When me and fellow movie-addict Vuk Radic met Lloyd Kaufman at the Tromathon, the retrospective Eye organized at Amsterdam’s Filmmuseum last March, to begin with he interviewed us. He grabs that mini-DV cam he carries all over the world – when he was in Syria a sand grain got stuck in the lens and now it doesn’t work that good anymore – and points it to your face. Then he asks you questions, such as: Why are you in Amsterdam? And of course you have to answer you came for the Tromathon.

As you can guess by its title, the retrospective was about Troma, the cult production company which Kaufman and his partner in crime Michael Hertz founded more than 3 decades ago. I say partner in crime because the duo is mostly famous for (very) low-budget horror-splatter comedies, many of which have now become classics – most of all the Toxic Avenger, which you might also known by its nickname “Toxie”, Troma’s mascotte.

Despite being an over 60-year-old with a wife and grown up daughters, Lloyd is still touring the world to sell DVDs, spread some DIY wisdom in his workshops, and carry on his institutional struggle against media moguls. Even with such a tight schedule, he also manages to find the time to whip out his Toxie mask and pose for embarassing pictures with his more or less shaved interviewers (which you can appreciate in this page).

Me and Vuk, whose Twitter skills and Troma savviness got us the interview in the first place, had come up with a lot of questions, but Lloyd answered them all in his own straight-forward way, mixing cultural references to musical and movie classics with harsh remarks about the star system that excludes him. To somebody who has done sort of everything (adult movie director under pseudonym, location manager for Saturday Night Fever, even guide for the Peace Corps in Ciad) you could ask anything, but in our long talk we discussed piracy, South Park, John Waters, Rupert Murdoch, Uwe Boll, the Oscars, and musicals, with a few unexpected interruptions from the animal world. (more…)

Unsurprisingly, yet another South Park episode has made the news recently. And as usual, the comments have ranged from praise and approval to shock (and even subtly worded death wishes?).
In pure South Park fashion, “Dead Celebrities” is a controversial mix of media/social critique and relentless celebrity-bashing, in shape of a Sixth Sense parody.
This time, the reason for media commentary is the daring politically incorrectness featured in the episode, which included a dead Michael Jackson finally realizing his dream of becoming a white girl in his afterlife and American TV salesman Billy Mays selling a washing product for blood-stained underwear (without mentioning a rather tactless appearence of David Carradine in stockings with a rope around his neck).

Parker and Stone’s fine-tuned postmodern pastiche formula didn’t fail to amuse and get the usual media coverage, but fan reviews are kind of mild and the accuses of poor taste/bad writing are no news. Most likely, there will hardly be any reference to “Dead Celebrities” in your newsfeeds next week.
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