Welcome to Tromaville

Working under the slogan of “Movies of The Future,” Troma Entertainment, founded by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, has been producing and distributing low-budget films since 1974. One of the longest surviving American independent film studios, it has been a catalyst of do-it-yourself guerrilla filmmaking that has created the trademark “Troma Library.” There are essentially two types of Troma films, those produced, and those purchased, which make up the smorgasbord of psychopathic and surreal movies within the library. The trashy aesthetic and genre mutation (and character mutants) are what identify a Troma release, which boast such provocatively titled films like, Rabid Grannies (1988), Killer Condom (1997), Surf Nazis Must Die (1987) and the beloved Cannibal: The Musical (1996), the first film project for South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

The films that have been the most commercially successful and revered by followers of the studio have been Troma’s own productions, Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (1993), Tromeo and Juliet (1996) and in particular, The Toxic Avenger series (1984-2001 [four parts]). The Toxic Avenger, also known as Toxie, is a fighter of crime, a mutant superhero, who employs excessive violence to defeat evil and restore community harmony. The films effectively establish the transparent values of the Troma ‘Universe’, which long time producer and director of the original Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Roger Corman, once described as “extreme yet idealistic, violent, yet romantic.”

The studio first established itself with sex comedies in the late 70s, and then after the success of the first Toxic Avenger (1984) Troma moved toward making films packed full of nudity, gore, and comic book violence. What has subsequently categorized Troma as a neo-independent studio is the various ways in which they have attempted to market a body of films which are practically all discredited by critics. The films are counter-aesthetic and are in full opposition to the institutions of Hollywood interest and popular taste.

The Toxic Avenger series is best described as a jumble of Peter Jackson’s style of slapstick horror, the absurdity of South Park, the physical comedy of the Three Stooges, the inventive murders of 1980 slasher films and the cheesy spoofing of film moments perfected by David Zucker in movies like Airplane! (1980).

Residing largely in isolation, main character, Toxie, always remains the friendly neighbor and a model citizen. His body might signify chemical pollution, but Toxie is still essentially law-abiding and clean-living. Within “Tromaville,” Toxie works with the blind, helps elderly folks cross the street, and even more mundanely helps a housewife open a tight jar lid. Tromaville’s streets and park are populated by the old and the young, illustrating community equality. Toxie can walk freely through Tromaville despite his gruesome appearance.

The citizens of Tromaville are repeatedly seen moving through the community, dancing in groups, enjoying leisure time walking dogs and taking picnics. Horse carriages are an optional and utmost optimal mode of transport, and well-behaved children bike and play in the streets free from passing traffic, all the while eating an endless supply of ice cream. But industrial capitalism, political greed, corporate, and gangs constantly threaten Tromaville’s utopia. Such counter-communitarian behavior challenges the moral rights of the community and puts Toxie in charge of saving the neighborhood.

The common silly and rude nature of Troma’s own productions disguises the extent of its social and political philosophies, and of those within Tromaville, the fictitious community built with the values of the studio. It is crazy that an independent producer of low-budget exploitation films should incorporate such ideologies into its productions. Troma’s communitarian logic is, however, not without its complications. Toxie’s acts of violence are part of his fight for community justice, yet they are clearly unethical, and contradicting of communitarian values, which have lead many critics to challenging the studio’s cultural worth. While Troma’s form of commentary is far from complete, it is not without moments of irony and eccentric oddity.


Troma fights the big pictures!!!
VERY GRAPHIC

Marty

Uncompromisingly, Martin Scorsese is arguably the most brilliant filmmaker working in American film today. Over the past 40 years, Scorsese has directed an impressive canon of innovative and controversial independent (and big budget) films that clearly stand as some of the best Indies/films of all time, and at the time of their release thru to the present have clearly laid the groundwork for succeeding filmmakers. He combines a film enthusiast’s passion for film noir with an appreciation of rich characterization and a hint of place and time. Scorsese’s impressive, and yet erratic, career has been emulated by young indie directors. His intoxicating take of the film medium is most apparent in the work of Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs), Nick Gomez (The Sopranos), and Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood).

Scorsese’s films display such talent with their dazzling camera work, jump cuts, and vivid framing that the filmmaking alone becomes a subject of his movies. His style is marked by a restless, jittery camera that in his best films reflect the tension of city life, a topic that found the most expression in Taxi Driver (1976).

An epic street opera, Taxi Driver centers on Travis Bickle (Robert Dinero), a Vietnam vet turned psychotic vigilante fighting against New York city’s scum, pimps, muggers, junkies and of course, politicians. The film generated controversy because of its bloody finale which was a long sequence of carnage involving a 12 year-old prostitute played by a young Jodi Foster.

In Scorsese’s next film and arguably finest film, Raging Bull (1980), he chose black-and-white cinematography to lend barren realism and intensity to the story of boxing champion, Jake La Motta, who rose from the dirt to the height of boxing, only to be destroyed by his own paranoia and personal vices.

Scorsese’s films are rooted in his Italian-American Catholic upbringing and confront themes of sin, guilt and justice. His explorations of male camaraderie, violent behavior, and definitely man’s deep fear of women have left significant footprints on the works of many directors. Scorsese places certain women, like mothers, on a pedestal to be revered, but more women in his films are depicted as being deceitful whores. Prostitutes are abound in Taxi Driver, and in Raging Bull, La Motta asks his brother to keep an eye on his wife for him, implying that given the chance, all women cheat on their husbands.

Based in New York, Scorsese has largely worked outside the establishment, pursuing his own path, (though often with Hollywood money) by making personal movies such as The Last Temptation of Christ. Scorsese has attained a goal of authorship more fully than other directors because of his high artistic quality. He may be one of the few directors left who still passionately cares about film.

Remember that Controversial scene in Taxi Driver I mentioned?
BOO-YA!!!



Unofficial Website of Martin Scorsese

The Indie King Makes Movies Too!!!

A serio-comedy about a do-well barfly, “Indie King” Steve Buscemi’s, Trees Lounge (1997), is an apologetic look at the petty feuds and uneventful existence of working-class people in a New York suburb. The film’s greatest virtue is Buscemi’s thorough knowledge of the characters because of the autobiographical nature of the story. Trees Lounge is a projection of what life might have been had Buscemi never left Valley Stream, Long Island, to pursue an acting career.

At age 31, Tommy (Buscemi) is a loser who is described by his own friends as a screw-up. Tommy is fired from his job as an auto mechanic after “borrowing” money without informing his boss. Tommy’s former girlfriend, who may or may not be pregnant with his child, has moved in with his angry former boss. Living in a tiny apartment above a bar, Tommy has no money to fix his car or to buy drinks. Further complicating life is Debbie, an adolescent with a crush on Tommy. Temptation overcomes Tommy, and after an ill-advised night together Debbie’s hotheaded father is infuriated.

Epitomizing the middle-class locale is the neighborhood bar, Trees Lounge, in which neither the décor nor the jukebox songs have changed in years. Spending his time hustling drinks and engaging in one-night stands, Tommy gets kicked out of the place for bad behavior. At a crossroads in the film, Tommy realizes that he is young enough to break out and make something of his life. If he doesn’t, he can see his future down at the other end of the bar, where the old salty dog regular, Bill, drinks himself to death.

Neither the comic nor the melodramatic elements are punched up and over done. Buscemi roots his film in characterization and acting, with the humor stemming directly from the characters. Without forcing a dramatic structure or an obvious climax, Buscemi conveys the dead-end nature of aimless lives. He refrains from giving his film the self-conscious hipness typical of the indie pictures in which he has so often appeared just as an actor.

Buscemi handles the material with casualness, so his characters are not caught up in a big dramatic crisis, but instead they get engulfed with petty quarrels. Trees Lounge boasts a cast of indie staples like Samuel L. Jackson, Mimi Rogers and Chloe Sevingy. Above all it’s Buscemi’s triumph as an actor that makes Tommy both pathetic and sympathetic. In the film Buscemi successfully transfers his cheerless character and sensibility to a bar that is a cave for losers. Trees Lounge shows how the young and restless Tommy struggles to distinguish himself from the drinking community. Despite its grim subject, the film is rambunctious. The drinkers are funny, each one of them with an ego to defend, and the film serves as a testimonial of the valor of failure.

Avant-Garde Binge

Critics have argued that in Avant-Garde and post modern film there is an emphasis on style over substance, a consumption of images for their own sake rather than for their usefulness or the values they symbolize, a preoccupation with playfulness and inside jokes at the expense of meaning. Even in big Hollywood movies like Zach Snyder’s depiction of Alan Moore’s world renowned graphic novel, The Watchmen (2009), we see fashion over content. As a result qualities like integrity, coherence, seriousness, authenticity and intellectual depth are undermined. Indie films, as well as some Hollywood pictures have destabilized cinema from within by challenging audiences’ expectations of narrative and visual representation.

Avant-Garde director, Jon Jost, is a ruggedly independent filmmaker who unlike most of his contemporaries exhibits a voice that is uncompromisingly personal. Self-taught, Jost has made his films as cheaply as possible. Though he has been directing for over 30 years, only a few of his works have had theatrical releases.

In an article published in Film Comment Jost writes that he has always worked “small.” “My entire career has been mounted on a fiscal sum- less than $500,000- that in LA would scarcely be imagined suitable for an episode of a lame half-hour sitcom.” Jost later in his article writes, “The thought that there might be virtue in modesty, that having a crew of just two or three might actually have its benefits- and not merely fiscal- is perceived lunacy…is to point out the obvious and the tragic.” The obvious and the tragic being that big production, big money and big promotion have nothing to do with art or human values.

Jost’s movies are mostly about losers. The kind of protagonists considered unappealing by mainstream standards. His repertoire consists of three kinds of film according to film annalist, Emanuel Levy; essays, Westerns, and urbans. His essays include Speaking Directly: Some American Notes (1973), which deals with the intersection of the personal and the political of American involvement of the Vietnam War. Last Chance for a Slow Dance (1977), Slow Moves (1983) and Sure Fire (1988-1990) are among Jost’s Westerns. His westerns examine the teetering generation of cowboys after the frontier and the decline of honor at this time. The characters go on long drives through barren landscapes and the only emotion they have left is rage, which often results in violent and seemingly pointless deaths.

His urban films like All the Vermeer’s in New York (1992) incorporate the lyrical camera of Jost’s essays and the violence of his Westerns together, creating a poignant story of discrepancies between art and spiritual decay. Like all of Jost’s films, he explores the boundaries between narrative and experimental cinema. He presents worlds that are both beautiful and decadent, calm on the surface, but riddled with anxiety.

Like Jost, filmmaker David Lynch is dedicated to explaining the violent nature of American life, but unlike Jost, Lynch has the ability to transform scary nightmares into pleasurable sensations, like the infamous dinner scene from Lynch’s breakthrough film, Eraserhead (1977).


From the very beginning, viewers of a Lynch film expect to be shaken up, to be astonished by the tension, mood and sensation in his work. This is very likely the reason why the term “Lynchian” has become a catchphrase of all other cinematic deviations somewhat like his style. Lynch’s creativity manifests itself through a disconnected series of images and moods. “Cinema is a language that can say abstractions,” Lynch said in a June of 2007 lecture. In that lecture he explained that sometimes even he doesn’t know what’s going on in his films, but that “Intuition and knowingness” of the individual are all that matter. People can interpret things an infinite number of ways, and Lynch says that “You know for yourself what an idea in a films means, and what you know for yourself is valid.”

Thus is the gist of Avant-Garde independent film. A provocative thought or image that suggests nothing in life is fixed and that everything is relative. A surreal search beyond logic and beyond narrative of perversity, violence and frivolity.

Defining Independent

In today's market, where the success of a film is defined by dollar signs, independent production companies such as Miramax seem to operate as mini-studios, churning out populist fare like SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE and THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Nothing wrong with that, really, as long as we call a spade a spade. Are the above referenced films truly distinguishable as independent?

What are the parameters of an independent film? Is it merely the financial constraint of finding money from independent sources? Does it have to do with having a singular independent vision?

It's an easy word to throw around, but not so simple to define.

Wikipedia claims that “Independent films today are generally defined as American films financed and distributed by sources outside today's Big Six [major film studios] and its subsidiaries.” Are financial support and distribution the only determinant factors as to whether a film should be classified as indie or not?

If so, then why is it possible for films, like Juno and Little Miss Sunshine, to be called independent?

In the past, the tag, “independent” was applied to low budget pictures that played for a week in some local art house theatre. Referring to non-studio, low-budget movies, distributed by a nonconformist company, the label had clear meaning. In the 1990s, however, things changed. The former mavericks of the film world were no longer independents. Disney bought Miramax, Universal bought October (eventually morphing into Focus Features,) Turner/Time Warner bought New Line, Vestron was swallowed up by Lion's Gate, and on and on. Stemming from this, indies’ budgets increased to as much as $50 million.

Two different conceptions of independent film can be found. One is based on the way a film is financed, the other focuses on the spirit of the picture or the artistic vision of the creators. According to the first view, any film financed outside of Hollywood is independent. The second suggests that it is fresh perspective, imaginative will and personal vision that are the determining factor.

Brad Krevoy, the producer of 90s comedies DUMB AND DUMBER and KINGPIN says that “the studios, with their hordes of executives going through every page of the script and telling a director what to do, are the antithesis of a pure independent, who basically executes his particular vision.”

When a filmmaker says that he or she is independent, the most important thing is that they do not let anyone beat them into a pulp and force them to make a movie that a financer wants. “It’s a more iconoclastic filmmaking without the burden of attempting to make $100 million at the box-office,” says Emanuel Levy, writer of “Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film.”

Independent has become a label that makes it easy for people to analyze things that are a lot more complicated. The independent spirit is trying to rely on as few outside sources and controls as possible. For many the term “independent” conjures up visions of ambitious directors working with little money and no commercial promises. Ideally, an indie is a fresh low-budget movie with a gritty style and offbeat subject matter that expresses the filmmaker’s mindset and vision. However, in today’s market the lines have blurred with popular Hollywood, creating what some call, “indiewood,” a hybrid of the imaginative creators with all the innovative ideas and the big market with all the deep pockets.

Cover Letter

Nick Kirschner
Persuasion
Bammert
Winter 2009

How to Not Get Hit By Cars
A Cyclists’ Guide


GENRE:
A brochure

PUBLICATION:
This brochure is for the commuting and everyday cyclist to help him/her avoid dangerous collisions with automotives. The brochure will be distributed at local area bike shops and cycling events such as the annual Bike Swap.

AUDIENCE:
At bike shops I expect to encounter all different types of cyclists, from the kind that ride 30-70 miles a day to the kids that are just getting their training wheels taken off. All cyclists that ride in the road are at a constant risk of being hit by motorists, and they need to be properly educated about proper techniques that can save their lives.

BRIEF ANALYSIS:
There is a definite bike v. car mentality out there, and despite all the bickering and proposed legislation, the fact that cars are always going to win in a crash is undeniable. We’re talking two tons against maybe 200lbs; the odds are always going to favor the gas-burning hunk of metal. The best thing that cyclists can do is take into account that in order to serve their best interest and to avoid serious injury they must take the responsibility of remaining safe among the adversity of cars. Motorists are often not cognizant of cyclists, especially when exiting their car, or at intersections. Yes, they should be more alert and should be able to spot a bike rider and evade accidents, but this is not the case. Put simply, car drivers just don’t see us out there. We can tell them to be more attentive over and over again but there is just no guarantee that it’s ever going to stick. That’s why we need to protect ourselves by being smarter on the roads. This brochure gives easy tips to cyclists on ways to circumvent the most commonly seen accidents between cars and bikes. The information provided in this pamphlet when applied to your everyday riding will greatly develop your safety methods and make you a more responsive rider.

WORKS CONSULTED/CITED:
http://www.bicyclesafety.com-/ Provided Images
www.helmets.org/stats.htm
www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/health/risks.htm

Imagery

As a strong proponent of free speech I believe that images of all kind should be used to their fullest extent to sway opinion. It is the public's job to interprete images and decide whether or not they are appropriate based on their own values. Images like the ones distributed by PETA can easily be avoided just by hitting the stop button on the video's browser, or by typing in a different web address. No one is being held down and forced to watch these ads, and as long as it remains that way, let people create whatever type of commercial with whatever type of pictures, videos or illustrations they want.

Seriously, if we ask PETA to cut back their lynch-mob antics, then we'll lose faildogs.com