Filmmaker Seeks Social Change With ‘Troma-tic’ Movies

NEW YORK (TNA)—A hundred years ago, French Dada artist Marcel Duchamp took a leak in a public restroom, framed the urinal, and called it art. The piss-pot was recently auctioned for $400,000.

Independent filmmaker and “professional shit-stirrer” Lloyd Kaufman, the gonzo guru and self-describe auteur behind the Troma Entertainment empire, which includes cult film classics like “The Toxic Avenger” and “Sgt. Kabukiman: NYPD”, believes time will deliver the same esteem to his legacy that it has to Duchamp’s.

Filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman

“In the fullness of time, art is recognized as art,” says Kaufman. “That’s how it’ll be for my films.”

The 62-year old Kaufman’s latest magnum opus, “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead,” is a scathing attack on the fast food industry, a piece of Native American activism, and an animal rights screed. On the one hand, that is.

At the same time, the film – which Kaufman is unspooling city by city across North America – is a classic Troma gore-fest and a slapstick horror piñata—its plot ostensibly ripped from the headlines—but full of creative, cartoonish violence, a smorgasbord of T&A, and a decidedly off-kilter sensibility.

“It’s a film with a lot of subtext, a lot of meaning. The fast food industry brainwashes our fat, sweaty teenagers into becoming fatter and sweatier. They kill animals in the most ruthless ways. And I think you know how we treated the Indians in this country,” says Kaufman. “Of course, there’s also lots of gore and nudity, and some singing and dancing,” he says. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

Since launching the Troma brand – imagine Mad Magazine-style satire, mind-bending genre skewering, with scads of titillating, gratuitous nudity and violence – in 1974 with longtime friend Michael Herz, Kaufman has worked the fringe of the film industry. Despite the madcap nature of his films, Kaufman has always sought social change through his work.

A 1968 graduate of Yale, where President George W. Bush was a classmate, Kaufman intended to be a social worker. The lure of filmmaking, as well as cinema’s power to reach wide audiences with provocative ideas, became too grand to ignore, he says.

Troma films like “The Toxic Avenger,” “Class of Nuke ‘Em High,” and the $500,000 “Poultrygeist” are garish to be sure, but also examine strong social and political themes.

“I’m a professional Dada-ist. I’m out to stir the shit. I’m out to make a change,” he says with the fervor of a hopped-up evangelist or a lunatic carnival barker.

“I don’t like fast food people. I don’t like phonies. I don’t like Al Gore riding around in a private jet that consumes more oil than a typical American family uses in a year,” he says. “I don’t like the way all these corporations and conglomerations are killing small businesses. Somebody’s gotta stand up and talk about this stuff.”

He adds, “I’m not serious about myself, but I take these movies – and this world of ours – very, very seriously.”

So while Yale classmate Bush is running the country and other filmmakers from golden years of the 1970s are making serious and serious-minded films, Kaufman runs his independent studio – “the longest, oldest, continuously running one in the world, and probably the last,” he says – and shares his worldview in all its vivid colors.

“I like to challenge people. Ingmar Bergman did it, but he also put people to sleep. He made masterpieces, but they’re like watching paint dry,” Kaufman says. “I like hard-bodied lesbians, I have to admit that. And I don’t think I’m the only one. My fans tell me I’m not the only one.”

Kaufman’s films have never cost more than a million dollars, and typically cost much, much less, which allows him a freedom of creative expression his comrades in Hollywood rarely enjoy.

“When the studios spend 150-million dollars making a movie, they have to be all things to all people. That’s baby food. You can live on it, but it’s very boring,” he says.

“Troma’s the jalapeno pepper on the cultural pizza,” he says. “Of course, I’m so broke I live in a refrigerator box.”

Indeed, times have become increasingly tough for independent filmmakers of all walks. Troma itself has been the target of shut-down rumors for the past year, though Kaufman insists they are untrue. (“Like herpes, Troma will never go away,” he says).

A key scene from  'Poultrygeist: Night of the  Chicken Dead'

“Truth is, the entertainment industry is controlled by a very small number of very, very powerful conglomerates, and they will prevent people from the pleasure of seeing truly independent films. You won’t see my films on TV or in Blockbuster. It’s economic blacklisting, and I’m pissed off about it,” he says.

“The monopoly is here and it does not like the independent artist. If you’re a free thinker, you’re fucked,” he says. “We are being forced to drink the Kool-Aid, or die of thirst.”

Kaufman credits Troma’s sizeable fan base – in most major markets, he’s able to virtually sell-out one-week runs of “Poultrygeist” – with his three decades of survival.

“I have the best fans in the world,” he says. “When they hear I’ve got a movie, they go out and demand the theaters play it. I can’t say how grateful I am for that.”
Kaufman, married for 35 years, knows full well he’ll never become rich making Troma films, but believes it’s all about creating enduring work, even if most people consider it slightly less sophisticated than a framed urinal.

“This is the work I have to do. I enjoy stirring the shit. I enjoy challenging people. My work will stand the test of time,” he says.

As for the typically sordid ingredients of his “masterpieces”, Kaufman is colorfully pragmatic. “Sitting on a set waiting for the fucking lighting guy is boring as shit,” he says. “I like to have some naked men and women running around every once in a while. It’s great stuff. So why not?”