By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Troma's blunt object lessons: Kaufman tells some if not all
The Globe & Mail’s Matthew Hay picks the mind of prolific schlockster Lloyd Kaufman, who’s been almost as prolific as classmate Oliver Stone: “Kaufman points out that due to Troma’s “commitment to art and auteurist cinema,” many people contact him through Troma’s website… to work for free. “Just about everybody on the set is there to experience the joy of making some art,” Kaufman explains, with a straight face. “We posted lyrics on our site and said we needed music for them. We were contacted by someone in Edmonton who wrote the music for it. And he did it for free. We said we needed pulsating eggs as a special effect. So this woman in Sweden made some pulsating eggs and sent them to us. They were stopped at the border, though. I guess pulsating eggs are suspicious after 9/11.” … In his book, he advises that you recycle fake limbs for gore sequences as a method of penny-pinching. Ground beef, he points out, works perfectly when simulating a head crushing.” Regarding film festivals, “he distills bits and pieces of know-how. Be sure to take as much food from the airplane as you can, he warns, so that you avoid the high cost of eating at [Canne’s] expensive restaurants… The changing scene at Cannes is part of the reason Kaufman lectures… “I’ve been going to Cannes for over 30 years… Look at this year: Everything was sandwiched by George Lucas and that no-talent hose hound Paris Hilton. Today, the word independent has been stolen. When the major newspapers call divisions of AOL Time Warner independent, and the public actually believes it, the vocabulary has been stolen too… If you’re not in it for the art, then get the hell out.”