People think they know what indie film is all about but do they really? Today we're speaking with Lloyd Kaufman, head and co-founder of Troma Entertainment, home of the famous Toxic Avenger movies and one of the only independent film studios left standing; they've been in the business for almost 40 years. He is the brain child behind the TromaDance Film Festival, which is celebrating its 12th year this April. He is also a producer, director, author, and actor. Whew, this man has done it all! Besides wearing all those hats fighting the good fight, he is charming, facetious, and passionate as wellSo you have the TromaDance Film Festival coming up April 22nd and 23rd. Would you like to talk about that a bit?
Sure. TromaDance is in its 12th year. It came out of a trip that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the boys who made Cannibal! The Musical for Troma and who went on to do some kind of a cartoon show called South Park. I don't know if South Park ever went anywhere, but Cannibal! The Musical is a brilliant, brilliant movie. Trey and Matt went to Sundance and insisted that we go there about 15 years ago with Cannibal! The Musical and it didn't get into Sundance but they went. They wanted to go anyway.
And they kind of convinced me to go with them. I went to go skiing, but we all were horrified at how unpleasant Sundance was and how they seemed to hate the independent filmmakers, and the staff seemed to be extremely rude and elitist. And it just was very apparent that Sundance was the tool of the vassals of the major conglomerates like Sony Classics, or Fox Searchlight, or Harvey Weinstein/Disney Miramax.
