With the tenth anniversary of TromaDance, the independent film festival sponsored by Troma, Lloyd Kaufman came to Salt Lake City to oversee the festival and festivities. On January 19, 2009, he graciously gave more time than I expected to the following interview, conducted on the Library Square premises of Night Flight Comics, one of the local sponsors of the festival. (Occasional comments from Mimi, manager of Night Flight, are included.)
Nathan:
The first question is, naturally, “Boxers or briefs?”
Llloyd:
Well, underpants. I don’t call them “briefs.” Grippers, we call them. Grippers! With skidmarks!
Mimi:
See, I would have said “commando.”
Lloyd:
Nah, I don’t like commando. I’m so huge that something has to separate them, or it’s be very frightening.
Nathan:
All right. Poultrygeist finally got released after much anticipation, and next up for you is Splendor and Wisdom. I looked up the description for that, and it looks very different from the rest of your filmography. Tell me something about that. When did you start working on that, and what made you decide to do it?
Lloyd:
We had the thirty-fifth reunion for my Yale University class, and Reverend William Sloane Coffin, who was a chaplin at Yale in the ’60s, he was a legendary guy who fought for civil rights and was against the Viet Nam war and got indicted and they tried to kick him out of the Board of Directors of the corporation of Yale. Anyway, he was going to die, supposedly, and my class came to me about two days before the reunion — I guess they had been to the rich guys and no one would but up the money — so they came to me at the end and said, “We’ve got to film this guy, it’s his last speech, he’s going to be dead in six months.” So I figured, “Let’s make a movie out of it, let’s not just have a speech.” So President Bush — remember him?
Nathan:
Yeah. In fact, I think he’s President for another… thirty-six hours?
Lloyd:
That’s right, today is the nineteenth. Well, Bush was in our class, and this was when Bush was still somewhat able to go out in the streets, os he invited our class to the White House. So I figured, “This’ll be sort of interesting, because Bush is right-wing and Coffin is left-wing, and it might be interesting to intercut them.” So I took my camera down to the White House and snuck it in and… Actually, for the reunion — and by the way, the government did not pay for that trip down to Washington, we paid to get there and paid for the picnic —
Nathan:
Did he at least pay for your parking, or –?
Lloyd:
Nothing, no. Not even for a postage stamp. At any rate, the paperwork all said, “No cameras, no cameras, no cameras,” but I brought my little one, which I carry everywhere, if you’ve seen my other documentaries, and all the guys at the various checkpoints let me in. I showed it to them, and they let me through. So I filmed the goofy Yale stuff with waving handkerchiefs and Whiffenpoofs, and then also interviewed some of the class of ’68, which has reporters from the Wall Street Journal and Strobe Talbot, who was secretary of Russia or something, he was some major Clinton guy, and we interviewed them about Coffin and the ’60s. So then the speech is intercut, and it’s actually a very interesting documentary, and it gives you a little window into the ’60s. And then on the DVD, you can push a button and see the speech all by itself, so if you don’t want to see my movie you can see the speech. I did this pro bono for Yale, and then if they wanted to distribute it, any money would go to Yale.
You know, we have a movie on HBO right now, which also we did pro bono, not to be confused with Cher’s poor-skiing Congressman dead husband Sonny Bono. We did another one for Jacques d’Ambois the dancer, called The Other Side of the World. He has the National Dance Institute which tries to introduce young children to dance and gives them of the athletics in dance, so that boys don’t look at dance as a thing that homosexuals do, that it’s a form of athletics and expression and opens up the soul. Jacques been doing that, and I’ve been making movies for him for thirty years, pro bono. This one, we went to China, and Jacques took some of the American kids and they danced with something like a thousand kids in the big Shanghai Theater and Dodo, he’s like the Michael Jackson of China, he’s the guy that took the torch when they switched it off to China in the Olympics. He led the children. It’s a very beautiful film and HBO bought it, so National Dance Institute gets all the money. That’s the one movie Troma’s had on HBO in fifteen years, and we brilliantly get nothing!
Just like the TromaDance Film Festival, it’s all free. This is the tenth year of the TromaDance Film Festival, and Troma does a lot to try to encourage — in the same way that Night Flight Comics does, I stopped eating Thai food for a number of years because Mimi turned me onto the children’s exploitation over there, and I never went to another Thai restaurant until Mimi gave me permission recently to go back.
Mimi:
Oh, that’s not true…
Lloyd:
That is absolutely true! I totally did not have Thai food until you said that things were getting better.
Mimi:
It wasn’t the food, it was, “Don’t buy Thai products.”
Lloyd:
Well, I didn’t buy Thai anything. I didn’t even buy neckties! I do what Mimi tells me. But Night Flight Comics is very idealistic and so is Troma, so in addition to making movies nobody sees, we try to do as much as we can to encourage certain causes, most important of which is to keep independent art and commerce alive. And TromaDance is motivated in large part by that very theme.
What’s very interesting about TromaDance for the last two or three years is it’s being taken very seriously now by the community. The library here this year has two days of TromaDance, and they’d been putting it out in their brochure that goes to 80,000 people. And the media has been writing up TromaDance as a serious festival. When it began, the seeds were actually planted twelve years ago, and it was a little bit along the lines of schadenfreude, because Trey Parker and Matt Stone and I came out here and we were so upset by the snottiness of Sundance, that it was kind of giving Sundance the finger. But that’s all gone now, now it’s a very idealistic, warm, loving film festival where all these filmmakers of different types — everything from G-rated family fare to Frank Henenlotter’s brand new movie which is having its world premiere, to films that are even more extreme — but the nice thing is that many of them are first-time filmmakers who get to have an audience see their movies at Brewvie’s, and in Park City, and at the library.
What’s also interesting is that in Park City, you get an audience that all wants something. They’re all networking because that’s the center of Sundance, and so you get professionals and their other agendas. But in Brewvie’s, you get the real fans, because we don’t charge. It’s all free. So you get a packed house at Brewvie’s, and they love Night Flight Comics, of course, and it’s always full. And the filmmakers get such a kick out of seeing just people who likes movies, showing up at Brewvie’s. So these young filmmakers get a kick out of seeing their film in front of a real audience, not family and friends. It’s a real “civilian” audience. For me, that’s the most gratifying aspect, to see the filmmakers.
Nathan:
So now that Poultrygeist is out, and you’re working on Spendor and Wisdom –
Lloyd:
Oh, Splendor and Wisdom is done! If you want a copy, email me, I’ll send it to you. And let me tell you something, that speech that Sloane Coffin did, that was brilliant. That guy was a wordsmith. If Kerry had had William Sloane Coffin as his speechwriter, he would have won, without a doubt. He would have beaten Bush. Not that I’m a Kerry fan, I hate Kerry. He was also at Yale, but he was a year ahead of us, I think. But basically, everything that’s gone wrong, Coffin talked about in that speech. He was very prescient. And he didn’t die! He was supposed to have been dead six months later, and he wasn’t I feel gypped.
Nathan:
So what’s the next movie project for you?
Lloyd:
Well, I don’t know, to be honest. I’ve just finished a new book called Direct Your Own Damn Movie! by Focal Press, who were kind enough to be the most generous from a monetary point of view for TromaDance, and that’s literally just come out yesterday, so I think it should be in stores pretty soon. And I have to do another one for them called Produce Your Own Damn Movie!
And I’m slowly gearing up for Toxic Avenger Part 5, but I don’t know where it’s going yet, other than Toxie gets older in all the movies, so in Part 4 he and his wife had given birth, and this film will center around the Toxic Twins, a male and a female twin. So, generation gap and the difficulties of adolescence. I want to have the scene in Carrie, in the shower, a toxic version of that. At any rate, it’ll deal with the younger generation of the Toxic Avenger and issues of generation conflict, so it should be pretty interesting. I just haven’t figured out the beginning, middle and end. Other than that, it’s almost finished! So right now it’s in the bullshit stage, and we have no money. But everything’s great otherwise.
Nathan:
Incredibly, that leads into the next question, which is: With the democratization of movie production and distribution, where literally anyone can make something that’s watchable for no money, what’s the future of independent film as a moneymaking or self-supporting occupation?
Lloyd:
Well, certainly — and I’m talking about this in my next book, Produce Your Own Damn Movie! — the model that Troma has been working on for thirty-five years, the $500,000 35mm movie, that model is probably kaput. I knew that going into Poultrygeist, which is why my wife and I put up all the money. I told her she was investing in Transformers Part 6, so please don’t give it away. But we will lose every dime. And even though it’s my best film and even though people love it, the industry is so consolidated that we cannot penetrate the hymen of the mainstream market, and I don’t think we’ll even get to the point where we can see any of the budget back. We’ll get some distribution funds back because it’s 35mm and it played in about 300 theaters, so we might get the advertising back on the marketing, but I don’t think we’ll ever see anything back on the budget.
So I think it’s going to be very tough for the truly independent films of that nature: 35mm films that are slightly personal. But the democratization of cinema, I think, means that, right now, people are making very good movies for five thousand bucks. In fact, some of the TromaDance filmmakers of five years ago, Richard Taylor and Zack Brines, they made a new movie, I think they spent maybe $1200 on it. And I’m in it, actually. They had to buy me a pizza. Increased the budget quite a bit. But they’ve made their money back! In fact, Night Flight Comics is actually selling it. So they’ve actually made a profit on that movie.
We have a guy whose movies with distribute, Zombiegeddon and Slaughter Party, he was a schoolteacher in Kansas and he makes a movie a year, feature-length but they’re on video so they cost very little — I think his budgets are ten or fifteen thousand — and he’s got five or six movies out there. They don’t get into movie theaters, but he sells them at conventions, and I don’t know if he can make a living off them yet, but if he gets enough of them out there, they should throw off enough that he doesn’t have to… He works in a liquor store right now, which is why I like him.Giuseppe Andrews is an actor, he does not like auditioning, but he makes money. He’s in Cabin Fever, he played the partying sheriff, and he’s in Detroit Rock City. But he makes movies and we distribute them, they cost around a thousand dollars apiece. He lives in a trailer camp, and he uses people in the trailer camp, these old drunks and drug addicts as his stars. And the movies are great! In My Garden is one. They’re in the Troma library. And they’re wonderful! We are losing money because we have to spend money to promote them, but he’s a real artist and slowly but surely he’s gathering a following. We’re going to put out a boxed set of his called Bathrobe Collection or something like that. And again, I don’t think we’ll make any money on it, but eventually I think he will. Eli Roth loves his films, and Adam Rifkin loves his films, so he’s getting a following. I don’t think he’s interested in directing Rush Hour Part 6, but he’s a serious artist. The nice thing is, he can keep going and maybe phase out of the acting and more into the filmmaking as he gets a bigger audience.
So I think it’s going to be great. I think it already is! There’s a huge number of terrific movies, the problem is we don’t get to see them. And Sundance doesn’t show them. Sundance has a nazi zombie movie this year. Big deal. And it’s a huge thing! A nazi zombie movie, how original, right? And maybe it’s good, but it isn’t the first one. There was a little movie called Surf Nazis Must Die a while back, and there’s other nazi movies. Maybe twenty years ago… but right now if somebody came to me and said, “I’m going to make a nazi zombie movie,” I’d say, “Well, that’s great. Good luck.” I mean, it’s totally twenty years ago. Whereas there are all these young new filmmakers, and they’re all over the world, and they’re producing personal, wonderful movies, and they can take risks, they can gamble, because they can do it for nothing.
So I think that will hopefully, at some point, create a tsunami of independent art that will swamp the $100,000,000 baby food movies that are shoved down our throats. I think on the one hand, we the public are denied the knowledge of a lot of good art, but I think over the long run, word gets out. We produced a movie called Combat Shock that was a big flop in 1986. It’s the best movie about post-war trauma and and going crazy after you’ve been in a war, and it’s so pertinent today. But it slowly got a following, and now it actually broke into profit about a year ago, and we’re releasing a twentieth-anniversary Combat Shock DVD. The guy who made it, Buddy Giovinazzo, is living in Berlin, and I interviewed him there at last year’s film festival. Because you always have that negative. It’s not like if you put a theater show on and there’s a blizzard, nobody shows up, that might be the end of it. Or the critics kill it. Whereas with movie, at least you have your negative or your master. The public does find things.So that’s the big hope, just what you said, the democratization of the arts.
Nathan:
Here’s a tough one for you. Where is the line of offensiveness? What won’t Troma do in a movie? “We’re not going to do holocaust porn.” Where is the line?
Lloyd:
The line is to do what you believe in. As long as you believe in what you’re doing, you can do anything. Now I personally, at least at this stage in my mental life, I would not make a movie glorifying Hillary Clinton. I would make one glorifying William Sloan Coffin. I would make one helping Jacques d’Ambois. But I would draw the line like that. But as long as I believe in what I’m doing, I’ve never gotten into any trouble. You know, the only hate mail I’ve ever gotten in my entire career was for the first Toxic Avenger. And people didn’t seem too upset with the little boy getting his head crushed by the wheel of an automobile, nobody cared about that. The dog getting shotgunned — that got them. And two nights ago, I was in Denver because we had Tromapalooza, a fundraiser for TromaDance, it was a concert with a lot of bands playing, and the Landmark Theater showed the original Toxic Avenger for a few days. And believe it or not, people actually walked out, a twenty-five year old movie and people walked out of it.
Mimi:
For me, that’s an endorsement.
Lloyd:
It still pushed buttons. And it had a huge audience.
Mimi:
I’ve walked out on a few dates in my life, when I was in college, and I was at a movie with one guy and he got up and walked out. He said, “I’m not going to stay her and watch this movie!” And I forget what movie it was — it was a horror movie, of course, because that’s my favorite stuff — and he got up and he left. And I’m like, “See ya!”
Nathan:
One last one, and this one’s not a question. I had friends online help me come up with questions, and someone came up with what he thought was the perfect title for a Troma movie. So we’re going to give this to you, royalty-free, and you just think good thoughts if you ever use it. Here it is: “Fat Guy Loves Dinosaur.” Let that work in you, let that percolate…
Lloyd:
Marinate, yeah. A good dinosaur steak.
Mimi:
I’m against bestiality, myself.
Nathan:
It could be from afar.
Lloyd:
Oh, I was thinking about food!
Nathan:
So that’s our gift to you.
Lloyd:
Thank you so much.
