Previously on My Troma Summer
What happened was this: while filming the second Toxic Avenger sequel on location in Japan, Troma, Inc. co-founders Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz somehow got hooked up with Toxie fans Tetsu Fujimura and Masaya Nakamura, big wheels at Namco, the Japanese video game company responsible for Pac Man, and the foursome entered into a deal to create a Kabuki-themed superhero movie with a $1.5 million dollar budget, the most lavish in Troma history.
Of course, I didn’t know any of that at the time. I’d only just received a call from a guy named Andy (soon-to-be First A.D. of the project, then titled Kabukiman), who’d invited me to come down to Hell’s Kitchen and join the Troma Team for the princely sum of fifty dollars a week. In New York City.
Fortunately, I had a friend from the Harvard Lampoon who lived on the Upper East Side with his beautiful wife from Spain, and they offered me room and board in exchange for my help writing text for a coffee-table book featuring artistic photographs of feces. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
And so, thus installed, I showed up for my first day at Troma’s second floor walk-up headquarters on 9th Avenue, a cramped office stuffed with posters and swag from the company’s long and storied history. Off the main room was the private office shared by Lloyd and his silent, intimidating business partner, Michael.
Lloyd welcomed me and gave me a brief introduction to the company, then asked what my favorite movie was. At the time it was The Big Chill, which, I gathered from Lloyd's reaction, was not exactly the answer he'd been hoping for.
After that, I was handed off to Andy, a tightly-wired, anal retentive type who clearly relished his role as resident drill instructor in Troma’s boot camp for aspiring filmmakers. “All you college kids come down here after four years of parties and sleeping late and think you know how to make movies. Well, that’s not how it works in the real world, and I’m not here to wipe your ass, okay, so if I tell you to do something, you do it, then you tell me you’ve done it, otherwise I’m not gonna know and everything gets fucked up and it's your fault, understand? Now go down to Blimpy’s and get us some lunch, and don’t forget the fucking receipt!”
By the end of the first day, I’d screwed up Andy’s lunch order, accidentally washed another Troma Teammate’s contact lens down the drain after rinsing out a cup I thought was empty and somehow felt even stupider than I had after deliberately flunking out of college (though I hadn’t nearly killed the gorilla yet...that would come later).
But I also knew Andy was right: I’d been living in a boozy academic cocoon for the past four years, totally unprepared for the real world outside. Thus chastened, I headed back to my temporary East Side residence, determined to get my shit together, then took a crap on a plate of linguini for one of my friends' feces photos and went to bed.
Tomorrow was another day.
To Be Continued...
