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 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, 7 , 8, 9, 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.