Roger Corman

Producer of infinite yards of low-budget schlock, but nevertheless a man to whom many film industry creatives owe their first break. Mark Kermode frequently references Corman's approach to directors who approached him with fantastical ideas, which was to tell them they had to make Stripped To Kill 3 - "86 minutes long and it has to have an exploding helicopter in it. After that, you can do what you want."

Mark often muses that movies that are way too long - most of the recent canon of Quentin Tarantino, for example - needed Corman sat behind them with a big stick, muttering "86 minutes long."