Click HERE for installment #1 of Trent's Terror Firmer experience!

Click HERE for installment #2 of Trent's Terror Firmer experience!

The film is loaded with action (as you may have inferred from these articles), but it's always exciting (in a dangerous kind of way) whenever the explosives guys go to work. In Lloyd's book, All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned From the Toxic Avenger, he goes into great detail about how you can never trust a pyrotechnic "expert." Terror Firmer seems to be no exception. A scene calls for a fake head to get blown up as if it was shot with a pistol. After the explosives guys rig the head, they make everybody leave the room. A few minutes later, there's a (literally) ground shaking BOOM. When we go back into the room, the dummy head looks as if it was shot with a Howitzer. Wet globs of fake flesh have been blown in a fifty foot circle. The head is completely destroyed (much to the chagrin of our special FX girl, Ruth).

Another great location is the National Guard Armory deep in the heart of beautiful downtown Harlem. It's at this location that we throw a dummy off of the top of a ten-story building onto the unsuspecting Lloyd. Except that the dummy gets snagged on a power line halfway down.

It may sound like the Terror Firmer set was full of technical SNAFUs and setbacks, but there were no more than your average $50 million big-budget extravaganza. Troma just deals with these things in stride rather than buying their way out of it. Case in point: We've got to film a buck-naked guy (the talented and daring Yaniv Sharon) running wild through the middle of Times Square during peak tourist traffic hours. What does Troma do? Sets up the camera and has the naked Yaniv run through an unsuspecting crowd! Sure, the cops immediately appear and kick us off the street. Sure, we don't get a second take. But I challenge Tony Scott to pull off the same thing without spending a million dollars to block off Times Square and fill it with paid "tourists." It's moments like these that make me proud to be a part of the Troma Team. These guys love movies, plain and simple. They've risked (and weathered) scorn for as long as I've been alive. They risk arrest in order to get the shot.

It was an absolute dream come true to get to work with Lloyd Kaufman. Growing up, I was never a big sports fan. I loved movies but it was the film itself, not the actors, that I adored. My heroes - the few of them I've had - are the renegades. The people who forged their own way in the world despite forces aligning against them: Hunter S. Thompson. Snake Plissken. Lloyd Kaufman. Not to discredit the hordes of excellent Tromites that have written, directed, promoted, and drawn the posters for Troma releases, but Lloyd is obviously the mastermind behind what the average person thinks of when they hear the word "Troma." Call him a cheapskate. Say that he lacks vision. Say the "the horror movie is dead." Create a ratings board that effectively kills films with dubious or challenging content. Lloyd Kaufman views these factors not as detriments to his work, but as direct challenges. He says in his own book that sometimes this principle has prevented him from attaining untold riches and fame. None of that matters to him as much as the ability to not only retain his vision, but to make it real.

While Lloyd was hesitant in the auditioning process, (he makes you audition a million times and gives you a speech about how much working on a Troma set sucks before hiring you) he really gives you carte blanche once you're officially on the project. Lloyd has the authority and opportunity to be a tyrant if he wants to, but is actually one of the most open-minded (you could probably guess that by watching his films) individuals I've ever worked for. He was extremely open to suggestions from everyone from the P.As to the actors to the D.P. In the end - and in keeping with the daoist philosophy he lives by - this open-ness allowed more creative flow and undoubtedly made the film even better than the written version.

I often feel like a sycophantic butt-kiss when I praise Troma and Lloyd so openly, but these guys deserve it. They are true independents in a world where the word "independent" has been co-opted by every major studio-owned film "division" (to paraphrase my character Jerry's stirring monologue in Terror Firmer). If heaping praise where it deserves to be heaped makes me a butt-kiss, then so be it!

Like I said in the beginning of this series, I never intended to be an actor. But to play Jerry was, in essence, the greatest pinnacle if thespianism I could ever achieve. If I went on to make a billion dollars and got a star on the walk of fame and won an Academy Award, these accomplishments would all pale in comparison to being able to work on a Troma film. I'm probably the only actor involved with the project who feels melancholy when he sees footage from the film. It was the actual making of the film that exhilarated me. Most people (like, say, my Mom) are excited about the release of Terror Firmer. While I'm certainly excited about it too, I miss getting up at 5:00am and being involved in the creation of something I can watch on DVD twenty years from now. Making Terror Firmer was, hands down, the best month I've ever lived.

Special thanks to everyone who helped to make Terror Firmer a reality and extra special thanks to Lloyd Kaufman, Will Keenan, Yaniv Sharon, Joe Lynch, the wonderful Debbie Rochon, Patrick Cassidy, and Troma's webmaster, Josh Gruber.

I'll see you at the movies.

-Trent Haaga