Through my wife, actually. We'd both been Troma fans for a long time and when she had to do an internship for grad school, she decided she wanted to do it with Troma. So she was doing that in the Troma LA office, helping to organize the theatrical premiere of Terror Firmer and doing costumes for the Playboy Mansion sequence on Citizen Toxie. I met Lloyd at the party for Terror Firmer and it was love at first sight. Basically, we bonded over the fact that we've both idiots who managed to luck out and marry well. He said there was a job opening in LA, that it would absolutely suck and wouldn't pay anything but if that sounded good to me, they'd be happy to have me. In fact, it did sound pretty good to me so I took it.

2. What was your job at the Troma offices?

At first, basically just a production assistant. The first thing I did at Troma was work on the Playboy Mansion stuff for Toxie 4. At Troma, once they realize you're reasonably competent, your job responsibilities increase exponentially. So I became Lloyd's LA assistant, arranging his schedules and basically serving as his West Coast liaison. Because the LA office was so small, we all basically had to do a little bit of everything. So I'd help out with booking the movies into theatres, promotion, video sales, staffing the booth at things like the San Diego Comic-Con.you name it, I probably did it. When I was originally hired, I was working with Scott McKinlay, who ran the LA office. After he left, for reasons that can at least partially be seen in All The Love You Cannes, I took over. So I ran the LA office until they decided to close it down in 2002. I was the last man standing at Troma West.

3. How did you end up co-writing Make Your Own Damn Movie?

Lloyd knew I was a writer and I started out co-writing a bunch of essays with him for the Troma website about stuff like Napster and intellectual freedom and why Metallica sucks shit. When Troma made the deal with Channel 4 in the UK to produce Troma's Edge TV, I became the head writer for that. Which meant that I had to squeeze 20 half-hour long scripts out of my ass in an incredibly short time. Lloyd really liked what I was coming up with. In fact, he's told me that Troma's Edge TV is the only time in Troma history that they started out with really good, really funny scripts and then managed to make it progressively worse as they actually produced them. Anyway, he'd been talking for awhile about doing another book and kept saying he wanted me to do it with him. I'd smile and nod and go about my business, assuming that nothing would ever come of it. Turns out I was wrong.

4. What was the writing experience like?

Probably pretty much the same as James Gunn's experience working on Lloyd's first book. Basically the process was like this. When we first got the official go-ahead for the book, Lloyd, Trent and I got together and sketched out what we wanted to cover. We didn't really care much about all the bullshit that's in every other how-to-make-a-movie book. We wanted to get into stuff about raising money, promotion, distribution, pre-production. Things that are either not talked about enough or at all in the other books. Once we got that figured out, Trent and I would get together every couple of weeks and he'd tell me a bunch of stories about the Troma shoots he's worked on, mainly about Citizen Toxie. I'd write a first draft of a chapter and send it off to Lloyd. He'd read it and call me with notes for about four hours, contradicting half the stuff Trent told me. I'd go back and try to put this Rashomon-style story together and rewrite the chapter according to Lloyd's notes. Then I'd send it back to him and he'd keep sending me minor revisions and tweaks while Trent and I went ahead and started trying to figure out the next chapter. During all this, we'd be working on getting the sidebars from other people incorporated into the text. We wanted those to reinforce the idea that nobody makes a movie by themselves. It's a team effort so the book had to have voices from other members of the team. Usually we were able to reconcile it pretty well. Sometimes not, which is why we decided to put in the whole argument thing where Lloyd and Trent start going at it over whether you should shoot on film or video. That was almost literally what I was hearing from each of them, so the only way to get both sides of the argument in was to just stop the book dead in its tracks and have them fight it out. Really, the hardest thing about writing the book was the fact that I was still doing all my regular Troma work at the same time. So while I was writing the book, I was also helping with things like the American Film Market, Cannes, and Comic-Con, doing reshoots on Tales From The Crapper, and promoting Citizen Toxie. I had to relocate the entire Troma office while I was right in the middle of the thing. So it was pretty hectic.

5. What are your favorite experiences during your time at Troma?

Well, one of the things I'm proudest of is helping to found TromaDance. I hope it keeps getting bigger and better because I think it's a valuable outlet for struggling independent artists. One of the biggest thrills I got was on Citizen Toxie. After the LA office saw a rough cut of the movie, I came up with the idea that the movie needed some sort of a prologue. Since it had been so long since the last one, I felt there should be more build-up before we get plunged into the action. So I wrote the little narration that appears at the beginning and end of the movie. A few months later, we got the new version and I couldn't believe they'd gotten Stan Lee to be the narrator. As a kid who grew up on Marvel comics, to hear Stan the Man saying words I'd written was one of the biggest thrills of my life. And then there were things like the time I went to a strip club with Lloyd and Lemmy and Lemmy's teeth fell out. But really the best thing to come from my working with Troma is the people I met there. The Troma Team really is a big diseased, incestuous family. I'm just happy I got the chance to get to know people like Lloyd and Michael, Trent, Scott, John Santos, Florian Schura, Chad Ferrin, Megan Powers.I could probably name a couple dozen people who I've become very good friends with through Troma. Once you're part of the Troma family, it's virtually impossible to get out. It's kind of like the Mafia only with no money and worse food.

6. What are your favorite Troma films?

I'm a huge fan of Terror Firmer. I think that may be their masterpiece. Also Tromeo & Juliet, Troma's War, Toxie, of course. Of the non-Lloyd movies, top of the list is Mother's Day. I absolutely love that one. Cannibal's great. So is Combat Shock. Unspeakable may be their most underrated acquisition. I wish more people would check that one out. Surf Nazis Must Die was one of the first Troma movies I ever saw, so I've got a soft spot for it. And I have a totally irrational, completely indefensible attraction to Maniac Nurses Find Ecstasy. Don't ask me why.

7. Anything else you'd like to mention?

I'm hopeful that in the next year, one of the multitude of projects I've been working on and have slowly been lurching toward reality will finally go into production and get made. Until then, I'm a regular contributor and columnist over at www.thedigitalbits.com, one of the biggest DVD sites on the net. Thanks and I hope you all like the book.