Make Your Own Damn Movie!: Secrets of a Renegade Director (Paperback)

~ (Author) "I was surrounded on every side by vermin, roaches, and rat shit..." (more)
Key Phrases: make your own damn movie, shooting ratio, rat shit, New York, Citizen Toxie, Toxic Avenger (more...)

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: 8 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (224 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #90,259 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cult Director Criticizes Film Culture, July 24, 2003

By	Melanie Gilbert (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

8 of 8 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 (the Netherlands) - See all my reviews

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)!!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Own Damn Review, April 28, 2004

By	James C. Cox (Evansville, IN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Make Your Own Damn Movie" tells you the blood and guts and more guts (with more blood and assorted body parts) of independent movie making. While going through each process of assembling a film it doesn't candy coat the time, trouble, expense, headaches, anxiety and possible asthma attacks making one's own movie a reality WILL be. If one truly wants to make one's dream come true, without selling one's soul to the Hollywood corporate system, this is the book that tells one how to do it. Lloyd Kaufman has been a leader in independent film making for thirty years. He knows how to get it done and shares it with you along with some personal quirks you just may not want to know about Lloyd or anyone else. But I digress. You want to make your own movie under your own control? Buy and read this book. You don't want to make a movie? Buy it anyway. It's so funny you'll wet yourself.