How Lloyd Kaufman shaped James Gunn’s career: “My life changed within weeks”
2025 is going to be a make-or-break year for James Gunn.
This is the year that his version of ‘Superman’ hits the screen. With David Corenswet in the title role, Nicholas Hoult as his archnemesis Lex Luthor, and a much-welcomed appearance from Krypto the Superdog, fans of the Man of Steel are hoping that Gunn’s vision will bring the red-caped hero back to the glory of the Christopher Reeve days. Only time will tell.
Superman is the latest in a long line of Gunn movies that have gotten people talking. He is most famous for helming the three Guardians of the Galaxy films for Marvel, which were surprisingly big hits considering they were based on comic book characters nobody had heard of. Elsewhere in the DCEU (or whatever it’s called these days), he’s helmed The Suicide Squad, the second attempt at bringing the chaotic team to life, and its popular spin-off TV show, Peacemaker.
Prior to immersing himself fully in the world of superheroes, Gunn mainly worked as a writer. He penned the scripts for the live-action Scooby-Doo film, going out of his way to make Scrappy as hateable as possible, and Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead. Right at the start of his Hollywood career, Gunn worked for a company called Troma Entertainment, which specialised in producing B movies. Their work includes the likes of the Class of Nuke ‘Em High series and The Toxic Avenger, amongst various other squishy, splattery horrors that your mother would absolutely have you watching.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, the maverick filmmaker recalled working for Troma, particularly his job ghostwriting a book called All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from The Toxic Avenger. “I wanted to quit because it was fucking killing me,” he revealed. “I didn’t have a small ego, and I felt like I was doing a lot of things for Troma, and I didn’t feel like I was getting any respect for it. And now I’m ghostwriting something that I thought was hilarious. And the more I was writing it, and the funnier I thought it was, the more resentful I was becoming.”
This frustration led to a fateful conversation between Gunn and Lloyd Kaufman, Troma co-founder and a mentor figure to the aspiring star. After speaking with Kaufman, director of Tromeo and Juliet (which Gunn also wrote) and the aforementioned The Toxic Avenger, Gunn realised that he couldn’t quit. He needed to finish what he started.
“The minute that happened, my life changed within weeks,” he said. “That’s when I wrote The Specials and finished that. And instantly everything happened.” The Specials is a 2000 indie movie that Gunn wrote and starred in. It focuses on the daily lives of a lower-tier team of superheroes and also features the likes of Thomas Haden Church, Paget Brewster, and Rob Lowe. This is what got the ball rolling on Gunn’s career as a mainstream scriptwriter, and all the subsequent glory that followed.
Even after his apprentice’s rise to fame, Kaufman continued to play a part in his life. He had a brief cameo in Gunn’s directorial debut, Slither, and another in his 2010 superhero comedy, Super. Kaufman and Gunn also did eventually finish their book, which was published in 1998.
