EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN’T posted any new pix to the site since I began the novel writing marathon/sprint, I’ve kept taking them. Starting today, a non-chronological sampling.

First off, Monday night’s visit to Scarecrow Video by self-proclaimed B-movie schlockmeister and Troma Films cofounder Lloyd Kaufman, plugging his new book and forthcoming DVD Make Your Own Damn Movie.

Kaufman’s minimal-budget horror comedies aren’t always funny and are rarely horrific. But, unlike so many other exploitation parodists, Kaufman has always kept his films brisk and entertaining. He’s one of the last old-time showbiz promoters. His public speaking style is exactly like his filmmaking style–the Troma films, the Troma promos, the Troma branding, and Kaufman himself are of one unified whole. He and partner Michael Herz have stayed in business and independent for three decades by making a consistent product that never goes out of style; by incessantly promoting even their oldest titles; and by maintaining a roster of trademarked costumed characters, which generate merchandising fees and which don’t depend on costly star actors.

In the lecture’s most entertaining segment, Kaufman recounted a filmmaking workshop he’d run at the Rhode Island Film Festival. He and his students had to film part of a decidedly non-Tromaesque student-written script, a talky love scene between an Israeli boy and a Palestinian girl. Kaufman showed two versions of the scene. The first version was acted as written. The second was done “the Troma way,” with histrionic overacting, harsh camera angles, and an out-of-nowhere gore stunt stuck in.

It was a cute joke, but it also made a point: “The Troma way” isn’t the only way to make an indie film. But then again, neither is the Tarantino way, or the talky-love-scene way.