Rooftop Films is Screening Troll 2 and Best Worst Movie in Williamsburg!
Rooftop Films is hosting an awesome two day Troll 2 extravaganza! Thursday, July 30th and Friday, July 31st at 50 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn! In 1989, when an Italian filmmaker and unwitting Utah actors shot the ultra-low budget horror film, Troll 2, they had no idea that twenty years later they would be celebrated worldwide for their legendary ineptitude. Just ten years old, first-time thespian Michael Paul Stephenson played Joshua, the young son in the film. There were a few hiccups in production, but as the shooting wrapped he expected that Goblins (as the film was originally titled) would soon be out in theaters, and he assumed he would be on the path towards inevitable movie stardom. Perhaps the movie wouldn’t be the next Gremlins or Labyrinth, but horror films were hot in 1989, and how bad could the film possibly be? But Goblins was terrible and didn’t come out in theaters. Ever. So, on Christmas morning one year later, the film, now renamed Troll 2, was released on VHS and Michael and his parents headed over to their local video store to rent it. On that morning, as he watched Troll 2 in his living room, Michael Paul Stephenson wept. His career in entertainment might not have been entirely doomed at age 11, but he was pretty sure that it was not going to flourish as a result of his participation in Troll 2. But he was wrong. Three years ago, Stephenson started getting MySpace messages and emails from teenagers all over the world with photos attached featuring kids dressing-up like goblins, eating green food and pissing on dinner tables. These were pictures of their Troll 2 parties, and there were lots of them. Over the course of 15 years, horror-hungry teenagers all over the world had picked up old copies of Troll 2 out of curiosity and they independently discovered that this was not an ordinary bad movie. It was quite possibly the best worst movie. Soon thereafter, comedy clubs and independent movie theaters began organizing Troll 2 revival screenings and selling out huge theaters, inviting the stars of the original film out to the shows, and attracting Troll 2 fans in full costume. Stephenson, now working on documentaries and studying film, realized that this was a story he was born to tell. He tracked down all the major (and many minor) stars of Troll 2 and began to document their stories. Troll 2 had driven some of the actors into instant retirement, while a few others had continued in show business. A few others had fallen upon seriously hard times. Twenty years after Troll 2 was made, as the unlikely resurgence of Troll 2 unfolded around the world, Stephenson captured their lives and began to piece together the history of the constituent parts that had serendipitously come together to produce this historically awful film. Info: http://www.rooftopfilms.com
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