Adult Swim : Time To Waste Time with Lloyd Kaufman

Lloyd Kaufman is the man largely synonymous with Troma Entertainment, known for its creation and distribution of low-budget horror (and otherwise generally cheesy) flicks like Toxic Avenger and Poultrygeist. And he's damn proud of it. As he should be: Troma is responsible for giving Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Oliver Stone, and Billy Bob Thornton their movie debuts as actors and/or directors. Kaufman continues to extend a hand to the younger generation with a series of books about filmmaking, including his latest, Sell Your Own Damn Movie! In that spirit of first breaks, we gave Kaufman a jingle on his celly to talk about his early cinematic inspirations.

Poultrygeist Trailer

I was going to be a teacher or social worker, to try to make the world a better place. It was the '60s, so I was going to teach people with hooks for hands to fingerpaint, and bums how to paint smiley faces on beads. Something along those lines. But then I made the mistake of going to Yale University, and God f***ed my life, because he put me freshman year with a movie nut [for a roommate]. We were in a tiny bedroom. Our beds were head to toe and at night I would inhale his stinkin' feet. The aroma d'Troma started to be born in a horrible virus that caused me to drift into the Yale Film Society, which my roommate ran. He works for the New York Times now: Robert Edelstein.

There was no film department then, there was one history of film course, and there was a guy who was teaching filmmaking, but he only let six people into his course. And because I hadn't made a feature-length film he wouldn't let me in. His name was Murray Lerner. At any rate, there were two guys out of a thousand who were film fanatics. One was in my bedroom, and the other was next door. Eric Sherman -- his father was Vincent Sherman, a big-time Hollywood director who directed movies like All Through The Night with Humphrey Bogart -- lived next door. I caught the virus. I would drift into the Yale Film Society and would see movies like John Ford's My Darling Clementine. Movies you wouldn't normally think of that he did. Long Voyage Home. Tobacco Road. She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. Cheyenne Autumn.

Because I speak French, those guys had the magazines of the French cinematheque, Cahiers Du Cinéma, the notebooks of cinema. Those magazines were written by critics. They weren't filmmakers. In the early '60s they started making movies, and propounded the auteur theory of cinema. That the filmmaker should be the author of his movies -- they should have total control. Filmmaking is the filmmaker's event. When people ask, "Who's in your movie?" I don't give a s***. It's who directed it. That's what it's all about in my head. This steered me to the auteur directors. People like John Ford, Howard Hawks, and those kinds of directors. I'd go see The Steel Helmet by Samuel Fuller, and there'd be two other people in the audience, but I'd be totally knocked out by it.

“Filmmaking is the filmmaker's event.”

The Steel Helmet

So when you saw these auteur movies, did they feel different to you from other films?

I can tell you the moment that I decided to make movies. I was at a showing of To Be Or Not To Be by Ernst Lubitsch. A movie that was subsequently remade by Mel Brooks. But the original starred Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, and Robert Stack. I was very much knocked out by the film because it's a crazy movie but 100 percent disciplined. I majored in Chinese studies at Yale, so the Taoism spoke to me. Like, how an oyster gets a grain of sand stuck in its anus, and it's extremely painful, but it produces a pearl? To Be Or Not To Be was so crazy yet so beautifully controlled, so I just decided right then and there that I would make movies. It just was. It was as easy as getting out of the La-Z-Boy, going to the icebox, and cracking open a beer.

“It was as easy as getting out of the La-Z-Boy, going to the icebox, and cracking open a beer.”

To Be Or Not To Be

It was just the whole movie. Unfortunately for me, I bought into the auteur theory. I had been knocked out by Warhol, Rossellini, and most of all by Stan Brakhage. In fact, we brought Stan Brakhage to Yale and I did an interview with him on the radio station. I asked him one question and he spoke for an hour. The students did not appreciate that. They wanted The Supremes. In fact, I got kicked off the radio station for that. That should tell you something about my rebellious spirit.

I didn't tell anybody that I was going to get into it. I waited until I graduated. But I did make a major life decision. I decided I was not going to go into film school. I had a decision to make whether to stay in New York and work for a crappy little exploitation movie company or go to Hollywood where I had an offer to be a production assistant on The Owl And The Pussycat, which starred Barbara Streisand. So I decided to stay in New York and run my career according to the auteur theory of cinema, and work for the crappy little company. I did that instead of working on a movie with the whiniest actress in history. That's just the '60s.

But because I didn't really enjoy my Yale life I spent a lot of time in New York going to the [movie] theater. I hung around the Warhol gang, and I used some of those people in Battle Of Love's Return and Sugar Cookies and along the way some others, too. Warhol was a big influence. I didn't know him. I would be in the same room as him or in The Factory or Max's Kansas City and maybe he knew my face, but I was just a nerd. I always wore a tie and jacket. I still do. It was my high-school upbringing. We always had ties up with blazers. Through Yale, actually. But they loosened up later. Later Yale went coed and I was allowed to wear women's clothing. Much more comfortable, except for the high-heel shoes. I only wore those at night.

Sugar Cookies Theme

What other ways did being at Yale help open your eyes?

I never read comic books as a kid. I learned about Marvel at Yale and fell in love with them. After Yale I sought out Stan Lee. In his introduction to my new book, he talks about why he let me hang around. I'm sure there were lots of boys who wanted to get together with him. But he gave me a story idea and I wrote a script based on his story, and that actually got optioned by a company called Cannon in the mid-'80s.

It seems natural you'd be into comics if auteur theory spoke to you: They're both essentially very faithful executions of the writer’s or director's vision.

Good point. In fact when I was shooting Battle Of Love's Return and writing the script called Night Of The Witch for Stan Lee, it immediately got optioned. As bad as my writing is, it actually got optioned [but that's how popular auteur stuff is].

Actually, I was just watching Stella Dallas by King Vidor. If you go to film school they probably show you Our Daily Bread. The big mistake with these f***ing film schools and critics is they'll show the kids M or Metropolis but won't show them The Big Heat. They'll show them John Ford's She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, but they won't show Cheyenne Autumn. They'll show Hitchcock's Rope or Psycho, maybe, but they won't show Marnie, the most perversely romantic movie in history. Because they don't get it. They just do not get it. They do not understand. They do not take the director's body of work as a whole, and they don't get the fact that the public goes in one direction and that Hitchcock goes in another, doesn't mean he's any less capable or his movies are any less brilliant.

“They just do not get it. They do not understand. ”

When your roommate and neighbor were exposing you to new movies that were influential, were there any you didn't really respond to like they expected you would?

Good question. I didn't care for some of the mainstream movies in the theaters. I don't remember when I saw it, but Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? -- in its day was a big deal, but to me was totally an exploitation movie. For me the greatest film, the No. 1 movie in the world is Princess Yang Kwei-Fei by the great Mizoguchi. The Japanese director. I've only seen it once because it was such a religious experience that I never wanted to see it again, because I knew it wouldn't affect me in the same way. I saw it back in 1969 or 1970. It so blew my mind that I didn't want to see it again.

The Princess Yang Kewi-Fei

It's totally sublime. It's based on a Chinese novel, Journey To The West, and if you look up the word "sublime" in the dictionary, you will find Princess Yang Kwei-Fei. I shouldn't even be talking about it, because I cannot do it justice. It has this sad ending, with just this wind that swirls these leaves up into the sky. It's very -- I don't know what the word is, but it's lasted. There's no way to describe it other than sublime. It's an amazing experience. At least it was for me at that time.

Robert Bresson is also great. I don't know what his most famous one is, Pickpocket, maybe, but Mouchette is this amazing movie about a sad teenager. At the end of the movie she wraps herself up in what looks like mosquito netting and rolls down a hall into a river and kills herself. Again, I'm not doing it justice, but to me it's totally where it's at. But I guarantee you even Adam Sandler movies aren't going to be discussed 25 years later. Although, I did just see Just Go With It, and I laughed my ass off.

Just Go With It Trailer

I'd be in LA being Michael Bay if it wasn't for the f***ing auteur theory and my buying into it at the age of 18. If I hadn't found all this stuff, I'd be Michael Bay. He's probably never even heard of Andy Warhol. Or maybe he has because Warhol's paintings sell for $37 million and that's something that those guys can understand. Money. They won't be a footnote, but I'll be a cinematic footnote. I've influenced some of today's filmmakers, and they're influencing me.

“I've influenced some of today's filmmakers, and they're influencing me.”

Given that you say you're going to be a footnote and this is going to go up on the Internet and it'll outlive us all -- what message do you have for future generations?

If you’re going to do what I do, to thine own self be true. Do what you believe in. To thine own self be true, a phrased coined by William Shakespeare who wrote that great bestselling book, 101 Moneymaking Screenplay Ideas.