Short Takes

What begins earnestly as "an indie's guide to the Cannes Film Festival" violently swerves head-on into a Croisette staging of the theatre d'absurde -- an apt thumbnail of most Troma productions, actually, barring the glam locale. CineSchlocker icon Lloyd Kaufman begins this crude docu-comedy with such serviceable advice for fledgling filmmakers as pilfering airline muffins today for free breakfasts tomorrow, dodging pricey taxies by thumbing rides with foreign media, sleeping 40 folks in a tiny flat and the art of crafting phony press credentials to crash studio soirees to guzzle complimentary cocktails, and more importantly, a chance to network with international film buyers. That, after all, is why the Troma Team's been there in force baring melon-heavy breasts, since the fest's inception, to sell The Toxic Avenger and his head-crushing ilk to Turkey, Malaysia and other lands starved for puke-slathered American entertainment. Amid the dealmaking are also scores of drunken, er, determined young Troma evangelicals who storm the beaches waving banners and engaging in guerilla marketing tactics akin to the rubbernecking spawned by any particularly grisly highway disaster. Former Tromavillian Doug Sakmann, being the Kabukiman-garbed poster boy of said movement, makes a royal jackass out of himself throughout by somehow getting tossed out of any joint with more than two walls, clocked by an elder coworker, strangled by an enraged bell hop, with the pee de resistance of his Tromatic behavior, being the MOST gratuitous -- and heroically voluminous -- urination yours truly has ever beheld. 18 breasts. Lesbian tongue rasslin. Grossly overloaded elevator. Unsightly bloodletting. Random Roger Ebert, Quentin Tarantino, Jean-Claude Van Damme and crinkle brow'd John Stossel sightings. Copious puking. Bitchin "Electric Chair" tuneage by The Dolls (whose lead singer, Jane Jensen, canoodled with Debbie Rochon in Tromeo and Juliet). Mr. Kaufman on his interoffice war with a crabby Warner Bros staffer and her snoopy pooch: "I think as a shareholder, I will write some kind of letter to the powers that be at AOL Slime Warner and complain about the use of shareholder money for hags with dogs!" (2002, 92 mins, Fullframe, DD 2.0, Footage from the 1993 fest, Trailers.)