Lloyd Kaufman: Interviews

If Troma Entertainment, creator of such midnight movie fare as The Toxic Avenger, Poultrygeist, and Surf Nazis Must Die, is unfamiliar to readers, cofounder Lloyd Kaufman blames a conspiracy of elites who have kept his films away from movie theaters, video stores, film festivals, and streaming services. At the same time, Kaufman believes independent filmmaking is open to everyone and has authored a growing library of how-to titles to support this. If it seems inconsistent to refer to moviemaking as democratized while decrying the industry as corrupt, this is part of Kaufman’s charm. Curating interviews spanning Kaufman’s and Troma’s half-century in the film industry, Klickstein (The Little Encyclopedia of Jewish Culture) suggests it can be hard to tell when to take the director of Class of Nuke ’Em High seriously. Kaufman is both Uncle Lloydie (as Troma fans know him) and the former Independent Film & Television Alliance chairman, who supported net neutrality and fought industry conglomeration. Sourcing from major magazines and newspapers, blogs, and fan publications, this book shows how he has positioned himself as a perpetual underdog, recycling well-honed (if over-rehearsed) lines of attack against the system.