Future Schlock: Troma Is Thinking Reel Big Lately

CANNES —  Sitting on the terrace of the Carlton Hotel where some of film history’s greatest legends have dined, Lloyd Kaufman explains why Troma Inc. is like Walt Disney Co.

“It’s a brand name,” Kaufman said with an uncharacteristically straight face. “Only Disney and Troma make films that are completely recognizable from their brand name alone.”

If true, that would make Kaufman, 51, the Walt Disney of campy, trashy movie making.

“We mix up sci-fi, action, horror, sex, gore into one picture,” Kaufman says proudly of such films as “Nymphoid Barbarians in Dinosaur Hell,” “Tromeo and Juliet” and “Schlock and Schlockability.” “We took all the traditional genres and combined them.”

Entering his 25th year of producing, directing and writing movies for the New York independent film company he founded with Michael Herz, Kaufman bubbles with ideas for expanding the Troma brand.

Two years ago, Troma, a privately held company that primarily has produced and distributed low-budget films, took on a minority partner, Richemont, a Swiss holding company that markets such luxury brands as Piaget and Alfred Dunhill. Kaufman said the investment helped the company enter the video business, create television shows and acquire more negatives to build its film library.

The company holds the rights to about 140 films and aims to reach 600 within a few years. At that point, Kaufman believes, it will be possible to have a Troma channel distributed around the world.

In the meantime, the company produces about two movies a year, distributes eight to 12 and is preparing blocks of television programming for various markets, including Troma’s Edge TV, a two-hour broadcast in Benelux and Scandinavia. The company has a Web site (https://www.troma.com) and licenses clothing and toys, and Kaufman has recently signed a contract to write a history of the studio.

A compact, irrepressible man, Kaufman wears bright green pants, yellow socks and a gaudy tie decorated with red “toxettes,” derived from the closest thing Troma’s had to a blockbuster: “The Toxic Avenger,” which he co-wrote, co-directed and co-produced.

In an interview, Kaufman is both self-effacing and outrageous. He insists, for example, that the name Troma comes from “the original Latin for excellence in celluloid.” When a reporter declines to write that down, Kaufman says, “You’d be amazed how many times that’s appeared in print.”

Beneath his tongue-in-cheek commentary, Kaufman’s views of the entertainment business have an edge.

“We founded Troma to be the anti-studio,” he says. “We’re anti-Hollywood, anti-elite, anti-Forrest Gump. . . . The message of that movie was be a retard . . . don’t think, be a nice quiet guy and be a millionaire. . . . The film said that if you’re a woman, I mean a gyno-American, and you want to be a revolutionary, you get AIDS and die.”

He contends Troma is the oldest independent film company in America and says Troma movies should be comedic, entertaining and challenging. The company recently bought a German movie, filmed in New York, called “Killer Condom” (“Kondom des Grauens”) that will be distributed in the U.S. with subtitles.

Kaufman has been coming to the Cannes market for more than 20 years and says the company does a terrific business, particularly near the end of the festival after international distributors have made their large purchases and are looking for a couple of cheap films to fill out their slates.

He laments that the days of revolutionary filmmaking are past and laughs at all the film festival visitors carrying cell phones. “Who the hell are these people talking to on the phone?” he asks.

Troma’s management is entirely anti-studio in its cost structure. Kaufman is proud of being able to produce movies on budgets that are a fraction of what Hollywood studios charge. “Tom Cruise obviously hates movies; he charges $20 million to be in one.”

Returning to a second-floor hotel room where Troma has set up a temporary sales office during the film festival, Kaufman plucks a Troma brochure from beneath a pile of refuse and cigarette butts in a hallway ashtray. “This one can be used again,” he says, brushing it off.

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Rambo-lin’ Man: The Rambo of Cannes, Miramax founder Harvey Weinstein, has become the owner of Rambo.

Miramax bought the sequel rights to the “Rambo” series for $500,000 from defunct Carolco Pictures during a bankruptcy hearing in Los Angeles attended by Miramax co-Chairman Bob Weinstein.

Sources say Miramax, which is owned by Walt Disney Co., has already held talks with Sylvester Stallone about doing a remake. The company brought Stallone here on Monday to promote the upcoming Miramax film “Copland.”

The company is also trying to reunite the original producers of the Rambo series, Carolco founders Andy Vajna and Mario Kassar, sources said. Vajna and Kassar were huddled together with L.A. entertainment attorney Jake Bloom on the deck of the Hotel du Cap this week.

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Trades War: About a dozen film industry trade papers compete with daily editions produced for the duration of the International Film Festival for scoops about who bought which film and what star committed to which project. Nobody charges for the magazines, which are financed by thousands of pages of ads from sales companies trying to get attention for their products.

Hollywood’s dominant trades, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, are the most aggressive. Variety got a jump this year by grabbing attention with a magazine-size book commemorating the 50th edition of the festival, titled “Cannes: Fifty Years of Sun, Sex & Celluloid.”

The book is being published by Miramax/Hyperion and distributed throughout the U.S. A master of marketing, Miramax is promoting the book on trailers for “The English Patient.”

Peter Bart, editor of Variety, said the paper sends 35 people to Cannes to publish a daily edition at the festival. He said the paper’s focus on reviews has made it the most useful trade.

Bart, who has been visiting Cannes since the early 1970s as a business executive, said he misses the days “when you could run into Jack Nicholson or Clint Eastwood on the street. . . . I miss the intellectual exchanges.”

Alex Ben Block, editor of the Hollywood Reporter, said his paper brings 25 people to Cannes and focuses on the business of the market. A popular feature called “Party Line” reviews the major parties, rating them from zero to five martinis.

“We only rate the parties that have a business purpose,” Block said.

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The Other Cannes: As usual, there is the film festival and grubby movie marketplace taking place in Cannes, while about 10 miles away many of the most powerful figures in the entertainment business gather at the idyllic Hotel du Cap at Eden Roc, located on a bluff overlooking the Mediterranean.

Here, the pool appears to flow directly into the sea, and the prices--cash only--can run to several thousand dollars a night.

This year, such stars as Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Sylvester Stallone, Woody Harrelson, and Charlie Sheen have been seen on the premises.