The Troma panel at Comic-Con gets smaller every year, but the sense that you’re at a really fucked up family reunion never dissipates. “What I find is amazing about Lloyd, is that everybody is connected to him in some fashion,” said panelist Steven Paul at yesterday’s session. He gestured at the room––the smallest I entered all weekend. “I bet everyone here has acted in a Lloyd Kaufman film.”
Not quite, but part of the reason to show up to this thing every year is to see which disparate characters Lloyd will rope into making an appearance. This year, there wasn’t a guest more unexpected than Paul, a producer on Ghost Rider, the visual effects producer on Karate Dog (!!!), and the man responsible for a number of upcoming “is that really necessary?” video game adaptations, including Castlevania and Tekken. What, exactly, was this guy doing on what Kaufman himself billed as “a panel of independent thinkers?” “I at one time was Steven’s teacher,” Kaufman boasted. “So there’s a little bit of Troma in the mainstream world!”
Maybe more than a little bit. Seated on the far end of the table was Mark Neveldine, co-writer/director of the budding Jason Statham franchise, Crank. “You’ll have to excuse me, because this is the first panel I’ve been sober for,” Neveldine cracked with pitch perfect post-frat bravado––now that nerds are inheriting the earth, an awful lot of them look and sound suspiciously like recurring characters on Entourage. What’s this guy’s connection to Kaufman? He’s apparently Troma’s most dedicated plagiarist.
“If you’ve seen Crank, you’ve known that I’ve stolen bits from Toxic Avenger, Terror Firmer, Tromeo and Juliet,” Neveldine says. And Poultrygeist, Kaufman’s recent fast food satire, which has been a minor hit in the cities brave enough to book it, is Neveldine’s “favorite film of like the past four years.” Neveldine even repaid his debt to Kaufman by casting the older filmmaker in both Crank 2 and his upcoming Game. Commenting on his late-in-life surge as a wanted actor (IMDb lists 20 credits for Kaufman for 2008 alone), Kaufman crowed, “That’s the benefit of having lips like a woman.”
Neveldine came back: “And the ass of a 4 year old.”
Lloyd beamed. “There’s the Troma influence!”
Hammering home the fact of his DIY cred, Neveldine then brags that Crank 2 was shot on prosumer cameras––which, he says, are “bitchin’.” “I think everyone should grab one and go be a filmmaker.”
What else you got, Lloyd? “We have some footage of Toxie, in Baghdad,” Well then! “Obama just came back, and Toxie was with him.”
After a tech snafu––during which Lloyd grabs a loose A/V cable and mimes plugging it into his asshole––we’re introduced to the highlight of this year’s panel. Toxie in Iraq, a four-minute short (filmed in Patriot-Color!) that’s equal parts Troma propaganda and satire on war propaganda.
“The Toxic Avenger windsurfs across the earth, to the desert of despair, to kick some radical Muslim ass! ” says the classic newsreel-esque narrator. “When a radioactive mop proves ineffective against the sandjockeys…Theres nothing like a big, honking bazooka to say, ‘We come in peace!’” The closing sentiment: “Thats right, Toxie, teach a lesson to the cut and run crowd! Let the red, white and blue hang high–just like Sadaam Hussein!”
Just like all of Troma’s triumphs, it’s dirty and scrappy and completely brilliant in its obstinate stupidity. “Satire is an art form that we have nearly lost, and Batton [Lash, the cartoonist who recently featured Kaufman and Toxie in his serial Supernatural Law) and South Park are keeping it alive," said Kaufman. "The problem is that most of the public doesn't get it." When a Troma product is firing on all cylinders, it convinces you––however temporarily––that contemporary culture is what's really toxic, and the the only appropriate anecdote is fart jokes and horrible, horrible puns. There's something beautiful about that. Utopian. It wears off almost immediately, but every year when I'm in that Comic-Con room with Lloyd and his insanely mismatched posse, I really do believe that they've stumbled on to some sort of answer.
It's probably for the best that Kaufman is not pie-eyed enough to share that belief. There's a reason why the panels are getting smaller, why there was no sign this year of Toxie himself or the infamous Tromettes: in this cultural climate, a company like Troma can hardly thrive when they're spending so much time and energy fighting for their right to merely exist.
In regards to the dying indie retail landscape (which he memorably railed against in this YouTube clip), Kaufman said, "Form the Troma point of view, we're effed. The indie video stores are gone, and unfortunately, most of the chains don't want to hear from Troma and I think it's the same from other [truly indie] companies. And American television…” As he trails, off, Kaufman makes a face that tells us exactly what he thinks of that.
Ultimately, the aged filmmaker who arguably invented viral movie marketing calls for us to put our money where our mouths are to support independent artists. “No theater wanted to play Poultrygeist, but the fans kept bugging them, and then it did very well, it was the #1 screen in the country the week it opened. It played eight weeks in NY. It had to move theaters, because Indiana Jones and the Skull Fucker came in, but it hung on for eight weeks!” Some dreams still do come true.
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