Reinventing The Toxic Avenger with Macon Blair

Zack Beins

Good morning St. Roma's Village by way of Tromaville, New Jersey and welcome to another episode of the Talkin' Troma podcast with your host me, Zack Beins. The show where we fall in a vat of toxic waste and 40 years later, A studlier version of us does it again. That's right, over 40 years ago, Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz made a film about a 98-pound weakling who fell into a barrel of toxic waste. Melvin Ferd then became international sensation, The Toxic Avenger. Toxie got three sequels, The Toxic Crusaders, Children's Cartoon Show,

Zack Beins

countless toys, comic books, video games, TV appearances. He became Troma's Mickey Mouse. Even if you don't know who Troma or Toxie is, you have at some point seen the iconic imagery of the poster with Toxie and his mop. Your grandma maybe even seen Toxie somewhere and didn't even realize it. The toxic Avenger made its way to a hungry video market before the over saturation of the big budget blockbusters, where such young whippersnappers like Peter Dinklage, Elijah Wood, Macon Blair, and even yours truly could pick it up, be shocked, and entertain and say, "Hey, I can make a movie too." Not too far after, horror remakes were becoming more and more commonplace

Zack Beins

with new versions of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, The Nightmare on Elm Street, and even Troma stepped in the ring with the Darren Limbosman-directed remake of Mother's Day. But this was Toxie, and all the stars needed to align for this to happen. It went through development hell. Several studios, writers, directors were attached. At one point, John Travolta and Arnold Schwarzenegger were slated to act in it, although who knows if they just got attached to keep Toxie in the trades. Enter actor, writer, director, Macon Blair. Filming in Bulgaria, right off the hills of the pandemic, with a cast that was just as shocking as the rumors. Dinklage, Wood? Kevin

Zack Beins

movie we would get. Would it be family friendly? Will it have the same spirit as the original? Well, we would have to wait a little bit longer, because Toxie would need to find a distributor. Legendary produced the film, but they are not in the business of distribution. It took a while. In the days, years, months, everybody was getting impatient, and they were getting news. People instantly assumed something was wrong with the movie. There was even unsubstantiated reports that the movie was unreleasable. It played fantastic-fest to glowing reviews.

Zack Beins

And then Crickets again. I must confess, I saw an early cut of the film and was not entirely sure why it wasn't out yet either. Intercineverse. They had tremendous success with the release of Terrifier 3 and figured they could capture lightning again by putting out The Toxic Avenger. Were they successful? That's up to you, the listener.

Zack Beins

release of this episode, it is opening day of the Toxic Avenger. Are you showing the fuck up? I know I have my tickets, and I've invited all my friends to come along with me. You could be my friend too, at your local theater. One of my buddies, who's not too familiar with Toxie, saw the preview and asked me, "This is that thing you're always talking about, right? It's a pretty big deal, isn't it?" It really is. At the end of the day, we get a new Toxic Avenger movie. It'll bring more eyes on the film I grew up with and love, and it changed my life. It will help cement Troma's legacy and preserve them from being a footnote in the annals of film history. So today, what we bring to you is an in-depth interview with Macon Blair,

Zack Beins

brought to you by producer extraordinaire Chris Lanphier. I wish I could have sat in on it, but as the Hollywood interview machine is, it's ready, set, go, so we dropped everything to get this once in a lifetime opportunity. Warning, there are spoilers, so do with that as you please. But enough of my rambling. Crack open an ice cold can of Toxic Waste, and on behalf of myself, Chris Lamphere, and the rest of the Talkin' Troma crew, let me present to you our interview with Macon Blair. Be sure to show the fuck up see Toxie in the theater. And remember to stay Tromatized.

Chris Lanphear

Macon Blair is a multi-hyphenate entertainer. You have seen him as an actor in films like Blue Ruin, one of my personal favorites, Green Room, and a little small micro-budget film called Oppenheimer. His 2017 directorial debut, I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and he wrote and directed the film we are here to talk about today, 2025's The Toxic Avenger, which is in theaters now. Macon Blair, welcome to Talkin' Troma. How are you?

Chris Lanphear

I'm very well.

Macon Blair

Thanks for having me here. Yeah. first movie was kind of a micro budget thing.

Chris Lanphear

I don't feel at home in this world anymore. It had a budget of $1.5 million. The Toxic Avengers budget, over $20 million. Did you feel an additional pressure to deliver based on the larger scale of this production?

Macon Blair

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I don't think I would say one and a half million is a micro budget for me. Even that felt fucking enormous as far as what I had been exposed to up until that point. So to go from that to something like Toxie, yeah, was just extraordinarily bigger as far as anything I'd ever worked with before.

Macon Blair

And there was certainly pressure there. But the studio that I was working with, Legendary, they had pursued the Toxic Avenger rights. They worked to form this partnership with Troma to do this new version. They were very supportive of it from the beginning. They had pursued it. It was their movie that I came on to.

Macon Blair

And so I didn't feel pressure from that direction. I always felt very supported from that direction. And I felt like they will budget it however they feel is appropriate for what they wanna do and we'll work within that. The pressure that I did feel and continue to feel was wanting to honor what, however you wanna say it, a franchise, a character, a brand, whatever,

Macon Blair

the whole Troma thing, and specifically, Toxic Avenger is beloved by so many people for so long. And I just felt like I didn't want to do something that felt like it would step outside of that too much and just have the same title, but not bear any spiritual resemblance to the original thing. I felt like that wouldn't do a service

Macon Blair

to the fans of the original and so that's really where I put the pressure on myself from that direction, much more so than the budget.

Chris Lanphear

>> The spiritual succession is interesting because you have, the bones of the story are certainly there in your Toxie. But Winston Goose, played by Peter Dinklage, is a very distinct character from Melvin Furd in the original film. Melvin Ferd is of course a janitor at a health spa, and Winston is a janitor for a large health pharmaceutical company. Can you talk about the decision to change these aspects of the plot?

Chris Lanphear

Instead of having him be a nerd with a girlfriend, he's a father with a young son.

Macon Blair

>> Yeah. I had the gut feeling that if somebody is a fan of the toxic Avenger, right? And they're telling somebody that hasn't seen it to check it out. I kind of had this gut feeling that the things that they're talking about would have to do with, you know, the sense of humor and the vibe of the world and the way the jokes play.

Macon Blair

I don't think that they're saying, like, "This is the storyline and this is why you're gonna like it. It's because he's a nerd at a health club." That's part of it, but I don't think that's the thing necessarily that people fall in love with. And so I felt like what we needed to do was carry over those things, the vibe, the sense of humor, the sort of the entertainment value,

Macon Blair

but have the actual details of the character's story be its own thing so it didn't feel redundant. Like I wanted it to feel like the original without being a literal retelling of like, okay, he's trying to get a date at the health club. I felt like it kind of, to justify itself, it needed to do its own thing while staying true to the roots of the original.

Macon Blair

And so if we're gonna do that, then it stood to reason as far as I was concerned that it should just be a different character. He should have a different name because there's kind of an inherent question in all of this, like the original Toxic Avenger is so singular that it's sort of like, why redo it at all? And so it's, and to me, the answer was like,

Macon Blair

well, to sort of take the vibe of the original and do something fresh with it. But if we're just gonna do literally the exact same thing, he's a nerd in a health club, he's trying to get a date, you know, the bullies at the health club trick him into the toxic waste. If it's a beat by beat retelling, then it really puts a spotlight on the question

Macon Blair

of why do it at all. And so that was sort of the reasoning made sense to me.

Chris Lanphear

>> I agree. I've always felt that with reimaginings of beloved media properties that you have to introduce something new. You have to find a way to make that story yours because the story that you're reinterpreting, it's already been told. That version of that story already exists. >> Exactly. >> With Toxie, it's been retold a few different ways with the cartoon series and the sequels retconning the first movie and additional other things. If people want that story,

Chris Lanphear

they've already got that. But this movie gives people an opportunity to experience a very similar story that has the same bones, the same DNA of the original while still being its own thing, which I appreciate and I think a lot of people will appreciate once they see the movie.

Macon Blair

>> That's a great way to say it. I think I use Batman analogy a lot where there's all these different Batman. You've got an Adam West Batman that couldn't be any more different from the Christian Bale Batman, but they're all Batman, and they all exist side by side. And one doesn't preclude the other one from existing. It's just sort of in addition to whatever tradition was started. So I kind of looked at it as this would just be a continuation of however you want to say it, the lore or the mythology. But as you say, it's in addition to all of those originals, the comics, the cartoons,

Macon Blair

the first four movies, not in place of. >> Yeah, I know that before the trailers

Chris Lanphear

were released and people started seeing dinklage in the suit and the look and feel of the new Toxie, there was a lot of discourse online with people saying, "Oh, it's too different from the original," or, "Oh, it's not exactly what I thought it would be." It's like, well, what you thought it would be, you've had for 40 years. This is an opportunity to expand it and adapt it and give it a fresh coat of paint and see where it goes.

Chris Lanphear

Personally, having watched the movie several times now, I think it's a tremendous success because all the bones are there, all the heart is there, all of the silliness, the slapstick, the stuff that Troma fans really love is there.

Macon Blair

>> I'm glad you said that. To be honest, I've faded away from online existence lately, so I actually wasn't terribly aware of any discourse. But yeah, it's true, it's he looks different. We went through a process of different looks for him, and some of them were very, very close to the original design.

Macon Blair

And to me, it felt like a little too close. And some went way fucking far afield where he was very melty and drippy. And some he looked like, almost like a vampire. We had designs where he had like white skin and stuff and none of them really felt right. And the way we landed on this one was the idea of really wanting to be able to see the physical

Macon Blair

facial features of whoever the actor was that's playing, you know, the human before he mutates, seeing that in the makeup prosthetics. So it feels consistent. And the other thing you just, a moment ago, before I forget, you said something that I clocked to, that I really appreciated, which was, you mentioned the word silly and you mentioned

Macon Blair

the word heart. And well before I even had the job to work on this, when I was just having these preliminary conversations with Legendary, they had just hooked up with Troma and gotten the rights to do a new version and they were soliciting pitches. So it wasn't even at a point where they were talking about what's the story, it was more just like,

Macon Blair

what's the vibe gonna be? And that was, I didn't have a story, but I was like, the vibe should be, like, it can't be a grim, dark, self-serious version. It really should be silly and it should be heartfelt in some way 'cause those are the things always reacted to in the original movies. I felt like if we got too far away from that,

Macon Blair

that it would be a bad move.

Chris Lanphear

>> Agree. I think people love the violence, and the over-the-top gore, and the nudity, and all those things. But I think what people really stick around for is the heart. Do you remember the first time that you saw the original Toxic Avenger? >> Absolutely. That was how this whole thing came to be.

Macon Blair

I was in sixth grade and this was in the mid to late '80s. And in those days, in the olden times, you would find movies by, well, there was two ways. One was you look at the cover of the videotapes 'cause they would put them face out in the video store and you just, whatever had the coolest cover. And also it was older brothers and sisters would come around and tell you what the cool album

Macon Blair

is to listen to or what the cool movie is to see. And my buddy, his older brother came around with this VHS tape that had this weird mutant guy on the cover with the American flag and the tutu and the mop, and it just looked insane. And he was like, "You have to watch this." And we did. We popped it in the VCR and watched it.

Macon Blair

And we're kind of flabbergasted on one level by how absurd and over the top and a very entertaining way it was. We were laughing hysterically the whole way through. But the other thing that was really significant was it was kind of one of the first times, at least that I can remember, that I had seen a movie that really felt homemade.

Macon Blair

I was really fascinated and interested with movies from a young age, but it was studio movies. It was Star Wars and big, big movies that seemed very magical and far away. and how they made them was very mysterious. This looked like a bunch of people with a mask running around in their hometown, like doing it on their own.

Macon Blair

And we watched this coincidentally at a time when we had gotten our hands on a video camera, like a VHS half-inch video camera. And we were running around trying to make our own little movies. They were terrible, but it was just sort of like, oh, we'll figure out how to do makeup and squibs and shoot little action scenes and stuff like that.

Macon Blair

And so watching Toxie, the sense of humor, and which we were the right age for it, it has this juvenile kind of sense of humor that really appealed to us right at that right time. But also just the sort of do-it-yourself quality to it was kind of inspirational. And we took both of those things as we were starting to figure out how to make our own movies

Macon Blair

and it became influential in that way. The style of the jokes and the deliberate tastelessness of it as a way to be funny, became a big part of the things that we were trying to make at that time.

Chris Lanphear

>> It's the movie that's not afraid to show it seems, and the fact that it gives it that homemade quality and that DIY punk rock ethos. >> Troma is often credited with bringing the punk rock aesthetic to filmmaking, and that's very clear in that film.

Macon Blair

>> Yeah. You mentioned seeing the seams. I find that very charming. So there was something about on this movie, we had a lot of talks internally, in particular with the DP, who's a really sharp guy named Dana Gonzalez, and also the designer, Alex Cameron. And it was this idea that like on one hand,

Macon Blair

it's a big movie and, or I mean, relative to what I was used to, it was a very big movie. And so we're sort of trying to appeal to a broad audience in that way, but at the same time, and it goes back to the question of tone and vibe, without having it be too obvious, we kind of wanted to bake in the feeling that like, we just had one camera and a tripod, you know?

Macon Blair

And like, so we tried to avoid overly complicated camera moves or things that made it seem like, look how flashy the budget is. We tried to deliberately sort of constrain ourselves. And we broke this rule here and there, but for the most part, we tried to sort of keep it a little contained and a little smaller so it had the feeling of that kind of homemade quality

Macon Blair

that I found very appealing about the originals. So we tried to sort of feather that into our choices whenever we could.

Chris Lanphear

>> Part of the legacy of the original film is that it's a movie that's kind of definitively 80s but also has a certain timelessness to it that's allowed it to live on for as long as it has. When you made your Toxie, did you approach to making that with the idea that it'd be a similar time capsule of here and now?

Macon Blair

>> Totally. It was like, I mean, there are aspects to it like, there's a reference to social media and there's smartphones, and there's little things here and there that suggest it's a contemporary story. But I really like the idea that it is a self-contained little weirdo universe that is slightly out of time.

Macon Blair

So we didn't really specify exactly when or where it was, but when we were choosing picture cars that you would just see in the background or whatever, we tried to push for things that were 20 or 25 years old. When we were talking with Vanessa Porter, the costume designer, what sort of clothes people would wear, we would sort of try and push it towards a more 90s

Macon Blair

kind of look without making it hopefully feel like, oh, this is taking place in 1995, but just so you have this kind of feeling that it's not exactly precisely connected to a particular time period that felt just as important as what I was just saying about the camera moves and the makeup and everything else, having it felt a little bit outside of time.

Chris Lanphear

>> Let's talk about Peter Dinklage for a second. Because it's still, despite the fact that it was announced and there were so many other rumors of people being attached to it, like Arnold Schwarzenegger was attached to it before you came on at one point. been a strange journey to get here and even though I've seen the movie, it still boggles my mind that Peter Dinklage plays the toxic adventure. He's been traditionally known for heavy dramatic acting, but he gets to have a lot of fun in this movie.

Chris Lanphear

Can you talk about your approach to working with an actor of his caliber?

Macon Blair

>> Yeah. I had met him at a film festival and he had seen my first movie and he reached out to me and was just very kindly, was like, "Hey, I like this. You wanna get a beer sometime?" Like that kind of thing. And so we just, we sort of met semi-informally that way. And then we kind of stayed in touch where every couple of times a year

Macon Blair

I would send them a script to read or he might send me a script and just sort of like trying to see if there was anything we could work on together. So when we got to the point of Toxie was, you know, we had a script and Legendary was committed to make it. and we were getting into the casting,

Macon Blair

it just felt to me that we've got about 25 minutes, maybe 30 minutes at the start of the movie where the audience really needs to connect with this guy. And he doesn't have a big monologue, or there's not a big arc for him to latch onto to connect him to the audience. He's just kind of, with his presence, he's just got to be sympathetic

Macon Blair

and they've got to get on his side very quickly before he mutates into the makeup and then we don't really see him anymore. And I just thought like he has this quality of, my theory is like, I think people who watched Game of Thrones tended to say that Tyrion might've been their favorite character for this reason, that he just has this charismatic quality

Macon Blair

that while doing or saying very little, he can connect with the audience. He's also, you mentioned he does these dramatic roles and that's true, but he's also very funny. And so I felt like this would be a great use of him to in that short amount of time at the start of the movie where he could deploy all of that, those comedy skills and also the gravitas

Macon Blair

and also the emotional depth and all of that in a short amount of time to kind of rope people in. And I sent it to him with no expectation that he would say yes, 'cause it was a strange script. And especially if you're not familiar with the original, you might wonder, are we being serious? Is it a joke?

Macon Blair

Is this whole thing a gag? But he knew the original, he got it. He got the sense of humor and he said yes. And then it was a very, it was just a very fun process. We had a great time on set. And what he did was he came in and basically performed the whole movie on videotape, playing all of the Toxie choices, right?

Macon Blair

His pauses and how he moves, even like the running and certainly how he said all of the lines. And so we had all these videotapes of him doing that as himself. Then we had another performer named Luisa Guerrero who came in and basically studied all of those tapes and performed Toxie as Peter in the suit. Then Peter came back later and put his voice over that performance. It was like a three-tier dual shared performance situation.

Chris Lanphear

It works really, really well. You see his mannerisms. And like you said, he does a lot with, with very little in terms of like what he says, but especially when he finds out that he has the, uh, the mystery illness, which I gotta say is just a fucking hilarious moment when he's like, Oh, you have a case of, and then construction's downs in the back. Yeah.

Chris Lanphear

It's just like, this is brilliant because rather than, you know, weighing it down with, you know, you have this or you have that, it's just, you're sick. You know, the, the details don't matter. We're yeah, we're sticking with what matters, but even in those moments, like you, you instantly connect with him and you feel for him and, and you, you empathize with the situation of him being a stepfather with a young son who. Maybe he doesn't have the best relationship with, especially because, you know, his wife passed or his girlfriend passed and you feel

Chris Lanphear

an instant connection with him. and someone that we are used to feeling a connection with as well is Elijah Wood, who I feel steals every scene that he's in. >> He's so fun. >> Yeah, dude. >> Because he's a self-professed huge horror fan and you stick him in this riffraffy looking makeup that just allows him to ham every scene up. >> Totally.

Chris Lanphear

>> You had worked with him in I Don't Feel at Home in This World anymore. What was his reaction when you sent him the script for Toxie?

Macon Blair

>> My recollection is that it was just a very quick yes. I mean, I had written that for him because I just had such a great time working with him on the first movie. He's such a kind, sweet guy, and to me it's very funny to put him in. He was, it's not that he was a bad guy. He was a little obnoxious in the first movie, but I thought it would be really fun

Macon Blair

to just make him a straight up villain. 'Cause he's been a villain so rarely. I mean, I guess, maniac, and that's the only one I can think of. And so to me, it was written to be like one of those roles where if you didn't already know that Elijah Wood was in the movie, there's a possibility that for the first couple of minutes

Macon Blair

not know that's him. You know, I thought that would be fun to have him sort of disappear into a makeup situation or a costume situation where he would just be this totally other thing as a villain. And yeah, it was definitely riffraff. It was definitely the Danny DeVito penguin. All of those things sort of mushed together to make him this sort of greasy, squirmy type of of raspy voice figured out and sort of a posture that he wanted to do and a way of moving that he wanted to do. And it was just, um, it was just a lot of fun to sort of turn them loose in that way. Because it's like, you know, I think maybe in a lot of situations it would be all right, let's tone it down. Let's keep it, let's keep it kind of realistic. Let's

Macon Blair

keep it, you know, kind of grounded. But this was a movie where it felt like there was a and very broad. I said the same thing to Kevin Bacon about his character. Like, you know, we can always scale it back if we need to, but at least initially feel encouraged to go very big, go very gonzo with it and just see what happens. And that ended up being a lot of fun.

Chris Lanphear

Everybody goes gonzo in this movie, which is something I love. I mean, even the newscasters who serve as sort of this sort of like running commentary throughout the movie, >> Yeah. >> They're going ham in every shot that they're in. >> Totally. >> It's really just a joy to watch because I feel like most people's instincts when they're acting is to dial it back less is more.

Chris Lanphear

In a lot of circumstances, that's the best approach. But for something like this, you just throw that down and say, let's just go for it.

Macon Blair

>> Totally. That was the vibe in a lot of the scenes for sure. In the editing too, a lot of just like, how can we, what's the silliest version of this that we can do? That was a fun goal to chase.

Chris Lanphear

>> What was personally seemed the silliest to me was the moment when Toxie is trapped in that dungeon and he's like, I got to get my dick out. [LAUGHTER] Not something you had expected and I read the script. Seeing it, it's one thing to read it on the page and not everything sticks in your brain, but then you see it on film and it's like, holy shit. So the film premiered at Fantastic Fest in Austin

Chris Lanphear

and to this kind of massive success, everybody seemed to come out of that just sort of loving the movie. What's your recollection of the night that premiere happened? It was delightful.

Macon Blair

I love Fantastic Fest. I do think that like we got graded on a little bit of a curve because the audience there is like genetically designed to like the Toxic Avenger and like movies like this and they were fired up for it. I'll take it though. I mean, I feel like, you know,

Macon Blair

you spend a lot of time working on the movie. There's this whole, it had taken years, you know, because it was also very slowed down because COVID happened and it took forever to sort of get it going. there was the writing the script, there was the shooting it, there was this long post-production process. And after all of that, at least for me,

Macon Blair

you get to a point where you're kind of like, I think I know what we're doing here. You know, I think I still have my eye on the target, whatever it is, but like, you kind of lose context and you lose a little bit of perspective, at least I did. So you don't know how it's going to land with an audience who hasn't been there for every step of the way They don't know why every choice was made and they're just seeing it cold.

Macon Blair

I was very nervous because it could just as easily have gone the other way. This shit sucks. And so when the joke started landing and people were reacting in real time, I was in the theater watching it with them. It was really, really gratifying and it took this weight off my shoulders of kind of like, "Okay, this is like, at least we're landing it with Fantastic Fest and that is a good step forward. I'll take that as a victory."

Macon Blair

And then we had a subsequent one at Beyond Fest, which had a similar sort of audience. The audience seemed similar to the Fantastic Fest audience in terms of the things they were responding to. And so that felt great just because, you know, it's not just like, I hope people like my movie. It's like a lot of fucking people worked really,

Macon Blair

really hard on this. Like a lot of set decorators and costume designers, the makeup people, the whole cast, Louisa was in 25 pounds of foam and like 105 degree heat. And everybody just like really, really broke their backs for the movie. And so I want their efforts to be rewarded by people applauding the movie and digging it,

Macon Blair

um, as much or more so than just for my own, like, "I hope people like what I did," you know? A lot of people really contributed to it, so that felt good, coming out of those two screenings.

Chris Lanphear

What was your first interaction with Lloyd like? And what was it like working with him on this movie?

Macon Blair

Let me think. I mean, it was-- it was great. There was... I think the first time I met Lloyd... I don't know exactly when it was, but it was before we shot anything and he was doing some sort of event in Austin and I went and met him and his wife, Pat, at a diner and we had breakfast. There's a little, in the background of the main street

Macon Blair

in Chumaville in the movie, there's a butcher shop called Pat's Carcass Shop, and that's for Pat Kaufman, Lloyd's wife. And so we just met with them and it was very casual. he seemed to go out of his way to make it clear that he really wanted us to go and do our own thing. And he wasn't going to, like he kept saying over and over again,

Macon Blair

like, "It's gonna be your thing, you do it, you do it. We're not gonna get in the way, you're not gonna get in the way." And I wasn't worried about that, but I found it very charming and very sweet that he really wanted to make it clear that he wasn't going to insert himself into the process. Not that I would have minded,

Macon Blair

but he was just like, I'm gonna stay out of it. I knew very, very early on in the writing process, even before we really had a storyline that there needed to be a Lloyd cameo in there somewhere. And so one of the first things I started figuring out was that's why I play a character in the movie where it's like the JJ character doesn't really need a roommate.

Macon Blair

But I gave her a roommate so that I could play the roommate to kind of set up this pattern of him kind of like applauding for things or booing for things in the background of scenes, specifically so that at the end of the movie, the guy that I was playing, this sort of like nobody background guy could be applauding for something

Macon Blair

and then it would pull a little wider and Lloyd would be standing there and basically shush me and like tell me to like knock it off, which to me was just kind of like, I wanted to make a little gag out of like the original maestro being like, settle down, you know? And so he came out to, we shot in Bulgaria and he came out to film that obviously,

Macon Blair

but he also got to walk around the sets and see all the, like the Tromaville set that we had on the lot and kind of look at the props and meet some of the cast and stuff like that. And he seemed very excited by that, the sort of getting to be on set and see all this stuff happening. So that was a lot of fun.

Macon Blair

The only, (laughs) the only suggestion that he had for me in the whole process, and he gave me this note at like, I think it was like the last week of filming or something like that. So there was no way we could do it anyway, which I thought was hilarious. but he was like, he just calls me up

Macon Blair

and he left this voicemail on my phone and was like, "All right, so I saw this news article about a woman that smothered a man. Her breasts were so big that she smothered a man with her giant breasts. And I think that should go on the movie." And it's kind of like, one, you're not wrong. That's the type of gag that you would advocate for,

Macon Blair

but it was also like we had like three days of filming left and there was no like there was no way to just like create this random gag and put it in the movie. So I reluctantly had to be like, I don't, I don't think we can do that, but I do appreciate the input. No, he was, he was very supportive and has remained so, um, the whole time.

Chris Lanphear

That's actually a perfect segue that story, because you know, one of the things the original is known for in addition to the over the top violence is the gratuitous unnecessary nudity. But your Toxie, I don't want to say avoids it, but doesn't go out of its way to follow those same notes. Can you talk about the thought process of why to or to not include nudity in a movie?

Macon Blair

Yeah, I mean, not to sound overly precious with it, but it's like, what's going on in the story? And it seemed to me that in the original, the story's about a horny teenager that wants to hook up with girls and wants to get a girlfriend. And getting a peek at naked girls is kind of part of the hormonal, horny adolescent thing

Macon Blair

that was going on in that movie. In this one, the guy's older, he's widowed, he's losing his health insurance. It's just sort of like getting a peek at some titties is not what he's about, you know? And so we could have put it in. And as a matter of fact, in the early draft of the script, there was a scene where we had to cut it

Macon Blair

because of, we just didn't have enough days in the schedule. But there was a scene where Toxie kind of like goes on a rampage and he was going to run through a version of the health club and crash through the shower, you know, and do the thing where there's like a cutout of his body in the bricks. and he was gonna go through both of the shower areas and the point of it would just to be like a pan

Macon Blair

across like a dozen naked people specifically for like, look how gratuitous this is. And if we had the days in the schedule that probably would have been in there, but the joke of it was like, look how gratuitous this is. The closest thing we have to that, and this one is like a quick flash of some people showing their stuff

Macon Blair

at the community festival where there's like a rock concert going on. But even that was sort of intended to be like, the joke of it was that it didn't really need to be there, that it was just kind of like, you know, nudity for the sake of itself. So, you know, it was just kind of like, it's not that there was a decision to like avoid it

Macon Blair

or not avoid it or whatever. It was just sort of like what felt right naturally for the story with some outside dictations of how many days we had to shoot.

Chris Lanphear

I had just ended up how it ended up. >> That makes sense. I feel too, and I don't know if this was going on in your brain, but 40 years ago, even 20 years ago, people seemed in general to be a lot more comfortable with nudity in film. Now, with the exception of movies like Nora,

Chris Lanphear

which had its own discourse around nudity and sex work and those things, it seems to be something that people are more sensitive of these days. And I feel like it's a lot easier from a marketing standpoint to sell over the top silly violence than it is to sell nudity. Maybe, yeah.

Chris Lanphear

I don't, I have heard like,

Macon Blair

I've heard conversations about how like younger generations are less interested in sex scenes and stuff like that, which is kind of interesting. I mean, to me, you know, I was a teenager in the 80s there was no internet, you know? And so like, if you were trying to look at a naked person, then like a lot of times the best you could do was the Toxic Avenger or movies like that

Macon Blair

or something like that. You know, it would like, I just have to imagine without being in a younger generation's perspective, but just sort of guessing that like, when there is access to all kinds of everything naked you can possibly imagine on your fucking phone at the drop of a dime for anything you want, then it needs to justify itself to be in a movie.

Macon Blair

Because just being like, "Ooh, like porkies, we're going to get a shower scene," is like, "So what?" It feels like it's not as exciting as maybe as it was when it was so scarce in terms of where it existed in media.

Chris Lanphear

>> Sure. It needs to be at this point, like you said, because there's so much accessibility now, if you're going to include a scene like that, it needs to be driven by the story, And this story was very much not that, you know, didn't a story or a joke or something.

Macon Blair

But if, but if it's like, if it really is just like within the movie, we're going to have this little like. Period, adolescent moment. Then it's sort of like, yeah, I could see how that would, that would maybe stand out in a way that sort of takes you out of the movie. But, you know, mainly it was just like, we wanted to keep it moving quick and we wanted to keep it joke oriented. So at the end of the day, a lot of the conversations, not just with nudity, but with anything in the movie came down to, is it going to get a laugh or not?

Chris Lanphear

>> Once the film was done, once everything's completed and it's locked, what's been the most challenging part of the process of getting this into theaters? Because your first film was premiered as part of a deal with Netflix, so it had a built-in audience for Netflix, but didn't necessarily have a long theatrical run. So this is your first big theatrical film.

Macon Blair

>> Oh, yeah. The first one didn't have it. I mean, it did a film festival or two, but it didn't have any theatrical presence. It was just Netflix had financed it. So it was a Netflix original and that was my first movie, and I was delighted to get it out there any way I possibly could. So I had no complaints about that. with this one, it took a while to get it out there.

Macon Blair

And so I think the hard part was just the sort of waiting and not really knowing because once I turned it in, so to speak, that I wasn't really part of the process anymore. I didn't really have anything to do with sales conversations or distribution conversations, anything like that. I would get updates. They would sort of keep me in the loop periodically

Macon Blair

about how things were going, but I wasn't really involved in a detailed way. So it was just a lot of waiting and, you know, a little bit of time goes by and a little bit of time, and eventually a year has gone by and it's, it's hard not to feel like, oh shit, is this gonna like totally vanish? Or is this gonna like just wind up on a shelf

Macon Blair

for eternity or whatever? Like who knows what could happen these days? So I know that Legendary was really working overtime to get it out there, but some time went by. And I think because I wasn't involved and I was kind of on the sidelines of that, it was just a lot of anxiety kind of waiting to see what was gonna happen.

Macon Blair

But on the other side of that, having gotten to where we are now, I feel like the timing ended up really working out in our favor because all of the sudden Cineverse was in a position where they were able to partner with Legendary and not just take the movie and be like, "I'll take it and we'll, I don't know, we'll do something with it."

Macon Blair

But like really energetically and enthusiastically design a promotional campaign and a distribution plan to get it out there in front of as many people as possible. And so I kind of feel like if the cost of that was waiting for two years to wind up with the right partner for the movie, I would have been happy to wait six years, you know, like in the moment it was difficult,

Macon Blair

but now with the benefit of hindsight, totally worth it. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Chris Lanphear

Yeah, and from the outside looking in, there was a time, hell at this point last year, you know, some news made the rounds that the film was quote unquote unreleasable was the quote that we heard. And having seen it by that point, my thought was how could this be unreleasable when you have things like Terrifier out there.

Chris Lanphear

Lo and behold, the people who got Terrifier out there are like, "Hey, we can do the same thing with Toxie. We know how to put out a movie like this."

Macon Blair

>> Precisely, and I think that's why the timing worked and why Cineverse was great was because of the success of Terrifier. I feel like it positioned them to be able to grab this one, and they knew how to do it. As far as it being unreleasable, I mean, I wasn't totally aware of that, but somebody forwarded me a repost or something. So I kind of was aware of the headlines,

Macon Blair

but I didn't know the whole context, but I suspect that is like a game of telephone because what it sounded like was this movie is unreleasable because it is so bloody, or at least that's the way the headline that I saw read. And that's obviously not the case. I mean, it's got some blood in it, but it's not even in the realm of being so bloody that you couldn't release it.

Macon Blair

It's got a little bit of blood, but it's basically a comedy. I suspect it was like somebody felt like it was unreleasable because the mainstream distributors were not interested in it, and incidentally, it's got a little bit of gore in it, and somehow that maybe that got conflated that like, um, it was unreleasable because of gore, but that's completely not the case. And in fact, I, the thing that really got me anxious about that was not the presumption that it's unreleasable was, but I didn't want people to have this incorrect expectation for the movie, because if you, if you put it out there that like, dude, this movie is banned, it's unreleasable because it's so gory.

Macon Blair

And then people go see this movie, they're going to be expecting a gore score like that. They're going to be let down because it's not- it doesn't have the gore score of something like Terrifier. It just doesn't. And it wasn't meant to be. It was meant to be a comedy with a little bit of gore sprinkled in.

Macon Blair

So I got kind of nervous about not wanting people to have an incorrect expectation going into the movie about what was going to be and I really wanted to clarify like, I don't know, it's a comedy and go in expecting a comedy and you'll be okay but it's not going to be like the most diabolical bloodthirsty movie anybody's ever seen. It's just, it's not that.

Chris Lanphear

>> DAVID: So you know, we going out of our way not to call the Toxie, your version of Toxie, a remake or a reboot because I feel like those terms are kind of reductive in terms of what it is. But, you know, there have been many different types of reinterpretations of beloved horror films and franchises over the years. What are some of those ones that you've liked and did they have any influence on how you approached Toxie? One of my favorites is Bram Stoker's Dracula, which, you know, there's been a bazillion

Macon Blair

Draculas, but there was something about that one that just had, it felt very, I mean, I I think because it came out right on the edge of before things started getting super, you know, there was still a couple of years before things got heavily digitized and it had a very, I mean, it was immaculate, but it had a kind of handmade quality to it. You could feel the sets and, you know, the effects and the makeup all had, to me, it seemed like human fingerprints on them. And that was something, obviously that movie is much more operatic and sensual and dignified and all sorts of things that this movie is not.

Macon Blair

But that sort of quality was something that I looked to and we spoke about a lot in terms of design and sort of set building. That would certainly be one.

Chris Lanphear

DC was originally rated R and was conceived of as an R rated film, but Cineverse, you know, to their credit is going full bore with this. They're releasing this movie unrated. How does the unrated version of the film up the ante and what can people expect from this that differs from the original R rated intention?

Macon Blair

There are some different shots in there. There are small tweaks in there, but we didn't have a whole sequence that we didn't use that we put back in. So the changes, the editorial changes that were made between the two versions are pretty subtle as a matter of fact.

Chris Lanphear

So yeah, so it differs from, if you've ever seen the R-rated version of the original Toxic Avenger, there's like 20 minutes that are missing. All the head crushings are gone, a lot of the nudity is cut down, some stuff is cropped out. It's cool to see that people can expect to see something that's released in the way you want to release it, I think is the most important thing.

Macon Blair

>> Yeah. Honestly, that's true. Also, one thing that I was pleasantly surprised by, yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by was the fact that both Cineverse and Before Them Legendary, when we were working on the movie, they were really into everything that we pitched to them. There is a scene in the movie, I'm assuming if people are listening to this podcast,

Macon Blair

they've probably seen it, we're sort of talking spoilers, but there's a scene in the movie where Toxie's battling some bad guys and he punches one guy in the butt so hard his small intestine out of his butt. And there was a moment where this gag sort of occurred to us. And I was talking amongst my crew, and this gag came to light.

Macon Blair

And one of the assistant editors had actually was like, maybe this should happen. And I was like, oh, shit, that's a good idea. And immediately-- it was very late at night. Everybody was kind of punchy. we were cutting very late and the idea of it made us laugh so much that without thinking, I very quickly got out my laptop and wrote out this email.

Macon Blair

In my memory, it was like all caps, it probably wasn't, but it felt like I was typing in all caps to the head of the studio and like sort of frantically describing like, and then he's gonna put his fist up this other guy's butthole and then he's gonna pull the stuff out. And I woke up the next morning and I was like,

Macon Blair

oh shit, I'm gonna, they're gonna fire me. that they're going to fire me off this. And I felt really embarrassed. And then about 30 minutes later, she wrote back and was like, let's do it. And so I think my point is that like, for such a movie with maybe an appeal to a certain niche audience,

Macon Blair

this studio was very game for stuff like that. and didn't really need a lot of convincing. They were just, it was kind of like a very two-word, like, yeah, let's do it, approved. Start working on the effects or whatever, go for it. And so that was a lot of fun to see. It was just sort of like, everybody was kind of down to make the same movie.

Macon Blair

And so there wasn't a lot of having to convince people that like, no, this is what's gonna work for the movie better, and the fans are gonna want this, and this and that. everybody was kind of down for the same program, which was very cool.

Chris Lanphear

And if I'm not mistaken, that sequence became known as Butt Guts, correct?

Macon Blair

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a separate section in the credits for that because we had a different camera unit shoot it, but yeah.

Chris Lanphear

Which leads into the next logical question. If your Toxie were to also get his own family-friendly spinoff children's cartoon, what is an important lesson you would like him to teach?

Macon Blair

that it is not just okay, but really good to be yourself. It feels like there's a lot of, there's this, I don't know, feels like there's a wave right now of a lot of like, I don't know, trying to dictate things to people choice and I think Toxie teaching kids that who you are is great and enough and not to fuck with that I think would be a good lesson.

Chris Lanphear

And that's reinforced in the film with Jacob Tremblay's character who I mean he does a phenomenal job given the amount of screen time he has relative to the rest of the movie. Yeah, he's great. He seems to be going through this kind of existential crisis and really finds himself by the end, thanks to repairing the relationship with Winston and everything. Yeah, that's a message that I feel like is sorely needed right now.

Macon Blair

>>AJ: Yeah. And I like that, again, that whole sequence at the end was designed to be a joke in that what finally gets people on his side is this lowest common denominator sort of like smashing melons and prop comedy stuff, which is just, that part is a gag, but the idea that like he can authentically be himself and have people get psyched up and cheer for him. And that was something that like was, we sort of had that scene

Macon Blair

as we were writing the rest of the script, but that scene was always sort of, we knew that was going to be the ending. In other words, the kid having a victory at school and Toxie being there to witness that. So it ends with Toxie up in the balcony watching his son have a victorious moment at school. And that was always, we didn't really know

Macon Blair

exactly how we were going to wind up there, but we knew that that was going to be the end moment and we kind of worked from there.

Chris Lanphear

I've heard you tell this story before, but I wanted more people to hear it just 'cause I absolutely loved it. Can you talk about the significance of the security guard?

Macon Blair

Yeah, yeah, good eye. The security guard, okay, so earlier on, you were asking me about when the first time was that I saw "The Toxic Avenger," right? And I said, we got a videotape from my buddy and my buddies who were making movies together, watched it, and that's one of the guys. His name is Chris, and I've known him

Macon Blair

since we were in kindergarten together. So Chris, myself, Jeremy Saunier, who just made Rebel Ridge and Green Room and a lot of other great stuff, we're all in that group in Virginia. And he played the lead in Jeremy's first movie, which was called Murder Party, which was a very low budget comedy horror movie

Macon Blair

that Jeremy wrote and directed. I think it costs like $200,000 to make. We shot it on video and Chris played the lead in that. He was a parking enforcement officer who gets kidnapped and brutalized on Halloween by this group of weirdos. That's him playing the same character in Toxie as a security guard when Winston robs his job to get some money to pay for his medical care.

Macon Blair

I put Chris in the movie because I wanted to have my buddy on set, but also I thought it would be cool to have him sort of reprise that same role as a hapless, you know, some sort of officer that's always finding himself in difficult, abusive situations.

Chris Lanphear

So that had to be a huge full circle moment for you. Because you go from watching this movie as a kid with your friends on videotape, you know, 30 some odd years ago to now directing the largest, most expansive version of that same story with more than just your friends, with tons and tons of other creatives and crew members and studio money behind you. I've got to assume that you took at least a moment or two when you were shooting that to go. Man, what a journey.

Chris Lanphear

Not a moment or two.

Macon Blair

Constantly, constantly, absolutely. I mean, you know, there's like, you're there to do a job, everybody's professional, so you've got this going on and you do that. And that's true, conduct yourself professionally. Behind that, absolutely. Mind fucking blown every minute of the day. We had that group of friends that I was talking about

Macon Blair

when we were kids, our group, there was like six or seven of us and we called it a production company. It was just like kids with a camera, but we called it Butt Stupid Films. And I said to my, I was texting my buddies, I was like, from set this big vaulted ceiling, it looks like a James Whale set with like blinkers and shit

Macon Blair

and Kevin Bacon's in full body makeup and Elijah Wood is over here and it's the Toxic Avengers over here. And I was just like, dudes, it's like, they let me make a fucking butt stupid movie on a gigantic budget over here and nobody has put a stop to it yet. It really, it was really, really surreal.

Macon Blair

And to this day, I'm like, I'm never not gonna be immensely grateful for all of that. and just overwhelmed. It was a lot of fun. It was a tremendous amount of work. It was difficult in a lot of ways, but yeah, man, it was really, really mind-blowing. It really was.

Chris Lanphear

>> I feel like the, sounds like I'm waxing your car, but I feel like the fun you were having comes through in every frame of celluloid on that movie just because everybody just seems to be having fun. Yes, making movies is a job and it's difficult and it's hard and there are tons and tons of obstacles and especially in this climate getting anything made is nothing short of a miracle. But man, you guys are having

Chris Lanphear

so much fun up there.

Macon Blair

Yeah, dude. I mean, I do believe that I couldn't articulate why this is and maybe it's not always the case, but I do feel like there is some sort of molecular thing where like if there is a positive energy, a fun energy on set, then it translates into the camera somehow and it comes across in what you watch. Which is not to say that great movies can't come from horrific experiences, apocalypse now, whatever. But generally speaking, I think if people are rocking and rolling and having a good time on set that will be reflected to some degree in the movie.

Chris Lanphear

That's what we were trying to harness on set for sure. >> It's the punk rock ethos. The question one of our producers wrote was, do you feel like you brought back the punk rock ethos of Troma to the big budget world? But I mean, I think it's safe to say yes.

Macon Blair

I don't know about that. That's not something, I didn't think about it that way. I understand where you're coming from, but that sort of line of thinking as a punk rock fan, that line of thinking didn't really cross my mind. What I thought of was that it was like,

Macon Blair

if I could get like-minded people who were gonna have fun with this together and we could all sort of have fun together, that that would result in a movie that some portion of the audience was gonna respond to and hopefully it would be the Toronto audience plus a wider field. But that was sort of my philosophy going into it.

Macon Blair

So if that makes it punk rock or not, I don't know, but that was sort of the intention.

Chris Lanphear

Well, I mean, I would personally counter and say, I think it is, it is punk rock because, you know, a lot of people in the position you were in would feel so grateful to just have the job that they would do everything safely. And the fact that you were willing to gestate this crazy idea like butt guts and then go, you know what, I'm going to go to the head of legendary and suggest this insane idea. seemingly without any regard for the job security that that that might threaten. I think is pretty fucking punk rock.

Chris Lanphear

That's funny. Yeah, I don't know. Lloyd often, you know, pulls from Shakespeare and he says to that on self be true. How do you stay true to yourself when trying to bring your vision to the screen when I'm also answering to other masters and restrictions and constraints. But it sounds like you were able to do that pretty easily, right? You had people that you were working with that were just as game as you were.

Macon Blair

>> Yeah. That's a good question. I don't know. I think it comes down to how I would try to do anything, whether it's making a movie or getting my kids to school or anything, which is just to try and listen to what the other people are saying and try to calmly, respectfully communicate what you're saying. 'Cause I think a lot of times,

Macon Blair

if it's just kind of like, we're not, everybody's trying to make the best version of the movie, right, or everybody's trying to get out of the house on time, whatever. But if you can just sort of like, okay, this is where I'm coming from. I think we should have a scene here that does this. And then they can sort of reflect on that

Macon Blair

and not have it be like a thing that needs to be battled over, but just sort of like agree that we're all on the same team. And, you know, by the way, there were certainly things that like, you know, needed to be compromised upon. And that like, as an example, just full disclosure, But like that, the opening scene where it sort of,

Macon Blair

it starts out with like a, like a flash forward. And it's sort of like, it shows you some clips or whatever, and it resets. Initially, I didn't really want that in the movie. We did a commentary track for the Blu-ray the other day, and I told this story, but that was something that the studio had suggested. And the reason why was because we had done an audience

Macon Blair

screening, like a feedback screening. And the main thing that we got from that was that the audience was saying for the first 10 or 15 minutes, they weren't really sure if the movie was supposed to be funny or serious. Because when they test these movies, it's sort of like they don't even tell you what the title is. And they're not recruiting Troma fans.

Macon Blair

It's just random people off the street. So they have no idea what anything is. So they watched the first 10 minutes of the movie and they were kind of like, is this supposed to be serious or funny or whatever? And I was very stuck in this like, oh, well, no, we don't want that record scratch, look how I got here moment at the beginning.

Macon Blair

And I kind of pushed back against it and we went back and forth and eventually we did it. And as soon as we did it, the scores went up. And that note about like tonal confusion, about is it supposed to be comedy or serious until Ferd gets killed and then you're kind of like, okay, now I know it's a comedy. That note kind of went away.

Macon Blair

And it was a great lesson for me to be like, shut up. It's cool to sort of advocate for your own position for things, but also you can kind of be open to outside ideas that you weren't leading with, or maybe you were even resistant to, and it ended up making the whole thing ultimately better.

Macon Blair

That was a great lesson for me. I forget where I was going with that. But anyways, I think it's about just communication is the key to everything. If you lead with, let's just communicate where we're coming from and not have it be a clash, then it's going to be better for everybody.

Chris Lanphear

Knowing that now about the about the opening of the film. Kind of gives the voice over some some interesting added context because he has that's why I didn't want any of this.

Macon Blair

That's why I wrote that line. I didn't want any of this. Not.

Video

Wait, wait, stop. Fuck, we'll get to all that. Just relax, Jesus. [CLEARS THROAT] I didn't want any of this. Not the grief, not the illness, certainly not the heroic voiceover. That's not who I am.

Video

But sometimes you got to do something.

Macon Blair

Exactly. I mean, and that was sort of like- that's what I pitched as the compromise. I was like, OK, so look, we'll do this, but we'll kind of make fun of what we're doing. Like as we're doing it, like we are actually doing that thing, but we're also kind of like, I know I'm doing that thing. And so that's, that's how it wound up like that.

Chris Lanphear

Having that context now that's fucking brilliant. Cause I liked it when I first saw it. I liked the opening because it was very tongue in cheek and because it was very, it's kind of like the traditional sort of superhero idea of, you know, the origin story but then also riffing on it and being like, "Hey, this is not what I set out to do. In fact, why am I doing this voiceover?" So you're breaking the fourth wall right away and getting people engaged.

Chris Lanphear

And I gotta say, having that context makes me love it more.

Macon Blair

Oh, good.

Chris Lanphear

Outside of the Toxic Avenger, what are some of your favorite Troma films?

Macon Blair

I always like Nuke 'Em High. I mean, you saw that, right? Mm-hmm, yeah, there's a couple different Newcombe High references in the movie. Yeah, so I don't know if anything will ever come of that, but if it does, that's why that's there. 'Cause I just felt like, you know, if this is the sort of the tone of the world

Macon Blair

that got established, that sort of expanding that into teenage adolescent stories would be a good idea. be a fun area to go and take it off of the street gang sort of thing and make it more kind of a breakfast club type of thing, but with that same kind of Tromaville vibe.

Chris Lanphear

Well, Legendary does have the rights to Nuke 'Em High for a TV series, wink wink, to our friend Alex over at Legendary. I would love to see that. I feel like that would be a lot of fun. I mean, the possibilities are endless. Talking about the references to other things, like there are tons of in-universe references in the movie. Everything from like Bill Goody, Bill Bonds, which I personally loved,

Chris Lanphear

to the background for the newscasters being the Troma cityscape.

Macon Blair

Good eye.

Chris Lanphear

That was one of the first things I noticed. I was like, "Holy shit." I was like, "The Troma cityscape's in there." I do think the idea of having it be St. Roma's village, but with the letters all fucked up to it to be for it to be Tromaville, I thought was kind of fantastic.

Macon Blair

With that, it was sort of like, if we make it literally Tromaville, then you really are stepping on Melvin Ferd and the original, 'cause then what are you, are you saying that there's two toxic Avengers that exist in the same time? Like the way that like timelines and universes are organized in my brain,

Macon Blair

I felt like it needed to be a different universe entirely to not feel like we already had a toxic Avenger 30 years ago. So that's why we did that.

Chris Lanphear

Which is awesome. And I think people, you know, the fact that Kevin Bacon says nobody calls me Bozo anymore with Bozo being a villain from the original film. Someone saying I never record and hold me a blind bitch, but getting cut off before he says blind bitch. down to like the logo for Miss Meat uses the same text effects as the original Toxic Avenger logo like there is there are tons of things in there for fans to to dissect and find.

Macon Blair

Somebody mentioned and this was not deliberate and I think it's a it's it's a little bit of a stretch but just the the guy we called him Chicken Head one of the bad guys that wore a chicken mask being a reference to uh Poultry Geist which it was not intended that way but if it if it makes sense say that it was intentional, but it wasn't.

Chris Lanphear

Hell yeah. Well, and even down to the mutated duck that somehow makes it through the entire film. There's a mutated duck in the Return to Newcomb High films. So I mean, there's tons of fun stuff in there, whether intentional or not. And if it wasn't intentional, I think that makes it even better.

Macon Blair

It was definitely like wanting to, as we're going through, they are just Easter eggs, but to me it sort of seemed like a wave to people who are watching this from a place for the originals to just be like, wherever this one goes and whatever this one, this version is trying to do, we have our eye on this as well. And it was just like a little, like, you know, a little wave hello to folks is how I thought of it.

Chris Lanphear

Yeah, and it's nice to have just that little wave versus like the very obvious fan service that you see in other films. Like if you watched the most recent Alien film, like there's literally a moment where he says, get away from her you bitch. And you know that's the sort of thing that is kind of fun on paper but in practice just completely takes you out of it.

Chris Lanphear

Yeah I could see that. But that's a whole other thing. What were some of the movies and records you watched or listened to while you were writing and making the movie? Repo Man and Repo Man.

Macon Blair

That was a big one. I mean, I think like the way that they dealt with Edge City in that where it was kind of like, it's sort of Los Angeles, but it's this other thing and you know, like the products are weirdly labeled and, and it just, it felt a little bit outside of the real world, but still being the real world. That was, that was a really big one. a lot of the old Universal monster movies, certainly all the Frankenstein ones with the doctor's laboratory and everything, that was a big influence. Listened to the Suburbia soundtrack a lot.

Macon Blair

On repeat, that was comfort food for me. I think RoboCop, we talked about a lot. The score for the taking of the Pelham 1-2-3 was one that I was listening to a lot. But there's a couple of cues in our score for this one that you can really see that big boom, boom, boom influence. And, oh, you know what else? One that the DP and I got really excited about, for some reason we got excited about the conformist and we were filming in Bulgaria.

Macon Blair

So there was a lot of this great older, I don't know how to describe it. I don't have the terminology 'cause I'm not versed in architecture, but this very cool older architecture, European architecture that just sort of made us think of the conformist a lot. So there's some shots in Toxie where we were kind of like kind of looking at frames from that and trying to kind of recreate it in our own way, even though that's a much more somber and

Macon Blair

serious and poetic type of movie. And this one is kind of the opposite of that. But we were just kind of inspired by the Bulgarian cityscape to kind of go in that direction.

Chris Lanphear

is your go-to karaoke song and do you now feel like you have to dip into adding Motorhead to your repertoire?

Macon Blair

You know, I would try to do Ace of Spades and then I would just embarrass myself. I would try to do Brandy by Looking Glass and I would also embarrass myself. So then I would probably go back to, I don't know, King of Rock or something like that where I don't have to actually carry a melody. That'll be because I can't sing for shit, man. It's best for the audience if I stay away from that.

Chris Lanphear

>> I mean, it's okay though. You can act, you can write, you can direct. I think you've been bestowed with enough talents that if you can't sing, I'd say that's okay to leave on the table. >> I think so. >> Last question, in the final moments of the film, there's what seems to be potentially a throwaway gag that says, Toxie will return into Toxie to Venger.

Chris Lanphear

Do you have ideas for a potential sequel? Is that something that you would like to do?

Macon Blair

If somebody were to ask me to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat, of course. I have thought about it. I was thinking about it while I was writing, I wouldn't say I have a whole story to pitch, but I have some general ideas. And part of it would be trying to figure out a way to- probably by owning it and being really obvious about it,

Macon Blair

bring back people that died in the original. And I don't know if that's like twin brothers or time travel or what the situation is, but I just think it would be funny to kind of come back with the same cast and be like, no, they're still here. Yeah, I don't know if if if there's if anybody wants that to happen, I would I would love to to talk about that, of course.

Chris Lanphear

Well, I think you left the door open, too, because you do, you know, spoiler alert, obviously, but you do leave Fritz alive, you know, at the end of the movie. So he could easily go on some sort of, you know, revenge tour.

Macon Blair

And frankly, Chelsea is alive too. So any number of things could happen. But that final title card was, there was a lot of things in the movie where we, there was a, for the most of the movie, we had a great editor named Brett Bachman, and then Brett went to go do another show and another editor named James Thomas came in.

Macon Blair

And in both of those instances, a whole lot of the movie kind of like came together with us just in the editing room trying to make each other laugh. Like what if just sort of like, okay, we've got a cut that makes sense and it plays fine, but what if we like move this shot over here or do this or add a sound effect here,

Macon Blair

add a voice that's off camera here and then add another voice. And next thing you know, we've got like a dozen off camera voices commenting on things. And that card at the end was definitely one of them where we were just sort of like, we're getting ready to send it in to be, you know,

Macon Blair

finally finished like the final file. And it was like a very last minute, like, let's just put a, uh, like a James Bond style, um, Toxie will return in octopusy type of, uh, card at the ends. And then, but we didn't have any text for it. So in like 20 minutes, cause it had to go out that day, we were like, let's just do this and we just sort of like typed it in and put it and then just left it in the movie.

Chris Lanphear

It's brilliant too and I think it potentially wets the whistle for people who want to see more of it and hopefully we get a little bit of that terrifier magic where we make 15 of them.

Macon Blair

That would be cool.

Chris Lanphear

I would personally love to see nothing more than that.

Macon Blair

Yeah.

Chris Lanphear

Well, that's everything I've got. Macon, I want to thank you for taking the time to chat with me today.

Macon Blair

Oh, it was my pleasure. This was a fun. This was a fun chat, man.

Chris Lanphear

A special thank you again to writer, director Macon Blair for taking the time to sit down with us today. Everyone show the fuck up. The Toxic Avenger is in theaters now, both in the US and internationally. Cineverse has teamed up with the nonprofit Undo Medical Debt and have pledged to cancel at least $5 million of medical debt for people in need. And for every million dollars the film makes at the box office, they will cancel another million dollars of medical debt.

Chris Lanphear

This is a fantastic idea. We're in full support of this here. Medical debt is a very serious problem that affects tons and tons of people in the US. And it can't be overstated. If you want to see more movies like this made and released in theaters, then it is important to see this movie in theaters. Go to toxitix.com, T-O-X-I-E-T-I-X.com

Chris Lanphear

for information on the closest theaters showing Toxic Avenger in your area. Tell your friends, see it again, review it on Letterboxd. Thanks for listening. We will see you next time on Talkin' Troma.

Announcer

Talkin' Troma with Zach Bynes hosted and produced by Zack Beins, Chris Lanphear, and Chaz Kangas. Our head of research is Dr. Nolan Stolz. The show is recorded at Loudspeaker Studios in Fort Collins, Colorado. Executive producers for Loudspeaker are Chris Lanphear and Charles Joseph Kelly. Our theme music is by J57 and Bald Halfwit. Talkin' Troma is a listener-supported production of Loudspeaker Studios, a non-profit public radio service. To support the show, please consider making a donation at loudspeaker.org. Catch new episodes of the show

Announcer

Thursdays at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific Streaming at loudspeaker.org and the Loudspeaker mobile app. Past episodes of the show can be found at TalkinTroma.com and you can find us on social media at TalkinTroma. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in Tromaville. This has been a listener supported production of Loudspeaker Studios. For more on this and other programs, visit loudspeaker.org.