Chapter five. Is There a Business Plan? Is IMDB Ass? or Secrets of Financing and Producing from the Pickled Brain of an Elaborate Non-pyramid Schemer*
LINE PRODUCER: Produces “lines” for Robert Downey, Jr. and other strung-out talent.
Synonyms: Candy Man, Sugar Daddy, Lindsay Lohan’s dad
Example:“Wow, I am feeling rough today, Dogg.”
“Me, too. Let’s call the Line Producer.”
-----------------------Original Message-------------------------
From: elinor@repress.com
Sent: February 13, 2009 7:52 AM
To: Lloyd Kaufman < lloyd@troma.com>
Subject: Definition of Line Producer
Dear Lloyd:
When we talked about defining producer terms, I thought we had an understanding that we would be imparting useful information through these definitions. We’ve given you a lot of leeway in this regard, but I really feel like I need to put my foot down. 1
1FOOTNOTE GUY: Hey up there! Watch where you put that big foot down! We’re trying to work down here.
You know I love your sense of humor and will trade puns back and forth with you all day when this project is finished, but the reality is that this is a serious didactic book about film producing. It will be featured on shelves in the Film Production section of Barnes & Noble, not the humor section.
Lloyd, please keep this in mind. We have several more books planned in this series and I would hate to have to re-negotiate that deal.
I trust you’ll make sure the rest of your producer vocabulary definitions are based on factual information.
Best,
Elinor
P.S. Was that you who called into Oprah’s special on escort services asking for a companion for a gay married man?
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
-------------------------End Message----------------------------
LINE PRODUCER: Manages the budget of the movie and sometimes even takes on roles similar to a Unit Production Manager (the person responsible for managing all costs of the movie and delivering it on budget2). The Line Producer works on location and is often involved in hiring key crew members and negotiating deals with vendors.
2More on the definition of Unit Production Manager in Chapter 7. I hope.
Synonyms: None known
Example:“Hi, my name is Zelda and I’ll be the Line Producer on the film.”
-----------------------Original Message-------------------------
Sent: February 13, 2009 2:07 AM
To: Lloyd Kaufman < lloyd@troma.com>
Subject: I’m a Massively Dead Bitch (IMDB)
Lloyd:
Hi! How are you! Happy Friday the 13th! Congratulations on the box office results of Poultrygeist! I hope you have a really great Valentine’s Day with your Pattie-Pie tomorrow night. I wanted to let you now that you are the warmest and most sensitive filmmaker that I have ever met. I am so lucky to be working with you. OMG, you are soooo hot and soooooo brilliant. 3
3EDITOR’S NOTE: This is not part of Ashley’s e-mail, Lloyd.**LLOYD’S RESPONSE TO EDITOR: Don’t font at me. I’ll bet the Index Gyno wrote it. She wants to take me to the Nano World Con.****INDEX GYNO’S RESPONSE TO LLOYD: Not true. I hate Lloyd.
Anyhow, you’re probably noticing that I’m writing this e-mail to you really, really late at night. And it’s because I can’t sleep. I have to say that ever since you totally wigged on me and called me 3 times in a row from the airport on your way to Yemen for New Year’s (1 standard phone call, 1 follow-up to the phone call and 1 follow-up to the follow-up) and then sat down for three long interviews with me, I horrifyingly realized that you basically re-told me all these funny stories that you’ve already told in your other three books (which I’ve just finished reading). And now I’m really stuck, Lloyd, and I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to help you finish your book!
I mean, you’ve made it pretty clear you need a gazillion pages and I’m just not sure where they are all going to come from! There’s another problem, too. I’ve been doing my best to completely immerse myself in everything Troma to prepare myself for co-authoring this book on producing. However, remember how I told you I get sick on small planes and in the back of taxicabs? Well, the truth of the matter is that your movies also make me nauseous. Like, I want to puke up green vomit kind of nauseous. And it’s the kind of puke that’s not the good “I’m a little excited” kind of puke. I mean, it’s really not pleasant. So I kind of have to watch all of your movies with only one eye. Half open. Without my contact lenses. Even though I’m as blind as Sarah in The Toxic Avenger.
Soooo, in preparation, I decided to really take to just listening to your movies and interviews while blindfolding myself and doing my best to draw your essence out, because I’m sensitive, you know, I feel I can really hear your story and help you communicate it to fledgling producers everywhere, but honestly, as I was transcribing our interview sessions where I went through all of your producing credits on IMDB (and there are boatloads of them), I noticed that you hardly remember anything about Troma anymore!
So what can I write about? That’s why I’m writing about the fact that I’m having trouble writing about finding material to write about. 4
I tried to approach your partner, Michael Herz, but he’s always at the gym when I stop by and prefers not to have to think – much less talk – about you. Then I talked to your assistant Matthew, and he told me he’s afraid of you. So then I asked Evan what he knows about you and he says he sticks around Troma only because you attract lots of chicks, and well, I don’t know what to do! The worst of it is that you keep saying you don’t know anything about producing because you’ve never really had to! So, I’ve cut and pasted some of my transcription notes from our sessions here that clearly illustrate my dilemma:
ASHLEY: So, Lloyd, what about The Dark Side of Midnight? Tell me about that one.
LLOYD: Did we do that? I don’t think so. Maybe we bought it?
ASHLEY: Well, you are listed as Producer.
LLOYD: Huh. Yeah, I don’t remember…. No, wait a minute. Wes Somebody made that flick, not me.
ASHLEY: Oh, okay. Well, let’s move through the list. What about Lust for Freedom?5
5Re: Lust for Freedom, I wrote in some shit-disturbing narration and turned it into a women in prison film. Women’s lib stuff was hawt then.
ASHLEY: No, Lloyd. I’m talking about the movie you produced in 1987.
LLOYD: Oh, uh, yeah. We put money into the film and re-wrote it. We probably added in some lesbians and footage of worms. You know. We were Executive Producers.
ASHLEY: Oh. Great! And then what?
LLOYD: Uh, we distributed it. Hey, where did you find this stuff?
ASHLEY: IMDB. 6
6IMDB is the Internet Movie DataBase found on the Internet that acts as a sort library of movies and actors. It’s not always (okay it's not ever) entirely accurate or complete.
LLOYD: IMDB is ass.
ASHLEY: Heh. Ummm, OK, sure. Whatever you say. What about Combat Shock?
LLOYD: Combat Shock! Great movie! Ahead of its time. We’re just releasing it again on DVD right now.
ASHLEY: Cool! You and Michael invested in it and became Executive Producers, right? And Troma acquired the worldwide distribution rights before the film was completed and then distributed7 it, right?
7INDEX GYNO: Various forms of the infinitive verb “to distribute,” as in the “distribution” and “distributed” you use here will get you to at least page 102.
LLOYD: Yes! I also sort of…fucked it up. Maybe. That’s debatable. 8
8Buddy Giovinazzo’s Combat Shock originally came to us as a movie titled American Nightmare. It was definitely not a Rambo-style action film. In order to make the film seem more commercial, we purchased stock Vietnam war footage and used it to create a prologue (Spielberg later stole this technique when making Saving Private Ryan) that the director did not want. It was shot on 16mm. Troma blew it up to 35mm so it could be released in cinemas—even though it came out during the age of video cassettes—and this resulted in an unsuccessful but prestigious theatrical release complete with a review in the New York Times. The movie ultimately turned a profit (possibly due to the prologue we added and the misleading title of Combat Shock that we gave it) and is now being released as a 20th-anniversary DVD, which contains both Buddy’s original American Nightmare version and the Troma Combat Shock version. http://www.troma.com: BUY TROMA!!!
ASHLEY: Wow! Cool. Well, what about Girls School Screamers, Igor and the Lunatics and Dialing for Dingbats?
LLOYD: Where did you find this stuff?
ASHLEY: IMDB.
LLOYD: IMDB is ass. We own Igor and the Lunatics. I know that much…and I do not remember anything on that film. It’s a crazy-ass movie, however.
ASHLEY: Uh, ok. What about House of the Rising?
LLOYD: You mean what Congress does when President Obama walks into the room?
ASHLEY: No, I mean House of the Rising, the movie you produced.
LLOYD: Really? Uh, Troma distributed it! Where did you find this stuff?
ASHLEY: IMDB.
LLOYD: IMDB is ass.
ASHLEY: Huh. Well, what about Class of Nuke ‘Em High II: Subhumanoid Meltdown and Class of Nuke ‘Em High III: The Good, the Bad, and the Subhumanoid?
LLOYD: Yeah, Michael Herz and I produced both of those at the same time. I had a hand in writing them – I also wrote the lyrics for the title song, “Class of Nuke ‘Em High Part 2, It’s a Subhumanoid Boogaloo Comin’ At You!” I’m the Oscar Hammerstein of low-budget movies.
ASHLEY: Right. Totally, I see that. Well, there must be a producing lesson in the Nuke ‘Em High sequels.
LLOYD: Hmmm. Yes, we planned to do both of those at the same time, but I wasn’t ultimately happy with the results, even though they were profitable. We also made The Toxic Avenger II and III at the same time, too, only that was a total accident.
ASHLEY: Yes, yes, you talked about that already in one of your other books!
LLOYD: Oh! Good! Well, those other books are pretty good. Have you seen the reviews on Amazon? You know, maybe we should talk about Hollywood sequels.
ASHLEY: OK, OK, OK then. Yes! We will, at some point. Now, what about Fortress of Amerikkka?
LLOYD: We wrote and produced it in the late 1980s. It was about a futuristic society where everyone in the world hates America. What a preposterous idea that is! Who could ever hate the land of George W. Bush? I was originally supposed to direct it as well, but Michael thought I should focus instead on being the “face” of Troma.
ASHLEY: And what a beautiful, pristine, unblemished face it is! 9 OK, so what about Touch Me in the Morning?
LLOYD: I really don’t think Pattie-pie would approve.
LLOYD: No kidding. Where did you find this stuff?
ASHLEY: IMDB!
LLOYD: IMDB is ass. But Touch Me in the Morning is a masterpiece by Giuseppe Andrews and was produced for less than $2K.
ASHLEY: Well, IMDB has scores more of producing credits attributed to you!
So, Lloyd, perhaps now you understand my problem. Anyhow, this whole thing has me uncharacteristically traumatized to the point where I just keep playing “IMDB is ass, IMDB is ass, IMDB is ass” over and over and over again in my head like a broken record and I’ve now convinced myself that I’m a Massively Dead Bitch if I don’t help you finish your book in time to get it to your editor by the deadline!
Please help and please, please, please do not blame this on one of your 1960s LSD-induced Iron Maiden flashbacks. There must be something of value to share with the producing youth in this world. Something? Anything!!!
Thanks for listening, Lloyd. I appreciate your being so open!
Best,
Ashley
P.S. You also wanted me to remind you that Dr. Phil is doing his special on “in-ing”10 gay married men next week.
Compare, contrast, coagulate: lloyd’s producing and acting resumes on www.lloydkaufman.com and www.imdb.com
 |
| Figure 5.2a. |
| Ashley hopes you will begin to recognize her dilemma and Lloyd's bad memory. Lloyd’s producing credits on http://www.lloydkaufman.com. |
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| Figure 5.2b. |
| Ashley thinks this list is really, really long. She wishes Lloyd would stop suffering from his Iron Maiden flashbacks that erase his memories. |
 |
| Figure 5.2c. |
| Ashley is way psyched that these reproductions off the Internet are taking up so much space. Maybe she can help Lloyd fulfill his page quota! |
 |
| Figure 5.3a. |
| Lloyd’s acting credits on http://www.lloydkaufman.com. |
 |
| Figure 5.3c. |
| EDITOR’S NOTE: Ashley, I’m going to have to encourage you and Lloyd to forge ahead with some actual text here … there must be more to share about producing, no? |
 |
| Figure 5.4a. |
| Lloyd’s credits on http://www.imdb.com. |
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| Figure 5.4b. |
| Ashley feels that by now, you are really feeling her pain. One man, one Iron Maiden flashback, so many credits! |
 |
| Figure 5.4f. |
| FOOTNOTE GUY: Yikes! This is a footnote nightmare! Because these captions are at the bottom of all the pages, they fall under my department as well. Ack! Help! |
 |
| Figure 5.4g. |
| EDITOR’S NOTE: Lloyd, Ashley is just the victim here. Iam holding you responsible. We get the point. Please move on. Please. |
The Accidental Business Plan
I have to admit it: I was in shock. I had just returned from the Berlin Film Festival to find Ashley’s e-mail in my inbox, buried among 318 offers to enlarge my penis and 57 messages from a bank manager in Lagos, Nigeria. Was it possible that I was becoming so old that I couldn’t remember all the movies on which I was credited as Producer/Writer or Executive Producer or had fluffered and distributed? And did Evan really only stick around me for the potential to meet chicks? Apparently, both were true.
But you know what? That doesn’t really matter. I realized, while rereading Ashley’s e-mail over and over and over again as I took the lovely N train from Manhattan out to the Troma Building in Long Island City, that there was at least a pattern in our conversation she had transcribed. And the pattern was that we at Troma actually had a business plan that we had adopted and followed over the years! We produced and subsequently distributed a lot of movies over several decades. Mind you, they were all movies we believed in and that had something unique—that special quality that speaks to you, for whatever reason. In doing this, I apparently racked up some more producing credits, at least according to that shit IMDB search engine.
It was, in fact, part of our whole business model, the brilliant thinking behind the pattern being, of course, that in addition to producing our own Tromasterpieces, we also acquire great films from aspiring filmmakers, who—for whatever reason—can’t find the money or the right executive producer or distributor to believe in and support their production. Sometimes we give that last piece of money needed to finish shooting a film and then I add in some element to set it apart from the crowd. Like Toxie, Troma steps in to save the day! See Monster in the Closet, Def by Temptation, or Cannibal the Musical. No one would touch these great movies.
Then, in distributing, we get our investment back “off the top” (so we’re not bending over, waiting in dreadful anticipation to make back our investment costs), and then we get a percentage of the profits following our initial investment. And then, that percentage of the profits goes toward financing our very own Troma movies à la the Class of Nuke ‘Em Highs, The Toxic Avengers, Tromeo & Juliet, and so on and so forth. So we’re furthering our personal mission and our business to make movies of the future by investing in other movies we believe in (again, that whole come from the heart, thing) and using the return on those investments and funneling it back into the business to grow our business. Pattie thinks I’d make a great guest on that Suze Orman11 show.
One of the movies we took on in the early 1970s was called The Incredible Torture Show. When their original distributor got hold of the movie, he fucked the whole thing up by releasing it as an R-rated movie and cutting out all of the sex and violence that made it funny and “over the top” in the first place. As a result, the movie flopped. It had no stars in it, but it didn’t need stars. If a movie doesn’t have stars, it’s got to have something else that is going to hold your attention. In the case of The Incredible Torture Show, that something else was sex, violence and misogyny.
Now, this was way back in the twentieth century, and it was sometime in the early 1970s when we invested in this movie. Newspapers were puritanical in that time and you couldn’t place an advertisement with the word “torture” in it, let alone a picture of a bikini-clad woman, unless the bikini was altered and appropriately drawn over and transformed into a pair of Bermuda shorts. 12 So we put all the so-called “bad of taste” footage from the “director’s cut”13 back in the movie, changed the title to Bloodsucking Freaks, distributed it, and it was a cult hit! Now, today, Bloodsucking Freaks is too politically incorrect, riddled with too much misogyny, 14 but back then, we didn’t know any better. The point is that when you control the content (i.e., the distribution, as in the Troma Model for Producing Movies), you are able to make sure that the movie you are putting out there in the rest of the world is exactly the vision you want others to see, and not some “product” others have had the chance to disembowel15.
12Buffalo, 1977. Someone at the Buffalo News took a magic marker (now called a Sharpie, but back then it was a magic marker) and actually drew a pair of 1890s bloomers on our bikini-clad gynos in our newspaper ads for Squeeze Play. Make your own damn censoring of independent advertising!
14INDEX GYNO: I forgave you for your past a long time ago, baby…and what is that smell down here in margin-land?!
15FOOTNOTE GUY: Speaking of “disemboweling,” I had Mexican food for lunch. I apologize. That may be what you are smelling, Index Gyno.
LK: Do you as a producer put your own money into films?
RC: I finance all of my films myself, which is generally considered not a good plan, but if you are careful and you know what you’re doing, it’s a good investment, because frankly you keep 100% of the profit. 16
16Pattie-Pie and I put up about $500K of our nest egg* for Poultrygeist, so we will get 100%…of the loss! I told her she was investing in Transformers VI. Please don't tell her where her money went.*INDEX GYNO: Great chicken pun, Lloyd!
LK: How would you describe your basic business model as a producer today? Certainly our $500K Troma formula is not so good anymore.
RC: In our business model, we first think, “What would we want to make that would give us pleasure?” Of course, someone in the stock market or in real estate who’s investing money to make a movie wants his name on a movie that will be a commercial success. So he tries to predict whether it will first go to theatres, to DVD, or to cable and so on. However, I learned from the experience and there is a great quote from William Goldman: “Nobody knows anything.” I think that is true. It isn’t that nobody knows anything; it is that nobody knows everything. You have a good idea based upon your own ability and experience, but you never know for certain.
I come as close as I can to calculating what I think the market will be and what is a possible return on the investment, knowing that I can be way off in that guess and knowing how much I can spend on the film. Starting with the idea and then deciding the budget, everything flows from that. How much I can spend on the script, on the director, the stars, the production—the post-production, which is different today—because so many pictures we do today use computer graphics.
LK: Roger, the film business is tough today for independents. Why do you decide to still produce films?
RC: I keep producing films because I love making motion pictures. I hope that they turn out to be good pictures and they are fun to make. Essentially, I love the game.
Real Talk About Real Estate and “Reel” Mistakes
The other thing we Troma producers did—which now, I have to say, looking back, was rather genius—was we purchased some real estate! In the early 1970s, we rented a little janitor’s closet in the offices of McCall’s magazine. We then later moved to a “penthouse” in the Actor’s Equity17 building on West 46th Street. The landlord started to ream us, so we bought what would become the legendary Troma Building, a crappy slum in New York’s then very dangerous Hell’s Kitchen. We bought the building because (a) our landlord was a shit and (b) we would be not only able to control our films but also our space. In tough times, we would not have to pay rent.
There was a liquor store on the first floor. 18 After that, it was the “Nearly New” Thrift Shop. 19 And then it was an animal hospital for about 10 years, where many Chinese restaurants came to get their dogs. 20 All of these businesses paid rent to us! After some time a McDonald’s moved in next door. And—although their presence did produce a never-before-seen rat infestation in our building—I cannot be too upset at Mickey D’s, for my hatred does account for some of the impetus and inspiration I felt to produce Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, a shot by shot exact remake of the hilarious slapstick gore satire classic, Schindler's List.
20FOOTNOTE GUY: Hey, guys! Don’t listen to Lloyd. He’s lying about the Chinese restaurant thing. He’s just trying to get a rise out of you. Not very healthy, Lloyd. Marianne Williamson would not be happy with your regression. As a side note, Lloyd, you don’t have to work so hard to get a rise out of me! Just massage my semicolon.
Anyhow, we didn’t take a mortgage out for the building. We paid for the building up front. 21 And the rent from the store on the first floor paid for our real estate taxes and more.
In good times, such as when the Troma film library proved especially lucrative with the video boom, we even paid ourselves rent. The lesson in all this? Go and Produce Your Own Damn Real Estate!
LK: Why did you produce—why didn’t you direct?
AL: The producer side of me is what I believe I’m better at. I would never be able to be a good director. One of the talents or things the director needs is a lot of patience and passion. Those two things—patience and passion—you have to have them in a way that sometimes are not logical. You see a director that is fighting and wants to do these shots in darkness…I would never be able to justify those kinds of shots that cost so much money in order to create something to my own satisfaction. You also need to have the patience to make a movie. Every day of a major movie you can shoot maybe one, one and a half minutes. Who has the time to sit there all day and do it again and again until you’re happy or he’s happy?
LK: Another reason why producing a movie for only $500K can be more fun—it goes a little faster.
AL: I don’t see anything wrong with producing a movie for $500K. The only thing I can tell you, because it’s so easy to do and so many people are making them, it’s harder to then sell low-budget films. We always have to find something that’s more difficult to make. The more difficult it is to make, the less competition there is from other productions.
LK: What about the young person who wants to produce?
AL: I’m not the producer. I’ll never call myself a producer. I would call myself a person that puts the picture together and looks at the business. You have to, above all, be a business man. For example, if you manufacture bottles, you need to know what is the cost of the bottle and know that this bottle will cost 50 cents to manufacture and that you can eventually sell it for one dollar.
Simple Math is My Favorite Kind … Call it Tro−Math
Now, if only we’d purchased a Troma Building in North Carolina in 1974, we’d be rolling in the money now—we would have made 50 times our investment instead of 20 times our investment. We eventually got bought out of our Troma Building in Hell’s Kitchen (and I used some of my profits plus Pat’s retirement fund to finance the majority of Poultrygeist). Regarding our new Troma Building22 in Long Island City?23 Ha! For what we paid for that, you could buy a skyscraper in West Virginia!
22Our new Troma Building is definitely cleaner and less disgusting than 733 9th Avenue, but oh-so-much-farther away from the subway!
23By coincidence, the Long Island City Troma Building was formerly a Chinese food distributor. I was a Chinese Studies major at Yale. Louis Su is one of my peeps—what a co-inky dink!
Who is Brian Yuzna?
Brian Yuzna is a director and a producer, most notably of such hits as Beyond Re-Animator, Night of the Living Dead III, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and Bride of Re-Animator.
Financing has changed a lot over the years. It’s all about any way you can get the money. You either have to have money yourself or family money or look to investors for money. It’s all kind of personal. If you’re in the industry already, there are other ways to do it. There is money from the people who are selling movies. These days, it has gotten very tricky to finance pictures. Normally, you would have to find a company to finance the movie. You would have to sell or pre-sell the movie. To me, there are three equal important parts of producing. One is financing, one is the production/making the movie and the other is exploiting the movie. If you don’t know how you’re going to exploit the movie, then you can’t finance it.
24FOOTNOTE GUY: Yet another good pun, Lloyd!
A Little more Exploitation for the Road
So you see, we Tromites were able to obtain money to produce our films through executive producing and financing other people’s films and amassing a very valuable library collection of negatives of movies. This was also achieved by investing in a piece of real estate property that we were able to call our own and work out of, all the while having it increase significantly in value. Avi Lerner and Brian Yuzna don’t even think about making a movie unless they know it is completely commercially viable—that it is a “product” they can sell and that it is destined to make a profit. You do have to take those exciting artistic dreams and balance them with hard-core financial realities. In the end, if you master this equation for yourself, you will stay happy and you will keep working. You may get violently stoned along the way here and there, but you will produce movies and have a career.
Jist so this Chipter don’t Seam two Poifect…
Most of my movies concentrate on the underdog. New Jersey is the underdog to arrogant Manhattan—not the underbitch, however. I love Jersey and have set our films in Tromaville, New Jersey, a fictitious town I made up—but many people today believe that Tromaville, New Jersey, is real! Not many folks know this, but at one point in time, Troma bought a building in Jersey City, New Jersey. 25 We were shooting The Toxic Avenger at the time in Jersey City, noticed that Jersey had great views of New York City, and thought it would be a good idea. 26 Our Jersey home had a big yard. We also used the basement as a kind of back lot in which to shoot a large part of Class of Nuke ‘Em High. That’s where the incredibly goofy monster scenes were shot. It was awesome. But, Jersey City was rough and not yet gentrified, and the building eventually got … torched. So we were forced to sell it. Now it’s probably worth a fortune.
25INDEX GYNO: Did you finally find a story you haven’t yet told in one of your other books? Well, hooray, bee-atches! It’s time to get down and celebrate.
26To my schnozzola, the permeating stench of garbage that reigns over the Garden State thanks to the abundant, plentiful chemical plants is the lovely “Aroma du Troma.”
Did I mention that everything I touch is fucked?