The recording captures a conversation between director Roger Corman, actor Dick Miller, and moderator Joe Dante as they discuss the 1959 American comedy horror film, A Bucket of Blood, a low-budget look at the world of Beat-era artists, poets, and hipsters. The main character (played by Miller) is a dim and talentless busboy at a bohemian cafeĢ who aspires to be a sculptor. The lengths he is willing to go in order to make it in the postwar avante-garde art world allows Corman to parody the pretentions of high art and the Hollywood studio system. Shown in conjunction with the Getty Research Institute's 2003-2004 research theme "Markets and "Value," A Bucket of Blood served as an examination of the forces that assign value to art as well as a somewhat macabre affirmation of the creative spirit.
