Antill Sara - Sell Your Own Damn Movie!

Sell Your Own Damn Movie!

Lloyd Kaufman

Sara Antill

Focal Press

Front-matter

Copyright

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2011 Lloyd Kaufman. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

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Notices

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kaufman, Lloyd, 1945

Sell your own damn movie! / Lloyd Kaufman; with Sara Antill.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-240-81520-6

1. Motion picturesMarketingAmateurs manuals. 2. Low budget filmsAmateurs manuals. 3. Motion picture producers and directorsInterviews. I. Antill, Sara. II. Title.

PN1995.9.M29K58 2011

791.4330688dc22

2011003845

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-0-240-81520-6

For information on all Focal Press publications visit our website at www.elsevierdirect.com

Printed in the United States of America

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Dedication

Sell Your Own Damn Movie! is dedicated to Pat Swinney Kaufman. My love for you exceeds anything in this book, on this planet, or in the heavens And speaking of selling, thank you for supporting 37 years of Sell-u-Lloyd!

xo Lloydie

A Special Thank You

A Special Sell Your Own Damn Thank You to Sara Antill

Sell Your Own Damn Movie! co-author Sara Antill explodes with joy after receiving this Christmas gift from Lloyd.

Acknowledgments

Id like to take a moment to give an impassioned thank you to the following people:

Michael and Maris Herz, your dear, sweet souls have nurtured me from the very beginning of my ascent into 40 years of failed filmmaking.

Jerome Rudes, who thought what I had to say was worth committing to paper. Ha!

And

Foreword by Stan Lee

Lloyd Kaufman and I have known each other since Lloyd was at Yale in the 1960s and sought me out. He was one of the many brilliant young students for whom Marvel Comics had become a sort of shrine, but Lloyd stood out among the others. He seemed driven by some kind of strong intellectual force combined with a monomaniacal passion for pop culture. That is why in 1970 I chose him to write a screenplay with me based on Night of the Witch, one of my stories. Lloyd had never written a movie script, but I could tell that his incredibly original ideas and incredibly unique persona-lity could be wrapped up in one incredibly charged enchilada of horror! I was right. Our script was immediately optioned by Cannon, the premiere indie movie studio of its day, from whose loins sprung stars like Susan Sarandon and Peter Boyle.

A lot has changed since 1970; Lloyd and his Yale buddy Michael Herz have established Troma, the longest running independent movie studio of all time. Lloyd has put a new face on the cinematic superhero with Toxie, as well as with my personal favorite, Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. Lloyds body of work has now proven to be a seminal influence on worldwide film today. Just look at any film created by the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Takashi Miike, Peter Jackson, Eli Roth, Gaspar No, and James Gunn, to name a few, and you are likely watching a film influenced by Class of Nuke Em High, Tromeo & Juliet, or Citizen Toxie. Come to think of it, perhaps Lloyd and I shouldve continued working together; the only problem was that during our intense brainstorming sessions, whenever he wanted to confuse me, hed speak in Mandarin Chinese, one of his many offbeat talents!