Lloyd Kaufman, founder of Troma Studios and director of such cult classics as The Toxic Avenger, Terror Firmer and Tromeo and Juliet, is hands down, one of the best people I've interviewed. Not only is he extremely informative about the ins and outs of independent film making (not to mention the feat of keeping Troma afloat and relevant for over 38 years despite Hollywood's blacklisting of the studio), he also has a great sense of humor. I recently got a chance to sit down with Lloyd and chat about Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, his hatred for Al Gore and the amazing art form of puppetry.

David: I know you moved into the new Troma building earlier this year. How's that working out so far?

Lloyd: Oh, its beautiful. We're in a brand new neighborhood, a new frontier called Long Island City and the local people love Troma. So, the neighborhood is happy that we've moved in. We're a famous movie studio so the neighborhood we're in doesn't have anybody like us so they're really happy.

David: No more giant rats then?

Lloyd: Well, we'll find out, we renovated this building. It used to be called Hung and Hung, a Chinese food distributor. In fact, part of our staff works inside a giant freezer. There's a huge freezer, probably about half the size of a theatre auditorium. There's also a cold room so if anyone needs to freeze some meat with the people working in there, we can do it.

David: I know the rats were part of the inspiration for Poultrygeist.

Lloyd: The U.S. Congress... I mean, the Hollywood agents... I mean, the rats that were in our basement. Yes.

David: What other inspiration did you have in conceptualizing the film?

Lloyd: As I opened my second book, Make Your Own Damn Movie, I'm in the basement with Gabe Friedman fighting off these raccoon sized rats as a metaphor to what you have to do when you're an independent filmmaker. You have to do the stuff no one else wants to do. That was a big inspiration, that McDonald's inspired these rats to have their weekend vacations in our basement. That led me to start learning about the evils of the fast food industry. Poultrygeist is very informed by what I learned about the fast food industry. And, of course, the hypocrisy of the rich, limousine liberals. The Al Gores who fly in their private jets and consume more of the earth's resources and create more global warming than my family and every Troma fan on the face of the planet. Ever. The phonies, the Hillary Clintons of the world that trade cattle for inside information and have made million of dollars behind the public's back. Poultrygeist skewers them equally. Al Gore, as you know, has over $200 million dollars of high tech stock and he and his wife are trying to make their reputations by censoring music. They give this guy the Nobel Peace Prize. He's going to censor and go against the 1st Amendment but he gets the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, Arafat got the Nobel Peace Prize and Kissinger as a reward for bombing Cambodia. So, Poultrygeist is a satire against the rich liberals who are hypocritical, who live in gated communities. The David Geffens who block off the beach in Malibu so the public can't go on it, yet pretend to be left wing.

David: On the subject of the subtext, you found a really good balance in the film. It's not overbearing and in your face like other recent horror films. How did you find a saturation point that you felt comfortable with?

Lloyd: Gabe Friedman really is responsible for the majority of Poultrygeist's scenario. He and I go back about 10 years and we both are very dark and cynical and well read on whats going on in the world. We spent at least a year working on the script and writing the lyrics to the songs. We don't take ourselves too seriously but we take our movies at Troma seriously. Tromeo and Juliet took almost 5 years before I had a script that I felt was true to my self and true to my soul. So, I think the most important thing is that I have to believe in the project 100%. Once I get there, I can get into pre-production.

David: I've read several articles that cite the budget was somewhere around $500,000 but the film looks like so much more than that. How were you able to stretch that money to make it looks like 10 times that?

Lloyd: Actually, the budget of Poultrygeist was somewhere around $83 million but don't tell anyone. We want people to think it was really low-budget. We shot in 35mm and most of the people who worked on Poultrygeist didn't get payed. I put something online saying I was about to start making a movie and they just showed up from all over the world. People from California, Florida, France, all over. They paid their way to Buffalo. Except for the core crew, everyone worked for free, even some of the special effects crew. A lot of the actors didn't get paid. The leads got paid but the rest of them got nothing. The Buffalo citizens who play the protectors showed up day after day in front of the American Chicken Bunker restaurant. Then at night, they played chicken Indian zombies in make-up; they didn't get payed. Occasionally, they got fed with food we got for free but it didn't happen often. We rented out a church and used it as a special effects lab, as well as our production office and sleeping quarters. Most of the 80 people who showed up to work on Poultrygeist for two or three months had to sleep on the floor, eat cheese sandwiches three times a day and learn to defecate in a bag so they could work on something they believe in. That's really how we were able to make it for so little money.

David: How did you finance the film from the ground up?

Lloyd: Me and my wife Patricia (NY State Film Commissioner) put up about 90% of the film's budget. As you know, we're living in an age of devil worshiping, international conglomerates and even though we're more famous than ever, business sucks. We're blacklisted from everywhere. We've never had a film on the Sundance or Independent Film Channel. My wife and I had to put up the money from our savings, I mean retirement money. I told her were investing in Transformers 2 so don't let her know where the money really went.

David: I know with Tromadance, thats usually run off of donations. Is that how the other 10% of the film's budget came about?

Lloyd: No, you can't do that. There are security laws. Poultrygeist is a limited liability corporation and three or four friends actually put up the rest of the films budget, even though they know they won't get their money back. No matter how successful the movie is, like it was number one last year at the theatre, they can't hold it over because they have other commitments. Disney wants them to bring back That Darn Cat or Harvey Weinstein wants to bring some crap like Atonement back in the theatre so it can win an Oscar. They'll be like two people in here. They managed to make a movie about child molesting seem boring. Not seem boring, it is boring.

David: I think a lot of the special effects in the film are some of Troma's best. Were you really hands on in that department?

Lloyd: That depends what you mean by hands on. Do you mean hands on with some of the young effects people? When you say hands on, those sexual harassment charges are terribly unfounded. So, I was not hands on. But, I made them test things. Everything has to be tested and filmed and then I look at it. Before I get to the set, they film the test on tape, not 35mm, and when I get there, if I like it, I approve it. So, I'm hands on in that regard. I give them ideas for sketches. But, in this movie, Gabe Friedman was very much involved in the decisions with special effects. That's probably the most complicated aspect of production on Poultrygeist. There's so much involved.

(Shane, a local promoter for Troma, enters the theatre and introduces himself and talks to Lloyd about the promotions booth outside of the theatre)

Lloyd: Shane is involved in helping get Poultrygeist into the theatre here. Explain what you've been doing for Troma for the last couple of years.

Shane: Pretty much, just helping with sales and promotions in the Florida area. Just trying to get stuff out there.

Lloyd: What's coming up here soon?

Shane: March 7th, 8th and 9th, we have Mega-Con, which is a huge convention around here that Lloyd has been at, which is how I met Lloyd. I was just a fan and came out to meet him and help out. Lloyd has touched me in many, many ways.

Lloyd: Shane runs our booths, he has a Troma den. He has a huge garage full of Tromabilia and he keeps it here. Whenever there is an event in Florida, him and his group go into action and promote Troma and sell merchandise.

Shane: We bring out the local Tromettes. We have our own clique of Tromites that do their own part. On March 8th, we're going to be at A Comic Shop (yes, that's the name of the store) and we're going to have Tromettes, a signing by Lloyd and free booze. The next night, we're going to have live bands at The Copper Rocket in Maitland. We're going to be showing several locals films and Troma films to raise money for the Tromadance Film Festival. I also book and record bands and had a recording studio for a while. <