Filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman. (Spike Bakker/Troma Pictures)
Lloyd Kaufman has long threatened to upstage Roger Corman as the king of strange, low-budget movies in America. In 1974, Kaufman, then a producer and actor who’d appeared in small parts in films (he played a drunk in Rocky), founded Troma Pictures, a New York-based production house that would go on to create and distribute incredibly strange horror and superhero movies. With titles like Surf Nazis Must Die, Punk Rock Holocaust, Rabid Grannies, Die You Zombie Bastards and Tales from the Crapper, Troma’s name has become synonymous with lurid exploitation. In addition to ludicrous plot lines, Troma films are noteworthy for their rock-bottom budgets and self-consciously cheesy production values, an esthetic that has won Troma legions of fans, including Guillermo del Toro, Peter Jackson and (surprise!) Quentin Tarantino.
There’s no gag left behind in Kaufman’s own films (The Toxic Avenger, Tromeo and Juliet). He pulls out all the stops, with loads of nudity, gore and scatological humour, all drenched in the aura of a vaudeville show. His latest film, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, is about the evils of fast-food culture. A chicken chain builds a new restaurant in a small town on the former site of a native burial ground. Soon enough, the ghosts of natives (and chickens) begin to wreak havoc on the employees and customers. As usual, Kaufman delivers splatter, over-the-top sex scenes and often repugnant laughs. Kaufman spoke from his office at Troma Pictures in Manhattan.
Q: What was the inspiration for Poultrygeist?
A: The inspiration came from the basement of the Troma Building in New York, where I had to battle these racoon-sized rats. The reason they showed up is because a fast-food restaurant moved in next door. They were not pleasant neighbours. We started to learn about fast food and I read the book Fast Food Nation, which enlightened me about the fact that there’s nothing good about fast food.
Q: You have likened film culture to fast-food cuisine.
A: Yes. The mainstream media brainwashes the public. The media puts the Kool Aid in the water. They brainwash people into going to see Transformers and then heading to Burger King right after — just like zombies. These movies are just like fast food: they feel good going down, and then later you get the diarrhea or worse. What a great image. I’d never made a zombie movie, so I thought, why not make a Troma satire about it?
Q: You say you’re not politically correct, but you have a very diverse group of characters. You have a gay Latino guy as well as a Muslim woman, and you have a couple of lesbians.
A: And the main character can’t go to college because he must take care of a mentally deficient father and a blind mother. His girlfriend goes to college and becomes a lesbian. So there’s the alternative-lifestyle theme there as well as the disabilities. We also don’t just skewer the corporate side, we skewer the phoney, limousine-liberal side as well. At one point, all the anti-fast-food protestors stop screaming to take a sip of their Starbucks coffee.
A scene from Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. (Troma Pictures)
Q: Your style could be characterized as “everything including the kitchen sink”: slapstick, one-liners, musical numbers. Who are your main cinematic influences?
A: Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Fritz Lang, John Ford, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage. Pretty much the classics.
Q: You wouldn’t know that, looking at your films.
A: I think Preston Sturges is all over our films. His fond satire of American life is running through our films. I think Capra, too, has influenced our films. There’s a sweetness to our movies, there’s a sympathetic side to all our characters, which is part of the reason that we’re still here.
Q: There’s a lot of scatological humour in this film. Is there anything that’s just too disgusting or crass for you to put in a movie?
A: My wife is executive producer of this film. The scene with the guy taking a crap, where we have the shot from inside the toilet, we put a sign over it that says “CENSORED.” That was because my wife insisted. I was going to have the sign say, “CENSORED BY DIRECTOR’S WIFE,” but then we just decided to go with “CENSORED.”
Q: What’s your advice for young filmmakers?
A: To thine own self be true. Do what’s in your heart. Troma was founded in 1974. It goes by real fast. If you want the swimming pools, then just imitate [blockbuster director] Michael Bay. But if you want to do something meaningful, follow your heart. We started the Tromadance Film Festival nine years ago, and it goes up against Sundance every year in Utah. It’s free — you don’t have to pay to enter, you don’t have to pay to see the films. Sundance, you have to pay to get in, but not us. And we don’t have a VIP policy, everyone’s equal.
I also support young talent by appearing in their films. I do it for free. That way they’ve got a name in their film; it can help them get a deal. There’s no doubt you have to grovel in this business. But I’m good at it. I’m good at giving blowjobs to distributors. Hitchcock did it. Picasso did it. Van Gogh couldn’t do it, so he cut his ear off and blew his brains out. I don’t think I’d cut my ear off, but I could blow my brains out.Q: You sing and dance in Poultrygeist. What prompted you to cast yourself in the movie?
A: I’m reliable; I know I’ll show up. You know, the older actors cost a lot to get in. And many of them suck. I suck less, so I gave myself the part.
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead screens at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival on July 14.
Matthew Hays writes about the arts for CBCnews.ca/arts.
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