Make Your Own Damn Movie!: Secrets of a Renegade Director [Paperback]

Lloyd Kaufman (Author), Adam Jahnke (Author), Trent Haaga (Author), James Gunn (Introduction), Trey Parker (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 2003

Lloyd Kaufman, the writer/producer/director of such cult-classic films as The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High, and Tromeo and Juliet, offers a guide to movie-making unlike any other available anywhere. In 25 years, Kaufman, along with partner Michael Herz, has built Troma Studios up from a company struggling to find its voice in a field crowded with competitors to its current--and legendary--status as a lone survivor, a bastion of true cinematic independence, and the world's greatest collection of camp on film.

As entertaining and funny as it is informative and insightful, Make Your Own Damn Movie! places Kaufman's radically low-budget, independent-studio style of filmaking directly in the reader's hands. Thus we learn how to: develop and write a knock-out screenplay; raise funding; find locations and cast actors; hire a crew; obtain equipment, permits, and music rights (all for little or no money); make incredible special effects for $0.79 each; charm, schmooze, and network while on the film-festival circuit; and, finally, make a bad actor act so bad it's actually good.

From scriptwriting and directing to financing and marketing, this book is brimming with utterly off-the-wall, decidedly maverick, yet consistently proven advice on how to fully develop one's idea for an independent film.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The experience of low-budget filmmaking is so bad it's good. This is the central bit of wisdom writer/producer/director Kaufman (his credits include The Toxic Avenger; Class of Nuke 'Em High; Tromeo and Juliet) gives in this riotous book. Equal parts how-to, memoir and shrewd marketing stunt, it tells young filmmakers to lower their expectations. Taking a reverse-inspirational tack, Kaufman admits indie films probably won't make you rich, famous, happy or very many friends. For emphasis, he begins with an image of him shoveling rat poop from the basement of Troma Studios and closes with a suicide dream sequence. It is to the tremendous credit of Kaufman's profane, self-deprecating, caustic but charismatic sense of humor that the book's opening, closing and everything else in between manages to make the low-budget filmmaking process seem like the most glorious and noble of life pursuits. Seven different contributors regularly interrupt Kaufman with commentary on aspects of the filmmaking process in general and Kaufman in particular. (He's both inspirational and profoundly cheap.) At one point, an argument that's been brewing between coauthor Haaga and Kaufman about whether film or digital video is better dissolves into a five-page, farcical cursing contest. Like the work he pursues, Kaufman's book is at times so bad it's good. 40 b&w photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Troma Studios impresario Kaufman is back with a manual for fledgling filmmakers seeking to slide down something like his slimy path to indie B-movie glory. Of course, the manual format is partly just an excuse for more raconteuring a la All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger (1998), Kaufman's memoir of crafting cult classics like Class of Nuke 'em High and The Toxic Avenger. Still, Kaufman does vend some pithy guidelines, one of the most succinct of which is "Get your wimmen nekid" because "one way to save money . . . is in the costume department." Not every insight involves salaciously soliciting audience interest; many are just useful, jaded tips for skimping at every juncture and finding somebody else's money to risk on one's celluloid magnum opus. Although the book is probably more valuable as entertainment than as counsel, its instructional content shouldn't be ignored. It isn't easy making low-budget movies, and Kaufman has definitely been there and done that. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: L.A. Weekly Books; 1st edition (April 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312288646
• ISBN-13: 978-0312288648
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (252 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #286,969 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 49 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Toxic Avenger July 24, 2003

By Melanie Gilbert VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Before reading this book, I had never heard of Lloyd Kaufman, Tromaville or the Toxic Avenger. Now I feel like he and all his crazy characters are family. And why not? You've got to love a guy who in the acknowledgments writes, "No thanks to: Viacom, New Corp, Vivendi, AOL Time Warner, Sony and other devil-worshipping international media conglomerates." He is a modern-day Don Quixote.

"Make Your Own Damn Movie," sounds like a call to action but it really isn't. For that reason, I gave this book four stars. Kaufman writes knowledgeably about how independent theaters, studios, and filmmakers are being squeezed out by consolidation - where Viacom owns Blockbuster, Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster Publishers, along with TV, cable and other media - basically all the channels of distribution and publicity in the marketplace. This book contains witty, subversive, smart and useful information, but to what purpose if the outlook is so bleak?

Kaufman closes his book with "sometimes lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for." That's hardly the call to action I thought I'd be reading. He clearly sees himself and his work as being a dying breed. This is a horror director who has written a tragedy. Has it come down to that for this innovative, dynamic and vivacious film pioneer?

If you are an aspiring filmmaker, this is an excellent autobiography about a 25-year veteran of independent films. But if you're looking for the nuts and bolts of filmmaking or a rah, rah you can do it tract, you may want to consider other material.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant. But of course! It's from TROMA! April 20, 2003

By Ton

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Winner of the lifetime achievement award for his body of work and important contribution to the filmindustry at this years's prestigious Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, Lloyd Kaufman is a genius making masterpieces on a budget that would barely be enough to pay for one day's catering on an average Hollywood producton and he does it for thirty years now. In a world where low budget independent filmmaking means manymultimillion dollar productions by subdivisions of Warner and Disney, Lloyd Kaufman survived for three decades (and counting) with his truly independent filmcompany Troma and in doing so directed, produced and/or wrote dozens of brilliant films (plus distributed hundreds more works that would otherwise have been totally neglected) without which the world would be an even less happy place! Heck - his work provided loads of "inspiration" (i.e. rips-off-ism) for the big ones who simply aren't creative enough to come up with their own masterpieces.
Want to know how he does it? Interested in learning from his expertise making true art and surviving in an industry that is almost entirely taken over by those big conglomerates? Need to know how you can make your own film you have been dreaming about for so long, but felt discouraged by the way the world has turned out to be? READ HIS BRILLIANT BOOK "MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MOVIE"! If there is one person alive (or dead, but they usually don't say too much to begin with) who can actually tell you how to overwin all possible obstacles you might -and will- encounter realising your plans, it is Lloyd Kaufman. He has lived it, he is still doing it, and every film he makes is better than the previous one, even while the problems are getting bigger.
Kaufman does not only tell you HOW you can go about making your own damn movie, reading this book his enthousiasm about the art of filmmaking may even get you encouraged to do so even if you didn't have any such plans at all. Apart from that, there are loads of anecdotes from his thirty-plus years in the business and he is one of the most entertaining, witty and funny writers I have ever encountered.
Footnotes, additional info and insight in how rewarding working with Lloyd can be (and how good his pay is) are provided by some of those other Troma-people he collaborated, like co-writer/assistant-director on Kaufman's latest masterpiece CITIZEN TOXIE: THE TOXIC AVENGER IV, Trent Haaga and others.
For those who want to learn about the business, for those who want to know about Troma and the filmindustry from the inside, and for those who want to have a damn good time reading, this book is an absolute MUST. I found it to be unputdownable and like his previous book "ALL I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FILMMAKING I LEARNED FROM THE TOXIC AVENGER" I am sure I will read it many more times. So don't rent it, don't borrow it, but support independent cinema and buy this one. It's a damn good value for your bucks (probably as much as buying the action- and extra's packed brilliant double DVD-set of CITIZEN TOXIE)!!

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars An orgy of self-love by Lloyd Kaufman and a few anecdotes about filmaking February 7, 2009

By Jerry Saperstein HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I'm not sure how this book caught my eye. I think it was because of a discussion of cult horror films with an acquaintance and "Toxic Avenger" came up. If you haven't seen "Toxic Avenger", by all means do so. It is vulgar, infantile, gross, filled with mindless violence, gore and sex - and hilarious because of it. It is not awful: it is just strange and funny.

Lloyd Kaufman and his partner Michael Herz created "Toxic Avenger", so I thought a book on independent filmaking by Kaufman would be interesting.

It is - marginally. And it is a thin margin.

Mostly this is a book celebrating Lloyd Kaufman in all his vulgar glory. Well, how about just vulgarity, because there is no glory?

Kaufman and Herz must have an interesting story to tell. They have been partners for 30 years or so and made about 30 low-budget, independent films, only a few of which have made any substsantial money or even had substantial audiences. More importantly, they appear to have made a ton of money buying up distribution rights to lots of other independent films and distributing them.

First, the production values of the book are as low as the production values in a Troma film. Lots of reverse inserts (white type on a black background) that are essentially unreadable.

Second, while there are loads of anecdotes about various aspects of low-budget filmaking in the book, the whole book is about Lloyd Kaufman, Lloyd Kaufman and Lloyd Kaufman.

Lloyd Kaufman, as it turns out, is a vulgar boor. While his experience may be admirable and perhaps even instructive, page after page of his almost infantile obsession with dirty words, crude sexual allusions and uninformed political opinion is boring. And so is the "misunderstood genius" routine. Kaufman tries to position himself as the independent outsider who is slowly being marginalized by big business, big studios, big broadcasters, big cable companies, big video chains and big everyone else.

Truth be told, the product of Kaufman and Herz's Troma studios is the kind of product that has always played on the fringes of the movie industry. Were it not for the unexpected and entirely accidental success of "Toxic Avenger", it is likely that Troma and Kaufman would be largely unknown. (The Toxic Avenger went on to spawn a TV cartoon series, comic book, action figures and all that kind of stuff - you know, the kind of stuff that the big companies do and Kaufman so despises.)

So, if you are or aspire to be an independent filmaker, is "Make Your Own Damn Movie" worth reading? Worth becomes a relative term. Will you fail in life if you don't read it? No. Will you find the breakthrough idea here that will change your life? Probably not? Is it an enjoyable read? Not really. Are there lots of anecdotes about low-budget moviemaking that might come in handy some day? Yes.

There are even a few funny lines in the book, but most of it is Lloyd Kaufman being vulgar and crude. That's not funny: that's pathetic.

Jerry