Chapter Six: June 23-28

Thursday, June 23, 2005

EC
Just now, watching Bitte paint a collection of eyeballs, I was slammed with memories of reading old Bill Gaines/EC Comics magazines in my grandfather’s basement. They were rude, gory, and usually cheesy and funny. I adored them. I now realize how much they’re still a part of me. The direct line from those to Herschell Gordon Lewis, to Rocky Horror, to The Toxic Avenger, Danny Peary, John Waters, Russ Meyer. It just strikes me so hard, when I have time to think about it, that what I’m doing literally is a multi-decade childhood fantasy come true. Throughout my lonely teen years, I had one dream. This summer, I’m acting it out.

Sides
Lloyd has started to worry about the fact that Buffalo is an extremely conservative area, and that some of the sides (the scenes that actors audition with) are a little raunchy. Local casting director Jamie responded:

“The sides I have for the character have him seducing and screwing the chicken and then getting penis bitten off. I can find different sides, but I think it’s important to make sure the actor can pull this off before getting signed. Any other suggestions?”

Poultrygeist: The Book
We knew there was already a book called “Poultrygeist”, but we figured no-one would confuse the two entities. One’s a cute bedtime read for young children. The other is a rude, crude, sexy, horrible, gross-out flick for stoned teenagers and tattooed freaks.

A headshot just showed up, from an actor who’s wife urged him to audition. “Our children just loved the book so much, she insisted I send this in!” Boy, is he in for a surprise.

Food
It’s very sweet — as people discover how poorly Troma takes care of us all, they’ve started bringing by food that they or their parents have cooked. Home-grown asparagus and kale, homemade lasagna (vegetarian and meat!), spicy home-pickled vegetables, and homemade jams now fill the larder and fridge. Oh, and several more trash bags of stale bagels that the anarchists brought by.

Friday, June 24, 2005

Roof nightmares
I was thrilled when the film commissioner persuaded Gary, from local roofing firm $^!$*%^##, to come by and fix the roof for free. “A credit don’t pay the bills,” he said, but he wanted to keep Buffalo in business. Of course… weeks later, and now months perhaps, little or no progress has been made. So today I took Ray, a grizzled fifty-something former-roofer, and now a Poultrygeist PA, to check it out. He scowled and then just groaned. So much of the roof has rotted away that it’s completely collapsing.

While we surveyed the soaking and blackened wood beams holding up the roof, a half-dozen PAs were still chain-bucketing water out of the basement.

This fucking joint is cursed.

In the church, the bat still flaps around blindly at night.

We’ve got a cemetery!
One of the most conservative towns around Buffalo, Clarence, has given us the green light! We can film the night-scenes in the Clarence graveyard!!!

I’ve learned that yet another great advantage of creating a new LLC is that we don’t have Troma’s trail of squalid, offensive, and smutty films behind us. Only ahead of us…

The Friendly Location
Two PAs were jumped last night, handing out flyers for Poultrygeist. Doug took a couple of punches before he managed to bolt. Josh just limped in - his face is a bruised mess.

During my original scouting visit here, I visited one bar, in which three vicious fights broke out. As I left, yet another furious jarhead was being forced out of the bar. What is it with Buffalo???

Huge Amounts of Blood
I nervously called Lloyd with a shopping list of FX materials, a $1500 estimate. (He’s been barking out at requests as small as $100 thus far.) But instead of his normal angry reaction, he demanded “That’s not enough blood! How much blood is there? We need huge amounts of blood! And greasy slimy shit too! KY jelly- Marcocet- we need buckets of it! This should be the bloodiest movie in history!” Oh, yeah.

Rewrites
Lloyd still thinks the script is far too long, but keeps demanding additions to it. Jamie does a good deaf-mute, so he wants a deaf-mute employee. He met a kid with a bright red mohawk, so wants a mohawked employee. He’s always adding long political speeches that sound like his own diatribes.

Last night, Gabe stayed at the NY office through the night, working on rewrites.

Tributes
Silent Hill II, the grand new horror video game, apparently tributes Troma with a sinister doctor called Michael Kaufman. Get it? (Like Michael Herz/Lloyd Kaufman? Anybody?) And Lloyd is wildly insisting that the lead malefactor of the new Romero film is named after him. Such an honor.

Drinking on the job
I just caught the first person drinking a 40 on the job. I worried about this - Troma films are addled with drugs and alcohol. People show up on Troma sets expecting a party dirtier than the one they watched. We’ll never be able to make this film, on the budget we’ve got, if PAs and the crew behave like they’re maniac nurses on ecstasy. I’ve posted signs around the house:

“This is a serious project. We are creating art — this is NOT a summer vacation. There will be no drinking or partying or YOU WILL BE THROWN OUT. Those who are not serious and dedicated to this film will be dismissed as well.”

This summer will be a rude awakening for many.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Joe’s Big Death Scene
In Poultrygeist, a 400-lb+ man shits his guts out to such an extent that he actually shits his entire self out of his own ass. The inside-out character, Subway’s Jared, then runs down the McDon- I mean, the ACB’s hallway screaming “I’m thin! I’m thin!!!” To play this obese role, we cast the obese Troma mainstay, Joe Fleishaker.

Awkward email #1:

“Hey Joe — Greetings from Troma! We’re preparing for the great death scene, and I was wondering a few things….
- how are you with stairs? are a dozen doable? more?
- I know you’re a large man, but since we’ve not yet met, how are you with doorways? (need we find a space with a larger doorway?) also, how heavy are you? (we need to ensure the prop toilet is sturdy enough.) Thanks, Joe — I look forwards to meeting and working with you!”

I really do look forwards to meeting him… he seems like a nice guy.

Safety
Lloyd insists, on all Troma productions, that his laudable mantra be posted around the set.

In the background of a photo I sent him, he realized that one of the posters reads “Safety to People” instead of “Safety to Humans”. He’s furious. I pointed out that the sign outside his office also reads “Safety to People”, and he got even crazier. In fact, each and every one of the hundred or so posters throughout the New York office, the Buffalo office, and the McDonald’s, all read “Safety to People.” They have for months now. Apparently, he’s on an insane tirade. Kiel and Gabe keep calling me from the New York offices in a panic over this.

Not that you need this reminder, but here it is: We’re trying to work on an unbelievably absent budget. With an unpaid skeleton crew. Working around the clock to make inconceivable deadlines. And Lloyd is losing his mind and screaming over the appearance of the word “People” instead of the word “Humans” in a bunch of hand-written marker-scrawled posters.

A PA is now walking around the house, the office, the church hall, and the McDonalds, pasting the cut-out word “Humans” over each and every “Safety to People”. She’s doing this, instead of creating props, which she had been doing.

Ironically, the same PA then left her scissors sitting open-mouthed in the middle of my office floor. Realnice.

Costumes
We’re now on our fourth Lead Costume Designer. The first, Thea, refused to come from England — even when LK offered to pay for her flight. The second, Alyssa, came up with mostly unsatisfying designs. (Okay, they were pretty terrible.) The third, __________. Right. Today Anna Chiaretta, a random PA, showed up with some watercolored sketches, which she’d done “on a whim.” They were magnificent!

Lloyd’s Yale-educated response:

“This looks great…My only concern is:will the older Arbie look fat in it? The camoflauge (I can’t spell) pattern is a good idea.Maybe have a pink or orange border..can we afford same? logos need to be on everything…You all need to print out everything you like(Including Arbie,other,buckets,cups,underwear etc,,,)and put the print outs next to each other on the floor then pour salad oil on the floor and roll around on the paper together.er..I mean….and see if they are all coordinated;then decide decide…then send the results to us in New York.”

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Mirror images
We have two identical twins working here, both in FX. At least one is here every day — maybe both of them, I’m not sure — I can’t fucking tell them apart. It’s terrible.

I still swear this is not a porn
Lloyd just suggested that Ron Jeremy get me in touch with the owner of a huge local strip club. “I will need to rehearse there July 7-8,” says Lloyd. Where the hell is this all going?

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Culinary Advice
Looking for advice on catering, I went back to old Troma Producer Trent Haaga. I’d heard something about stale baked ziti being served on Toxic Avenger IV. His advice?

“Man, we went with the dirt-cheapest local caterer. I don’t know exactly what we paid. We just had a PA find a ton of caterers and we went with the lowest offer. They’d drop off some food and we either fed everybody or we didn’t. Ah, if only it was baked ziti. In actuality it was EGGPLANT LASAGNA over and over and over and over again.”

We’re now looking for eggplant lasagna.

Next week: Almost 100 strangers crowd into the church basement to sing protest songs. Andy receives a verbal flogging that begins with “I’ll take a fucking 82 year old midget at this point….where is the tape of the fat man singing?…” And the WB news-team shows up to document the travesty that will become… Poultrygeist!