Rick Sloane - Early Life

Early Life

Rick attended Hollywood High School in Hollywood California. While in film school at Los Angeles City College, Sloane was singled out among his peers by a number of instructors and deemed the least talented student in the bunch. His directing teacher dropped him from the class on the first day, weeding out people that didn't belong in film making. He waited a year for another teacher to take the course.

At the age of 18, Sloane was inspired by the ultra-low-budget film Hollywood Boulevard which heavily inspired the look of his future films. Ironically, Hollywood Boulevard was the directorial debut for Gremlins director Joe Dante, another of Sloane's inspirations. Mary Woronov, one of the stars of Hollywood Blvd agreed to take the lead in Sloane's first feature, Blood Theatre, made when he was only 21 years old.

Sloane had cultivated his taste for satire by producing fake trailers for non-existent Grindhouse style films such as Chainsaw Chicks, Amputee Hookers, Nightmare of the Lost Whores and Clown Whores of Hollywood. Sloane was working with 20th Century Fox to promote The Rocky Horror Picture Show and these short films were first shown at The "Third Annual Transylvanian Convention" held in Anaheim, California . It was also the launching of the Rocky Horror sequel "Shock Treatment". Sloane himself having organized and produced one of the earliest of these cult conventions himself in 1981. The event which was video taped and aired on syndicated television that same summer as part of the syndicated special "Rocky Horror Treatment" and later that fall in a segment on NBC, in one of televisions original reality shows, "Real People".