Muldoon and Lloyd Kaufman talk POULTRYGEIST! Lloyd says it's a shot for shot remake of SCHINDLER'S LIST!!!
Published at: Dec. 6, 2007, 10:54 p.m. CST by quint
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Our very own intern, Muldoon, had the great pleasure of talking to King of the Independents, Troma Entertainment's very own Lloyd Kaufman. The interview is hilarious. I hope you enjoy it! Thanks Muldoon!
Lloyd Kaufman: Hello.
Muldoon: Hey Lloyd, how are you doing today?
Lloyd Kaufman: Oh hi, how are you doing? It’s nice to talk to you. How is everything?
Muldoon: Everything’s great… So I’m just going to jump right in here…
Lloyd Kaufman: Yeah, jump right in.
Muldoon: So what can you tell me about POULTRYGEIST?
Lloyd Kaufman: Well, POULTRYGEIST is a… you know we are living in age of remakes and I know how much my fans love them, so POULTRYGEIST is a shot by shot exact remake of the slapstick-gore-comedy SCHINDLER’S LIST. Instead of the Jews, we have “Chicken Indian Zombie” for substitute… There are a few substitutions, otherwise it’s exactly the same as SCHINDLER’S LIST.
Muldoon: Nice.
Lloyd Kaufman: Instead of the concentration camp, we substituted a concentration coop, namely a fast food chicken restaurant and well, SCHINDLER’S LIST has Liam Neeson, so we got a much better actor, a Shakespearian actor by the name of Sir Ron Jeremy. We also have some singing and dancing in the movie the movie.
Muldoon: Almost exactly like SCHINDLER’S LIST.
Lloyd Kaufman: Yeah, very similar. An exact shot by shot remake. It’s taken us three years to make the movie. It’s 35mm and I believe it’s my best film in my forty years of making movies.
Muldoon: Really? You’ve made quite a few, so…
Lloyd Kaufman: I believe it is. This weekend is the big test, because it’s Austin and Houston and those will be the biggest cities it has played in so far, but so far the audiences love it.
Muldoon: I saw that Merrick posted a couple of reviews from some people who caught it in New York a little while back and loved it.
Lloyd Kaufman: That was a rough cut. When I’m editing, I always show the rough cuts to something like focus groups, where I’ll get an audience in and then show them the rough cut and so what they saw didn’t have the music and sound effects and it wasn’t the finished version. I give them questionnaires and based on the questionnaires, I get a sense of what people like and what I should cut out and how to shorten the film. I had a focus group screening in New York at NYU and then one at USC in California and then one in Albuquerque and one in Indiana. I figure that way I have an idea about what people really like and whether or not they could understand it. I give them a survey and ask a few questions to see if they could understand things, because there are some plot points that you want to make sure people understand.
Muldoon: Yeah, I did a little bit of research about the flick and it looks like everyone who has seen it, loves it, so I can’t wait to see it.
Lloyd Kaufman: Where are you going to see it?
Muldoon: I’m actually going to check it out here in Austin this next week.
Lloyd Kaufman: I’m going to be there. I’m coming in on Thursday night, so I’ll be there Friday for the big opening on the 7th.
Muldoon: That’ll be pretty cool, I think you’d dig it here.
Lloyd Kaufman: Oh, I love Austin. I had been there a few times. I did South By Southwest and in fact, Harry Knowles moderated the panel for the TROMA retrospective there at South By Southwest… I guess that was seven or eight years ago.
Muldoon: I had no clue.
Lloyd Kaufman: They showed a bunch of our movies and then Warner Campbell… Do you know him at all?
Muldoon: Nope, I guess I haven’t met him yet.
Lloyd Kaufman: Well, he did a party at some club and there was a lot of rollerskating and shit… But anyways, POULTRYGEIST was inspired by the fact that we, at the TROMA building, which is a small building in Manhattan… Right next door, they built a McDonald’s and they would put their garbage in front of our building and they weren’t very good neighbors, and then we had these giant rats in our basement. We had never had rats and then we started getting them the size of raccoons and I had to go down to the basement and fight the rats. Nobody would go down there, not even Rat Busters…
Muldoon: I think I read about that in one of your books.
Lloyd Kaufman: Yeah, that’s exactly right, MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MOVIE opens with me fighting off giant rodents and it wasn’t even at a meeting with BLOCKBUSTER executives.
[We both laugh]
Muldoon: Nice!
Lloyd Kaufman: So Gabe Friedman, who had just started working for us at the time was down in the basement with me and he had actually worked in fast food. He had worked in a fast food chicken establishment and so the job at TROMA was a big step down for him and he thought that since my films are usually political… THE TOXIC AVENGER… CLASS OF NUKE ‘EM HIGH…
Muldoon: TROMA’S WAR…
Lloyd Kaufman: Yeah, they all have either political or sociological themes to them. They’re all satires and so he suggested that maybe the fast-food industry might be a good theme for a TROMA movie. I don’t know whether it was junta fever that I got down in the basement from the rats or the fact that my wife and I switched our meds that day.
[We both laugh]
Lloyd Kaufman: I don’t know what it was, but I decided “yeah, that’s a great idea. Let’s investigate the fast food industry.” It’s pretty awful. I read FAST FOOD NATION and thought that was a great book and gave me a lot of good information.
Muldoon: Did you catch Linklater’s flick?
Lloyd Kaufman: Yes, I did… I like him as a director, but I didn’t think that film served the purpose, because it was much too boring. I don’t think it hit the audience that it needs to hit. I don’t think that the families who eat their Wheaties and the young people, who I think need to be educated… I don’t think they went to that movie. Did you like it?
Muldoon: Yeah, I thought it was OK, but I’m looking more forward to POULTRYGEIST than I was for that. If anything that means I’m not really the right audience for that kind of thing, but…
Lloyd Kaufman: I think POULTRYGEIST does a better job… First of all, it’s a hell of a lot more entertaining and I think it will do a much better job with bringing out the satire and making the points of the evils of the fast food industry. Also, POULTRYGEIST skewers the limousine liberals and there’s a lot of targets of satire in the movie, not to mention the fact that there is singing and dancing in the film.
Muldoon: So what are your plans with getting the movie out there. Is it a straight to DVD or are you going completely…
Lloyd Kaufman: It’s theatrical. It’s going to movie theaters all over the country. It opens in New York on March 7th at the Village East and then it opens in LA sometime after that, like April or so. We make a small number of prints and then we move them around the different theaters. If I direct a movie, we can get it into about 300. They’re calendar houses or they are independent theaters and what’s very interesting is that the fans, who helped us make this movie, are the ones booking it into the movie theaters. They are actually going and asking their theaters to play the film and that’s how it got into the Texas theaters. The fans would just go in and say “hey, we want to see POULTRYGEIST” and then the theaters called us, both in Houston and Austin. It’s opening in Houston also on the 7th. The fans have really been helping to get the movie into American cinemas.
Muldoon: That’s awesome. I know down here at least, we have TROMA THURSDAYS at the Drafthouse and it’s…
Lloyd Kaufman: That’s what I’ve heard, yeah. It’s all free, right?
Muldoon: Right. Your fans are TROMA crazy. It’s shocking the integrity that these guys have and they just really love your movies and so that’s…
Lloyd Kaufman: The only reason TROMA is still around, because we are living in an age of conglomerates and so it’s almost impossible for an independent movie studio to exist… The only reason we are still alive is because of our fans. We have a very strong fan-base and TROMA’s kind of a brand and our fans… you know our fans actually made this movie. They came from all over the world. I put a notice up on the internet saying “Lloyd’s making another movie and we need mysterious vein covered pulsating eggs made and we need them made for free” and a gal in Swede, in Stockholm made them and she had mailed them to us, but they were seized at customs because after 911, of course, mysterious vein covered pulsating eggs are weapons of mass destruction… We thought she was full of crap. We thought she was bullshitting and didn’t do it, but then it turned out that the eggs were seized by customs and we finally got them.
Muldoon: That’s a bit…
Lloyd Kaufman: But yeah, we had people in Buffalo New York… Wait, what’s your name again?
Muldoon: Mike, but Muldoon on the site.
Lloyd Kaufman: Mike, we had people coming to Buffalo New York from all over the world… from Japan; from Australia; France; Germany; England… In fact, one of the French guys didn’t even speak English.
Muldoon: That’s insane.
Lloyd Kaufman: Yeah, and they all came to work on POULTRYGEIST for free no less. Most of them didn’t get paid. A lot of them were special effects people and we had about 80 people from all different countries… Canada… California… I know we had people from Texas, I just can’t quite remember who. Literally, it was all over the map and they all came to live in a vacant church in Buffalo and most of them slept on the floor and ate cheese sandwiches three times a day and had to learn how to defecate into a paper bag, because we only had one bathroom. There was this very attractive German gal named Zorina… she came late, so there was no floor space, so she had to sleep on the floor of the bathroom and she told me that in the middle of the night, people would come in and take a dump and wake her up.
Muldoon: Well, you said she’s from Germany, right?
Lloyd Kaufman: That’s right.
Muldoon: I’ve heard stories of… you know what? I’m not going to make a joke right there…
[We both laugh]
Muldoon: Could have, but I’m not…
Lloyd Kaufman: I dig the joke. At any rate, there’s tremendous dedication and so it’s our fans that keep us going, there’s no question about it. If we didn’t have kind of a brand name, because we’re economically blacklisted, as I’m sure you know… We have never had a movie on the Independent Film Channel. TROMA is the most independent film company in history!
Muldoon: You guys definitely have earned… That blows my mind.
Lloyd Kaufman: They wouldn’t even play Trey Parker’s movie… not even Samuel L. Jackson’s first movie and not even Dario Argento’s… We distribute his Stendhal Syndrome… THE TOXIC AVENGER and CITIZEN TOXIE never played on the Independent Film Channel. We have 800 movies and not one of them apparently was good enough for the Independent Film Channel. It’s owned by a huge conglomerate and they independent filmmaking; they want to put us out of business.
Muldoon: Maybe that’s a good thing. Keep your movies away from them!
[Kaufman Laughs]
Muldoon: Have you seen some of the stuff they play? Granted, they do have a lot of good stuff, but have you seen some of the stuff they show?
Lloyd Kaufman: It’s horrible, I agree with you.
Muldoon: I don’t want to dog on it, but…
Lloyd Kaufman: Even CANNIBAL THE MUSICAL, by Trey Parker, has never played on television… Never played on Comedy Central… It’s idiotic and we’re blacklisted. The biggest problem is that we have no revenue, so my wife and I had to put up the money for POULTRYGEIST. We put it up out of our own retirement funds… I told her she was investing in TRANSFORMERS, so…
Muldoon: You did say that you feel this is one of the best movies that you have made, like in your entire career, right?
Lloyd Kaufman: I think it’s the best film that I have made and I think in terms of just movies generally, I think it’s a great film. I’ll tell you something, there’s a movie out now called NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, by the Coen brothers. They are very talented filmmakers, no question about it, but I’m very sorry that the critics are all ejaculating over it. It is an adequate film. I honestly feel that POULTRYGEIST is much more entertaining, has much better character development, and is a much more profound movie on every level.
Muldoon: With the Coen brothers?
Lloyd Kaufman: Did you see NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN?
Muldoon: Yeah, and I liked it.
Lloyd Kaufman: The guy is running around in a wig, it could have been Leatherface… It’s ridiculous and it was still OK. It was still entertaining and it was good, but suddenly there’s a shot of a bone sticking out of this guy and here people always ask me if I make exploitation films, but what was that doing in the Coen brother’s movie?
Muldoon: That’s a good point. That reminds me of, and I know this is always the “go to” flick, but what about HOSTEL? People jumped on that movie and said stuff like “This is sex for the sake of sex; drugs for the sake of drugs, and gore just to show gross and nasty things,” but I think when people automatically jump to labeling movies as “strictly exploitation,” they aren’t really allowing themselves to get wrapped up in the story itself. It’s like if that’s really what it is and we’re calling it out, then why bother having a story at all?
Lloyd Kaufman: I think HOSTEL is terrific and even HOSTEL 2 is… but again, I’ve been making movies for forty years, so I don’t really reflect the majority view, but I even thought HOSTEL 2 was as good, if not even better, than HOSTEL 1. I thought it was more sophisticated in a certain way, but again also Eli Roth is in a bunch of TROMA movies and he’s a very good guy, so… In fact, he did one of the best commentary tracks on a TROMA DVD in history.
Muldoon: Which movie?
Lloyd Kaufman: His commentary on BLOOD SUCKING FREAKS.
Muldoon: BLOOD SUCKING FREAKS?
Lloyd Kaufman: Yeah, he did a commentary track on the DVD and it is terrific. Now he’s a major director and I think he is developing… You know James Gunn, he worked for us too and of course we did TROMEO AND JULIET together and he made SLITHER and gave me a little tiny acting part in it and you know, these guys are young and they’re developing their craft and they’re going to get better and better and they’re good guys, too. They know how to get what they want from the system and they aren’t having to become Michael Bay…
[Both Laugh]
Muldoon: He’s… The world only needs one Michael Bay…
Lloyd Kaufman: You know, Peter Jackson and James Gunn and Trey Parker and all of these guys sort of credit me with the creation of the slapstick-horror genre and I think with POULTRYGEIST, what makes it especially interesting is that I’ve got the slapstick-gore satire going, but I added in the singing and dancing. It’s not a musical, but… There’s another director who is a big fan of TROMA from Japan, named Takashi Miike. Are you familiar with his movies?
Muldoon: Of course I am. AUDITION… ICHI THE KILLER…
Lloyd Kaufman: OK, cool. You would be surprised with how many people aren’t, but at any rate, he’s a big TROMA fan and he wrote a big piece extolling CITIZEN TOXIE in Japan, but he made THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS and that had some songs in it and that gave me the courage to… My life long dream is to get to make a musical since I’m a big fan of Broadway musicals and I put a few songs in after I saw THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS, because Miike had done it and… It’s just random. It’s not a musical, so I did this similar thing with POULTRYGEIST and you know people want to pigeonhole you. Some people say “the songs… they stop after three quarters of the movie…”
Muldoon: Who cares? As long as it’s entertaining…
Lloyd Kaufman: Yeah. What, do you go to “Music Jail,” because you didn’t have songs in the right order or… it doesn’t make sense… That’s another issue that we have, because our movies are TROMA movies. They’re not horror films and they’re not comedies, they’re…
Muldoon: They have their own damn flavor!
Lloyd Kaufman: Exactly! This particular movie, POULTRYGEIST, is really very different from anything we have ever done and I really believe it’s a really big step in a really good direction. I think it could be my funniest film, but I think it’s also my darkest.
Muldoon: Well, I can’t wait to check it out this next Friday.
Lloyd Kaufman: Well, I hope I get to meet you.
Muldoon: That’d be cool. I know you mentioned something about giving out a big cast/crew open call on the internet, but where exactly did you do that? Do you have a site up or…
Lloyd Kaufman: Yes, yes. “POULTRYGEISTMOVIE.com” and if anyone can go to their local movie theater and get the theater to contact us, we’ll send the 35mm print and in some cases even go there; that’s what I’m doing with Austin and Houston. The fans set it up a while back, so now I can actually go there. I went to Tucson. I went to Albuquerque, so if I have enough advanced notice, then I could even come to the theater.
Muldoon: That’s awesome.
Lloyd Kaufman: There’s also a contest up now on the TROMA site. There’s a KARA-YOKE-E contest, where there’s actually a karaoke DVD and I’ll some with me in Austin, but there’s a POULTRYGEIST karaoke DVD where you can sing along with the actors and the words are up on screen and on the website there’s a streaming song and if you film yourself singing it, then put it up on YOUTUBE, then the TROMA website will link to it and the fans are going to vote on the best three and then they’ll get prizes and they’ll be put on the eventual POULTRYGEIST DVD, which won’t be coming out for about a year. That’s a way for the fans to participate, where they can go right now and see one of the songs with the words and film themselves singing and all. The rules and stuff are all there. I’m on myspace, too by the way.
Muldoon: So you have myspace, POULTRYGEISTmovie.com…
Lloyd Kaufman: …and then TROMA.com and I think my url on myspace is myspace.com/chickenzombie and if someone wants to get on that, they have to know my last name or something… there’s some little test they have to do…
Muldoon: I’m pretty sure most people do, so.. Well, Mr. Lloyd Kaufman, thank you very much for chatting with me and…
Lloyd Kaufman: Thank you Mike, and please thank Harry and all of the AintItCool people for continuing to support independent movies. It’s great that you guys do, because very few places actually do. In fact, Austin is a very good independent art town. The whole town is very supportive of independent music and art and I get a lot of fan mail from Austin, so I know it’s a really independent area and that’s great, so thank you so much.
Muldoon: No problem. Well, enjoy the rest of your day and I hope to bump into you at the screening.
