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Lloyd Kaufman is an American film director, producer, and documentarian. With Michael Herz (of Troma), he is the co-founder of Troma Entertainment. He is the director of many of Troma's feature films. His early Troma films are credited to Samuel Weil, a pseudonym (actually the name of Kaufman's maternal great-grandfather) which Kaufman used to skirt Directors Guild of America rules.

A staunch independent artist for over thirty years, James Gunn said in his introduction to Make Your Own Damn Movie, "Lloyd's blend of slapstick, gore, sex, vaudeville, and nuclear waste has inspired luminaries such as Peter Jackson, Kevin Smith, and Quentin Tarantino."

Books written by Kaufman include All I Needed To Know About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger (with James Gunn), Make Your Own Damn Movie (with Adam Jahnke and Trent Haaga), and The Toxic Avenger: The Novel (with Adam Jahnke).

Born Stanley Lloyd Kaufman Jr., he pronounces his name KOFF-man.

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Early career 3 The Birth of Troma Studios 4 Recent Work 5 Select Filmography (as director) 6 Bibliography 7 Associates 8 External links

Lloyd graduated from Yale University with the class of 1968, where he attended a class with George W. Bush. (Kaufman has publicly referred to Bush as "my least-favorite coke-sniffing Yale classmate".) Majoring in Chinese Studies, while originally intending to become a social worker, he became friends with Robert Edelstein and Eric Sherman (son of filmmaker Vincent Sherman) who introduced him to cinema, which began his lifelong obsession with film (some of Lloyd's favorite filmmakers include John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch, and experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who also taught Trey Parker and Matt Stone at the University of Colorado and acted in the Troma film Cannibal! The Musical made by Parker and Stone).

In 1966, Lloyd went on hiatus from his studies, and joined the American Peace Corps, who sent him to Chad. Living there for a year, according to Lloyd, he contracted a wealth of horrific diseases including dengue fever, equatorial pneumonia, no less than twenty different varieties of diarrhea, and a litany of sexually-transmitted-diseases (including one which gave him such a high fever he hallucinated that a pair of eyes were growing out the head of his penis. At least, this is what he claims in his autobiography). He also jump-started his filmmaking career by shooting Chad natives slaughtering a pig on 16 mm. The film infuriated many of his friends and colleagues upon its first screening in the United States.

Returning to Yale, he produced Robert Edelstein's low-budget film Rappaccini, using funds from a summer job pumping gas, he directed his own first feature, The Girl Who Returned. This black and white film was presented at Yale, Harvard, etc. film societies. After graduating from Yale, he went on to work for Cannon Pictures, where he met John G. Avildsen, director of Rocky and The Karate Kid. The two collaborated for several years, making low-budget films including Joe and Cry Uncle. During this period, he also directed his second feature film, The Battle of Love's Return, in 1970, and then wrote and produced a tribute to Hitchcock's Vertigo Sugar Cookies (with Oliver Stone), and, in 1972, Big Gus, What's the Fuss?, which was produced with future CBS/Sony president Andrew Lack.

He is also rumoured to have directed and edited at least 2 adult films around this time The Newcomers (1972) and The Divine Obsession (1975), under the name Louis Su.

After meeting his life-long friend and business partner Michael Herz, the two formed Troma Entertainment, using a janitor's closet as the base of operations with a budget of only $300. In order to pay the bills, Lloyd did freelance work for various Hollywood productions including Rocky, Saturday Night Fever, and The Final Countdown. Working on these films, he became revolted with the crewmembers' cynicism and poor attitudes, leaving him to remain a staunch independent ever since.

In the mid 1970s, Lloyd and Michael Herz began producing, directing, and distributing raunchy comedies such as The First-Turn On and Squeeze Play, which were particularly well-received. These hilarious political comedies anticipated the raunchy sex comedies of Porkeys and Borat. In 1984, Variety ran an article entitled "The Horror Film is Dead", which inspired the two to make their own low-budget horror flick, the chrysalis of which became The Toxic Avenger. Originally titled "Health Club Horror", The Toxic Avenger is an inspiring story about a nebbish mop-boy named Melvin who falls into a vat of toxic waste, only to emerge as a crime-fighting superhero.

This film contains classic examples of themes prevalent in Kaufman's work, such as anti-authoritarianism and a dangerously obsessive fixation on the female anatomy. It also contains the unrelenting violence and gore Troma is known for today; examples include an old lady who is beaten to death with her own cane, a seeing-eye dog which is blown apart with a shotgun, and a young child whose head is crushed by way of moving car. Though the film was not successful initially, mainly due to the stupidy of cinemas that did not comprehend that The Toxic Avenger is an environmental satire and that with Toxie, Kaufman put a new, human face on the movie super-hero, much the way, says Stan Lee, Spider-Man put a new face on the comic book super-hero, it eventually went on to become Troma's most popular film, inspiring an entire franchise including three sequels, over 200 educational children's products, and a children's television program. It is no coincidence that Toxie is Troma's official mascot.

Lloyd's next feature-film was Class of Nuke 'Em High, co-directed with Richard W. Haines. The film was nearly as successful as The Toxic Avenger, went on to inspire two more sequels, and remains a seminal favorite in the Troma Team library. At one time, it was the highest-selling VHS for Troma, which Kaufman says in his autobiography was due almost entirely to the advent of the video rental store, which were at that time, in Kaufman's words "desperate for product" to "fill their shelves". Kaufman also claims the title was frequently stolen, forcing the stores to buy replacement copies.

Soon after Class of Nuke 'em High was completed and distributed, Kaufman directed Troma's War. Intended as a criticism of Ronald Reagan's attempt to glamorize war, the story concerns a group of ordinary people who crash-land on a remote island, only to find it populated by an isolationist militia that intends to overthrow the U. S. government. In the fullness of time, the Cinemateque Francais and other archival organizations have recognized Troma's War as a cult masterpiece. Troma's War also was the first film to deal honestly with AIDS, which was being swept under the carpet during the Reagan years. The film has since been released unrated and uncut on DVD, and Lloyd claims that it is one of his personal favorite out of all his own films. Kaufman and Herz then went on to direct two sequels to The Toxic Avenger, and Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD.

From 1995 to 2000, Kaufman directed three feature films: Tromeo and Juliet, an adaptation of Shakespeare's play which contains plenty of violence, gore, and vulgarities; Terror Firmer, a horror film about a transsexual killing crewmembers of a Troma movie (the film was inspired by Kaufman's autobiography (written by James Gunn), All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger), and Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, the franchise's fourth film in which Toxie fights his alter-ego, The Noxious Offender. The film was controversial for a scene involving a black man being dragged by a truck by white supremacists, even though it was based on an actual event, and a similar scene occurred on the television show Oz without any backlash.

Troma then went on to fund a low-budget film called Tales from the Crapper, which cost $250,000 despite most of the footage being completely unusable. India Allen, one of the producers, backed out of the film halfway through, and sued Troma. Lloyd personally supervised the reshoot, where the crew paid little attention to their work, and instead spent most of the time drinking and partying, which Lloyd attributes to the film's failure. The film was "Tromatized" (re-edited with extra nudity, gore, and comedy) and released on DVD in September of 2004.

In recent years, Troma Films has distributed many films including Cannibal! The Musical and Killer Condom. Lloyd himself encourages independent filmmaking, which he feels is a dying art form thanks to Hollywood and various conglomerates completely dominating the market, and makes cameo appearances in many low-budget horror films-- occasionally for free. Among his more recent appearances is in former collaborator James Gunn's directing debut Slither. His next film, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, finished principal photography in the summer of 2005. The movie is slated for release, after several delays, in February 2007.

All films from Waitress to Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. were co-directed with college buddy and Troma Vice President Michael Herz

• The Girl Who Returned (1969)
• The Battle Of Love's Return (1971)
• Big Gus, What's the Fuss (1973)
• Squeeze Play (film)(1980) (as Samuel Weil)
• Waitress (1981) (as Samuel Weil)
• The First Turn On!! (1983) (as Samuel Weil)
• Stuck On You (1984) (as Samuel Weil)
• The Toxic Avenger (1985) (as Samuel Weil)
• Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986) (as Samuel Weil; co-directed with Richard W. Haines)
• Troma's War (1988) (as Samuel Weil)
• The Toxic Avenger Part II and The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie (1989)
• Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (1991)
• Tromeo and Juliet (1996)
• Troma's Edge TV (1999-2001) (26 half-hour episodes)
• Terror Firmer (1999) (based on his book All I Need To Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger)
• Farts of Darkness: The Making of Terror Firmer (2000)
• Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000)
• Apocalypse Soon: The Making of Citizen Toxie
• All The Love You Cannes (2002)
• Tales From The Crapper (2004)
• William Sloan Coffin and the Yale Class of 1968 (2005)
• Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

• All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger with James Gunn (1998)
• Make Your Own Damn Movie: Secrets of a Renegade Director with Adam Jahnke and Trent Haaga (2003)
• The Toxic Avenger: The Novel with Adam Jahnke (2006)

• Michael Herz
• Joe Fleishaker
• James Gunn

• Lloyd Kaufman at the Internet Movie Database
• Lloyd Kaufman at MySpace
• Official Website
• Official Troma website
• Lloyd Kaufman, Troma Entertainment President ToxicUniverse article
• Lloyd Kaufman interview in Mongrel Magazine
• Lloyd Kaufman interview with HorrorYearbook
• Lloyd Kaufman interview with Ms. Divine