ANYTHING I SO DESIRE

Here’s the talk we did with Lloyd Kaufman in 2001. The creative driving force of the New York based Troma Entertainment and director of cult classics like THE TOXIC AVENGER and CLASS OF NUKE ‘EM HIGH visited the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival where, in the early morning hours, he presented CITIZEN TOXIE to an audience of dead-tired horror fans who had been up all night during the traditional Night of Terror. Roel Haanen talked to him at that same festival (the talk was scheduled before the screening of the fourth TOXIC AVENGER movie). It’s a sprawling and entertaining talk, with Kaufman going into every hot button topic of the time: abortion, racial violence, art versus politics, a conspiracy of elites, the hypocrisy of politicians, the hypocrisy of Hollywood, the obesity plague and so on. In twenty years since this talk took place, not much seems to have changed. As with his art, Kaufman was ahead of the curve.

Before you had success with THE TOXIC AVENGER, you had been in movies for about fifteen years.

My first feature was made in 1968, THE GIRL WHO RETURNED. It was a 16-mm movie in black and white, made with a Bolex. And we had many successes before THE TOXIC AVENGER, by the way. For instance, we had great financial success with a movie called SQUEEZE PLAY. It was a very raunchy sex comedy about a women’s softball team, based on the women’s liberation movement of the seventies. It ended up with four hundred 35mm prints.

This was before PORKY’S?

Oh yes! We discovered that whole sex comedy thing in the States. It was not done before SQUEEZE PLAY. We made enough money with that movie to buy what is now called the Troma Building in New York. Because of that success we made a whole string of sexy comedies: WAITRESS, STUCK ON YOU, THE FIRST TURN-ON, all of which were based on newspaper stories. Just like we do today, except that these were lighter and sexier. We didn’t have a dark side yet.

Is that what you learned from THE TOXIC AVENGER? Combining that dark side with raunchy, anarchic comedy?

I think you’re right. That’s what Roger Corman said about Troma. From the beginning our brand has been famous for blending genres. In TERROR FIRMER we not only mix genres, we turn them inside out.

You seem to move along with the times. Your recent films, like TROMEO AND JULIET and TERROR FIRMER, are more outrageous and they contain much more cruel jokes.

Really?

Don’t you think so?

Well, it’s a little hard for me to be objective about what I do.

I’m referring to the jokes with the fetus ripped from a woman’s womb. You probably couldn’t have done that in 1985.

Well, in 1986 we did something similar with a pregnant woman in CLASS OF NUKE ‘EM HIGH.

That wasn’t quite as brutal as this.

Yeah, well. I thought it was important to start TERROR FIRMER with some brutal moments, because to a certain extent that is what American society is: brutal. The reality of American life is constant racial and sexual violence. My movies are a reflection of that. From THE TOXIC AVENGER on we have been involved in fighting hatred and violence and the puritanical dictatorship in America. It’s always been there in our movies and these important buttons have to be pushed. In CITIZEN TOXIE the abortion button will not be pushed, it will be jammed! You’ll see.

What’s your stance on the issue then?

It’s a bug-a-boo! It’s a non-issue! It’s the woman’s choice. But the point is: half the world is starving and we’re having discussions about abortion. It’s horseshit! We did a movie called TROMA’S WAR. That dealt with AIDS when no one was dealing with AIDS. Certainly the first movie that took AIDS and shoved it in your face. We made it at a time when AIDS was swept under the carpet. We said: Hey, this is here and you better do something about it!

TROMEO AND JULIET and TERROR FIRMER deal with these hot button issues by doing provocative jokes. Not only abortion, but incest and child abuse and rape. Do these jokes get you into trouble in the States?

The United States is run by a cartel, as is Western Europe. It’s a fixed club in which no one who is independent can enter without selling his or her soul. So, it doesn’t matter which subjects I use in my movies. I’m economically blacklisted anyway. You have Pathé controlling almost everything in cinemas here in The Netherlands, right?

Most of it, yes.

Yeah, and everything they don’t control that fuckhead in Brussels controls. And that is true of everything: television, newspapers, magazines. So what do I care what they think of Troma? What do I care what anybody thinks of our movies? Does Blockbuster have… Do you have Blockbuster here?

No, in The Netherlands the video store situation is a bit different…

Yeah, yeah! I know. We have one store – let me take you there – they have one Spanish art house movie and one Troma movie, all the way in the back! You don’t have to say it. There is economic blacklisting against independent art in the States, but maybe here, I don’t know, you have a free society where you can get Troma movies everywhere.

Hey, your newspaper, when they print this article on Troma…

I’m not from a newspaper. I’m from a fanzine. See? [Shows Kaufman an issue of Schokkend Nieuws]

Oh, well. You are the reason that Troma has been around for twenty-five years. The fans like that I do what is in my heart and you’re willing to go there with me. There are millions of fans out there and they support us.

Fifteen years ago I produced COMBAT SHOCK and fans now are finding it. COMBAT SHOCK failed financially when it came out, but my partner and I knew that the public and the critics made a mistake. It’s masterpiece. We keep pushing it and pushing it. We re-released it on video and recently on DVD. It cost us 75.000 dollars. It was one of the first DVD’s of ours to come out. Now it is getting a very good following. Thanks to the fans. I’m still not making any money on it, but now people are recognizing what a great movie it is. Some will even go so far as to say it’s the best post-Vietnam statement ever made in movies. PLATOON is okay, but COMBAT SHOCK is the real thing.

So, over time, what we do will have its day in the sun. It just takes time for our fans to hear about it and for others to find it.

So, how successful are the new Troma movies compared to the old ones?

Well, to give you an example. We made 20.000 DVD’s of TROMEO AND JULIET, but it sold out quickly. We were waiting for more orders to come in, because you have to produce them in large quantities. The stores got angry with us, because it took so long. And now, we are on our third run of the DVD’s. We knew the film was successful, but we didn’t expect this.

That movie took five years to make. I couldn’t even get the money for it. Even our investors didn’t want to invest in it.

I thought the acting in TROMEO AND JULIET was a lot better than I had come to expect of Troma.

Except for the black guy, every actor in TROMEO AND JULIET had Shakespearean experience. They knew how to say these lines. Whereas in that Leonardo DiCaprio film – which wasn’t a real film anyway, it was a music video – the actors had no idea what they were saying. I don’t know what Di Caprio was saying, but it wasn’t Shakespeare. Claire Danes was a little better, but they didn’t understand it. Our script was written in iambic pentameter. We wrote every line in Shakespeare’s rhythm. You’re not aware of it when you hear it, but it gives the film a mood of artistry.

Would you consider doing another Shakespeare adaptation?

I might. It’s a real possibility. I have been thinking about it, to tell you the truth.

TROMEO AND JULIET also got some good reviews in the mainstream press.

Yeah, but the major American critics have always favored our movies. THE TOXIC AVENGER got good reviews. Even SQUEEZE PLAY was well received by the New York Times. The American Film Institute did a major Troma retrospective at our tenth anniversary. The problem is, there are fewer mainstream newspapers and fewer mainstream television critics, at least in the United States. That’s because of the cartels who are eating up all the independent newspapers and TV stations. There are fewer ways to have your movie reviewed. The serious critics know what we’re doing. They know that the purpose of the movies is not just to show sex and violence. The stupid ones don’t. If you look at all the movies I directed in twenty-five years… I’m one of the few working film auteurs today. Maybe the only one who can truly do whatever he wants. In film, I can do anything I so desire.

Are you deliberately trying to prove that point with each film?

Good question. No, I think I’m also motivated by pissing people off. Lemmy from Motörhead is in three of our movies. He doesn’t take any money. He’s just a nice guy. We have a lot of well known people that offer their services for nothing. But Lemmy asked me on the set of CITIZEN TOXIE: You do this to piss people off, right? I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but I can’t deny that is part of my motivation. Last year at Cannes a French critic compared me with Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. Certainly in the case of Duchamp, when he painted the mustache on the Mona Lisa, he did that to provoke people. Same with the urinal he put on the wall as part of an exhibition. He was a Dadaist. He was trying to stir the pot.

And the pot needs to be stirred now as well.

Of course! We are living in an age of excess in the U.S. Everyone is fat. People say I’m thin, but that’s only by comparison. I can’t even get into my fucking shirt. I took an airplane to Orlando, Florida where I was a guest of honor at a convention. These people going down to Disneyland looked like elephants. It’s an age of excess and pampering and smugness. People need to be reminded of certain things. They need to feel something real. The movies that you see in your theaters – I don’t mean you, but most people – are shite like WILD WILD WEST and SUPERNOVA. We get this every week in the United States! We’re brainwashing children and adults with hundred million dollar advertising campaigns to go see this shit. That’s all we get. No real emotions. NOTTING HILL with Julia Roberts: absolute formulaic crap! Worse than porno. With porno at least you have some kind of emotion. You get an erection or you find it disgusting, but there’s something. What we get is no risk, no emotion, no thoughts. Nothing! Baby food!

The purpose of Troma was to rail against this baby food. We are the anti-studio. Anti-elites. Anti-Hollywood. Anti-FORREST GUMP.

On the DVD of BLOODSUCKING FREAKS there is a Troma intelligence test. I took it, of course, and I got ten out of fifteen questions right.

That’s excellent!

Well, no. Because the DVD proceeded to give me the advice to look for a job separating the brown from the green bottles.

[Laughs]

One of the questions was about you being attacked on a TV show. I was wondering if that was about your provocations.

No, that was set up by a fascist right-wing racist pro-tobacco chat show guy, who used to be a Kennedy supporter, a real phony hypocrite by the name of Morton Downey. Total asshole. They called us up and said they were doing a Halloween show and they wanted Troma to be on it. But it was a set-up and I got beaten up. What they did was, he got me on the show, showed a few seconds of TROMA’S WAR, which we had just finished at the time, and he screams at the audience: That was terrible! Should we get rid of this guy? And the whole audience gets riled up. It was a real mob scene. And he wants me to get up and leave, but the only way out of there was through the audience. So, I said: I’m not going anywhere. Then the big fat security guards came in and had their way with me. This guy would do anything to get some ratings. Like I said: he supported Kennedy and when Reagan was popular, he became a right-winger. It was live. Somewhere we have a copy of it. We’ll put some of it on one our next DVD’s as an extra.

Isn’t there a scene in TERROR FIRMER that references that?

Yes! It’s sort of based on that. Because my wife was in the audience. She had just given birth. This was our first night out. We got invited to a TV show and we thought we would have some dinner afterwards. Won’t this be fun! She’s in the audience with this screaming mob. It was Halloween, so everyone in the audience had masks on and they were screaming and yelling. My poor wife was in the middle of that. [Laughs] That’s why we did the scene in TERROR FIRMER.

You have a real dislike of authority, it seems. Politicians and police are mostly not portrayed in a flattering light.

I have a big problem with authority. I think that we are too much controlled by so-called liberals like Hillary Clinton who think they know better. Who tell us how to live our lives. They, who have been successful by being dishonest. They, who have made millions of dollars though chicanery and tricks. They think we need to be told how to run our lives. I hate that. So, every movie we’ve done has reflected a subversion of authority.

We take the position that there is a conspiracy of elites. The labor elite, the bureaucratic elite and the corporate elite. These three elites conspire to suck dry the little people of Tromaville of their economic and spiritual capital. In the States labor leaders get salaries of a million or two million dollars a year, while the union members are working like animals for next to nothing. Government officials like the Secretary of State or the Environmental Commissioner, they put in their three years of service and then move on to the big corporations where they make ten million dollars a year. It’s all fixed. On top of that, they are preaching to us.

Judging by the references you made in TERROR FIRMER I suspect that there is a fourth elite in your view, the Hollywood elite.

Yeah, because you see: I’m not going to forget. I’m not going to forget that Elia Kazan named names. They give him an award! Someone here at the festival said to me they were upset that Kazan had to fly coach to come to a festival in Europe. He should have been made to swim! He shouldn’t even have been invited. He’s a disgrace to humanity. He renounced his friends.

But not everybody in Hollywood supported the decision to give him that award.

I don’t buy that whole controversy crap about him getting the honorary Oscar. I think ninety-eight percent of the audience was all for him getting the award. Because Hollywood has sold its soul to the devil. I used our website to picket the Oscars. I wrote an essay explaining the issue. We put out a call for people to come picket the Oscars. We have an office in Los Angeles and I had the staff make picket signs. We had about fifty people there, who had responded. The Toxic Avenger was there too. Good Morning America filmed it. Canal+ did some coverage. We did it again in Cannes, two months after the Oscars. You’ve got to keep reminding people.

Kazan, by the way, is a very mediocre director. He directed theatre pieces. He sucks. He had James Dean. Lucky him. Basically, his movies are boring. If you’re going to give out awards, give one to Leni Riefenstahl. She is probably one of the five greatest filmmakers in history. She’s still alive. Fly her in on business class. Give her the lifetime achievement award. Why not? If art is more important than politics…  So what if she was a Nazi? She had talent and she was a woman! How else could she have made movies back then? How else can a woman make movies today, unless they suck dicks or they’re Penny Marshall?

The Oscars are absolutely disgusting anyway. I’m convinced that fifty years from now we’ll look back on that as the obscenity that it is. We have an entire continent falling off the map and here’s this rich western country reveling in the wealth and prosperity of a very small minority. People wearing fifty thousand dollar evening gowns. Thirty thousand dollars worth of fake breasts underneath. While baby’s are dying of starvation, these people, who make twenty million dollars a movie, are putting tens of thousands of dollars into their ass! To make it look smaller! Twenty percent of American children go to bed hungry. American kids are being beaten and raped by their fathers. There’s child molestation all over the United States: in schools, in churches, in temples. It’s out of control! Meanwhile we have this nonsense about Elian Gonzales on TV. Fuck him!

Speaking of children, you have used your daughters in your movies frequently. Can they watch the movies they’re in?

No, because my wife is very strict. She believes children should not see these movies. She is correct, of course. So, Charlotte was ten years old when she was in TERROR FIRMER, and every time there was nudity or graphic violence, she was removed from the set. She has never seen the movie either. But it’s not like she’s even asking to see it. She doesn’t want to.

My oldest daughter is now at Duke University. She doesn’t have any interest in my movies either. It’s not like she turned sixteen and suddenly got interested in her dad’s movies. She hears from her friends at college that I’m cool, but she has always thought of me as somewhat of a nerd. 

Are people surprised that you’re such a family man?

Yes, sometimes people are shocked that I’m still married to the same wife. Our domestic life is quite boring. I love drugs and alcohol, but my wife won’t let me have them in the house. Well, I can have a glass of wine, but I can’t get drunk and throw up. She’s probably right. It wouldn’t be good for the kids to see their dad waking up in the morning in a pool of his own vomit. So, I behave myself. Even at the festival here.

I might scream about the big issues, like war or Hillary Clinton or Pathé-is-the-devil and all that. But the reality is that my family is much more important. I’m more proud of the fact that I’m still married to my wife after twenty-five years, that my kids are reasonably normal and happy, and that I’m still working with the same business partner after all these years, than getting awards from festivals.

Talking about your business partner, Michael Herz doesn’t seem to do any festivals or publicity, right?

Michael decided about fifteen years ago that he really doesn’t enjoy being in the public eye. In fact, he decided to devote himself solely to building our company. He and I both saw that the elites were getting more powerful and that independent movie companies were being destroyed or eaten by the conglomerates. So, Michael decided to focus on the business side of things. Originally, he and I co-directed. We did about fifteen movies together. But he doesn’t like it when people recognize him.

Is that why Joe Fleishaker plays him in the extras on the DVD’s?

Yes. It’s funny. Joe gets recognized at conventions as Michael Herz. The first time I asked Joe to play him in an interview, I thought it would get a rise out of Michael. But he loved it. He thought it was great. He said: Can you now get Joe to come to the office as me, so I don’t have to do this anymore?

I saw that you also distributed Dario Argento’s THE STENDHAL SYNDROME and I wondered…

We distribute a lot of movies. We have seven hundred movies in our catalogue. Outside of the major studio’s I don’t think anyone owns the rights to so many movies. In India someone might have more, maybe, I don’t know. But we made only about a hundred movies. The rest we bought. Now, THE STENDHAL SYNDROME is a brilliant film and Troma is not good enough to distribute…

That’s not what I meant to say.

No, but I agree. It’s a disgrace that Troma has to distribute it. Dario Argento committed the crime of making an independent movie. Any one of the majors should have distributed that movie, but because they want to own every last bit of you, Dario had no place to go but to us.

So, it’s not a new strategy to branch out beyond the more apparent Troma-esque films?

No. Of course I like the film. I think it’s great. But I really mean it when I say that STENDHAL should have played in major cinemas. But Dario is obviously not interested in joining their club. I asked him about that. I interviewed him twice for the DVD of THE STENDHAL SYNDROME. I asked him: Dario, it must be very disappointing for you that at this point in your career your new movie is being distributed by Troma. And he said: Look, I am happy because I know Troma will release my movie uncut. You guys have guts and you care about the movie.

You saw Pupi Avati’s THE ARCANE ENCHANTER last night.

Yes, and I loved it.

So, you obviously also like more serious genre movies. Have you ever had the ambition to try your hand at that?

I don’t have the ambition to do anything. I get involved in a theme or concept and I go with it. It slowly develops. I’m very much interested in the subjects that interest young people. So, our next movie will be about the various political issues that concern the youth of the nineties, especially in universities. For example, you have the people who sleep in trees, who want to save the tree from getting cut down. Or lesbianism. That’s big in American universities now. Troma has always been a big fan of lesbianism since the late sixties. So, we’re going to focus on that.

You said earlier, that given time, everything Troma does will have its day in the sun. Does it sometimes frustrate you that Troma doesn’t have the same clout as the majors?

Look, when Van Gogh made his paintings, nobody understood it. He had to cut his ear off. I don’t know about a more influential artist than Van Gogh. Troma is like Van Gogh. But the difference is that Troma has been lucky enough to find an audience while we’re alive. We can support ourselves by our movies. Van Gogh did not have that luck. On the other hand, he didn’t have to worry about distribution. He had a rich brother to support him, so… If I had a rich brother, I probably wouldn’t have bothered doing anything. But I didn’t have a rich brother when I started. Now I do. My brother is very rich. He’s made a big business of bread.

Is that the same brother who made MOTHER’S DAY?

Yeah. He has a big bakery in San Diego. He makes high end bread. The best. Really great baguettes and olive bread. It goes out to restaurants. It’s a huge success. Horror films and bread… They both have the knife thing.

The thing is, you have to be a good business man in this business. Charlie Chaplin was a smart business man. He owned his negatives. He was rich. Buster Keaton, on the other hand, was a contract player for MGM. Not only was he poor, bankrupt even, but MGM destroyed his career on top of it! They cut it short. He was younger than I am when he made his last movie. I’m 55 and still directing movies.

So, what’s the difference between you and, say, George Lucas, besides the obvious difference in the scale of your operations. You both are savvy business men and you both control everything creatively.

Lucas is motivated by something else than artistic vision. Just look at THE PHANTOM MENACE. It’s terrible. With all due respect, no one who is a true artist, no one who had a real artistic spirit, would make that movie. It’s truly there for money. It has nothing to do with a world vision or anything.

And why doesn’t Lucas release these movies on DVD already? Because he wants the kids to buy the VHS cassettes first and shell out twenty bucks and when everybody’s got the VHS he’ll release the DVD. Don’t you think that’s reprehensible? These fans are just kids. They don’t have any money. They’re poor! Give ‘em a break! How many million do you need? He gets to fuck the fans.

I actually believe that in the end you will make more money if you treat the fans fairly. We release our DVD’s region free. What the hell do I care if someone wants to buy a DVD in the States and play it in Europe? Art is for the people.

That’s why we did Tromadance. Our own festival that was at the same place as Sundance, the same time. To show people that independent film making is for the people. At Sundance you have to pay to send your movie in! You think they have a fair selection of movies? No way. Whichever movie has the best public relations gets in. Every movie by New Line or Miramax gets in. Miramax isn’t even an independent company. They are owned by Disney! The Sundance  selection committee is a hundred percent corrupt. They charge the poor filmmakers money to enter, but the selection is not done based on quality, but based on politics, money or power. We charge the filmmakers nothing to submit. We don’t even charge for the tickets. It’s all a public service.

You see Disney doing public service? Did you know that the U.S. Congress, because of Disney, passed a new copyright law? Mickey Mouse was about to become public after 75 years and Disney lobbied for a new law. Copyright is now extended so that Disney can keep Mickey Mouse. Everyone is brainwashed. They think: Oh, copyright law is good because it protects the artist from bootlegging. No! Copyright law has been overused to protect the elites. Because it also pertains to the world of medicine and science and education. It means that everything is still in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people. Because of copyright people are dying of AIDS in Africa. They can’t pay twenty thousand dollars for a pill! It should cost five cents! Universities have to pay royalties to some asshole who wrote a thesis eighty years ago! Education shouldn’t be expensive. Point is: copyright should protect the artist from bootlegging while he is alive. It’s fair to say that for a period of say 75 years no one is allowed to make TOXIC AVENGER movies but Troma, but after that: give it to everybody!

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This interview first appeared in a shorter version in the Dutch fanzine Schokkend Nieuws. Above is the full version of this talk, edited only for clarity.

Special thanks to Jan Willem Steenmijer for letting us use use wonderful photograph. Be sure to visit his website.