote some where. i would say simply a film maker. i make films, i have written and directed and produced and i have introduced a number of young writers, directors, actors and so forth. it is all around working in motion pictures. >> we owe you a dedicated gratitude for that. >> thank you tavis. >> the project is "death race 2050," 90 years old young roger

corman. >> up next, music taj mahal and keb moe, stay with us. ♪ please welcome taj mahal and keb moe to this program. the historic collaboration, it is called taj moe, what else do you call it? i can tell you why it is number o one, it is an awfully good project. i saw you last weekend at the playboy jazz and y'all killed it absolutely. >> i guess when you are on stage, you can feel the energy from the audience. >> yes, you can. >> jazz people you can stretch out. >> yeah. it was good >> yeah, you guys killed that

thing. >> taj is a legend and how did you first came to know him as a child? >> from high school. >> uh-huh. >> he came to the performance of 1959. >> that's your high school. >> wow. >> he performed there and i got to go to both shows. >> uh-huh. >> and they opened up a whole another portal of what was that? >> yeah. >> it was blues out here before that was not like that. >> yeah. >> i am like oh, wait a minu minute -- i had to reevaluate everything. not that i was in the blues, i kept on encould wantering taj m. >> how long did you make that turn? >> it took a good 16 years >> yeah. >> i was on another path. i wanted to be a song writer and wanted to be a producer. i did not want to sing or perform. i just like to be a side man. i was not looking for that

identity. once life kind of hit me, okay, i am going to do this blues. >> how do you process seeing somebody perform twice at your high school and fast forward a few years you are doing a collaboration with him, how do you process it? >> something inside me knew that was a very important thing that happened. you know something that you don't know and later on that you meet the person and you work with them. it was like -- >> wow. [ laughter ] >> that's taj mahal. >> young moe. >> you are about to have a life-changing experience here because you are around a legend and a real master of the blues. so you get, you know, you tend

to be with the people you hang out with. some of that may rub off of you. >> how do these tracks get picked for the project, taj. >> well, between the two of us. mostly i will tell you what. the tracks pretty much pick themselves. >> uh-huh. >> you can ponder on paper and sit with a pen and scoring notes or you can, you know, let the music come and tell you what time it is. >> you know -- we sort of stay in that face as much stuff as we recorded. the thing that's most important was that eventually, the songs that speaks that's on the record. there is got to be some way of knowing. you tell me what that process is. if you have a hundred songs, there are some of those songs lend themselves better to what you two do together.

how do you figure it out? >> y'all can sing anything together? >> pretty much. >> okay. [ laughter ] >> pretty much. >> i of family, those background singers, are they your daughter sns. >> yes, they are my daughters. >> they're good. >> they're having fun.

>> i noticed that you guys did a cover. what made you do that as jo john mayor, of course. >> i wanted something contemporary in the album and that's why we do squeeze box as well. some of the contemporaries was modern day artist that has a connection to john maher is a very profound artist. he does the blues. the song became relevant in the coming couple of years again. >> it is relevant in the trump error. [ laughter ] >> yeah, we are all waiting for the world to change.

>> taj, you record third-degrede he got elected though. >> it is amazing. well, maybe you would not be m y amazed of the number of projects. prenovember. >> if you do somehow or another, the world collides. to me, it seems to me that is the blues, it always goes away. >> always. i am over here singing the blues. we got it all going on. we have a blue society over

here. we have a bunch of young kids. come on, calm down. people are going to have heart aches and they have enough money or food. >> yeah. >> yeah, right there. >> it is a nightmare. y'all been waiting here. >> yeah. [ laughter ] >> y'all got the blue nos now, y'all yjust wait. >>. [ laughter ] >> what's that line you used before, i love it. you cannot chew the flavors out the blue. >> yeah, they never chew the flavor out the blues. >> i don't care and you know i don't care who they put up there that's supposed to be challenging like the latest ones of the blues.

sorry. i listen to it all night. listen and listen, listen -- it has not reached me yet >> yeah. and, and what is that thing that you have to have to reach the people? >> the whole point of this is, there is a portal in your soul that connects you to the ancient ones who's been sending messages for centuries. you don't fall into that and it does not make of what kind of music. you of all the music in the planet. okay, everybody was remove insied in the western hemisphere and even if you never heard it before, you know it. that's what both of us have been dealing with dna. now all, you know, okay, why was this first record i bought, my

african record that came into my house from nigeria. why is it that is when i hear cuban music or brazilian music. it is already all relative. you got your blood everywhere and in the blood is the message. there it is. >> it is time you got your dna into it. >> i just got just one. >> this is breaking news. [ laughter ] it is not breaking news. >> breaking news on pbs. keb moe who don't know who he really is now. when did you find out? would you mind sharing with you what it is? >> well, i found out that i am mostly black.

[ laughter ] >> that's breaking news. i am really curious of what you found out. >> 83% of african. >> what part? >> nigeria. >> holdup, holdup. just as the world need another nigerian. >> yeah, that's the real problem. [ laughter ] >> what percent? >> 33%. >> i know you got some white in you? >> 7% scandanavia. >> that's actually funny. but it leads into a serious questi question. when you are on stage looking out many nights where people thinking they're trying to save the blues, you see the audience that's overwhelmingly white and

most of the places you play, i know you are grateful for your fans and audience. how do you process that? >> when i see the audience, all i am seeing is the people that i am there because of my church and relatives that came before me. that's why i am there. >> yeah, yeah. >> i look at the audience as maybe not primarily black but the black audience put me here >> so you bring all your blackness with you? >> yeah, that's why i am there. without them i would not be standing there. >> even if i don't see one person, they're there to me >> how do you process it? >> same thing. >> yeah. >> what i am, that's the thing that you learn early on that i remember i used to try to sing, i got good at it and i got so good at it that i put on the dog glasses and it would lead me to

the stage. [ laughter ] >> i made it happen. i was serious, i was always a good mimic. then it came a thing where i could not open my mouth where i did not sound that great. well, now what are you doing to do? you got what you wanted but now what are you going to do and i realized that hey, you have to find who you are musically and be that person. once i started going in that direction, everything was perfect. >> did you know that every artist including ray charles, copying somebody >> charles brown and nat king coal. cole. >> you got to find your own voice. i wish i can sing like taj mahal and keb moe. >> their project is called t

taj moe. i am going to put them high on my prayer's list because they got 85 days left to go. there is a good chance if you go online, you will catch taj mahal and keb moe. i love it. great to have you back. that's our show for tonight, thanks for watching and as always, keep the faith. ♪ for more information on today's show. visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi, i am taj smiley, join me

next for benjamin booker, we'll see you then. ♪ smiley, join me next for benjamin booker, we'll see you then. t smiley, join me next for benjamin booker, we'll see you then. a smiley, join me next for benjamin booker, we'll see you then. v smiley, join me next for benjamin booker, we'll see you then. smiley, join me next for benjamin booker, we'll see you then. s smiley, join me next for benjamin booker, we'll see you then. ♪and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you -- thank you.

good evening from rs like alexandria, -- good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. travis alexia has garnered high prize for his poems and short stories about contemporary native american life. he discusses his first work of nonfiction, a personal and moving memoir titled, "you don't have to say you love me." we're glad you've joined us. a conversation with sherman alexi coming up in a moment. ♪