If Roger Corman is the King of the Bs, then Lloyd Kaufman is the Robin Hood of the genuine independents: filmmakers without budgets, stars, studios and any kind of support. He's been making films for forty years, at times within the studio system but mostly on the outside, on miniscule budgets where audacity and ingenuity and ballyhoo made up what was lacking in production value, and he's toured, lectured and written numerous books on the subject of making movies in the margins. Thirty-five years ago he formed Troma Entertainment with his partner Michael Herz, which has producing his own outlandish efforts (the "Toxic Avenger" films, "Tromeo and Juliet" and "Sgt. Kabukiman," to name a few) as well as films that can't made or seen in the mainstream industry.
Kaufman's most recent epic of energetic bad taste is "Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead," an aggressively absurd, outrageously gory and comically grotesque horror farce: part "Poltergeist," part "Alien," part "Dead Alive," all zombie chicken musical, with more excruciating puns that you thought was (in)humanly possible. The feathers fly as the demon chicken spirits invade fried chicken franchise American Chicken Bunker (where the outfits look like oversized Boy Scout uniforms with aspirations to military authority) and do to the humans what they've been perpetrating on chickens. The humor is aggressively tasteless and outrageous, the special effects bargain basement and the production values nonexistent, which is part of the fun. Kaufman even joins in the fun in front of the camera with his usual over-enthusiastic attack. Subtle this man ain't, but then again this a movie where the hero sings "revenge is a dish best served fried" and zombie chickens take him at his word and dismember, deep fry and devour the staff of a fast food joint. Subtle is not on this menu, but it is goofy, gory fun.
It's also the first Troma film in years to get a theatrical release, though even that has been a challenge for the fiercely independent Kaufman. He's a scrapper, outspoken against the monopoly that Hollywood holds over film distribution and a champion of truly independent voices and visions. He's also as amiable a movie micro-mogul as you'll ever meet, and you'll get a chance to meet him at Central Cinema on Friday, September 18 and Saturday, September 19, where he will introduce screenings of "Poultrygeist" and take questions from the audience about the film and his distinctive career. The film plays through Monday, September 21. Click here for details on the showtimes and tickets.
I spoke with Kaufman earlier this summer about his career, his company and his campaign for independent cinema.
"Poultrygeist" is the first Troma films in years to get a theatrical release.
Only because we fought like crazy. It's played about 300 cinemas, but one by one by one by one, and when you play in one movie theater in New York and you can only spend $50,000 and "Speed Racer" is opening against you and they're spending $2 million in New York and opening on hundreds of screens in New York alone, and in spite of that "Poultrygeist" had the highest per-screen average in the country on May 9, 2008, and yet two weeks later we get thrown out of our cinema because "Indiana Jones" needs every screen in the world. So that's the problem we have.
In your promotion of Troma films, you pose as a kind of goofy huckster character. Is that what you have to do to promote your movies when you don't have a promotional budget?
I don't know if that's what you have to do but that's what I do. In other words, you have to whore for your art, as I say in my books. I've had forty years of making movies with nobody telling me what to do. The downside is I've had very small budgets. "Poultrygeist" is a half-million dollar movie. If a major made it... How much was "Drag Me To Hell"? I'm sure it was thirty, forty, fifty million. We're making movies for less than one percent of that. So in order to get the money to do that I have to humiliate myself and because I don't want to break the law or rip people off or tell people to invest who can't afford to lose their money, I have to be a clown to some extent.
And then to sell my movies. I just came back from the Cannes Film Festival, I was on every French television station and radio and newspaper, I spent the whole time doing French interviews. I'm the Jerry Lewis of the French underground. But meanwhile, no distribution anywhere. Economic blacklisting, that's what it's called. At least Troma has a fan base. "The Toxic Avenger" musical opened in March in New York and it's doing great, just won the Outer Critics Circle for Best Off-Broadway Show, so we're still around, but it's never been more difficult. We go to Cannes and we do street theater. We're spending no money and Warner Bros. has a party that costs more than "Poultrygeist."
You're also politically active in the cause of independent cinema.
I'm president of The Independent Film and Television Alliance, which is the trade association for the independent movie industry. Roger Corman's company is a member, the guys who made "Crash," the guys who made "Monster," the guys who financed "Lord of the Rings" and "Million Dollar Baby," most of the serious independent filmmakers are part of this organization and I ran as chairman on a platform of fighting industry consolidation and protecting net neutrality on the Internet, because the worst thing that has been going on in my forty years of filmmaking is the rules that used to protect the public against monopolies have been done away with. The consent decree of 1948, which prohibited the studios from owning theaters, was done away with under Reagan, so that's why Sony owns Loews, and we independents have difficulty getting into a movie theater, which made it very difficult for "Poultrygeist."
So that's the problem we have, so that's why I ran for chairman of this organization. The other part of this platform is, they've gotten rid of the financial syndication rule which used to prevent the networks from owning content and required that they license 35% of their content from independent sources, and that was done away with under Clinton. So as Michael Moore said, Clinton was the greatest Republican president that we ever had, he did more for big business than Reagan. When the financial syndication rule was done away with, it meant that we independents couldn't get our TV shows or movies on television, even HBO or Showtime. But they still pay a shitload of money to their friends at Paramount, which is owned by Viacom, or Universal, owned by General Electric, or Sony. So I ran for the chairmanship of this trade association to try to get some of our treasury devoted to lobbying in Washington against industry consolidation.
What's the future of "The Toxic Avenger" series?
We're just starting to write the fifth "Toxic Avenger" movie. I don't even have a beginning, middle and end to the script, I just know that "Toxic Avenger: Part 5" will concern the twins that he had at the end of "Citizen Toxie." Toxie gets older in each movie so I have to figure out where we're going with it.
Is that also going to be shot in New Jersey?
I don't know. I honestly don't know. My wife is New York Film Commissioner and she will kill me if I don't shoot in New York State. If it turns out we have to shoot in January or February, we may have to move it to a warm climate somewhere.
