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Chapter 12: Sink or Swim!

Greetings from Tromaville! Here is Chapter 12 from my book, Everything I Know about Business and Marketing, I Learned from THE TOXIC AVENGER. In this chapter, I talk the many opportunites Troma affords to aspiring filmmakers and the benefits of giving people a chance to do something they have never done before… What do you think?

If you haven’t done so already, you can read the Foreword by Troma co-founder, Lloyd Kaufman, and the Introduction to the book as well as Chapter 12345 and 67 , 8910 and 11. You can also see me read a few chapters live, along with Lloyd and Toxie, at Florida Supercon as well as a few chapters I read on Facebook Live. Stay tuned for additional chapters to be published here. If you like what you read and can’t wait for more, please don’t be shy. You can buy the book now on Amazon (and also please don’t be shy about sharing, and reviewing the book when you do read it.) Both Toxie and I greatly appreciate your support! – Jeff Sass

 

Chapter 12: Sink or Swim!

The only source of knowledge is experience.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN

And thus, Tromaville has perhaps been the greatest film school ever. Literally, no application process or qualifications required. No tuition. Virtually every student is a scholarship case. Show up eager and ready, and you are likely to be put to work. Present even a modicum of initiative, and you are likely to be given a chance to operate at a level you have no reasonable qualifications for, and in 90 percent of the time, no chance of actually being any good at it or succeeding. More than likely you’ll quit, sobbing and broken, and never set foot on a movie set again, let alone say anything remotely kind about your personal experience in Tromaville.

But, if you’re in that 10 percent who make it, who actually rise to the occasion, set the bullshit aside, and get the job done, your stint in Tromaville will be the best experience you could ever have, and you will learn career-inspiring and career-changing lessons. It’s film school on steroids. It’s sink or swim.

Never underestimate the power of just doing it. There’s a reason the famed Nike slogan has endured all these years. “Just do it” is often the best way to grow and learn (and it sounds a hell of a lot better than “sink or swim”). But, in Tromaville, where madness and opportunity abound, anyone at any time may be given the opportunity to step up to walk the plank, dive into the unknown, and truly sink or swim. Never directed a second unit? Now’s your chance. Never designed and sewn a wardrobe from scratch? Now’s your chance. Never written lines of dialogue at 1:00 a.m. that actors would speak in front of the camera at 7:00 a.m.? Now’s your chance. Ever convince the monsignor of a local church to allow you to shoot scenes of violence, drug use, and debauchery inside their lovely chapel? I did (and I had no idea what I was doing…the first time).

Experienced talent costs money. Giving experience to newbies costs nothing. It’s hit or miss, sink or swim. Most will implode and fuck up, but many will do just fine, and some will be amazing, and somehow, everything will get done, and the film will get made.

That’s Troma. Better to be finished than to be perfect.

That’s a lesson, too. The best way to learn is simply to do. Take a chance by doing something you’ve never done before. Give a chance by delegating to someone who has never done it before. Of course, you need to supervise them and make sure the whole project doesn’t implode, but within reason, let them make the noncritical mistakes they can learn from.

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That’s Chapter 12  –  Another valuable lesson I learned making Troma movies: The best way to learn is to do!  Stay tuned for “Chapter 13: “Embrace your Vision and Culture” which focuses building a company culture… but not a cult!

 

Chapter 11: Show Up!

Greetings from Tromaville! Here is Chapter 11 from my book, Everything I Know about Business and Marketing, I Learned from THE TOXIC AVENGER. In this chapter, I talk about understanding the true “bear necessities” for your business, and how I learned what are ultimately the most important things needed to make a movie. What do you think?

If you haven’t done so already, you can read the Foreword by Troma co-founder, Lloyd Kaufman, and the Introduction to the book as well as Chapter 12345 and 67 , 89, and 10. You can also see me read a few chapters live, along with Lloyd and Toxie, at Florida Supercon as well as a few chapters I read on Facebook Live. Stay tuned for additional chapters to be published here. If you like what you read and can’t wait for more, please don’t be shy. You can buy the book now on Amazon (and also please don’t be shy about sharing, and reviewing the book when you do read it.) Both Toxie and I greatly appreciate your support! – Jeff Sass

 

Chapter 11: Show Up!

Question: What do you think is the most important thing when it comes to making a movie? A good script? A talented director? A great DP? (Director of Photography).

Answer: None of the above.

The bottom line is, every day of production you need three things to be able to make a movie, and without these three things, well, basically then you are fucked. Without fail you need the following:

1. A working camera
2. Film (or in this day and age, ample digital storage to record on)
3. Actors and actresses to perform in front of the camera

Without those three things, it doesn’t matter how good the script is or how talented the director is. It doesn’t matter if the DP has won awards, or if the lighting is perfect or if the location is amazing. No camera, no movie. No film, no movie. No performers, no movie. Those are the basics. You must show up every single day with those three things as the bare minimum. But they are more than the bare minimum. They are the bare essentials. Or, as they’d say in Jungle Book, “the bear necessities.”

When I worked on my first Troma movie, the epic masterpiece, Troma’s War, I learned these lessons. I was the associate producer, and one of my first assignments was to “protect the cameras” and make sure all the principal actors and actresses showed up on time. Protect the cameras? WTF? It turned out, once before, while filming an earlier cinematic epic, a rogue group of angry Teamsters stole the Troma camera truck overnight, literally bringing that production to a costly halt.

You see, as a (very) low-budget operation, Troma makes nonunion, independent films and back in the late ’80s, especially when shooting in New York, the powerful Teamsters Union didn’t like that. Even though we always played by the rules and had permits and permissions, often with the kind support of the New York City Mayor’s or New York State Governor’s Film Commissions, the Teamsters would go out of their way to attempt to make our lives miserable and disrupt our production.

Perhaps it was because it was before the dawn of the World Wide Web and free Internet porn, and those lonely Teamster souls had nothing better to do with their time than leave their homes and families on a weekend to come harass the Troma Team. Perhaps that was it, and now with the Web readily available via the mobile device in their sweaty palms, perhaps now they don’t bother the Indy filmmakers as much. Perhaps.

But back then they were nasty, and I was warned. Protect the camera truck. That was my responsibility. The camera truck was a rented U-Haul truck that was custom decked out by our team to house all the rented camera and lighting equipment for the shoot. We may have been low budget, but our largest expense, and thus the most-prized asset, was all the professional (and valuable) 35-mm camera and lighting equipment we rented from the same well-known NYC rental houses that served the “Hollywood” crews when they were in town. Fully loaded with all our essential gear, the camera truck was the first vehicle to arrive on the set every day, and the last vehicle to leave each night after it was carefully packed, every lens, film can, and camera body in its designated, custom-fit place. Where to park the camera truck each night was a critical decision, because, once before, those tricky Teamsters had stolen our truck, rented cameras and all, right out of a locked and guarded NYC parking lot.

I had to protect the camera truck. It was not going to get stolen or disabled on my watch. Fortunately, we filmed most of Troma’s War in Peekskill, NY and at the National Guard training facility, Camp Smith. At the time, I was living in Rockland County, about a twenty-five-minute ride away, through the winding roads of Bear Mountain State Park. So, I would have the camera truck park behind my house every night, hidden from view from the main road. With the fear of Teamsters deeply ingrained in my younger, impressionable mind, I remember the first few nights, waking up at the simplest sound to look out the window and make sure the truck and its precious contents were still there, behind my humble abode.

The basics. Protect the camera (and the film, which was also stored in the truck). Make sure it showed up on set, first thing, every single day. And don’t forget the actors and actresses.

There’s a reason the transportation captain is one of the most important people on a movie crew, and more importantly a reason that captain makes certain that a car and driver was waiting outside the apartment or home of every principal actor before they even were awake, ready to herd those sleepy thespians to the day’s location long before they were actually needed. Despite our low-budget operation, even our talent got picked up by a car and driver every day (granted, on a Troma set it was usually a wide-eyed intern in their own beat-up vehicle, but it was a car and driver nonetheless). We did this not because we wanted to treat them special or like a “star” (although many of them took it that way), but rather because of the basics—no actors, no movie.

Understanding the necessity of the basics was a good lesson. In business, it is very easy to get caught up in the detritus, in the details of the moment, and lose sight of the simple things that are actually far more important.

Exercise: What are your basics, your “bear” necessities? What are the three things you should be doing every day to ensure that you are keeping your business or marketing on track? What are your equivalents of the camera, film, and actors?

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That’s Chapter 11  –  Another valuable lesson I learned making Troma movies: No matter what your business is, you need to recognize your “bear nececessites” to keep your business moving forward, and focus on them every day! Stay tuned for “Chapter 12: “Sink or Swim!” which focuses on learning by doing, even if – no, especially if – you’ve never done it before!

 

Chapter 10: Find Something to Believe In

Greetings from Tromaville! Here is Chapter 10 from my book, Everything I Know about Business and Marketing, I Learned from THE TOXIC AVENGER. In this chapter, I reveal my true feelings about Troma films, and one of the keys to success in any career. What do you think?

If you haven’t done so already, you can read the Foreword by Troma co-founder, Lloyd Kaufman, and the Introduction to the book as well as Chapter 12345 and 67 , 8 and 9. You can also see me read a few chapters live, along with Lloyd and Toxie, at Florida Supercon as well as a few chapters I read on Facebook Live. Stay tuned for additional chapters to be published here. If you like what you read and can’t wait for more, please don’t be shy. You can buy the book now on Amazon (and also please don’t be shy about sharing, and reviewing the book when you do read it.) Both Toxie and I greatly appreciate your support! – Jeff Sass

 

Chapter 10: Find Something to Believe In

The common thread you will hear people say is that you should “pursue your passion” and find a job you are passionate about. The truth is, in my humble opinion, often the opposite. Most people do not find a job or career that exactly matches their deep inner passion. But that doesn’t mean that being passionate about what you do is not important. It is. But you may need to work a bit to find that passion.

If I am honest, despite the fact I worked for Troma for more than seven years and was intimately involved in the writing, producing, marketing, and sales of many of their signature films, I was never actually a hardcore fan of Troma movies. As a moviegoer, I tolerated them. As a creative, I got caught up in the muse of the moment and immersed myself in every production wholeheartedly. I was able to do this for two reasons.

One: I loved the act of making movies. The creative collaboration was infectious. The concentrated energy and intense focus on one common task was exhilarating. Making a movie, especially an independent film, where the lines of responsibility are perhaps more blurred than in a more formal production, is like going to summer camp (and is for around the same amount of time). For roughly eight weeks, you are practically living with a bunch of strangers with a common interest. Together you are in your own little world for this intense, but short, time period, more or less cut off from or at least not focused on, the rest of the world.

I loved summer camp. I loved making movies too.

The second reason I was a great citizen of Tromaville was that I came to truly appreciate our fans. While maybe these films were not necessarily my cup of tea, I could recognize that there were a lot of loyal tea drinkers out there who really, really loved and enjoyed what we were brewing. Troma fans are loyal and dedicated. They are free spirits, free thinkers (and, if they transitioned from fan to employee, mostly free workers). Regardless, their love and appreciation for our movies was, and is, real. The joy and satisfaction I saw in our fans made me proud to be in a position to help bring our films to them. The work we were doing, as campy and sometimes childish as it was, was anticipated and more importantly, appreciated by our fans.

So, I worked for our fans. I made silly movies I didn’t necessarily want to watch myself because I knew there were people out there who did want to watch. I became passionate about our films because I knew our fans were. My passion was real, and it fueled all the hard work I did to keep the Troma dream alive. I could get inside the heads of our fans, and from their perspective, I could see, enjoy, and contribute to the awesomeness that was, and is, Troma.

There’s a great lesson in this for anyone in business. There are going to be times in your career where you are doing something that is not so great, or that you are not particularly fond of. You still need to do it well, and to do it well you need to embrace it. You need to find something about it that you can love. Find some element of the work that you can be honestly and deeply passionate about. There is always something.

I found the fans. I didn’t have to be passionate about the movies themselves as I was passionate about delivering to the fans exactly what they wanted. I wanted to make great Troma movies—the best we could—to satisfy those fans, and I came to love doing so.

It’s like any good relationship. Eventually, you come to love the whole package, even if, in the beginning, it was just certain bits of him or her that you were attracted to.

Find something to believe in. It is the only way to succeed.

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That’s Chapter 10  –  Another one of my favorite lessons in the book: no matter what your job is, there is always something you can find to become genuinely passionate about – and that will make all the difference! Stay tuned for “Chapter 11: “Show Up!” which focuses on finding the true things that matter to move your business forward. What are the bare necessities to make your business succeed?

 

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Author Jeff Sass on The Chris Voss Show (video)

In yet another podcast appearance and another video podcast, it was a pleasure to talk Toxie with Chris Voss of The Chris Voss Show. Turns out Chris is a fan of The Toxic Avenger so our talk was very Tromatic. Enjoy!


 

 

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Jeffrey Sass on The Small Business Puzzle Podcast

A few months ago I had the pleasure of recording an episode of The Small Business Puzzle Podcast with hosts Michael and Teresa Blaes. The episode was just released this week, so please listen here or at the link below.

As their show focuses on supporting the interests and challenges of small businesses, we talk about my book, as well as the domain name industry and the opportunities with new domain extensions such as .CLUB. We also talk a bit about mobile marketing, and we discuss a bit about the process of writing a book. I also share a story from my days working with William Shatner on his Tekwar computer game. It was a good conversation and I hope you’ll enjoy listening to it.

CLICK TO LISTEN TO THE SMALL BUSINESS PUZZLE PODCAST

 

 

 

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Looking for a Podcast Guest? Book Me and Others Thanks to PodcastGuests.com

I’ve been an avid fan of podcasting since the very early days of the format (2005). In fact, back in October of 2005, I made my first “guest” appearance on a podcast when I appeared as the subject of the “interview with a listener” on Episode 100 of the Podcast 411 show, hosted by Rob Walch. Interestingly enough, in that 2005 interview I talked about my experiences at Troma, and mention a bunch of things that I have now written about in Everything I Know about Business and Marketing, I Learned from THE TOXIC AVENGER. I also talk with Rob about many of the early podcasts I was listening to at the time, a number of which are still around today. Since then I’ve become friends with many of the podcasters I listened to, such as the talented author Scott Sigler, and I’ve had the chance to produce and host podcasts myself. I co-hosted the Cast of Dads podcast with some fellow “dad bloggers.” When I worked with Gapingvoid I launched and produced the Gape Into The Void podcast, with guests including Tim Ferris, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Seth Godin. I also turned one of my original screenplays, WUNDERKIND! into a podcast.

As such a fan of podcasting, it should be no surprise that appearing on podcasts has been an important part of my marketing efforts for my book. With that in mind, I was very happy when friend and domain industry blogger Andrew Allemann launched his service, PodcastGuests.com. Whether you are a podcaster looking for guests, or an author or expert looking for opportunities to be a guest on a podcast, this is a great service. The main component of PodcastGuests.com is a newsletter that features a guest expert, as well as a selection of podcasts seeking guests. If you think you’re a good candidate for one of the featured shows, you fill out a simple form that goes right to the podcaster. Signing up for the newsletter is free. If you want to be the featured expert guest in the newsletter, there is a fee, but you are also guaranteed to get a certain number of podcast appearances. A great deal, if you ask me.

There is also an online directory of expert guests at www.PodcastGuests.com with two levels of service. The directory is a great resource for podcast hosts looking for guests. Here’s a link to my profile in the PodcastGuests.com directory.

So, if you’re a podcaster looking for a great resource to find qualified guests, or if you are an author, or expert looking to gain exposure by appearing as a guest on a relevant podcast, PodcastGuests.com is a service you should definitely have on your radar.

And, of course, if you are a podcaster looking for a great guest to talk about movies, marketing, pop-culture, entrepreneurship, branding, and a fun new book, feel free to contact me! Here are just a few of my recent podcast appearances talking about Everything I Know about Business and Marketing, I Learned from THE TOXIC AVENGER.

Marketing Smarts by Marketing Profs

DomainNameWire Podcast

Six Pixels of Separation w/Mitch Joel

See, Here’s the Thing Podcast

Enjoy!

 

 

 

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Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale: Kindle Version On Sale Now for $0.99!

‘Tis the season… of the sale, and my book, Everything I Know about Business and Marketing, I Learned from THE TOXIC AVENGER is no exception! Now through November 30th, you can get the Kindle Version of the book for only $0.99! Yep, that’s less than one buck… less than the cost of a few sips of that FrappaZappaTiniLatteLeche you’re drinking… and far more fulfilling! The Kindle version normally sells for $4.99 so you’re getting a whopping 80% off a book that is guaranteed to make you smile and get inspired by business and marketing tips you can actually use! Watch the short video below for some highlights of the 5-star reviews on Amazon! And don’t be shy… spend a buck and buy the book! Thanks!!!

 

 

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My Mentor was a Monster! (Video)

Here’s a short promotional video for the book:

In business, it is important to have a mentor… Watch the video (and please share!)