Appearing on a screen straight from the legendary Troma Entertainment headquarters in Long Island, New York, veteran producer and filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman has both hands occupied: one is gripping a compact vape pen, the other holding a massive can of sugar-free energy drink. It would be a pretty standard sight for a busy producer, but even more impressive given that Kaufman is 80 years old, and cutting into lunch breaks to take calls coming from different time zones and respond to young assistants nipping in and out of his busy office with questions about several concurrent productions.
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Kaufman founded the iconic Troma Entertainment in 1974 alongside Michael Herz, with the duo still helming what is now the longest-running independent film studio in history. The producer’s legacy was honored late last week when his daughter flew to London to accept a Raindance Icon Award on behalf of her father, who remains so busy with work he couldn’t quite make the trip. Looking back at his career with Variety on the occasion of his Raindance award, the well-humored Kaufman jokes: “Roger Corman is dead, Toby Hooper is dead, who else can they give awards to? I’m the last one left!”
Troma Entertainment specializes in low-budget independent films, focusing on horror and comedy and riffing off classic 1950s horror films by leaning into gore, farce, parody and provocation. The company is most well-known for 1984’s “The Toxic Avenger,” and is responsible for discovering major talent in the last half century, including James Gunn, Oliver Stone, Billy Bob Thornton, Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Costner.
“Troma is a fan-fuelled company,” notes Kaufman. “The only reason we’re still in business, other than Michael Herz running the company, is because our fans from the very beginning have always been very young and quick adapters.”
The studio head recalls how David Schultz, now CEO of Vitagraph, pushed Troma into making DVDs “when the machines hadn’t even been in people’s homes yet.” “We were way out front. We had two or three good years. We got into video cassette very early, before anybody else, at least with the kind of movies we were making. ‘Toxic Avenger’ was a seminal movie of that era.”
“Twenty years ago or so, one of my daughters said streaming looked like a pretty interesting area in which to travel,” he goes on. “We discussed it, and then launched Troma Now, which is still very small but grows slowly and people don’t leave the platform. For once in 53 years, we have a somewhat predictable six months ahead of us. We know we can meet the payroll and keep doing what we do on the distribution end, which is very little.”
Asked if he has hope for the future of the industry, Kaufman says, “mainstream is frightened.” “From what I’ve seen anecdotally, they don’t last long. All suits walk around in cars they don’t own, in big empty houses, huffing and puffing at restaurants that don’t have phone numbers.” The producer believes, however, that this makes for a great time for those who might be scrappy but hungry to enter an industry that is still more accessible today than it was when Troma first started.
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“You know, I think we are in a late-stage democracy time for capitalism and life in the States, which has reached its climax with Trump and what’s happening in Europe and everywhere, but I still do believe a young person can make it,” he says. “The bright side is that one can make a movie for $2,000 and it can be terrific. Academy Award-winning Sean Baker made a movie in 2004 called ‘Take Out’ about a Chinese delivery boy who’s an illegal immigrant; he was way ahead. Baker infuses the film with comedy and pathos; it’s a wonderful film. Then Baker started using cellphones with ‘Tangerine,’ and he’s a big Troma fan. The point is: if people can read and write, they can make something.”
Troma was also pioneering in tapping into the comic book slash superhero genre, with its “Toxic Avenger” series that started back in 1984. One of Kaufman’s very own mentees, “Tromeo and Juliet” co-writer James Gunn, is the big man at the helm of DC Comics. So how does Kaufman look at the legacy of the genre in the Marvel Cinematic Universe era?
“I went to Yale University and majored in Chinese Studies,” he recalls when asked. “The one thing I got out of Yale, other than learning the rich kids had drugs, is Marvel Comics. That’s when I discovered Marvel and Stan Lee. Once I graduated, we wrote at least a couple of scripts that never got made. He was a big help to Troma. He wrote the forward to one of my books in which he states that, in the same way that Spider-Man put a new face on the superhero comic book, ‘Toxic Avenger’ has done that with cinema.”
“The Troma Universe has very much, I think, birthed the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” he notes.
Speaking of legacy, Kaufman is very much still working towards the future of Troma Entertainment, and is currently directing his latest, “The Power of Positive Murder.” The film, a (very) loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic “Crime and Punishment,” is in its final stages of shooting. “With ‘The Power of Positive Murder,’ the idea is more about a young Gen X man in America who has been going along believing in the American dream, who went to college, and now what can you do? You know, you’ve got to murder your landlord [laughs]. It’s a rather nihilistic film, and just to make sure it doesn’t make money, we shot it in black and white.”
Kaufman ends the conversation in a characteristic self-deprecating note, stating he doesn’t quite know if he has “any real talent,” but then leaning into earnestness to add: “What we do have is a talent for recognizing talent. That has served us well, and also listening to young people as opposed to the ones we’re supposed to be listening to. That’s good advice, I think.”