Troma Studios is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary in 2004, yet founder Lloyd Kaufman and his crew of blood-sucking freaks are still acting like four-year-olds.
Troma is the longest-running independent studio in the country, held afloat by a devoted fan base that hunts down its wildly subversive films despite the studio's noticeable blacklisting from mainstream reviews, video outlets and theaters near you.
In those thirty years, Troma has put out over one hundred films that are at once ludicrously silly and politically pointed. Few filmmakers can manage to portray the '70s woman's lib movement through a sexy softball team's group showers and wet t-shirt contests. Even less could battle the environmental crisis with a toxic mutant and his super-power mop.
But Troma's absurdist juxtapositions are exactly what make its films so appealing. That and the domineering, scantily clad women - or "gynos," as Troma calls them (you know, "because 'woman' has the word 'man' in it"). Gynos endure buckets of green goo, three-foot penises, and wandering pickles all in the name of entertainment. All in the name of art.
Mr. Skin had a chance to talk to Kaufman, the procurer of Troma's 1000-plus film library, the teacher of seminars on shoestring movie-making, the brain behind Tromadance Film Festival, and the soul of independent filmmaking.
Tell me about the Troma psyche, are there any films that you feel have summarized your creed?
Certainly Citizen Toxie, which is the most recent movie I've directed. See, our basic premise in every movie is that there is a small town of Tromaville, and the little people of Tromaville are perfectly capable of running their lives. They don't need rich people to tell them how to do it.
But unfortunately, there is a conspiracy of the labor elite, the bureaucratic elite, and the corporate elite -- and the little people of Tromaville are victimized by the conspiracy of elites that sucks dry their economic and spiritual capital. And sometimes the little people of Tromaville must call upon the Toxic Avenger to save them. Or they gotta call on Sergeant Kabukiman NYPD who patrols the waterfront and has some heat-seeking chopsticks.
Or sometimes, as in Troma's War, the little people of Tromaville literally had to save their society by themselves. They had to get together and do it.
Citizen Toxie deals with a lot of different themes. It deals with the Columbine massacre and the abortion issue, which I don't see too many Hollywood companies dealing with.
It deals with the fact that MTV and the media are promoting plastic surgery everywhere and brainwashing young kids whose bodies haven't been formed into changing their behinds and breasts and noses. This whole emphasis on material goods and how you look as opposed to your soul and morals.
Watching all the Troma films, they remind me of what I read about Grand Guignol in Paris, these plays of extreme horror and violence.
Yes, you're absolutely right! The Grand Guignol at the turn of the century.
I was also thinking about the Grand Guignol when I was reading your book Everything I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned From the Toxic Avenger. You were complaining that modern filmmakers don't want to make their audience watch anything that will make them feel uncomfortable or anything but happy, sad or excited.
I don't know if it's the fault of the filmmaker, but when you're making a one hundred million-dollar movie, you can't screw around, you have to make it for all people. You have to be all things to all people, therefore you can't take any risks. It's like baby food. You can live on baby food, but it sure is boring.
Our budgets are less than one half of one percent of that. Terror Firmer (Picture: ), probably my most personal film, challenges the audience. It gives them lots of different things to think about, politically and socially. It's rather subversive and, presumably, it will challenge the audience and give them a true emotion.
I think that there are a lot of people out there who would like to have a strong emotion; they crave that. And I think that's why we're still around after thirty years. So rather than baby food, Troma is the sort of the jalepeno pepper of the cultural pizza.
Is all the extreme nudity and crazy sex scenes part of the concept of taking the audiences out of their comfort zones?
Well yeah. A lot of what we do is alternative lifestyles, anything that's for the underdog. Tromeo Juliet (Picture: ), I think those are elements that get people's attention.
But look at the sex in Citizen Toxie or Terror Firmer. Well, Terror Firmer was a hermaphrodite. I don't think that people are going to whack off watching Terror Firmer. Although there is a pretty good female masturbation scene, where she may have gotten off during it.
And in Tromeo and Juliet, too, in the lesbian scene it would definitely appear that the two gals got off on it. But I don't know that that's why people go to our movies. They can go to see Strap-On Sally Part 14 and get a lot better lesbian material.
So we got that stuff there, but hopefully we're doing it partly to get people's attention, and partly to get some interesting points across.
I think if you look at our eroticism you will see that it is rather provocative. There's a cerebral element to it, more interesting than just straight-on pornography.
But I just did a master class at the University of Milwaukee, and a Shakespearean professor came to the screening of Tromeo and Juliet, and he had been recommended the film by his students and he couldn't understand why. To him it just looked like a sex film, he couldn't get anything out of it.
Really?
Yeah! Whereas the kids got it. So I think there is also a cut off. I think that people born of a certain age can't see beyond the sex and violence.
Why do you think people get bent out of shape over sex and sexuality? It seems the only way it's okay is if it's funny or if it's art, and even nudity in art makes people uncomfortable.
Well, I don't know. The fact that the professor of Shakespeare couldn't get it - the movie is in iambic pentameter, he missed that! He didn't get it. He didn't get how brilliant it was for the balcony scene, to have Juliet up in a glass box! That's brilliant! And the kids get it; if you go to the Troma website you can see people are getting their MAs and PhDs writing about Tromeo and Juliet. And that guy didn't get it!
And porno is absolutely chic right now! The New York Times just gave a whole "Style" page on Jenna Jameson (Picture: ), "At Home With Jenna Jameson." But again, the value system was pretty screwed up. It wasn't anything to do with her acting or anything. It was all about the fact that she had a five million dollar house. Nor did she talk about the stupidity of censorship.
What about the actresses in Troma films, do you usually have to coax them into doing some of these scenes?
Nowadays, I think there are very talented young actresses out there who would fuck a giraffe to be in a movie. I think that now, if anything, you kind of have to hold people back.
Certainly up until about five years ago, this was a big thing for actresses and actors to get over. And for some of them it is still a big deal. But there is a huge number of young people who have gotten over it, who would do anything to be in a Troma movie.
I mean we had that fat kid in Terror Firmer who ran around Times Square buck-naked. That could be looked upon as a tougher task than pretending to fuck in a closed set. This guy had to show everything in Times Square during tourist season with an awful lot of people in the street, including policemen!
Did Troma get in trouble for that?
Yes we did! Our production manager did not tell the police that we were doing it; it all has to be on the permit, and the permit did not say, "Fat kid runs naked through Times Square." It just said something like, "Man walks through Times Square."
So the cops saw the first take and they took the permit away and closed us down. And my guess is that they did it because they thought we were fucking with them, they thought we were being wise guys.
But I think that if the production manager had just told them the truth and had organized it six weeks ahead of time, we could have worked it out where we had a blanket here and a blanket there. It's just that we didn't tell them.
Was it worth it, though?
Oh yeah, the shot is great! But the point is it could have better. It could have been so much better if we had different angles. We should have done it three times.
When, in your opinion, does something become pornography? And I'm not talking about Troma films necessarily.
I can't tell you that. I can tell you that when a movie tells the audience to follow orders, not to think, I would say that's obscenityI guess form without substance.
If it's just penises and vaginas looking like machinery, maybe that's pornographic. But if there's a personal statement involved I don't think it can be pornographic. I don't even know what the word pornographic means to tell you the truth. It's a multi-syllable word and we're a low-budget company. We can't afford a dictionary.
But I think a filmmaker like Gaspar Noe, who made Irreversible (Picture: ), no matter how graphic he may depict sex, I can't imagine that it would be anything but art, as opposed to pornography. I don't think anything we would do, no matter how graphic it might be, I can't imagine it being anything but art.
It's just us being uncomfortable with sex again.
Yeah, we're a weird race. There is this puritan ethic; people specifically came here so they could be sexually repressed. That's what the pilgrims came here for, and that was part of their religion. Two hundred years is not a long time.
But I do think that the younger people in this country really have gotten over it. And thanks to Mr. Skin, and Troma, and others, I think people are getting very used to it!
Troma is the longest-running independent studio in the country, held afloat by a devoted fan base that hunts down its wildly subversive films despite the studio's noticeable blacklisting from mainstream reviews, video outlets and theaters near you.
In those thirty years, Troma has put out over one hundred films that are at once ludicrously silly and politically pointed. Few filmmakers can manage to portray the '70s woman's lib movement through a sexy softball team's group showers and wet t-shirt contests. Even less could battle the environmental crisis with a toxic mutant and his super-power mop.
But Troma's absurdist juxtapositions are exactly what make its films so appealing. That and the domineering, scantily clad women - or "gynos," as Troma calls them (you know, "because 'woman' has the word 'man' in it"). Gynos endure buckets of green goo, three-foot penises, and wandering pickles all in the name of entertainment. All in the name of art.
Mr. Skin had a chance to talk to Kaufman, the procurer of Troma's 1000-plus film library, the teacher of seminars on shoestring movie-making, the brain behind Tromadance Film Festival, and the soul of independent filmmaking.
Tell me about the Troma psyche, are there any films that you feel have summarized your creed?
Certainly Citizen Toxie, which is the most recent movie I've directed. See, our basic premise in every movie is that there is a small town of Tromaville, and the little people of Tromaville are perfectly capable of running their lives. They don't need rich people to tell them how to do it.
But unfortunately, there is a conspiracy of the labor elite, the bureaucratic elite, and the corporate elite -- and the little people of Tromaville are victimized by the conspiracy of elites that sucks dry their economic and spiritual capital. And sometimes the little people of Tromaville must call upon the Toxic Avenger to save them. Or they gotta call on Sergeant Kabukiman NYPD who patrols the waterfront and has some heat-seeking chopsticks.
Or sometimes, as in Troma's War, the little people of Tromaville literally had to save their society by themselves. They had to get together and do it.
Citizen Toxie deals with a lot of different themes. It deals with the Columbine massacre and the abortion issue, which I don't see too many Hollywood companies dealing with.
It deals with the fact that MTV and the media are promoting plastic surgery everywhere and brainwashing young kids whose bodies haven't been formed into changing their behinds and breasts and noses. This whole emphasis on material goods and how you look as opposed to your soul and morals.
Watching all the Troma films, they remind me of what I read about Grand Guignol in Paris, these plays of extreme horror and violence.
Yes, you're absolutely right! The Grand Guignol at the turn of the century.
I was also thinking about the Grand Guignol when I was reading your book Everything I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned From the Toxic Avenger. You were complaining that modern filmmakers don't want to make their audience watch anything that will make them feel uncomfortable or anything but happy, sad or excited.
I don't know if it's the fault of the filmmaker, but when you're making a one hundred million-dollar movie, you can't screw around, you have to make it for all people. You have to be all things to all people, therefore you can't take any risks. It's like baby food. You can live on baby food, but it sure is boring.
Our budgets are less than one half of one percent of that. Terror Firmer (Picture: ), probably my most personal film, challenges the audience. It gives them lots of different things to think about, politically and socially. It's rather subversive and, presumably, it will challenge the audience and give them a true emotion.
I think that there are a lot of people out there who would like to have a strong emotion; they crave that. And I think that's why we're still around after thirty years. So rather than baby food, Troma is the sort of the jalepeno pepper of the cultural pizza.
Is all the extreme nudity and crazy sex scenes part of the concept of taking the audiences out of their comfort zones?
Well yeah. A lot of what we do is alternative lifestyles, anything that's for the underdog. Tromeo Juliet (Picture: ), I think those are elements that get people's attention.
But look at the sex in Citizen Toxie or Terror Firmer. Well, Terror Firmer was a hermaphrodite. I don't think that people are going to whack off watching Terror Firmer. Although there is a pretty good female masturbation scene, where she may have gotten off during it.
And in Tromeo and Juliet, too, in the lesbian scene it would definitely appear that the two gals got off on it. But I don't know that that's why people go to our movies. They can go to see Strap-On Sally Part 14 and get a lot better lesbian material.
So we got that stuff there, but hopefully we're doing it partly to get people's attention, and partly to get some interesting points across.
I think if you look at our eroticism you will see that it is rather provocative. There's a cerebral element to it, more interesting than just straight-on pornography.
But I just did a master class at the University of Milwaukee, and a Shakespearean professor came to the screening of Tromeo and Juliet, and he had been recommended the film by his students and he couldn't understand why. To him it just looked like a sex film, he couldn't get anything out of it.
Really?
Yeah! Whereas the kids got it. So I think there is also a cut off. I think that people born of a certain age can't see beyond the sex and violence.
Why do you think people get bent out of shape over sex and sexuality? It seems the only way it's okay is if it's funny or if it's art, and even nudity in art makes people uncomfortable.
Well, I don't know. The fact that the professor of Shakespeare couldn't get it - the movie is in iambic pentameter, he missed that! He didn't get it. He didn't get how brilliant it was for the balcony scene, to have Juliet up in a glass box! That's brilliant! And the kids get it; if you go to the Troma website you can see people are getting their MAs and PhDs writing about Tromeo and Juliet. And that guy didn't get it!
And porno is absolutely chic right now! The New York Times just gave a whole "Style" page on Jenna Jameson (Picture: ), "At Home With Jenna Jameson." But again, the value system was pretty screwed up. It wasn't anything to do with her acting or anything. It was all about the fact that she had a five million dollar house. Nor did she talk about the stupidity of censorship.
What about the actresses in Troma films, do you usually have to coax them into doing some of these scenes?
Nowadays, I think there are very talented young actresses out there who would fuck a giraffe to be in a movie. I think that now, if anything, you kind of have to hold people back.
Certainly up until about five years ago, this was a big thing for actresses and actors to get over. And for some of them it is still a big deal. But there is a huge number of young people who have gotten over it, who would do anything to be in a Troma movie.
I mean we had that fat kid in Terror Firmer who ran around Times Square buck-naked. That could be looked upon as a tougher task than pretending to fuck in a closed set. This guy had to show everything in Times Square during tourist season with an awful lot of people in the street, including policemen!
Did Troma get in trouble for that?
Yes we did! Our production manager did not tell the police that we were doing it; it all has to be on the permit, and the permit did not say, "Fat kid runs naked through Times Square." It just said something like, "Man walks through Times Square."
So the cops saw the first take and they took the permit away and closed us down. And my guess is that they did it because they thought we were fucking with them, they thought we were being wise guys.
But I think that if the production manager had just told them the truth and had organized it six weeks ahead of time, we could have worked it out where we had a blanket here and a blanket there. It's just that we didn't tell them.
Was it worth it, though?
Oh yeah, the shot is great! But the point is it could have better. It could have been so much better if we had different angles. We should have done it three times.
When, in your opinion, does something become pornography? And I'm not talking about Troma films necessarily.
I can't tell you that. I can tell you that when a movie tells the audience to follow orders, not to think, I would say that's obscenityI guess form without substance.
If it's just penises and vaginas looking like machinery, maybe that's pornographic. But if there's a personal statement involved I don't think it can be pornographic. I don't even know what the word pornographic means to tell you the truth. It's a multi-syllable word and we're a low-budget company. We can't afford a dictionary.
But I think a filmmaker like Gaspar Noe, who made Irreversible (Picture: ), no matter how graphic he may depict sex, I can't imagine that it would be anything but art, as opposed to pornography. I don't think anything we would do, no matter how graphic it might be, I can't imagine it being anything but art.
It's just us being uncomfortable with sex again.
Yeah, we're a weird race. There is this puritan ethic; people specifically came here so they could be sexually repressed. That's what the pilgrims came here for, and that was part of their religion. Two hundred years is not a long time.
But I do think that the younger people in this country really have gotten over it. And thanks to Mr. Skin, and Troma, and others, I think people are getting very used to it!
