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 There
may have once been a time when you dreaded the end of that four-year bender
otherwise known as college. You know, back in a rare sober moment when
the realization struck that your days of boozing, partying like a movie
star and hanging with your close coterie of friends were numbered. Wouldn’t
it be beautiful, you thought, if you could at least all head into the
“afterlife” together, having fun doing what you want to, and
making a decent buck in the process?
Meet Broken Lizard, the hilarious minds behind the 2000 side-splitter
Super Troopers. The comedy troupe actually formed way back in 1989
on the Upstate New York campus of Colgate University under the guise of
Charred Goosebeak. As graduates, the now-five-man crew (which consists
of Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Erik Stolhanske and
Phoenix native Paul Soter) continued honing their comedic craft on New
York stages before venturing into shorts and then feature films.
While their first film, Puddle Cruiser, made a run at Sundance
but failed to lure a distributor, it generated enough buzz that they’re
second effort, Super Troopers, wouldn’t be denied. As their
most wide-scale release yet, the surprisingly scary horror/comedy Club
Dread hit theaters, we talked to the quintet about their latest film,
the evolution of their unit and of course, snozberries.
1-42 :: Why do you think you guys succeeded
from the get-go, going back to the origins of Broken Lizard at Colgate?
Heffernan: Everyone wants to make fun of shit on campus, and I think it
was easy for us to make fun of the local campus cop or something, and
everyone thought it was hysterical. So it went over really well.
Soter: And this is like a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. So they
were craving any kind of entertainment.
Lemme: And we gave it to them!
1-42 :: Were there any initiation rites?
Stolhanske: None that would pass decency laws in the United States.
Heffernan: I don’t think so, because everyone was initiated at the
same time.
Soter: (Founder) Jay was way too outnumbered. You’d have one guy
trying to haze 12 people.
1-42 :: At what point did Charred Goosebeak
become Broken Lizard?
Chandrasekhar: We moved to Manhattan and took a year off and drank and
once everyone graduated we re-formed under Broken Lizard. And we had so
many friends from Colgate in New York that we were able fill up rooms
(at comedy clubs) that we were in. And because of that we quickly moved
to Friday and Saturday night primetime slots. Our videos just kept getting
more sophisticated as we made more and did more shows. And then I took
a class at NYU and learned film and how to load a camera and how to light,
how to edit, and became a film editor. From that we were able to make
the jump to film because of technical knowledge.
1-42 :: Will the Lizard ever be fixed?
Chandrasekhar: I hope not.
1-42 :: Were any of your fathers cops? Who
did you base “Super Troopers” on?
Heffernan: It’s funny, whenever we needed some sort of technical
thing, we just made it up. And then later on, when we’d get recognized
by cops, they’d say, “Great job!”
Lemme: Like when Jay comes in and Farva and Rabbit are fighting, and Jay’s
like, “Come on, we got a 1092.” I’d like to know what a
1092 is.
1-42 :: Kevin, how did the Heffernan family
react to your full frontal nudity?
Heffernan: I think they took it in stride. I think my in-laws were a little
more shocked about it. But I think my parents got a strange kick out of
it.
Lemme: Seeing your penis?
Heffernan: No, just the nudity in general.
1-42 :: Are you guys being conscious about
making sure there’s a nice ratio of male: female nudity?
Lemme: Yeah, we like to give something back to the ladies.
Heffernan: The problem was in “Super Troopers,” we were trying
to get more nudity, and some of the actors had a problem with nudity.
And then you look at the movie, and I’m completely nude, and there’s
not enough counteracting female nudity. We rectified that in this movie
(“Club Dread”).
1-42 :: What, exactly, does a snozberry taste
like?
Stolhanske: Like ambrosia. It’s like the nectar of the gods.
1-42 :: How would you describe the type of
comedy and horror in “Club Dread”? It’s not really satire.
Stolhanske: We always want to try to make something different, instead
of what everybody else is doing. And our comedy isn’t necessarily
in the style of parody. It’s like a hyper situational comedy, our
style of movies.
1-42 :: How did co-star Bill Paxton come
into the picture?
Heffernan: He was looking to do some comedy. He tries to mix it up, and
he’s pretty picky about what he does. And he read the script and
thought it was awesome. And at the same time he’d get to do a film
for younger audience that maybe doesn’t know him as well.
Lemme: He has done all these great comedies. Like “Weird Science.”
And “Aliens” and “True Lies,” he’s so funny,
and he’d gotten away from the comedy.
1-42 :: And he was in “Titanic.”
Heffernan. Yes, and he contacted us and we ended up meeting him for dinner
somewhere and he showed up in a beach shirt—
Soter: Bare-chested, unshaven, in a nice Italian restaurant. He had already
become the character. It freaked us out a little bit.
1-42 :: You showed the movie to Jimmy Buffet,
who Paxton’s character is modeled after. How’d he like it?
Chandrasekhar: He loved it. God, he loved it. We really couldn’t
have made it without him. Luckily, he went for it all.
1-42 :: Are there certain creative skills
or comedic abilities that you guys can say each of you individually brings
to the table?
Soter: It’s hard to say, being together as long as we have. It’s
hard for us on the inside to judge the guys’ different roles. But
I bring the Shakespearian, classical aspects.
Heffernan: I can definitively say I am the fat guy.
Stolhankse: Kevin’s the heavy. Kevin’s the ball-buster, as you
can tell from Farva. But I think everyone is going to be pleasantly surprised
by his warm-hearted (character) in “Club Dread.” That was a
real stretch for him, by the way. Lemme’s the filthy one. His mind’s
in the gutter. Soter’s the Roberto Benigni of the group. Jay’s
got the absurdist’s point of view. I’m the kid next door. I’m
the earnest, Midwestern guy. I bring wholesomeness to the group.
1-42 :: Who would win in a fight between
National Lampoon and Broken Lizard?
Heffernan: They’re so amorphoused, I can’t put a face on them.
Lemme: There’s also like 20 of them.
Soter: We could definitely kick the surviving members of Monty Python’s
asses, I think. We could also beat up Kids in the Hall.
Lemme: We could certainly beat up the guys from the State.
1-42 :: Could you have possibly imagined
while in college that you guys would someday be making movies together?
Chandrasekhar: Honestly, this kind of thing is the dream of dreams. Even
within showbiz when I meet actors who’ve been doing it for a long
time. They look at me like, “How are you working with all of your
friends?” It’s tough enough to make it, but to get to make it
with all your friends, it’s just too amazing.
Photo courtesy of http://www.brokenlizard.com/
2004 1-42 Online |
