David Vienna's Blog, page 150

The problem with having talented friends and acquaintances is...

The problem with having talented friends and acquaintances is you want to plug everyone’s movie or book or startup or fundraiser. But if I did that my Tumblr would literally just be a slew of posts about other projects. (Hey, @dougmoe, I’m still reading your book @manvchild and will post about it soon… though you’re a bestseller now, so I don’t know how much more help I could be.) Plus, I have my own new book out and, well, I really want you to buy it. Like, really.

Anyway, this post is not about my book. It’s about Jeffrey Sass’ book, which you should also buy… maybe after you buy mine. First, some backstory.

Let me set the way-back machine for, oh, let’s say the late-80s. I was an awkward kid and not into things like “going outdoors” or “maintaining friendships.” So I spent literally ever day watching movies—either rented from the local video store or whatever was on late-night TV. I was into cult films and low budget stuff, so one of my favorite movie studios was Troma. For the unfamiliar, Troma made goofy gory flicks like Class of Nuke ‘Em High, The Toxic Avenger, and Troma’s War, plus later classics like Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. and Toxic Avenger Parts II and III.

Fans of cult cinema know Troma. They know the company is a wild mix of insane projects, young talent, and more gross-out gags than every Rob Zombie and Eli Roth film put together. Troma took what Herschel Gordon Lewis started and paved the way for every schlock cinema auteur to come. Think Roger Corman, but with a more prominent sense of humor.

Cut to… 2014… maybe 2015-ish? I was already and handful of years into my career as a social media marketer. I met Jeffrey Sass at a dad blogger conference. I’m not sure how it came up, but he revealed that he used to work at Troma. Though the studio had a reputation for burning out employees fairly quickly, Jeffrey stayed with the company for nearly a decade doing everything from marketing to screenwriting to distribution deals to convincing a posh neighborhood to let Troma blow up a house. (More on that in a sec.) Listen, I’m not one to get selfies with celebrities, but I got one with Jeffrey.

Jeffrey took all of his absolutely batshit crazy experiences at Troma and turned them into a marketing how-to book with the best title ever: Everything I Know about Business and Marketing I Learned from the Toxic Avenger.

What’s great about the book is it actually serves a duel purpose. One part memoir, one part marketing guide—Everything I Know offers short digestible stories of the madness Jeffrey experienced while at Troma and pulls simple marketing lesson from the somewhat organized chaos.

One great example is how Jeffrey convinced an upscale neighborhood to let a production team use explosives to literally blow up a goddamn house on one of their streets for a film. Jeffrey presents this amazing anecdote as a lesson for businesses in using often untapped resources. For him, those resources were the local film commission, the fire department, and other organizations. They were the leverage he used to get the locals to sign off on the stunt.

Plus, the book includes a forward by Troma honcho Lloyd Kaufman. For cult film fans like me, he was the first studio exec I ever knew by name and face. (I mean, I know Darryl Zanuck’s name, but I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.) And look, if you’re not into cult films or whatever there’s another reason to learn everything you can from the Troma team. LOTS of successful people got their start there, including Marisa Tomei, Samuel L. Jackson, and Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. Rad, I know.

Everything I Know about Business and Marketing I Learned from the Toxic Avenger is available at Amazon. Get it. Seriously.

Just for the record...

daughterofthebeard:

One of my Facebook friend’s 9 month old baby died (sorry, I don’t know how but it appears to have been an illness of some kind).

If anything like that ever happened to me and you said, “it’s all part of God’s plan” or “God makes no mistakes” I would punch you straight in the fucking face.

Seconded.

No, I’m Not Disagreeing With You

Wyatt disagrees with everything we say. Everything. For no reason. No gain. It’s like he’s hard-wired to just be contrarian. But it’s always close enough to what we’re saying to call it a negotiation.

The best example is this: We tell him he needs to shower and he says, “I don’t want a shower, I want a bath.”

See? He’s agreeing to bathe, just not the way we said.

Sometimes we acquiesce. “Okay, we can do a bath.”

Other times, we’re like, “Just do what we ask for once in your life, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!”

He won’t give up either. He just keeps debating us until we usually cave (on the small stuff, though - we hold our ground on the big stuff). It’s exhausting.

One thing’s for sure, Wyatt’s going to be a fucking stellar politician.

One block from our house, we joined a bunch of our neighbors on...

One block from our house, we joined a bunch of our neighbors on the hill for a view of the pier and the fireworks without having to suffer the crowds. ‘MURICA!

They had a contest to see who could stand barefoot on the hot...

They had a contest to see who could stand barefoot on the hot deck the longest. I think it’s safe to say no one won.

Boone contemplates Wyatt’s culinary artistry.

Boone contemplates Wyatt’s culinary artistry.

Let the birthday celebration COMMENCE!

Let the birthday celebration COMMENCE!

Boone’s first mohawk! (And I told him no faux-hawk...

Boone’s first mohawk! (And I told him no faux-hawk bullshit. If he wanted to do it, he needed to commit.)

This was pretty much our entire weekend.

This was pretty much our entire weekend.

Look at Wyatt’s goddamn six-pack abs!

Look at Wyatt’s goddamn six-pack abs!