On June 16th Lloyd Kaufman made a return visit to Pittsburgh and I had the pleasure of interviewing him once again at a undisclosed location. Here is that interview- Troma revisited!

1. Why did you decide to write "Make Your Own Damn Movie"?

After the first book "All I Need To Know About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger", which you were gracious enough to promote. Thank you very much. When I was on the book tour many of the fans were asking questions that I didn't address in the first book. I managed to write the first book without any useful information so the questions that came out of the book tour for the first book suddenly hit me well maybe I wrote the wrong book. The second book I decided we'll make that kind of a guerrilla textbook. So the first book "All I Need to Know About Filmmaking" will be the inspirational kind of story about Troma, the theory of Troma and a bit of our aesthetics and the theory of Independent Cinema as we know it at Troma. Then the second book "Make Your Own Damn Movie" would be kind of a guerrilla textbook so people who read the first book would have useful information from which to glean pertinent guideposts toward making their own damn movies. I don't know if you can glean side posts I think I mixed some metaphors there. Bad usage.

2. Who is your favorite character you created and why?

Well I would've liked to have created Larry (Silvio, son of director David Silvio of Kiss of Death Productions.) but I didn't so instead of Larry I guess the Toxic Avenger. Although I heard that Larry carries a mop. I heard he chases the boys in the neighborhood with a mop..the big bully. Yeah..Any rate I think Toxie is probably my favorite character that I created. My wife and I created some children but she gets the most credit for that. I guess out of the one's I'm responsible for Toxie. My wife suggests that there's a lot of, you know if you look at the four movies, you'll see a lot of me in Toxie.

3. Any new upcoming projects?

Troma has two, well first of all we have a couple of new movies coming out on dvd that might be interesting. One is "All the Love You Cannes" it's the Cannes Film Festival. It's a very interesting movie about how Troma goes to the Cannes Film Festival. Anyone who is a movie fan or anyone who is interested in the Cannes Film Festival or anybody who is interested in making or distributing movies should see "All the Love You Cannes". It's a chronicle of how the independent can go to a giant commercial film festival like the Cannes Film Festival and license movies there and promote oneself. The Troma team does it and also manages to punch each other and get drunk and have lots of naked people. In addition to "All the Love You Cannes" there is the movie "Jefftown". "Jeff Towne" is a very good, another in the same way"All the Love You Cannes" is a wonderful reality movie. "Jeff Towne" is a guy. He's a retard and he well actually technically he would be. He really isn't and he lives a pretty normal life. I don't know normal but he's not, he doesn't go through life being a victim. You know he's out there drinking beer and bowling, porno and he goes to meet William Shatner and he's got a girlfriend. It's a very interesting again reality.

  It's a documentary called "Jeff Towne" and the central character is Jeff Towne who's a very very interesting, how do we say it? Whatever the politically correct word is for retard? It's a great great movie and it's wonderful mainly because Jeff Towne is a wonderful guy and the people around him, he's got some wonderful friends. There's a female friend of his who is just inspiring. It's a great movie, it's funny. It's terrific because it doesn't take the usual public MPR PBS the usual politically correct way to handle the mentally ill or the challenged or whatever they want to call them. They 're always victims and they always beat them up to be and force them into the victim role and they can't do anything with their lives because they are required to behave that way. That's how they're supposed to behave. This guy he's got a problem but he's living his life. He's having a great time including women, beer and porno. I don't know what more there is to life anyway whether you are retarded or not. So it's a great movie "Jeff Towne" and since reality seems to be the great new trend and since a lot of those people I've seen on television on those reality shows seem to be retarded anyway I think "Jeff Towne" will be far above anything you've seen on reality t.v. I don't think guy really is retarded I just think he's fucked up a bit. Mongoloid, mongoloid is what I think he is.

4. How was the Cannes Film Festival this year?

Cannes was okay. I think the selection was better than usual in terms of playing genuinely independent movies. The kind of movies the festival should be promoting. They had Lars Von Trers movie. They had Sodaberg's movie. They had the one by Gus Van Zant. They seemed to have you know better than usual line up. They had the guy from Canada Denise Arcane something barbarian, The Outlaw Barbarians. Very good movie. A French guy named Bertrand Bellia. His film the Cutlets. So in that regard I think Cannes maybe pretty cool. But it's getting snottier and snottier and more and more less interested in the younger independents. It's all about money now. There's an awful lot of the money, money, money everything. Anyway they can squeeze money out of people. So a lot of the fun of Cannes is gone and there a lot of people didn't go this year too. It was definitely not as crowded as it usually is. So I think the festival is losing a lot of the customary fans but who knows. We'll see what happens.

5. What are some of your hobbies besides movies?

That's it. That's about it. Masturbation.. Movies is about it really. I'm kinda interested in China because I majored in Chinese studies. I don't really do much else but movies, you know the sorta things that deal with movies. I guess my family but that's not really a hobby. I don't think so.

6. What do you think has been the secret to your marriage?

My wife is a saint. Basically she puts up with a lot of Tromatic behavior. If you see "All the Love You Cannes". If you see that movie you'll see what she has to put up with. She's very, In spite of that, she's been able to have her own career which is a very important career. I have to respect that. You know we just got lucky. We got very lucky and we happened to match, which is extremely fortunate. Just luck, blind luck. She is a very very very fair, open-minded and extremely intelligent person. Except for marrying me, that was the only non-intelligent thing she did. Other than that she's amazing.

7. Would you let your children become more involved in your movies in the future?

They can do whatever they want. I don't care as long as they don't, I wouldn't let them see it. I wouldn't let them see our movies. I mean I again that's I don't make these decisions, my wife does. But I agree with them. We didn't think they ought to be looking at these movies until they are in their mid-teens. If they want to go into this. I don't think any of them really does. I think they see how difficult it is and they see that I'm driven by...That the only reason I take all the horrible punishment that goes along with being a filmmaker is because I'm a movie nut. I'm totally totally consumed by the art of movies and I don't think they are. So I don't think they would be too interested in being an independent filmmaker but who knows? One of them is 15 and one is 17 so you never know. I have three girls, the other one is a lost cause. She's 22 and she's working on Wall Street. She's never gonna work for Troma. No way. Not a chance. Actually I wouldn't recommend it either unless you just absolutely love movies. They are right to do what they want to do and just go about their business. Whatever they want to do.

Favorite convention? I don't know. I think the Cannes Film Festival is a convention and uh it's probably my favorite just because there is such a mixture of different types of people. The very rich, the very poor, the establishment, the underground media, the fanzines, the mainstream obnoxious studio big shots, the people the snobs who are just snobs and have nothing to offer, the snobs who have something to offer, and then the real people and all these wonderful independent filmmakers go there. Not just filmmakers but actors and writers. It's just a great soup of different extremes and they are all there. I find it rather inspiring. I usually tend to have a creative burst after Cannes. Usually it has a good effect on me even though I may not have such a good time there. I don't enjoy it so much cause we're there...the main purpose of Troma going to Cannes Film Festival is to license our movies to international distribution companies. We're there to make money. So there's a lot of pressure being there. It's extremely expensive, if you look at the movies "All the Love You Cannes" you'll see we have to spend a lot of money to go there. Nothing compared to what the big boys spend but still for us a huge budget. So we have to bring back deals. In spite of all that it's still pretty crazy atmosphere and I find it rather stimulating.

9. Do you have any superstitions?

Well not really I don't think so. Sometimes if I kick something in the street, like if I kick a bottle cap in the street I might kick it a second time. Or if my right foot. If I'm jogging and my right foot kinda kicks a little twig I feel that my left foot has to find a twig to kick. That kind of stuff. Otherwise I don't think I have any serious superstitions.

10. Is there anything you do to prepare before you start making a movie?

Just finding a theme, you know, that I believe in. Something that really appeals. I think the most difficult part of the preparation is getting the script the way you feel it is ready to be shot. Pulling the trigger on pre-production and then pulling the trigger again on production. That's, I think, what has to be done to prepare. Not to mention little details like raising money, which is very difficult. I talk about that quite a bit in "Make Your Own Damn Movie". That's always problematic. Big problem always.

11. What's your outlook on life?

It's about people. I think most people are good. People are good and I think the only time.. I think the bad people are not bad. They're just frightened. They do things, you know, they're just scared. Not much you can do about it. Most people, I think, unfortunately fall into that category. So but basically people are good and I think things improve also. Even though I think quite a bit about suicide I'm an optimist. I do believe that things are getting better. Even though there are still 500,000 little babies dying of starvation in Africa every year while Sandra Bullock gets $11,000 for her hair budget per movie. Even though that kind of stuff is around I'm still.. I think the situation is better than when my life began. So I'm rather optimistic.

12. What attracts you to a person?

I don't know. It's very hard to say. I really don't think I can answer that. I mean what doesn't attract me? I think what turns me off is pretension and disloyalty. I think for the most part I really rather like people. I'm not too.. unless someone's really rude. You know I'm pretty much attracted to everybody. I like men with really big penis's, of course. David Silvio (Kiss of Death Productions) and I used to bathe together. It's one of the things that made him very attractive to me.

13. Is there a period in history that fascinates you?

Well it depends on umm literature I'm interested in the 17th century from the point of view of literature I'd say the 17th. I don't think so. I don't think I specialize in any particular area of history..

14. What's your opinion on war?

There is absolutely no need for it. It should be totally done away with. The stupidity of our current policy is to ask these countries not to make a-bombs and not to have them. is asshole time. It's ridiculous. Everyone should not have them. We should get rid of them and everyone should get rid of them and that's all. It's the only way it's gonna stop. People are fearful but it's absolutely absurd to ask a little crappy country to get rid of it's dirty bombs or whatever they got and then we got all these a-bombs. France is allowed to have them. England is allowed to have them. China is allowed to have them but North Korea is not allowed to have them just because they have a psychopath, a guy with weird glasses and goofy hair and leading the place. That makes no sense. Just cause the British guy looks okay and he seems sane he should have the a-bomb but the Korean guy with the goofy hair shouldn't because he looks crazy. It makes no sense. Nobody should have the a-bombs. There's no excuse for them- it's a disgrace.

15. How many of the Toxic Avenger comic books were there?

I don't know. Marvel Comics did them. Marvel went bankrupt and they had to cut out most of what they were doing that wasn't core material. There's a Spanish company, Spanish fans.. There's some guys who used to be fans in Spain who are now older and have a comic book company. They are publishing Troma comic books in Spain. It's called Fester Comics and they are turning them out. I can't keep up with them but they are doing a lot but they are in Spanish. They are pretty damn good. We're writing some of them, the Troma staff are writing some of them. We kinda have our hand in it but it's being handled by the Spanish company. We don't sell them. They do it all. You can get them off the Troma website. There's a link for Fester. I think you can still buy some Troma comic books some old ones on the Troma site. I'm not sure. Troma we did publish our own comic books for awhile but then we had to turn to DVD's. Comic books are just too time consuming. There's no way to make money with it. So we prefer to go into something more expensive like DVD's which there's no way to make money also. At least we can spend what little money we have left quicker.

16. What do you think of Pittsburgh?

I love Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is great. It's very creative and inspiring to see Kiss of Death Productions and it was a great privilege to have been associated with the first theatrical airing of "Meat For Satan's Icebox's" theatrical trailer. That was very cool at the Rex Cinema. That was really really great. It's wonderful to see, you know obviously I'm a major major Romero fan and he's probably the most underrated American director in history. It's a pity he's not directing more movies but every movie he has made is terrific. I just looked at the DVD of "The Crazies" aka code name "Trixie", which he made in 1972 or something. It's great. It's really good and "Martin".. All his early "Martin".."Martin's" a film noire that can't be beat. A lot of great movies were done in Pittsburgh. Not just Romero but some of the interesting mainstream movies. "Boys on the Side".. That wasn't bad but there's all sorts of things. It's just wonderful to see all the independent cinema that's going on here in Pittsburgh. Not necessarily at the Filmmaker's place but outside of that it's really great. The best seems to be outside of that. I mean I'm sure that place is great but there seems to be really inspired stuff going on kind of out there like Kiss of Death Productions and Happy Cloud Productions. Mike Watt and Amy( Happy Cloud Productions) are doing a movie called "Severe Injuries". It seems that there's a lot of energy here. A lot of great creativity and that whole South Side is a great neighborhood. The Cynics too are a very good band. That's a Pittsburgh band isn't it? we tried to contact them. I think they are still playing but we just haven't been able to get in touch with them. They're really great.

17. What are the keys to marketing independent movies?

The Troma way relies a lot on grassroots like a grassroots campaign. A lot of point of purchase doing promotion in or around the cinema. In and around the neighborhood of the cinema. Underground, your website, our own website. Troma's website. It's very hard, it's very very hard to get the word out. Extremely hard and you have to run it kinda like a political campaign without television advertising. You sorta have to get into cyberspace, get leaflets under people's doors. Troma's strategy is to kinda build a brand. We've created a brand. When people say that's a Troma movie the public kinda knows what it is and we do have a big fan base.So if they just know about the movie and they've been trained. We're in one movie theater here. If anybody wants to see it they know they have to get there fast cause it's only gonna be there one night. Or maybe one week. it was actually here a week ago was here for a week a few months ago. But the Troma fans have been trained to get there fast because our stuff gets kicked out because of the there's always some even if it does business because the theaters have commitments to the Hollywood movies.

It's pretty tough. I think the only way to survive being an independent is to not get sucked into the spend spend spend. You can not possibly compete with Viacom or Sony. You cannot compete with their advertising. You've got to do it as a you can't have a big ego. You gotta just just have enough joy in being able to make what you believe in and if people show up that's great and if they don't you can't. If you want an Oscar you got to go out to Hollywood. If you wanna be famous you go to Hollywood. There's no other way I mean yes Woody Allen is famous and Romero is famous but they didn't do what they're doing to become famous. They became famous. Andy Warhol became famous. He got out of the underground but he didn't change his motives. He did not conform. He got lucky. The public found him and embraced him. But Van Gogh unfortunately had to blow his brains out before anybody recognized his talent. There's a guy Van Gogh is so typical right. He's underground, nobody bought any of his paintings. If they did they gave him 10 cents and it wasn't until he blew his brains out then. Even cutting his ear off didn't help him much right. And now he's Van Gogh what 50 million for one painting, 75 million . The poor bastard -it's really sad. A lot of good it did him so you really have to enjoy what you are doing and not get sucked into it because otherwise you get eaten up and destroyed. The "Blair Witch" movie was very successful but that company is on it's own. It's got huge debt and they're not making any movies that I know of. They are trying to compete with the major studios. They can't because they can't spend 60 million dollars in advertising. I think the way to do it independently is the grassroots. Do everything grassroots.

18. What are some of your upcoming projects?

We are working on a movie about the fast food industry. That will be kind of a satire on both the fast food as well as the phoney environmentalists. It's a zombie movie. We wanna try to go back to the 70's zombie. I doubt I'll pull it off. I'm too interested in the cheap joke. But I'd like to do a homage to Romero actually and kinda go back to doing something like "Dawn of the Dead". We wanna do a zombie movie around a fast food chicken like a Kentucky Fried Chicken. And have ahh the fast food place is built on the cemetery of the Indians. I'm sorry the Native Americans. The people that brought you casino gambling, those folks. So we wanna build a ahh you know the chicken the fast food chicken place is built on the graveyard of the Indians and the spirits of the Indians go into the chickens and the chickens become zombies. It's gonna be called "Poultrygiest". So we are working on that script-"Poultrygiest". And it should be very good, should be really good. So the problem is we got no money and so it'll be awhile. By the time i get the script. It took it takes along time for me to get a script I can get behind. "Tromeo &Juliet" took 5 years to write the script. "Terror Firmer" took quite awhile so hopefully by the time we get a script that we all really love somehow some magical thing will happen and we'll have a few bucks in the bank. Right now it's never been worse.

19. Is Troma's Edge T.V. viewable in America? If not do you think it ever will be?

Troma's Edge T.V. was broadcast on Channel 4 in the U.K. In fact they produced it with us. Channel 4 in the U.K. is the equivalent of NBC. It is the largest privately owned network in the U.K. Other than BBC it's the biggest television network in the United Kingdom. They had no trouble with it. They were happy to put it on but in this country because we are Troma unless we do something through AOL/ Time Warner or Sony or one of these giant devil worshiping international conglomerates. We could make "Gone With the Wind" and it wouldn't get it on t.v. We could bring in the Rapture. We could bring you the second coming, the rapture we could bring that to you in living color and they wouldn't put it on t.v. because unless you go in through the right tunnel through one of the conglomerates you don't get on television. So there's no chance Troma's Edge T.V will be seen. However the good news is the first dvd about 4 or 5 half hour sequences are on the dvd of "Troma's Edge T.V.". Troma was one of the pioneers of dvd. I think we were also the first movie studio to have a website. We've had it since like 92 or 93. We've had a website for a long time and I think we were one of the first or the first studio to really get into dvds. I've been an expert and I've had a lot of experience with VDs but dvd was something new and exciting. I had prepared myself quite well in my youth.

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