Previously on My Troma Summer: Part One, Part Two
My first few days as a barely-paid production assistant in Troma’s three-story walk-up Hell’s Kitchen “studio” were uneventful (and possibly carcinogenic) as my new drill sergeant, Andy, had me organize and inventory several piles of fake severed limbs and other junk in the building’s cramped, asbestos-y basement. After that was done, I was assigned to watch and transcribe every dreadful line of dialogue from one of the company’s recent releases, Fortress of Amerikka, for use by Troma’s overseas distributors (an exercise which at the very least taught me a valuable screenwriting lesson about NOT starting every other line of dialogue in a movie with “Listen,” as in: “Listen, we gotta get outta here.” “But those men will kill us!” “Listen, if we stay here, we’re dead for sure.” “I’m scared!” “Listen, Jennifer, you’ve gotta listen to me...” “Listen! Someone’s coming!”).
And so on.
Andy didn’t have anything in particular for me to do after the Amerikkka transcript was complete, so he decided to further indoctrinate me in the house style by sitting me down with another recent release, Troma’s War, which employed the signature Lloyd Kaufman/Michael Herz formula of sex, violence, sophomoric humor and paranoid, populist outrage against “the power elite” and all the other assorted scumbags, shysters and pests who plagued the lives of decent, ordinary people.
Of course, like many a populist, Lloyd himself lived much better than the working class heroes he championed, as I discovered when I was summoned one afternoon to the Troma kingpin’s spacious brownstone maisonette to discuss his upcoming production, Kabukiman.
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