Salon has an absolutely hysterical interview with the strangely astutely observant Lloyd Kauffman, founder and president of Troma Films, the last of the real independent low-budget movie studios.I include this link because no matter what you think of Troma’s films (and I think they’re usually pretty funny and occasionally brilliant) I think you have to respect the sheer stubborn independence expressed by Kaufman and Troma. His struggle to get his films shown, distributed and into video stores are all too indicative of the coercive power of what Kaufman calls the “devil-worshiping international conglomerates” that control the film industry, especially given that much of mainstream Hollywood’s output is far more base and truly exploitive (especially exploitive of children–how else can you view Pokemon, The Movie, which exorts children to “catch [buy] ’em all!”)than anything Troma produces.
Leave a Reply