It’s Wedding Season at the Movies

Tromemoir Artist and Award winning filmmaker Onur Tukel’s RICHARD’S WEDDING opens this week at reRun Gastropub Theater

Check out the TRAILER: https://vimeo.com/38510145

RICHARD’S WEDDING is premiering in New York on June 1,

2012 and will play for one week at the ReRun Gastropub in Brooklyn.

RICHARD’S WEDDING recently premiered at the 2012 Sarasota Film

Festival where it won a special jury prize for best screenplay.

Trailor: RICHARD’s WEDDING

Where??? All the cool kids are in the know about the hip venue the ReRun Gastropub, but in case you are  an lut of towner looking for aome culture here’s the address:

147 Front Street Brooklyn, NY 11201

website: http://reruntheater.com/

Ticket Info:

When???

Date and Times:

FRI 6/1 – 7:30pm, 10:15pm

SAT 6/2 – 3pm

MON 6/4 – 7:30pm, 10:15pm

TUE 6/5 – 10:15pm

WED 6/6 – 10:15pm

THU 6/7 – 7:30pm

Tix here: http://richardswedding.eventbrite.com/

You want more?

Onur Tukel (Writer/Director/Actor, “Tuna”) is a writer, director,

author and illustrator who recently co‐starred in the feature film

Septien (Michael Tully, 2011) released by IFC Films/Sundance Selects.

Tukel created 65 pastel and ink drawings for the film, which were

exhibited at the Pennington Gallery in New York in July 2011. His

first children’s book Little Friends was released by Marshall

Cavendish in the spring of 2012. Tukel also stars in Red Flag (Alex

Karpovsky, 2012) which premiere at the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival

in June.  Along with Richard’s Wedding, Tukel has directed the feature

films House of Pancakes, Sergio Lapel’s Drawing Blood,

Ding‐a‐ling‐LESS and Sergio Lapel’s The Pigs.

Onur Tukel’s MOST IMPORTANT Film Contribution to humanity: Writer/Director, Troma’s SERGIO LAPEL’S DRAWING BLOOD

Winner!  TROMEMOIR ILLUSTRATOR : MONSTERS AND DAUGHTERS 

Grammy Kaufman – clues to understanding Lloyd

The below article was originally posted on the BREAD & CIE BLOG:   Into the Hearth Of Darkness  (For those who don’t know, our very own uncle, Charles Kaufman, Writer and director of classics including WHEN NATURE CALLS, MOTHERS DAY and of brother of Lloyd Kaufman.

Uncle Charles, as we call him, is the founder of  San Diego famed bakery Bread & Cie, which is hands down the best bread, period. He has since become the Donald Trump of the Baking Industry, growing quite an empire – he’s got alot of Dough!    We follow his blog, and today we learned a lesson about our family Kaufman history…   If you too would like to learn about Grammy Kaufman, check out the below story which originally ran on the Bread & Cie blog.

The story behind Bread & Cie’s challah

Posted by Nina on April 24, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Bread & Cie’s six-braid challah

Even though we’re all about rustic European breads here at Bread & Cie, it’s kind of funny that one of our most popular items is challah.

Challah is a soft, sweet braided bread traditionally used for Jewish Sabbath dinners. As a Jewish person who has consumed plenty of challah over the years, I can wholeheartedly say that, yes, ours is the best. (I’m only sorry that it’s not Kosher because I can’t share it with my religious friends.)

Grammy Kaufman

Recently, Charles mentioned that the challah recipe was his grandmother’s. I was about to  get all sentimental about it, but he stopped me. Apparently Millie Kaufman wasn’t really all that grandmotherly. She cursed. She ate raw food. She lived in Manhattan. She was no warm, fuzzy sitcom kind of grandma.

But those things sounded pretty awesome to me, so I asked Charles to tell us more about the woman responsible for the San Diego’s best challah.

1. Millie Kaufman, food pioneer

Back in the 1950s, before people worried about eating vegan and growing their own vegetables, Grammy Kaufman was buying organic and baking bread from scratch. She also followed the teachings of Scott Nearing, who (Wikipedia says) was a political activist and advocate of simple living. Millie went to Nearing retreats in Vermont, where they’d spend four hours working in the field, four hours doing something intellectual and four hours engaged in something spiritual. I think I may try to adopt this lifestyle one day.

2. Millie Kaufman, socialist

Charles was about five-years-old when he’d go to Grammy Kaufman’s apartment in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Apparently, Charles’ father was supposed to be visiting with her once a week, but instead he’d drop off his three kids and he’d go off and do his own thing in the city from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Millie had newspapers everywhere and would go on rants about politicians like Richard Nixon and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Kaufman siblings knew more about Karl Marx before they got out of elementary school than most people know about the socialist philosopher in their lifetime.

3.  Millie Kaufman, baker

In her neighborhood, which, at the time was an extension of Harlem, Millie was known as the “old lady in tennis sneakers.” She was loud and cantankerous and everyone on 103rd Street recognized her. But what temporarily calmed Millie down was feeding her grandkids. She was worried about pesticides and only served them organic meals. And along with baking fresh challah, she’s also responsible for Bread & Cie’s Seedy Multigrain.

4. Charles Kaufman, traditionalist 

Grammy Kaufman passed away when Charles was 8-years-old, but she left behind  her recipes. And once Charles got into the bread business, he experimented with the challah. Instead of making it with three braids, for instance, he made it with six. He added  poppy and sesame seeds. But everything else he kept exactly the same and that’s the challah (and brioche) that we’ve all come to love.

I asked Charles what he his grandmother might say if she knew he was selling her bread all over town.

“She’d take a taste and ask how much I was charging. And after I’d tell her she’d say ,’What, do you want to be the richest man in the cemetery?”

THOSE TOTORO CREAM PUFFS

I was minding my own  business, checking out little modern day warm and fuzzy baking website cutestfood.com, (Sure, I’ve got my blood, vomit and foam at the mouth recipes down, but maybe I have a secret yearning to develop a clean cut Martha Stewart side too)  and I’m scrolling through adorable ideas for baking kitten shapped shaped macaroons, growing heart shaped lemons, cappuccinos for your loved ones with a heart in the foam, Fashionista Louboutin stiletto shaped cupcakes, and then…. TOTORO CREAM PUFFS punches me in the face.

Are you kidding me?? This is not the time and place to show me TOTORO CREAM PUFFS.  First of all, what are TOTORO and CREAM PUFFS even doing together.  Secondly, this reminds me what my dad went through with TOTORO.

Hayao Miyazaki is an incredible Japanese animator, and MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO was the first Miyazaki film to be widely released in the US, and it was released by TROMA!   If you know Miyazaki’s work, you know that’s pretty unbelieveably cool, and if you were me, a 12 year old girl attending a preppy girl school, this was EVEN COOLER because FINALLY I was going to have a movie I could show all my friends.  A nice kid-friendly animated cartoon!  No Boobs, no cursing, just good plain clean animated fun.

To us wide eyed kids, the premier was awesome at a big fancy theater in midtown Manhattan, all three of us kids, dressed up in our best smocked dresses. We had seen the screener a million times at home, and sang the song I remember to this day “To-to-ro, Totooorooo… To-to-ro…”

Now, I don’t know the details, I was only a small pigtailed girl at the time, but sure enough Totoro was stolen from the good people at Troma soon enough.  Totoro was a great movie, so good in fact, that the big studios circled around from afar at first, scaring off everyone else.  Then they inched closer.  They hovered over the theaters, circling, salivating as they glimpsed the movie, but they kept circling, and waiting, scaring away everyone.   Then when no one was looking, and unbeknownst to Troma, they swooped in and scooped up the entire Miyazaki library in their long dirty talons, Totoro included.

The deal was announced in the NYTimes, one year before TROMA’s license expired! In fact, according to THIS 1995 NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE  ”His [Miyazaki] biggest success in the United States has been “My Neighbor Totoro,” about two girls befriended by a plump, mythical creature.”  but there was no mention of dad or TROMA anywhere.

I was so revved up just by the little sight of the TOTORO CREAM PUFFS that I had to call dad to talk to him about this Tromatic event we had been through.

“Disney bought the library but we still had a year on our deal” he recalled “but when they announced in the newspapers they used the artwork, so when we went to the cartoon network, or other television networks, they said ‘hey, what are you trying to pull here? Disney owns Totoro!“

Those studio cream puffs. 

“Now you know,” he continued, “for 40 years, we have specialized in doing alot of hard work and making no money, so thanks to Disney we continued this work.”

After this all happened I also remember, dad was so upset with Children’s movies that he locked himself in our family room and watched over and over again the opening scene to  SGT. Kabukiman NYPD, where two of us kids are  skewered to death…

You can guess what happens next… or find out for yourself!

WATCH TROMA’s SGT KABUKIMAN NYPD! 

Freaky Friday: Ghost Rider 2 and Fathers Day Premier

Thank god I had just bought a new pair of leather leggings, because what else do you wear to a GHOST RIDER 2: Spirit of Vengeance Party?

Photo credit: Fangoria.com 

We had been instructed by our role model and GHOST RIDER 2 director Mark Neveldine to wear our Sunday best – Black, Leather, and or something Ghost Rider theme to the big bash FANGORIA mag was hosting at TIMES SCARE.

I thought dad and us kids should ride in on a motorcycle, with our head on fire, but then again, Nicholas Cage was going to be there, and we didn’t want to upstage the big star.  This was his moment in the spot light, Dad’s was up next, just a few hours later, when we would head to…

The New York Premier of FATHERS DAY at the Sunshine Landmark Theater.    From GR2 we all headed down to Houston st. for some more father-daughter bonding over the midnight showing of FATHERS DAY.

Dad and Mark introduced FATHERS DAY, written and directed by Astron-6  a talented Canadian group making bloody miracles on a super low budget.  There was a pretty sweet cameo by Dad, playing… you gussed it, GOD.  A typical Troma film, it’s a warm and light romantic comedy about fathers, a nice little bonding moving any child should see with his or her father.

No, that’s not how it went at all… A deranged killer and rapist is on the loose and has a taste for “Daddy meat.” One man will do any it takes to send the bastard to hell! At no more than two and a half minutes into the film, a man get his PENIS bitten off.

“The latest Troma flick “Father’s Day” is one of the schlock studio’s intentionally bad movies that succeeds a little too well.” 

-Kyle Smith at The New York Post,

Check out his review titled “Your dad will hate it too” here, from The New York Post

Beers with Dad and Writer/Director Mark Neveldine

I have to give dad credit for letting me tag along and introducing me to all sorts of talented and interesting filmmakers, like writer/director MARK NEVELDINE! 

Last night, I’m minding my own business, eating sushi at a quiet restaurant in Gramercy, when out of the blue, dad texts me “We’re at Molly’s 22-23 3rd.”

I just assume “we” is dad and mom, although I can’t figure out, why in gods name, are they all the way down town at Molly’s?  Molly’s, I happen to know because I run by it all the time, and because it is the kind of awesome place that has sawdust on the floor and a ton of beer choices (second only to the bars where you can eat peanuts and throw the shells on the ground)

I immediately walk over after my dinner, to a fabulous surprise and find that dad is having a drink with writer/director MARK NEVELDINE!   Mark has just finished shooting in Romania, and is gearing up for the premier of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance which he directed with Brian Taylor, starting Nic Cage.

Over drinks, Dad and Mark agreed to have MORE drinks next Friday February February 10th ahead of co-hosting the FATHERS DAY Premier at the Sunshine Cinemas here in  NYC.

——————————————

February 3, 2012, New York, NY - Greetings from Tromaville! Troma Entertainment is proud to announce that Mark Neveldine (who has learned everything he needs to know about alcohol consumption from Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman) will host the New York premiere of Father’s Day at Sunshine Cinema at midnight on Friday, February 10. He will join Father’s Day producer and creator of The Toxic Avenger, Kaufman, in hosting this historic evening, which will include a Q&A with Astron-6, who directed the movie. If conditions are right, Neveldine and Kaufman may recreate their famous “passing out drunk under the theatre seats” technique, which is instrumental to their filmmaking.

 

Mark Neveldine is best known as the writer & director of Crank (2006), Crank: High Voltage (2009) and Gamer (2009) which starred Lloyd Kaufman. His new film Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, filmed in distant Romania (in order to get away from Lloyd Kaufman) and starring Nicholas Cage, opens on February 17 nationwide.

 

Sunshine Cinema is located at 143 East Houston Street, New York. Tickets are now on sale online at https://tickets.landmarktheatres.com/Ticketing.aspx?TheatreID=256&ShowDate=2/10/2012 or from the box office. If you are a film critic who would like a screener of Father’s Day for review, please email nina@troma.com with your mailing address.

 

The gritty, gruesome, grindhouse Father’s Day follows that classic story we all grew up with: boy watches father murdered, boy grows into a vengeful one-eyed man, man teams up with a priest and a male prostitute to take down his father’s killer. Variety calls Father’s Day ”a gleefully tasteless quasi-grindhouse nasty that’s funnier than most of the many such parodic cheesefests that have been created since, well, Grindhouse!” Ain’t it Cool News adds “Father’s Day is over the top, tasteless, senseless, and completely hilarious.”  For more on Father’s Day, including additional theatres where Father’s Day will be presented, visit www.thefathersdaymovie.com

 

TROMADANCE KICKSTARTER FULFILLED! Entry Deadline Extended!

Pretty psyched to report that there could not be a better scenario – the Tromadance Kickstarter funding is already OVERSUBSCRIBED, and with 35 days to go!

To make Tromadance EVEN bigger and better, you can still donate here, anyone who donates $5,000 gets to go Bowling with our pops:

TROMADANCE on KICKSTARTER 

Meanwhile, for all you filmmakers out there the deadline to submit your film has been extended to March 15. What does this mean? FREE FILM FESTIVAL and MORE TIME to send in your work!

TROMADANCE FILMMAKERS SUBMIT HERE!

 

 

 

Toxie visits ancient Roman Ruins in Tunisia and frightens small children

The family vacation is going great! We’ve been on the road since we got to Tunisia, traveling from the island of Djerba in the south to the desert town of Douz, checked out Sidi Bouzid where the Arab Spring started, and visites many incredible ruins as impressive as the structures you would expect in Italy!

We are slowed down because at every stop toxie makes an appearance, and a scene. People gather around, stare, sometimes they love it, love toxie, love the entertainment, sometimes small children are frightened

On set in Tunisia

Toxie makes his first appearance on location on the island of Djerba. Mom behind the camera, and special direction from the sisters.

Toxic Family Vacation Begins

The Toxic Family Vacation is off to a good start….

4 hrs early at the airport….check!

Stay tuned, next post from a far and foreign overseas land!

TONIGHT: PAPA Kaufman on Last Call with Carson Daly