It’s been pretty hard to overlook New York City filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman during his 50 years of disrupting media, and now he’s back for more with Lloyd Kaufman: Interviews, a book now hitting book and online stores everywhere.
In the book, the self-denigrating, affable 80-year-old co-founder and president of Troma Entertainment — responsible for the likes of such schlocky “midnight movie” fare as The Toxic Avenger, Surf Nazis Must Die, Tromeo & Juliet, and, most recently, #ShakespearesShitstorm — gathers together no-holds-barred commentaries, op-eds, Q&As, and arguments like a modern-day P. T. Barnum (of circus fame).
Readers are warned that Lloyd Kaufman: Interviews may make us all uproariously laugh, but it should be taken deadly seriously.
VideoAge sought Kaufman’s help in 1994 when he was an American Film Market (AFM) advisory committee member (he later served as the AFM’s executive vice chairman), and the trade publication was entangled with AFM’s organizers, who didn’t appreciate the editorial coverage the market received in VideoAge‘s daily editions. In his book, Kaufman published the letter he wrote on VideoAge‘s behalf and sent to AFM’s management, which was subsequently published in the March/April 1994 edition of VideoAge, headlined: “Lloyd Kaufman Chides AFM on Press Freedom.”
Kaufman’s book is a collection of 28 interviews and comments that first appeared in a variety of publications, including The Los Angeles Times, the New Statesman, and The New York Times from 1981 to 2023.
But it also includes his filmography of 20 films he produced and/or directed from 1969 to 2020, and a 12-page chronology that begins when he was born in 1945 as Stanley Lloyd Kaufman Jr. in New York City. It details his time at Yale University in the 1960s, where he majored in Chinese studies (he also speaks French), as well as his co-founding of Troma –– a production, international distribution, and theatrical releasing company –– with his college friend, Michael Herz, in 1974.
The 17-page introduction for the book is from Mathew Klickstein, a self-described “multiplatform storyteller” from northern Colorado, who’s also the book’s editor. Klickstein was fascinated by Kaufman, who he first met in 2005 at TromaDance Festival, a film event that was held regularly as counter-programming during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
The book has only 188 pages because of the smaller font used, otherwise it could easily have been 300 pages long. But that was a decision made by the publisher, the University Press of Mississippi (UPM), and “probably was for printing/shipping costs,” Klickstein told VideoAge. In 2023, he approached Kaufman with the idea for the book and, later, proposed it to UPM (which also publishes the Conversations With Filmmakers series). The book was published in 2025.
While Klickstein was able to answer some questions about Kaufman, there were some that he either didn’t or couldn’t answer, like when his subject switched from his trademark bowtie to a necktie (as shown on the above book cover next to Klickstein’s photo), or the year when the same photo was taken (he wasn’t sure, but believes that it was taken by photographer Jan Steenmeijer in 2001).
Reached by e-mail, the still active Kaufman, a showman executive who embodied the entertainment industry, would only comment, “Your questions are very personal and my psychiatrist, lawyer, and plumber have instructed me not to answer.”
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