@drivenbyboredom

I took a photo of Lloyd Kaufman, founder of Troma Entertainment and creator of the Toxic Avenger. Story time, and I don't know who is out here still reading these and this one is sort of niche and is really a collection of stories but let's just get into it. So let's start at the beginning. I am a 14 or 15 year old punk kid in suburban DC and it just so happens that my favorite band is also from Alexandria and the bass player, Tad, works at my local video store, Video Vault. Video Vault was not just your ordinary pre-Blockbuster VHS rental place, it was world famous for its cult cinema collection. If you are familiar with Kim's in NYC, this place was even better. Movie buffs from all over would make a pilgrimage there. Tad was about the best teacher I have ever had. He showed me you could just make stuff yourself, her personified the DIY punk ethos. He would take me into Kinkos with a stolen copy card and show me how to make flyers and album artwork and with his help my friend Tom and I started a record label when we were just 15. I don't think I would have thought I could start my own business and do the things I do without him. Aside from punk and DIY, he also introduced me to so, so many movies. Video Vault was my film school (although I do technically have a film degree) and I learned about every type of cult cinema you could imagine. At 15 I was watching John Waters, Russ Meyer, Roger Corman, David Lynch and maybe most importantly Lloyd Kaufman. As I mentioned above Lloyd Kaufman was the face of Troma, the cult cinema studio that made such films as the Toxic Avenger, Sgt Kabukiman NYPD, Class of Nukem High and Tromeo and Juliet. They launched the career of filmmakers like James Gunn, Trey Parker and Matt Stone and actors like Samuel L Jackson, Vincent D'Onofrio and Kevin Costner. He is credited as creating the horror comedy genre and Troma is the oldest independent film studio on earth. I was obsessed with Troma and when I first started my website, Driven By Boredom, back in 2001 I reached out to Troma, who had an early online presence back then, and they would send me VHS tapes to review on my website. One of those VHS tapes was a movie called All The Love You Cannes, a documentary about Troma's yearly attempt to disrupt the Cannes Film Festival to get promotion for their underground film studio. The star of the film was an absolute psychopath named Doug Sakmann who got kicked out of their hotel, pissed in a producer's bag and caused more drunken chaos that I thought possible. When I sent the review back to Troma I realized that the person I had been emailing with was Doug! I just talked about Doug yesterday because he was the founder of the NYC Zombie Crawl, but before that he worked for Troma and when I moved to NYC in 2006 he was one of the first people I hit up. Unfortunately right around that same time Doug had moved to Philly but he was in NYC constantly and threw crazy parties. He was a horror film director and he made a short horror porn parody for a local porn company called Burning Angel. I ended up becoming friends with them through him and when their film was nominated for an AVN Award we all went to Vegas together and that's really how I got involved shooting the adult industry. Without Tad and Troma and Doug my life would be so different. In 2012 I had been working for the legendary NYC weekly The Village Voice for about four years and I had never shot a cover despite shooting the photos for two cover stories. I found out my editor was doing a story on Lloyd and Troma for the 40 year anniversary of the company and I basically forced myself in. I think I was a help to the story because I knew so much about Troma and it just so happened I was friends with a guy named Zac Amico (Now a relatively well known comedian) who was trying out for the long awaited sequel, Return to Nukem High. During his audition he got completely naked and vomited green toxic ooze everywhere (a Troma special made from alka seltzer and green food coloring). Zac and the photo of him made the story and he ended up booking the roll and becoming a Troma regular. I had briefly met Lloyd through Doug, but this was my first time spending time with him. His movies had such an impact on my life and his books about film were so important to me as a photography and filmmaking student. (If you have ever wanted to make a low budget movie of any kind, read his books) I was so excited to take his photo, but I had a vision for it I didn't quite think he would go for... I always wanted to get a Troma tattoo because of how much the company meant to me (for some reason I never did) but my idea for it was to get a tattoo of Lloyd Kaufman dressed as the Toxic Avenger, in his famous tutu and holding a mop and so I knew exactly how I wanted to shoot Lloyd and incredibly he went for it. I remember taking this near 70 year old man out front of the Troma building in Queens to take photos of him in front of their spray painted Troma gate and I watched him apologize to the dozens of people waiting in line to try out for Return to Nukem High. "Don't worry, I normally wear pants but we are doing a photo shoot for the Voice!" One of the tutu-shots made the cover of the story and I couldn't have been happier. Now we have to talk about Tad again. Tad had more of a positive impact on me than anyone on earth outside of my family, but he was also a bully. He was a couple years older than me and was super fucking mean to me even though I looked up to him so much. He and his band jumped me once "as a joke" and he shot me with a bb gun and would just randomly hit me and shit. He had a pretty rough life and I am sure he got picked on at school and took it out on me. By the time I was 17 I was working out all the time. I was on the football team and the wrestling team and getting into fights because I was also an angry young kid. One day he was talking shit about me doing sports and we ended up wrestling and I beat him. I held that shit over him forever and we pretty much stopped being friends after that. A few months later he pulled me aside and tried to apologize for the shit he had done to me in the past, but I wasn't ready to hear it. Instead of accepting his apology I just told everyone about it and how much of a bitch he was for apologizing after I beat him in a "fight". That was the end of our friendship. Over the years I would run into him. The first time was maybe two years later at the record store he worked at, he pretended he didn't know me until I checked out and he said "Would you like a bag for your gay shit". Several years later I saw him again at a tattoo convention. He was working as an apprentice at a local DC shop, the same one where I got my very first tattoo. This time we just sort of said hi and made our separate ways. A year or two later, same tattoo convention, but this time he was working as a tattoo artist and we actually caught up a bit. Whatever beef we had was too old to care about anymore. We were in our 30s at this point. A couple years later he followed me on Instagram. He was a great tattoo artist at this point. I followed him back. Story continues in the next thread...

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