13Bit Interview With Lloyd Kaufman Part 3
Part three of 13Bit’s Low Budget Legends Interview series. Here, we speak with Lloyd Kaufman, the head of Troma Films and the Director of such low budget legends as “Toxic Avenger,” “Class of Nuk’em High” and “Poultrygeist.” ” Lloyd has been making classic films for over forty years, and is heavily involved in promoting and protecting the rights of independent filmmakers.
We went out to Troma HQ in Queens last fall and are proud to kick off our series with Lloyd. Here is the third of our three-part chat with him.
13BIT:
Do you buy into the idea that people under 30 don’t want to pay for any media?
LLOYD KAUFMAN:
People under 30, I think, are willing to pay. I think that they feel that the shit they’re getting in the movie theaters and on television doesn’t deserve to be paid for. And the fact that they– I think they object– I think for the first time in history there is a generation of young people who are rebelling against television for the first time. They’re looking at television as kind of a button-down parent type thing, you know, where you have to watch Matt Lauer in the morning with a shit Today Show.
And then it gets broken up and goes on CNBC and then MSNBC and this fat-ass weather man. And they hate that stuff. They don’t want to see Jay Leno. They don’t want to see this shit. They don’t find it funny or interesting. And I think that’s the problem. Why should they pay for that? And to have to go and everywhere you look, you’re going the see the Transformers on every poster, every t-shirt, every newspaper, you go to the fast food dump and there’s Transformers in the Burger King.
And I think a lot of young people resent it. And so they– why should they support these people? You know, they’re– they– at the conventions, they don’t want to take free DVDs from us. They want to pay. They– sometimes I try to give stuff away. They insist on paying. They want to support Troma. And these people have nothing. They have nothing. Takes them two weeks to get an unemployment check, by the way. No, in Ohio recently, I understand it took six weeks to get an employment check, to get a check.
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