Unsurprisingly, Gunn began developing this style on his first screenplay, for the 1996 Kaufman directed Tromeo and Juliet. This mix of sweetness and raunch is more commonly associated with directors like Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith, but Gunn’s humor has an edge to it, one that goes past dirty jokes to outrageous violence and taboo subject matter. Tromeo and Juliet (1996) – source: Troma Entertainment But when the passengers begin to initiate sex, the men always stop them – in one case, because they’ve arrived at the woman’s destination in another, because a particularly flirtatious woman was “disrespecting marriage.” James Gunn surely gets humor from the filthy set-up, but the jokes build to a humane, perhaps even sweet, pay-off. From his early screenplay for the “day in the life” superhero spoof The Specials, to his more recent PG Porn shorts, an online comedy series featuring pornography scenes that never culminate in sex, Gunn celebrates the crude and irreverent.įor instance, a PG Porn episode called “Helpful Bus” features Craig Robinson as Havana Bob and Sean Gunn, James’s brother and frequent collaborator, as Jason, van drivers who lecherously offer rides to scantily-clad women (played by real-life pornographic actresses, including Bree Olsen and Marie Luv). No Budget and No TasteĪcross his entire oeuvre, one thing is obvious: James Gunn likes to offend. Whether writing the screenplay for a big-screen Scooby-Doo adaptation or directing his violent indie Super, Gunn has kept not only the subversive streak one expects from a Troma alum, but also has a surprising ability to find empathy in the grotesque, something he did even while working for his provocative former employer.
Few moments better encapsulate Gunn’s style than that momentary fusion of Disney and Troma. The answer is Guardians director/co-writer James Gunn, who began his career working under Kaufman. How did Kaufman, the president and co-founder of Troma Entertainment, a studio devoted to creating infamously offensive cheapies such as The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke ‘Em High, wind up playing an inmate in Guardians of the Galaxy, the third-highest grossing film of that year? In the summer of 2014, the unthinkable happened: Lloyd Kaufman appeared onscreen in a multi-million dollar Disney blockbuster.
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