PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Lily Hayes Kaufman, the daughter of Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman, has made a documentary on what could be Troma’s last trip to the Cannes Film Festival and it’s pretty damn good. It follows Lloyd and the Troma team to the famed French film festival and gives fans and viewers a behind-the-scenes, in-depth look at not only their journey there, but also into the close-knit group where everyone worked nonstop to reimagine their image after past trips.
“Occupy Cannes,” follows Lloyd Kaufman and The Troma Team on what could be their last trip to the Cannes Film Festival. The film dives into the underbelly of the glamorous event and offers a window into a vibrant subculture.
Occupy Cannes! had its world premiere at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival and is a love letter to Troma that will delight hardcore fans and introduce their shenanigans to those who haven’t yet embraced the low-budget horror films and community that comes with the Troma name. To celebrate the premiere, I chatted with Lloyd, Lily Hayes, and Troma family member, Catherine Corcoran (Terrifier) about the message behind the documentary, their journey through the years, horror films, and more!
PopHorror: I really enjoyed the film. I watched it this morning and I’m super excited to talk to you guys about it today.
Lily Hayes Kaufman: Thank you!
Catherine Corcoran: Thank you!
PopHorror: My first question is for Lily Hayes and Lloyd. Occupy Cannes! is a documentary about Troma’s potential last trip to Cannes. What made you want to make a documentary chronicling this?
Lily Hayes Kaufman: I like, first of all, that you said potentially last trip because I hope that Troma gets to Cannes and I think that despite what my dad may say, it’s hard to not admit that deep somewhere inside, I have this fantasy that Troma and my dad will somewhere at some point be recognized by the official Cannes at Cannes. So, I’ll just get that out of the way.
PopHorror: Never say never!
Lily Hayes Kaufman: That’s right! A girl can always dream. But I think in 2001, there was a Troma documentary called All the Love You Cannes! If you haven’t seen it, go watch it. It’s very entertaining and it’s totally wild, and the Troma team goes to Cannes. There are small clips of it in our film, and they just are totally over the top and spewing blood all over the place and getting kicked off the red carpet. I think in our film, the Troma team is this new generation of Troma team who are really professional and have a mission and are really goal oriented. It was really interesting to see this new generation who has come through Troma, and this time has two goals, one of selling the latest Troma film and also of spreading the word and educating people about the challenges that filmmakers are facing with independent film and getting their voices heard. I think that those were the main goals of the mission and the documentary. On a personal level, I made this with my two sisters and the whole Troma team. There’s some sort of personal moments in it as well, with my sisters Charlotte Kaufman, who’s our cinematographer, and Lisbeth Kaufman, where we’re trying to wrap our heads around the whole Troma world and our dad and his enfant terrible approach to filmmaking and is he crossing the line and how we are reconciling everything and what that means for Troma. Do Troma’s antics draw eyeballs to films? Does it draw film buyers, or does it alienate Troma farther from the inner circle that is at Cannes?
PopHorror: I did notice it is quite a family affair, which is awesome.
Lily Hayes Kaufman: Our mom too! It’s a Troma Family! Catherine’s part of our family, Doug Sakmann was part of our family. The Troma team!
Lloyd Kaufman: Roger Corman and I were friends for over 50 years and was Lily Hayes’ executive producer. She and Roger’s kids kind of grew up together and Roger was a big help. Stan Lee was also mentioned in relation to Fantasia in terms of pop culture because I don’t think Troma would’ve ever had a Toxic Avenger comic book. He did a lot to help. We wrote a script together, which almost got made. He was a great man and he’s in about eight of our movies.
PopHorror: The excitement over Roger Corman tweeting about the movie was really heartwarming because the excitement was real in that room. My next question is for Catherine. How did you become involved with the film?
Catherine Corcoran: I was very lucky that Lloyd had cast me as one of the leads in his film, Return to Nuke ‘Em High, which you see in Occupy Cannes! So that was how I got involved because we were going to Cannes and decided to document it and also knew going in that we were going to be the underdogs because even though we were screening as part of the festival. We were a tiny, tiny company up against these giant studios that could afford, as you can see Lily Hayes’ film, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of advertising that we didn’t have so it was a very consolidated effort to get eyes on the film and to stand out against this behemoth. And I think it worked! We came back and we were privileged enough to screen at Fantasia over 10 years ago and then also at the Museum of Modern Art in the Contender Series, where we were alongside some of those studio films, like Wolf of Wall Street and Blue Jasmine, so I think it worked.
Lloyd Kaufman: Scorsese, Zeffirelli, major directors were in that series and there was our movie at the Museum of Modern Art! How cool is that? It didn’t make money, but it will eventually.
Catherine Corcoran: But you know a lot of Academy Award winning pictures don’t make money either.
Lloyd Kaufman: Well, when you spend 200,000,000 bucks on a movie… The Toxic Avenger, the new one’s 50,000,000 bucks! They could have done it for a lot less, but they did have a big cast, and they had about 15 producers, probably each getting half a million bucks. The new Toxic Avenger, you’ll love it. It’s really good. Macon Blair was brilliant and Peter Dinklage. The whole cast is great. You’ll love it. It’s better than good.
PopHorror: I’m excited to see it!
Lloyd Kaufman: Again, it’s word of mouth. If you wait long enough and it’s good, what you have is good… Poor old Van Gogh, eventually, he cut his ear off, and nobody paid attention. At Cannes, having street theater and zombie crawls and stuff, because we can’t afford $500,000. But it does get attention and over the years we’ve been able to attract buyers. But now, the bosses at Cannes, they don’t want competition with the $500,000 party that somebody’s giving or that kind of stuff. We got policed out. The same thing happened at Sundance, too. We started TromaDance. Trey Parker started it with the one festival during Sundance, called the Cannibal! The Musical festival was one movie, and we rented places and had a little festival right in the stomach of Sundance in Park City. It was very successful because Cannibal! The Musical is great! And then add that to TromaDance, which is all free. We had a theater in Salt Lake City and a venue in Park City, and we showed movies by new, young talent like Fantasia, except the entry was free. It was a very nice event and eventually after 10 years, we got policed out of Sundance. They didn’t like Toxie and the mop. It got worse and worse. His mop was taken by the police because it’s a weapon. We had a guy playing the accordion and that interfered with the cover band up the road there. It was ridiculous. We moved the TromaDance to New York City and in 2027, TromaDance, we’ve got three venues in Boulder, so we’ll be back inside the bowels of Sundance in 2027. They’ll be delighted to know we’re back! Lily Hayes will hopefully show Occupy Cannes!
Lily Hayes Kaufman and Catherine Corcoran: Yeah!
PopHorror: I think they’re missing out because you mentioned word of mouth. I’ve been to conventions where Troma is and where you’ve been, Lloyd, and I’ve seen the lines wrapped around the building. I’ve seen the excitement for new Troma movies to come out, so you have the fan base. You have the loyal following. They’re losing the money that they want. Do what you’ve got to do to get yourself out there.
Lloyd Kaufman: Lily Hayes’ movie is entertaining. It’s rather touching and a little bit sweet, and very educational. The fans at Fantasia are genuine cinefiles and filmmakers themselves, so she had a full house and a standing ovation!
PopHorror: Congratulations!
Lloyd Kaufman: And those fans, they yelled during the movie if they don’t like it. They’re real fans. They don’t hesitate to tell you if they like or don’t like the movie, and they really liked it. It’s wonderful for young people and certainly for the sad, old man here. It’s really great, really great.
PopHorror: That’s awesome! This is for all of you. What do you hope people walk away with after watching your documentary?
Lily Hayes Kaufman: I think one takeaway that to me is really important is how the sort of new generation of Troma team, like the previous generation of Troma team like the James Gunns, Trey Parker and Matt Stones, and Eli Roths of the world, have also gone on to launch incredible careers like Catherine Corcoran, and Asta Paredes, and Clay von Carlowitz, and Justin Martell and Matt Manjourides who are running a huge show on Shudder. Almost every member of the cast in the “Where are they now?” started their own company or are running a show or is a huge performer, has a great following, started a great family! Everyone has really gone on to do something really wonderful and valuable that they really believe in. To me, that’s really inspiring and exciting, so I think that that’s something I hope that people take away, in addition to there’s hope for film I hope and support independent film.
Lloyd Kaufman: That’s the thing. You never know where lightning will strike. I think I’m good at identifying talent. Do I have talent? Well, I’ve made a lot of movies and they don’t necessarily make money, but the people who have come out of film are genuinely talented. Gabe Friedman, who worked for us for 10 years, he’s writing scripts. Troma alumni are doing good things and good work, and good things for society, too. Lisbeth Kaufman, her whole life is wrapped around environmentalism. Her whole career is all environmental, using AI to get rid of bad weeds without any pesticides. Not sure how that’s done but it’s that kind of stuff. Lily Hayes’ mother and my wife of 52 years, is the New York Media Commissioner, so the kids have grown up in that mood of the… It’s an interesting thing because Pat Kaufman is from the South. The point is, Pat, their mother, comes from a very different debutante kind of world and they’ve grown up in the world of Surf Nazis Must Die and the Subhumanoid Meltdown, and Terror Firmer, these crazy movies, so it’s kind of a yin and yang. Lily Hayes is already working on the next documentary. Why don’t you talk a little about it? It’s interesting.
Lily Hayes Kaufman: I’m working on a documentary about Troma’s legacy. Dad’s been making films for 50 years and as you can see, he’s sort of this enfant terrible filmmaker who says things that are impossible to control. You never know what he’s going to say so there’s this push and pull for 50 years. I haven’t been alive that many years but almost. I’ve watched my mom, who’s this sort of very straight-laced person, as she’s supported him through this incredible career and he’s this iconic film legacy, while she’s built this unbelievable career of her own. She, as the New York State Film Commissioner, launched this $4,000,000,000 program to give a credit back to the biggest Hollywood films. So, it’s been this really interesting balance that I’ve seen that they’ve built while he has had this legacy. Sort of over that, there’s also been The Toxic Avenger, which also has spanned that, so it’s been the arc of this story that culminated last week at San Diego Comic Con when 6,500 people watched Dad handing the mop to Macon Blair and the new generation of the Toxic Avengers. We started filming and Occupy Cannes! took 10 years. Let’s see if we can do this in less!
Lloyd Kaufman: And getting back to Mom, she’s had a political career, a serious political career, for 40 years, in spite of the Surf Nazes Must Die, and Bloodsucking Freaks, and none of the governors or the mayor, everybody seems to be okay. Nobody’s ever… When Pat was first appointed by Governor Pataki in 1992, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety badmouthed, “We don’t want Mrs. Troma.” They had the unions and whatever. “We don’t want Mrs. Troma as Commissioner.” But within six months, they loved her. They loved her! The unions, the industry, brought her back to New York because Covid and the strike were a big problem and as a result of Pat’s tax incentive that she worked and got through legislation, they have about 20 new soundstages in New York state that are now kind of empty because of the strike and Covid, and here she is. She’s building New York City back up. She’d be happy to hang out with the Troma team but they called her back. Somehow, the Troma thing has never been an issue. The governors usually joke about it. They make up titles for The Toxic Avenger. They all love her. They appointed her to be Commissioner in spite of whatever Troma represents. She’s really an amazing woman.
Catherine Corcoran: The entire Kaufman family, that was my takeaway from Occupy Cannes!, was what kind of nurturing environment they create for filmmakers and for creatives and artists in general. I think Lloyd and Pat are this beautiful dichotomy that really mentors. There’s this beautiful scene at Lily Hayes’ house where she has three people working on the campaign, and you can just see them eating up every word that’s coming out of Lloyd and Pat’s mouths. It is this beautiful, beautiful moment of mentorship amidst struggle, and I think all three sisters, his daughters, do the same. They’re so supportive and so kind and so encouraging. That’s my takeaway. I think audiences will take that as well and I think it just shows, in the fullest of time, the impact you can make as a family and also that extends to your work, which we refer to as the Troma family.
Thank you so much to Lloyd, Lily Hayes, and Catherine for taking the time to chat with us. Stay tuned for more information about Occupy Cannes!
