EW/Timehost: We're really excited to be bringing you the second in a series of interviews live from the Avignon/New York Film Festival. We're going to be joined by a very interesting duo... and a very unlikely one as well. James Ivory, the director of A Room With A View and HowardÕs End and Lloyd Kaufman, director of The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke 'Em High. : Right now, everyone at the festival is screening James Ivory's 1981 movie "Quartet." They should be done any minute...and they will join TIME and Entertainment Weekly online in just a little while...

EW/Timehost: Okay, James Ivory is answering audience questions now... and we'll send your online questions to him. We will give them to the festival's director to ask.

EW/Timehost: James Ivory says it was a pleasure shooting with French actors. He didn't really understand all the nuances of the French, but he had very good assistants for the shooting of the film. Up to the point he did Quartet most of his experience was shooting in India and the U.S. In retrospective he feels that the film was emotionally overwrought, but he has not regrets about it.

EW/Timehost: James Ivory is talking about the writer, now. The movie was adapted from a novel by Jean Rhys. The writer of the screenplay was Ruth Prawler Jhabvala, and she felt that the writing should be more spirited, so that came through in the movie, because she added that. James Ivory is bow talking about some of the motivations of the actors in the movie, what held the characters together. The movie is about the relationships between two couples.

EW/Timehost: Now, I've just been joined by Lloyd Kaufman in the back of the auditorium where the screening took place, and we'll be speaking with him later.

EW/Timehost: There is a question about how he worked with the composer, Richard Robbins. James Ivory says it's very indirect, the composer watches the movie then plays some of the themes he's been inspired to compose, then they discuss it together. The style of music was influenced a little by Philip Glass. As was the music in future movies after that.

EW/Timehost: Ivory says that he himself is not a composer so he doesn't necessarily understand the process the composer goes through. Sometimes the first time he hears the music is at the recording session when it's too late to do anything about it.

EW/Timehost: Now, the festival director has asked one of the questions that you sent in online: how would you express the essence of a Merchant-Ivory movie?

EW/Timehost: James Ivory says that he likes to think that the writing is good to begin with. The production values are very good. And the combination of those elements - but what the essence really is, he says he really cant say.

EW/Timehost: The festival director, Jerry Rudes, is talking about the element of nostalgia present in many of the films. A sense that maybe they would have liked to live in Paris at that point in time.

EW/Timehost: Ivory laughed and says, maybe you would! Ivory says: who exactly finds scrubbing pots and pans and being a servant nostalgic? Who would want to go through being a servant all over again? Ivory points out that the shots in Quartet are not of traditionally famous Parisian buildings.

EW/Timehost: Lots of hands are up in the audience for questions.

EW/Timehost: Ivory says when he first went to Paris he didn't have any money, he feels that the atmosphere portrayed was rather grim and poor.

EW/Timehost: He's talking about Isabelle Adjani now. He says that when she was actually doing the scenes, not the rehearsals, that's when she pulled out all the stops. She was not the way most actors are, where they give you a good impression of what they'll do before they do it.

EW/Timehost: Ivory says he was a big Hollywood fan, the MGM musicals, spectacles, and westerns.

EW/Timehost: He's now being asked one of our online questions -- he's talking about his main influences, and he's discussing Satyajit Ray.

EW/Timehost: Right now he's talking about how he gets the ideas of what books to make into movies -- things he's read or that friends or acquaintances suggest to him. He doesn't think he would make the films if there wasn't something in the material already that has touched him. Years later, he'll watch a film he's made and something really clicks emotionally about what it was that actually made him want to make the film.

EW/Timehost: Ivory says that his next project is another, and probably last, Henry James projects, The Golden Bowl.

EW/Timehost: And is there a film in the last few years that he's found extraordinary? One of the ones he mentioned as an answer was David Mamet's The Winslow Boy.

EW/Timehost: Here's another internet question... What do you see as the future of filmmaking?

EW/Timehost: Everyone laughs at that one. He's going to tackle it though. It'll probably last another 100 years!

EW/Timehost: And another question from online: what made you want to become a filmmaker?

EW/Timehost: Ivory says he used to make documentaries, he didn't think about what directors did, and when he made his first feature he didn't really know what to do. He just had a sense that he was making a new kind of film. There are books you can read, but he didn't know what he was really supposed to do. They are ending this question an answer session now, and our two guests are going to be joining us backstage in just a few moments, folks. Stay tuned and send in your questions for Lloyd Kaufman and James Ivory - two of the most different filmmakers you're likely to run across!

EW/Timehost: It's a very special cinematic meeting... James Ivory, maker of such movies as Remains of the Day and A Room With A View...generally pretty highbrow stuff... will be joined by a very different kind of director, Lloyd Kaufman, the director of Toxic Avenger, and most recently the author of the book, All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger.

EW/Timehost: Our two guests are now with us. Welcome to both of you.

EW/Timehost: Lots of people online have asked about whether you two see any similarities between what you do.

Lloyd Kaufman: I would like to suggest that there has always been confusion between The Toxic Avenger and Remains of the Day and A Room With A View. The Merchant Ivory movies have a lot more sex and violence. And the Troma movies seem longer.

jcpetri asks: Remains of the Day is a truly beautiful film. It seemed a special role for Hopkins, no?

James Ivory: It was. I think he was especially good, also. How can I elaborate on that - I agree! I think he especially liked doing it also. He said again and again that that film in particular gave him a lot of pleasure.

hugo6382 asks: Mr. Kaufman: Are there are filmmakers out there that you particularly enjoy and who you feel have been particularly influenced by you?

Lloyd Kaufman: Well, I would not presume that filmmakers are influenced by me, even though Quentin Tarantino is one of them. I saw Shakespeare Wallah by the great James Ivory, and there is no doubt that the Ivory influence is all over the Troma oeuvre.

EW/Timehost: Okay, you two, we have to ask this one...

deadbikemessenger asks: Can you point to similarities between Quartet and Toxic Avenger

Lloyd Kaufman: One of the reasons that Troma has survived for 25 years is that our movies have relationships in them. Toxic Avenger has good relationships. Ivory's movies - seriously - are about very intense relationships. I remember when Quartet came out, distinctly. I saw it. Also Shakespeare Wallah, and other movies of Mr. Ivory's, definitely showed the Troma team that relationships are what it's all about. The first feature length movie I made, Rapaccini's Daughter, starred Perry King. I made this movie while a student at Yale, and he went on to make the Wild Party directed by James Ivory.

James Ivory: That's one of our lost movies, it's never really going to come out as it was made, it was the only movie I ever made that was recut by the distributor. And when I say recut, I mean recut. Only three scenes left! It was with Raquel Welch, James Coco, and David Dukes, among others.

jcpetri asks: What is most important in a great film: the art or the entertainment value?

James Ivory: They should be one and the same, no?

Lloyd Kaufman: That was an intelligent answer, so you know it was Mr. Ivory! I was just wondering how Mr. Ivory felt about the fact that many of our wonderful politicians, like Gore and his wife Tipper, feel that the movie industry is responsible for violence in schools, especially the films of Mr. Ivory!

James Ivory: They are not watching our films enough! But seriously, I don't think we should talk lightly about all this.

EW/Timehost: When you two spoke earlier this evening, I learned that today is not in fact the first time that you two have met...perhaps you could tell us about your earlier encounter?

James Ivory: We had a civilized lunch at the Yale Club, 50 years ago, at least!

Lloyd Kaufman: I had a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich as I recall. Open-faced.

deadbikemessenger asks: Is there another Toxic Avenger in the works?

Lloyd Kaufman: Yes. We are writing, at this very minute, Citizen Toxie. The Toxic Avenger will fight with Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD. This will occur in a parallel universe. And we will also deal with the theme of a woman's right to choose. When Toxie's wife will be pregnant. The point is relationships, the genius of Mr. Ivory.

EW/Timehost: Here's a question that perhaps you would both like to answer...someone who wants to know about your favorite genres...

BUFFY_SUMMERS610 asks: What genre do you prefer?

Lloyd Kaufman: In terms of a possible switch, I would like to do a good version of Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey.

James Ivory: You should, why don't you?

Lloyd Kaufman: That would be my dream. If I had a large budget, that is really the only project other than Troma movies that I would dream of doing.

James Ivory: I've never really wanted to do an action adventure movie as such. If anything, definitely a contemporary comedy.

EW/Timehost: Thanks to both of you for joining us. I know you've got to leave now, but perhaps you have some closing thoughts?

Lloyd Kaufman: If anybody, by the way is interested in Troma, we have a website www.troma.com

James Ivory: We have one too. www.merchantivory.com

EW/Timehost: And for those of you who want to know more about the Avignon-New York Film Festival, one of its organizers is pointing out that the festival also has a website, reachable at www.francetelecomna.com/twist and he says that this is the only festival in creation to cross-pollinate both French and American independent films, which is also cross-generational, allowing young filmmakers a chance to meet and share ideas with masters. He says that tonight also proves that this festival is also "cross-modal...Truly we span the full spectrum of independent creativity in cinema. Plus we know how to party!" Thank you for joining us. I know that you are heading off to more festival activities!

James Ivory and Lloyd Kaufman:: Thank you!

EW/Timehost: So thanks for spending this time with us!

Lloyd Kaufman: Please also mention that New York State is the greatest State for making movies. Because the New York State film commissioner is the greatest commissioner in the world!

EW/Timehost: Just so you know, Lloyd Kaufman's wife is in fact the film commissioner for New York! Movies are a family affair!

WRITE TO US