Lloyd Kaufman im Interview

Indepent-Cinema Urgestein Lloyd Kaufman im Interview. Kaufman ist Kopf von Troma-Entertainment, eine Filmproduktion, mit weit mehr als 30 Jahren völliger Unabhängigkeit. Troma produziert sehr eindeutige Genrefilme, „Southpark auf Drogen“ umschreibt es recht gut.

AVC: You’re open to people pirating your films?

LK: I think it’s actually helped. I’ve written essays about copyright law and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that Clinton pushed through, which basically gives perpetual copyright to giant devil-worshipping media conglomerates. Mickey Mouse should be in the public domain by now. What a better world it would be if other people were doing things with Mickey Mouse! If Shakespeare had lived in our age, he would have been sued for writing Romeo And Juliet, because as everybody knows, he plagiarized that from an Italian play. With the Clinton act, he would have had his rosy red ass sued right off. That DMC Act is a disgrace. And the problem with independent art in this country is that independent artists have been economically blacklisted. HBO hasn’t bought any independent movies for God knows how many years, and if they do, they get them from Fox Searchlight or Warner Independent. Believe it or not, Warner Independent—I did a lot of research on this—is actually part of Time Warner. And IFC, which has never played a Troma movie, is actually owned by Cablevision and the Dolans, who are horrible people as far away from the independent spirit as you can get. The nice thing about piracy is, it allows the public to get independent art, to get a variety of music and movies.

I was recently elected to be chairman of the Independent Film And Television Alliance, and I ran on the platform of lobbying in Washington to educate the lawmakers and FCC that independent art is under assault in this country—and under a pepper, too, but that’s beside the point. Comcast won’t talk to Troma. We’ve been in business for 30 years and have 800 movies, and they won’t talk to us. If we give one of our movies to some middleman at Time Warner or whatever, then they’ll talk to them, so there’s another layer of revenue that we lose. The limited access to the marketplace is economic blacklisting. If you’re an independent, you don’t get on TV. And in the rare instances that you do get on, you get a fraction of what that very same movie would get if it came in through Fox or Viacom. With Poultrygeist, Troma didn’t even have the money to put up, so my wife and I had to put it up. I of course told her she was investing in Transformers. Don’t tell her.

Unbedingt auch den Rest lesen. Bei diesem Typen weiß man nicht mehr, wo die Ironie anfängt und wo sie aufhört.

AVC: You actually teach a Master Class at various film schools now. What’s the first thing that you tell your students?

LK: The first decision is, „Do I want the big mansion in Hollywood? Do I want the hookers? Do I want to be on the cover of People stepping out of a limousine with no underwear?“ If that’s what I want, then I gotta go out to Hollywood and fight my way up the food chain. But if that’s not necessary, then no need. One can stay in New York or Chicago or Memphis or wherever and make your own damn movie the Troma way. The other very important thing is, „To thine own self be true“—which is a phrase coined by William Shakespeare, who wrote the bestselling book 101 Moneymaking Screenplay Ideas, otherwise known as Hamlet.

Auch wenn Troma-Filme nicht jedem schmecken dürften, der Kopf hinter all dem scheint einer der hellsten Hollywood’s zu sein.