There is an almost masochistic streak running through the veins of anyone who decides to become a writer for a living, doomed to toil away in virtual anonymity while clinging to the faint hope they may one day join the ranks of those beloved household names. Mathew Klickstein is much more pragmatic than that, having spent most of the new millennium working as a writer and co-writer of many pop culture related books, as well as working as a ghost writer for a number of celebrities, including our very own Mr. Skin!
The pragmatism that drives Mathew seems to stem from his desire to continue working rather than continuing to work toward fame and fortune... or at least fame, anyway. He's been through it all and has come out the other side clear-eyed about what business he's in and how best to survive within its confines.
Mathew's latest project is a comprehensive gathering of interviews done with Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman, which is due to be released in February—pre-order your copy by clicking here! We covered a wide range of topics in our interview, including Mathew's experience working on Mr. Skin's book, the Lloyd Kaufman project, his hopes for a Marx Brothers-related work, and so much more...
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Skin Central: Looking at your website, you are a man who has worn many hats over the years working in the worlds of print, film, and theatre. Do you find any one of them to be the most rewarding area in which you’ve worked?
Mathew Klickstein: Co-writing Mike Reiss' memoir SPRINGFIELD CONFIDENTIAL: JOKES, SECRETS, AND OUTRIGHT LIES FROM A LIFETIME WRITING FOR THE SIMPSONS is the one time I worked on a project that resulted in a six-figure compensation. Of course, I had to share it with Mike — who was very generous with the split — and it was paid out over a lengthy period of time over a series of various production mileposts.
But, that was still way more rewarding than any of my other projects that tend to be more in the succès d'estime realm, which is cute but doesn't pay the bills. My Nickelodeon oral history, SLIMED!, for example, was a clue on JEOPARDY! not that long ago. But that didn't help with the rent that month. Therefore, it wasn't very rewarding.
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SC: Reflecting back on it, what memories do you carry with you from your time working on Mr. Skin’s book?
MK: All the time spent on and off going to Chicago to work with Skin and his fantastic staff at the office. Anyone who knows him knows Skin as the most humble, courteous and thoughtful rich guy you've ever met. He always made me feel at home to the point of being "one of the family" when I was in the office, and I even became kinda buddies with some of the Skin team, hanging out with them at lunch or after hours.
While in Chicago, I also got to go out to eat with a local buddy of mine who runs a small but sensational foodie concern and who is additionally a nationally renowned competitive eater. After we got completely drunk one night, he made me eat way more than I ever thought possible and though I think he made himself throw up afterwards (as many competitive eaters do), I just felt sick. But, it was still a fun night.
A lady friend I've known for years lives out there, too, and it was always great to see her, spend some quality times bar hopping with her and occasionally banging her when we were in the mood, as well. Then it was always back to the Skin hub in the morning to work on the book.
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SC: How did this whole Lloyd Kaufman project come about? Were you approached for this or was this something you sought out?
MK: It's crazy to think about it, but I've known Lloyd for more than half of my life by this point.
Like so many people from my generation, I grew up on Troma films a la USA's UP ALL NIGHT with Rhonda Shear, Joe Bob Briggs' DRIVE-IN THEATER, Skinemax and the like. Sleepover parties as a kid in the SoCal suburbs during the late 80s/early 90s was for me all about: Barq's root beer, Cool Ranch Doritos, HOT SEAT with Wally George, maybe some late night MTV during the LIQUID TELEVISION/THE STATE years and mondo Troma.
In film school, my good friend, collaborator and absolute loonie art filmmaker Aaron Sheley introduced me to the Troma West crew when they still had an office in LA, and then, shortly after that, I met Lloyd and crew through producer Doug Sakmann (who just died mysteriously at the young age of 43; RIP) while shooting my documentary about "disabled rock band" the Kids of Widney High whilst at Warped Tour + our screening of the finished doc at TromaDance when it still ran as counter-programming at Sundance.
Lloyd and I stayed in touch over the years, we'd meet up whenever we were in the same town and we just clicked as he clearly does with so many people around the world. Kind of like Skin, actually. Just a great guy whom I've always admired and enjoyed spending time with and whose movies I respect greatly for all that they are — the bad and good of them alike.
Long story short (too late), I had also long been a fan of University Press of Mississippi's quarter-century- Gerry loved the idea, connected me to some other folks at the publisher and they were totally not interested, despite the fact they had already done similar filmmakers like John Waters, Roger Corman and Stuart Gordon. (I mean, come on. Love those guys' work, too, but you're going to do Stuart Gordon and not Lloyd Kaufman?! Pshaw.) Anyone who knows me knows I'm the most persistent motherfucker you've ever met, and so I kept kvetching about it, writing up proposals and explaining why I thought it was an absolute travesty that they weren't including Lloyd amongst their pantheon of filmmakers in the series. I guess I finally got their goat (or maybe, like Marc Summers once told me, I was enough of a pain in the ass for it to be a good thing), because all of a sudden, they completely changed their minds and decided they were "excited" to bring me on board to put together the Lloyd Kaufman book in their hallowed series. Huzzah. And that's how it happened. During Covid. **** SC: Wow. Piggybacking off of that, how much material were you given to whittle down to a manageable book sized tome? MK: Oh, I wasn't given any material. The job was to find all the material — the previously published interviews with Lloyd over the years (more than half a century's worth) — curate and organize the best ones, somehow magically figure out who the rights holders were (never the authors and rarely the original outlets), negotiate licensing deals within our scant (university press, lest we forget) budget and then do all the fact-checking, copy editing and annotating needed to make sure the book would be a definitive, authoritative text that can be taught in colleges around the globe. I was also tasked with a scholarly intro that may be the best thing I've written to date, a chronology of Lloyd's life (beat-by-beat by year) and a filmography, which for Lloyd was nearly impossible to condense, since he's personally made more than 50 films and has been involved in various capacities with hundreds more. I also, of course, conducted an interview of my own with Lloyd exclusively for the book and which is objectively the best interview ever done with the man. And I should know. For those in the cheap seats, I just produced the definitive, authoritative scholarly text on the man. And if you dare to contradict me, you're arguing with the very institution of scholasticism and academia, which you don't want to do, because then you're by definition an anti-intellectual ignoramus. **** SC: I interviewed Lloyd over Skype back when I first started with the company and I found him to be every bit as manic as he is in those Troma on the street videos. Did you ever see another, perhaps more reserved side of Lloyd or is he truly on 24/7? MK: He's truly on 24/7. Even now that he's 97, has shrunken to 4'5 and requires a full-time nurse generously underwritten by his always-affable and monumentally talented acolyte Eli Roth. **** SC: Do you have a personal favorite Troma movie or movies? MK: Lloyd would (and has) agree(d) with me both in previous interviews and in person that his best movie is one he had almost nothing to do with, his brother Charles' (not that Charlie Kaufman) MOTHER'S DAY. The reboot is pretty damn good, too, even though it's completely different. Rebecca De Mornay is incredible-as-always in it. And, to bring it all back home again, the daughter of Wally George, to boot (true story!). About two years ago, I also became obsessed with the fourth Toxic Avenger, CITIZEN TOXIE, which I demanded virtually everyone I know watch immediately. And, of course, COMBAT SHOCK is an American masterpiece, but will likely cause many viewers to kill themselves after viewing, a la Godard's WEEKEND. Oh, and you always gotta try the many BTS feature films about the making of Lloyd's films. They're all like Les Blank's BURDEN OF DREAMS or the APOCALYPSE NOW BTS film HEARTS OF DARKNESS ... but way crazier and with way more nudity, blood, shit, crying, fighting and pure movie madness marvelousness. Particularly the one about the making of POULTRYGEIST which, once again, has a genius title — POULTRY IN MOTION: TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN CHICKEN. **** SC: Were there any Troma movies you’d never even heard of before you started this project? MK: Plenty! STUFF STEPHANIE IN THE INCINERATOR has a great title but is sadly very boring. FATTY DRIVES THE BUS also has a great title and is laugh-out-loud funny the entire time and very creative. Lloyd's brother Charles' FEROCIOUS FEMALE FREEDOM FIGHTERS is by far the best example of what one can do by overdubbing a random foreign film; way better than Woody Allen's WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY?. James Gunn starrer DOGGIE TALES is worth watching. I laugh the whole way through every time I watch it. No one else I know does, but I always do; so, fuck them. Some of the new Troma movies are worth a look, also — EATING MISS CAMPBELL and DIVIDE CONQUER (not to be confused with the Roger Ailes doc, which happens to coincidentally involve various Troma folks such as one of Lloyd's daughters), among them. **** SC: As a toy collector, I continue to be fascinated by the Toxic Crusaders action figure line and cartoon series. Did you delve into that strangest of Troma side projects with Lloyd at all? MK: Absolutely. I'm so disappointed I got rid of my TOXIC CRUSADERS action figures as a kid. What an idiot I was. Whenever I'm in vintage toy shops, I always look for them. I usually find them, but the originals are very expensive now. Some day ... (Editors Note: This is an excellent and comprehensive look at the vintage toy line from Leftover Culture Review and is where the above image was taken from) **** SC: I’ve seen Lloyd Kaufman compared to a great many cult film figures over the years, but to me, he really seems most in tune with William Castle, particularly whenever he and the Troma cast of characters storm Cannes every year. Has he ever mentioned Castle being an influence or do you think it’s subconscious? MK: Definitely both of those statements are true. Lloyd is explicitly and implicitly influenced by Castle — both in his films/filmmaking and persona/extra-cinematic sensibilities. Also, if you go to the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) website, for Lloyd's bio, they include this fragment: "A gleeful huckster in the grand drive-in tradition of William Castle and Roger Corman, who knows that selling a movie is as important as making a movie ..." So, there you go. Lloyd even dresses like Castle sometimes, but he doesn't smoke cigars (at least not that I've ever seen) and isn't fat. **** SC: I’m sure that to the average person, nearly everything out of Lloyd Kaufman’s mouth is objectionable, but were there any exchanges in any of these interviews that even took you back? MK: We talked about this during the interview I conducted with him for the book, and that's the fact that I was actually quite surprised that, in going back to his earliest interviews (by the likes of, yes, the venerable NEW YORK TIMES), I found that, even as a bratty newbie in his late 20s, he was already right out of the gate completely contrarian, completely provocative and completely fearless in everything he said. I told him during our interview that I had always assumed he became the outspoken bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you type of irascible and foul-mouthed curmudgeon he so often comes off as on record over the past two decades or so. But, nope: he's always been that way. He's not just a jaded, bitter old coot now. He's always been like that, even before Hollywood and the pharisaic indie scene alike had a chance to shit all over him and toss him out a window into a vat of toxic waste multiple times over the course of his lengthy career. **** SC: On a side note, on your website you mention a project you have in development about the Marx Brothers. As a dyed in the wool Marx Brothers fan, what can you tell us about this? MK: One of my more recent projects has been chronicling the origins of San Diego Comic-Con with the surviving contributors to its birth and development before it became the tumorous corporate-like behemoth it's metastasized into over the past 25 years or so. Co-originator and legendary cartoonist Scott Shaw! and I have, through the process, become very close friends, and we got to talking about an idea I've had in which I would write children's books that would introduce the current crop of kids to Jewish cultural icons like the Three Stooges and Fanny Brice and, certainly, the Marx Bros. Sadly, since we Jews remain right near the top of the most marginalized demographic the world over, it's been a hard sell. None of the publishers seem to care. I even spoke with a few that specialize in Jewish books, and more than two or three said they loved my idea and proposal but "kids today don't know who the Marx Bros. are." To which, of course, I responded, "That's the whole reason I want to do this." But, you know how it is. Anyway, Scott loved the idea and actually had already been developing something similar. So, he started sketching out a few character and page ideas. He's a busy man, as am I, and thus it's been on hold for a while. But hopefully someday we can get it done. Even though I don't see much changing in the way of the popular mindset and thus money people at publishers giving much a damn about a series of books attempting to educate the new generation about how incredibly impactful Jews have been on modern culture. I mean, look at the mess that kept cropping up at that despicable Academy Museum of Motion Pictures or how much the moronic administrators of continuously self-destructive LA's government keep botching the inclusion of Jewish history and culture into their recently mandated ethnic studies programs in area schools, etc. etc. etc. **** SC: Finally, is there anything else you’d like to plug, either out now or coming down the pike? MK: Yes, I also have a new graphic novel coming out through Fantagraphics based on a novella of mine from 2008 called DAISY GOES TO THE MOON. It'll hit stores (wink wink) in mid-January. It's illustrated by another one of my Comic-Con history subjects, Rick Geary, best known for his books on Victorian serial killers and the like, particularly his popular graphic novel on Lizzie Borden. And we're in the final stages of development on the feature-length doc on Comic-Con in partnership with Academy Award-nominated executive producer David Permut (FACE/OFF and Obama-produced RUSTIN) and Oscar Boyson (all of the Safdie Bros. movies and early Greta Gerwig/Noah Baumbach films). I'm really tired of being poor, especially since I'm America's most productive Working Class Creative workhorse par excellence. So, I hope some day one of my many, many projects actually makes me a six-figure check again like that SIMPSONS book of mine with Mike Reiss. Only this time I hopefully get to keep it all and it will bring in substantial residuals, too. Man, passive income would be awesome. I can't even imagine how luxurious life would be if I could get my glasses fixed and an oil change/check up on my car in the same month! Whoa! Gravy train, biscuit wheels, etc. More to come and then some at: www.MathewKlickstein.com **** Click the image below to pre-order your copy of Mathew's book of interviews with Lloyd Kaufman today... ****
