Ive been a fan of Broken Lizard ever since I got really stoned and went to see Super Troopers in the theatres. Just from that film, I knew that these guys were a tight knit bunch of comedy stars. When their next film, Club Dread, tanked at the box office I was so worried that these guys wouldnt recover. After The Kids in the Hall movie failed it took them years and years before they did anything together again. Even Bob Odenkirk and David Cross have not fully recovered after their movie, Run Ronnie Run, was brutally mishandled. But Broken Lizards director Jay Chandrasekhar kept working doing episodes of Oliver Beene and Arrested Development. Then he directed the film adaptation of The Dukes of Hazzard which was a big hit. That got Broken Lizard a sweet deal with Warner Bros. Their first film with them is Beerfest which is about two American brothers who travel to Germany to spread their grandfather's ashes at Oktoberfest. There they stumble upon a super-secret, centuries old, underground beer games competition. The brothers receive a less than warm welcome from their German cousins who humiliate them. The brothers then assemble a ragtag team of beer drinkers who use their hearts, minds and livers to drink faster, smarter and harder than they ever have before.
I got a chance to visit the set of Beerfest in Albuquerque, New Mexico where Broken Lizard and their crew have recreated Oktoberfest. It certainly is bizarre to see such an iconic party as Oktoberfest against the yellow of Albuquerques deserts and mountains. I was very excited because the scenes they were shooting while I was there were with legendary German actor Jrgen Prochnow in a rare comedic role as the great beer baron of Munich.
While on set I got to interview the stars and co-writers of Beerfest, Steve Lemme and Kevin Heffernan.
Check out the official site for Beerfest
Daniel Robert Epstein: Steve youre rocking the Larry Fine haircut, what is your character in Beerfest?
Steve Lemme: I play a guy named Charlie Finkelstein, who is the geek thats figured everything out scientific about beer. The anatomy of beer, the physics of beer, the geometry of beer. Ive even figured out a way to align the body in such a way that the spine and the organs and throat align to create the perfect chugging instrument. As a scientist I needed to get a perm.
DRE: How much science did you have to learn?
SL: Quite a bit actually. I learned a word. Its one of the longest words in the English language. You know that word antidisestablishmentarianism? This ones longer. Its pneumonoultramicroscopicchillicovolcanokinesis. I throw that around pretty liberally in this film.
DRE: What is it?
SL: Its sort of like osmosis. Its the passage of tiny particles into something else.
DRE: Did you learn how to brew?
SL: Oh yeah. Since the day I was born motherfucker.
DRE: How did you guys come up with the hair?
SL: When we were making Dukes of Hazzard, my original scene got cut. So I was going to do the reshoot, the idea was thrown around about me doing male pattern baldness, which I latched onto and so did everyone else. When that didnt happen, it just seemed like a natural fit to do it for this thing. I modeled it a bit on Sean Penn from Carlitos Way.
DRE: Ive heard that this movie is loosely based on the beer culture at the college Broken Lizard went to, tell me about that.
Kevin Heffernan: They say write what you know, so we decided we would make a beer movie because thats what we learned in college, beer drinking.
SL: Youll see quite a bit of the things we did in college. We drank so much that we got so bored with it so we came up with new ways to do it. We have the monkey chugs in this movie, which is upside down and you race drinking beer in the roof of your mouth, which is easier said than done. You realize every time you try to do it, you instinctively put it up to your chin and then you spill the beer all over your face.
KH: I think the real inspiration was this trip that we took to Australia to promote Super Troopers. They sent us to a beer festival, which was interesting because we dont really get that here. We ended up having a chug off against five Australian guys.
SL: They wanted us to get up there in the cop uniforms. They were getting so ridiculous about the cop uniforms. They sent us on a radio interview in our cop uniforms. We were like, But nobody can see us. They were like, For the energy!
DRE: Who won?
KH: Never drink against an Australian.
But thats why did this movie, so that we could beat everyone else in a scripted way. Now we beat the Australians.
SL: I will say this though, the guys who play the German team in this movie did challenge us to a similar race and we beat them. Its going on the DVD. If we had lost it would not be on the DVD.
DRE: There is a German character in Super Troopers as well.
SL: Thats Philippe Brenninkmeyer. Hes in Beerfest as well.
DRE: Is he part of the German team?
KH: No, he plays the Master of ceremonies at Beerfest. Hes flamboyant and has this funny costume.
DRE: Is he actually German?
KH: He is actually Dutch, but hes a big TV star in Germany. Hes on a show called Sisters.
DRE: How did some of the non Broken Lizard guys do with the chugging?
KH: It was funny though because Will Forte came in and chugged a gigantic thing incredibly fast. Then he went outside and puked in the parking lot.
DRE: Kevin, what character do you play?
KH: My characters name is Phil Krundle, aka Landfill because Im the guy who drinks and eats anything and everything.
SL: Hes Bruce the Shark.
KH: License plates and shoes and stuff. They get me on the team to be that guy.
DRE: So if you bring your experiences from college to this film, do you bring some of your bad experiences too? Obviously people who drink a lot of beer have some bad nights too.
SL: No, its all glorified. In a beautiful glow.
DRE: There are no beer goggles?
KH: Theres a little bit of beer goggles in there actually.
SL: We have a very intense beer goggles scene actually.
DRE: Are there any big stunts?
KH: I think in this theres a lot more physical comedy than in the other movies. For example I get into a huge fistfight with MoNique. Were thinking that shell break out some karate on me.
DRE: Steve your real life girlfriend [Blanchard Ryan] plays Kevins wife!
SL: Yes its true. But I didnt really get her into the movie. In fact, when you see her, shes actually the perfect girl for the part.
KH: She is perfect. We actually have a lovemaking scene.
SL: Theyre going to go at it animal fashion.
KH: Thats really why shes in the movie. No, Im just kidding.
DRE: Steve, do you have any love scenes?
KH: Steve gets seduced by the Swedish drinking team.
SL: When you first meet my character, my occupation is that Im in cloning. I work for the National Institute of Health and I extract frog zygote manually. Its actually a real thing a good friend of mine does for a living. He masturbates frogs for a living. Im not kidding. I dont want to say too much about what happens in my sex scene, but lets just say I frog the Swedish girl.
DRE: Of the five guys in Broken Lizard, who gets picked on the most?
KH: Steve.
DRE: Why is that?
KH: Hes the shortest. The shortest guy always gets the most heat and he does.
SL: Or some could say the most successful looking fella. Right?
KH: Okay. I like that. I bulked up for the movie man. Come on.
SL: I know.
DRE: There was a little Super Troopers bit in Dukes of Hazzard. Are there any other callbacks in Beerfest?
KH: We brought back a couple of the guys who played the local cops but they dont play the characters they played in Super Troopers.
SL: I dont think we have any real callbacks.
KH: We have a call back from Puddle Cruiser, which was our first movie.
SL: Whats that one?
KH: Domingo.
SL: Oh right. Domingo. I dont know if any of you have seen Puddle Cruiser, but theres a little Flamenco dancer.
KH: We brought him back.
SL: He puts pickles on the table.
KH: We brought some guys from Club Dread back. Theyre sort of like the two homophobic guys who run around and get stoned.
DRE: Can you talk about recreating Germany in Albuquerque?
KH: Its weird. New Mexico is giving filmmakers lots of rebates and breaks and stuff, so Warner Bros said, You will go to Albuquerque and shoot Beerfest there. Ultimately the art design guys did a great job.
SL: In our research for this movie, we looked up Oktoberfest and we found out a number of surprising things. It is a carnival atmosphere, they do not have beer until the beermeister taps the ceremonial festival and Oktoberfest starts in September because October is too cold. We are fairly accurate with the bands and schnitzel and spleen eating contests and all that. In terms of Albuquerque, the crew here is without a doubt the best crew weve ever had and the art department has taken this movie to whole other level.
They have built a ton of fantastic stuff but you cant beat the 100,000 plus people who go to Oktoberfest. It would be nice to get one shot of that.
DRE: So much of Club Dread was the atmosphere of being there.
KH: That was shot at a place called Tamarindo, which is on the west coast of Mexico, about four hours south of Puerto Vallarta. It was a really nice resort and it was a time when tourism was down because of 9/11 and it was hurricane season. We were able to go down there and take over the resort and shoot there a few months.
DRE: I heard that everyday you guys would just go jump in the ocean and hang out.
KH: Super Troopers was shot in Poughkeepsie, which is a lovely place, but afterward we said Lets figure out a warm place to go shoot a movie.
SL: We invented a stupid game called Wet Ball, which you could play with a Nerf football or a bunch of tennis balls. Theres two teams, no score, and from 30 yards away you would try to hit the other guy in the face with the wet ball.
One time we were in the ocean and Kevin and I were on opposite teams and I said, Watch this, and I heaved as hard as I could and I hit him in the left eyeball with the thing. I was very upset about it. After that he was eyeballing me from the other side.
DRE: Are you guys doing any beer contests after shooting?
KH: After you drink 30 gallons of ODouls in a day, you dont want to drink anymore. Its curing our beer drinking.
SL: You wake up in the morning, show up on set and realize the first shot of the day is you chugging an entire beer.
KH: Shotgunning an ODouls.
SL: Jay [Chandrasekhar] is a coverage freak, so youre doing it at least four times.
DRE: They were talking about making darker German beers by pouring Diet Coke in the ODouls. How foul was that?
KH: It got a little ridiculous because some of the German guys were like, I cant do this anymore. I am done! Diet Coke and beer would be a great drink to serve at a restaurant.
DRE: Are you guys losing a lot of time with bathroom breaks?
SL: You see us running to the bathroom.
KH: Its weird because youll drink six ODouls and you wont feel drunk at all, but you go to the bathroom every 15 minutes. Its like being 65 years old.
DRE: Have you guys thought of any good drinking games to go along with the movie?
KH: There was talk about creating our own drinking games, but there are so many already that you dont have to create them.
SL: People came up to us after Super Troopers and said, Oh we invented a drinking game, anytime one of you swears, you have to drink.
DRE: Youd last 11 minutes!
SL: I know that Warner Bros suggested creating a drinking game for the movie, just a dot that appears every few seconds.
KH: The new one is that since we reused a lot of the extras, you put a picture of the extra up and every time you see that guy in the movie, you drink.
DRE: Kevin, are you going to be naked again in this?
KH: I guess Im supposed to be, but I dont know if Ill subject the world to that.
DRE: Everybody has their moment. You have yours in Super Troopers, Jay has his with the tuck in Club Dread.
SL: The mangina.
I had a speedo in Club Dread and my naked ass is in Puddle Cruiser and Super Troopers.
We had a very funny experience when we were making Club Dread. This guy Mike Weaver, who was one of the local cops in Super Troopers, left the dinner table and came back 15 minutes later laughing. You could hear him down the hall. He told us this story about how he has a gay friend whos into bears, in the gay community theyre big hairy guys. This gay friend of his was a bear lover and had been on a bear website. He saw this photo of the Bear of the Day. It was a still from Super Troopers of Mike hosing and brushing down Kevin in the show. So Kevin was actually the bear of the day.
KH: I didnt get a trophy or anything. The next day some other guy was Bear of the Day. Its cruel.
SL: We have a friend of ours who is a bear himself and a bear lover who corrected us and said that Kevin is not a bear because he doesnt have any hair on his body. Hes an otter. I was like, What am I? He was like, Youre a twink. Actually a twink could kick your ass, since a twink works out really hard. Youre just a short gay guy. Theres no category for me.
DRE: Kevin, besides Broken Lizard you are acting in a lot of other films.
KH: Yeah, I did a movie right before this called Strange Wilderness, which is really funny with Steve Zahn and Justin Long and Ashley Scott. Its a Happy Madison movie. I think its going to come out probably in the fall. Its about a late night wilderness show and they go in search of Bigfoot.
DRE: How excited are you guys about the three year production deal with Warner Bros?
KH: Its great because they gave us an office. Its a good place.
SL: Its nice. After Club Dread we thought we might have one foot in the grave. With Dukes of Hazzard, the one guy that we really needed to impress was Jeff Robinov, who is the head of the studio. Somehow he took a fancy to what we were doing.
In fact we had walked out of a particularly distasteful meeting at a place, I wont say where, and said Oh God. This a terrible situation were in here. We got the news about Warner Bros literally as we walked out.
KH: Its good though. It allows us to write movies for Warner Bros and Jay can direct movies for Warner Bros and then at the same time, we can make these movies.
DRE: What does it mean to be on the Warner Bros payroll?
KH: Its so great because the interesting thing is that Warner Bros has been more into the big blockbuster action movies. They havent been in the comedy world so much and they really want to be there. Its flattering that they would like us to come in and help them find things to create. Last year The 40 Year Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers showed that you could make big budget R rated comedies that are appealing to a lot of people. I think they want to get into that business and we are happy to help them.
SL: No disrespect to Fox/Searchlight, but when they bought Super Troopers and then they gave us the chance to make Club Dread, I dont know that they trusted us so much. But Warner Bros is taking us as an established entity. I think its been a great relationship. With Beerfest they havent really given us notes since we started shooting.
DRE: Jay said that he was honored and flattered at the Razzie nominations for The Dukes of Hazzard.
KH: I can see that. He didnt win though.
SL: Im sorry he didnt win.
KH: Yeah. It wouldve been great if he had won.
DRE: What would you have done?
KH: I think we would send him a nice basket of flowers. Maybe some muffins.
SL: The fun part was that the script for Dukes of Hazzard was up for worst screenplay. We went through a particularly nasty arbitration and did not get credit for it. We were hoping it would win worst screenplay because we had nights where we would spend the entire evening discussing what we were going to send those screenwriters as a gift.
DRE: Jay was the point man for the Super Troopers script and Kevin you are point man for Beerfest. Why is that?
KH: I think it was a matter of how it felt. Steve was a point man on another script that we wrote, which we did not make. Erik [Stolhanske] was point man on a script we wrote for Paramount last year that didnt get made. It gets shifted around.
SL: Greek Road is something weve been working on since a couple years after college. Its the one weve been dying to do forever. After Club Dread we came up with a contingency plan which was that we wrote a low budget script that we could do for two million bucks, we wrote Beerfest as something we could do for maybe between five and ten.
KH: Yeah, we wrote the two million dollar one after Club Dread just in case we couldnt get the money. Thats the one Steve was point man on.
SL: Wed still like to do that one. Its a fun thing that takes place in a restaurant. Essentially Mike Tyson owns a seafood restaurant and we are the waiters in the place.
KH: He rules by fear.
SL: He rules by intimidation and fear.
DRE: Did you talk to Mike Tyson about being in the movie?
KH: We would lose production days.
SL: We should be careful what we say here. [in Tyson voice] Lemme log onto some websites to see whats up with Broken Lizard. WHAT? Steve Lemme, whos he? Im going to get him. Im going to eat his face.
DRE: Do you ever hear about cops doing the games from Super Troopers?
KH: We get guys coming up to us all the time. There were two cops who got suspended for doing the Meow Game. When I was shooting another movie in Pasadena, two cops came up to me and said they do it all the time.
SL: I had an experience where I was driving on the freeway after I had just gotten my new car. It was this straight, perfect highway about 300 miles long and I was doing about 120. It was nighttime and I realized I had been doing this for about four hours and hadnt been pulled over by a cop yet. I was reveling in this when I looked up and saw the cop car behind me. I was trembling, I was going to jail and looking at a big, heavy fine. I rolled down the drivers side window and I waited and I waited and the tap came from the other side. I rolled down the window and he looked at me and said, Mister, do you have any idea how fast Super Troopers? I was like, You got me, and he was like, We do all those games! We do the Meow Game, we call dispatcher Radio, he hates that. Then there was an awkward silence and he says I had you at 110. I was like, Yeah you sure did he said, Ill tell you what, Ill let you off with a warning on this one. Are you in a rush to get someplace? I was like, Uh, no, no, honestly, I was just driving too fast. He says, Good, can I trouble you for a photo and an autograph? I said, sure and I got out and he came to me and his hands were trembling as he brought a carbon copy of the speeding ticket he wanted me to sign. He had his camera and he put his arm around me and took a photo of the two of us. Cops have a sense of humor, which is how the idea for Super Troopers came about. Thats why they love us.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
I got a chance to visit the set of Beerfest in Albuquerque, New Mexico where Broken Lizard and their crew have recreated Oktoberfest. It certainly is bizarre to see such an iconic party as Oktoberfest against the yellow of Albuquerques deserts and mountains. I was very excited because the scenes they were shooting while I was there were with legendary German actor Jrgen Prochnow in a rare comedic role as the great beer baron of Munich.
While on set I got to interview the stars and co-writers of Beerfest, Steve Lemme and Kevin Heffernan.
Check out the official site for Beerfest
Daniel Robert Epstein: Steve youre rocking the Larry Fine haircut, what is your character in Beerfest?
Steve Lemme: I play a guy named Charlie Finkelstein, who is the geek thats figured everything out scientific about beer. The anatomy of beer, the physics of beer, the geometry of beer. Ive even figured out a way to align the body in such a way that the spine and the organs and throat align to create the perfect chugging instrument. As a scientist I needed to get a perm.
DRE: How much science did you have to learn?
SL: Quite a bit actually. I learned a word. Its one of the longest words in the English language. You know that word antidisestablishmentarianism? This ones longer. Its pneumonoultramicroscopicchillicovolcanokinesis. I throw that around pretty liberally in this film.
DRE: What is it?
SL: Its sort of like osmosis. Its the passage of tiny particles into something else.
DRE: Did you learn how to brew?
SL: Oh yeah. Since the day I was born motherfucker.
DRE: How did you guys come up with the hair?
SL: When we were making Dukes of Hazzard, my original scene got cut. So I was going to do the reshoot, the idea was thrown around about me doing male pattern baldness, which I latched onto and so did everyone else. When that didnt happen, it just seemed like a natural fit to do it for this thing. I modeled it a bit on Sean Penn from Carlitos Way.
DRE: Ive heard that this movie is loosely based on the beer culture at the college Broken Lizard went to, tell me about that.
Kevin Heffernan: They say write what you know, so we decided we would make a beer movie because thats what we learned in college, beer drinking.
SL: Youll see quite a bit of the things we did in college. We drank so much that we got so bored with it so we came up with new ways to do it. We have the monkey chugs in this movie, which is upside down and you race drinking beer in the roof of your mouth, which is easier said than done. You realize every time you try to do it, you instinctively put it up to your chin and then you spill the beer all over your face.
KH: I think the real inspiration was this trip that we took to Australia to promote Super Troopers. They sent us to a beer festival, which was interesting because we dont really get that here. We ended up having a chug off against five Australian guys.
SL: They wanted us to get up there in the cop uniforms. They were getting so ridiculous about the cop uniforms. They sent us on a radio interview in our cop uniforms. We were like, But nobody can see us. They were like, For the energy!
DRE: Who won?
KH: Never drink against an Australian.
But thats why did this movie, so that we could beat everyone else in a scripted way. Now we beat the Australians.
SL: I will say this though, the guys who play the German team in this movie did challenge us to a similar race and we beat them. Its going on the DVD. If we had lost it would not be on the DVD.
DRE: There is a German character in Super Troopers as well.
SL: Thats Philippe Brenninkmeyer. Hes in Beerfest as well.
DRE: Is he part of the German team?
KH: No, he plays the Master of ceremonies at Beerfest. Hes flamboyant and has this funny costume.
DRE: Is he actually German?
KH: He is actually Dutch, but hes a big TV star in Germany. Hes on a show called Sisters.
DRE: How did some of the non Broken Lizard guys do with the chugging?
KH: It was funny though because Will Forte came in and chugged a gigantic thing incredibly fast. Then he went outside and puked in the parking lot.
DRE: Kevin, what character do you play?
KH: My characters name is Phil Krundle, aka Landfill because Im the guy who drinks and eats anything and everything.
SL: Hes Bruce the Shark.
KH: License plates and shoes and stuff. They get me on the team to be that guy.
DRE: So if you bring your experiences from college to this film, do you bring some of your bad experiences too? Obviously people who drink a lot of beer have some bad nights too.
SL: No, its all glorified. In a beautiful glow.
DRE: There are no beer goggles?
KH: Theres a little bit of beer goggles in there actually.
SL: We have a very intense beer goggles scene actually.
DRE: Are there any big stunts?
KH: I think in this theres a lot more physical comedy than in the other movies. For example I get into a huge fistfight with MoNique. Were thinking that shell break out some karate on me.
DRE: Steve your real life girlfriend [Blanchard Ryan] plays Kevins wife!
SL: Yes its true. But I didnt really get her into the movie. In fact, when you see her, shes actually the perfect girl for the part.
KH: She is perfect. We actually have a lovemaking scene.
SL: Theyre going to go at it animal fashion.
KH: Thats really why shes in the movie. No, Im just kidding.
DRE: Steve, do you have any love scenes?
KH: Steve gets seduced by the Swedish drinking team.
SL: When you first meet my character, my occupation is that Im in cloning. I work for the National Institute of Health and I extract frog zygote manually. Its actually a real thing a good friend of mine does for a living. He masturbates frogs for a living. Im not kidding. I dont want to say too much about what happens in my sex scene, but lets just say I frog the Swedish girl.
DRE: Of the five guys in Broken Lizard, who gets picked on the most?
KH: Steve.
DRE: Why is that?
KH: Hes the shortest. The shortest guy always gets the most heat and he does.
SL: Or some could say the most successful looking fella. Right?
KH: Okay. I like that. I bulked up for the movie man. Come on.
SL: I know.
DRE: There was a little Super Troopers bit in Dukes of Hazzard. Are there any other callbacks in Beerfest?
KH: We brought back a couple of the guys who played the local cops but they dont play the characters they played in Super Troopers.
SL: I dont think we have any real callbacks.
KH: We have a call back from Puddle Cruiser, which was our first movie.
SL: Whats that one?
KH: Domingo.
SL: Oh right. Domingo. I dont know if any of you have seen Puddle Cruiser, but theres a little Flamenco dancer.
KH: We brought him back.
SL: He puts pickles on the table.
KH: We brought some guys from Club Dread back. Theyre sort of like the two homophobic guys who run around and get stoned.
DRE: Can you talk about recreating Germany in Albuquerque?
KH: Its weird. New Mexico is giving filmmakers lots of rebates and breaks and stuff, so Warner Bros said, You will go to Albuquerque and shoot Beerfest there. Ultimately the art design guys did a great job.
SL: In our research for this movie, we looked up Oktoberfest and we found out a number of surprising things. It is a carnival atmosphere, they do not have beer until the beermeister taps the ceremonial festival and Oktoberfest starts in September because October is too cold. We are fairly accurate with the bands and schnitzel and spleen eating contests and all that. In terms of Albuquerque, the crew here is without a doubt the best crew weve ever had and the art department has taken this movie to whole other level.
They have built a ton of fantastic stuff but you cant beat the 100,000 plus people who go to Oktoberfest. It would be nice to get one shot of that.
DRE: So much of Club Dread was the atmosphere of being there.
KH: That was shot at a place called Tamarindo, which is on the west coast of Mexico, about four hours south of Puerto Vallarta. It was a really nice resort and it was a time when tourism was down because of 9/11 and it was hurricane season. We were able to go down there and take over the resort and shoot there a few months.
DRE: I heard that everyday you guys would just go jump in the ocean and hang out.
KH: Super Troopers was shot in Poughkeepsie, which is a lovely place, but afterward we said Lets figure out a warm place to go shoot a movie.
SL: We invented a stupid game called Wet Ball, which you could play with a Nerf football or a bunch of tennis balls. Theres two teams, no score, and from 30 yards away you would try to hit the other guy in the face with the wet ball.
One time we were in the ocean and Kevin and I were on opposite teams and I said, Watch this, and I heaved as hard as I could and I hit him in the left eyeball with the thing. I was very upset about it. After that he was eyeballing me from the other side.
DRE: Are you guys doing any beer contests after shooting?
KH: After you drink 30 gallons of ODouls in a day, you dont want to drink anymore. Its curing our beer drinking.
SL: You wake up in the morning, show up on set and realize the first shot of the day is you chugging an entire beer.
KH: Shotgunning an ODouls.
SL: Jay [Chandrasekhar] is a coverage freak, so youre doing it at least four times.
DRE: They were talking about making darker German beers by pouring Diet Coke in the ODouls. How foul was that?
KH: It got a little ridiculous because some of the German guys were like, I cant do this anymore. I am done! Diet Coke and beer would be a great drink to serve at a restaurant.
DRE: Are you guys losing a lot of time with bathroom breaks?
SL: You see us running to the bathroom.
KH: Its weird because youll drink six ODouls and you wont feel drunk at all, but you go to the bathroom every 15 minutes. Its like being 65 years old.
DRE: Have you guys thought of any good drinking games to go along with the movie?
KH: There was talk about creating our own drinking games, but there are so many already that you dont have to create them.
SL: People came up to us after Super Troopers and said, Oh we invented a drinking game, anytime one of you swears, you have to drink.
DRE: Youd last 11 minutes!
SL: I know that Warner Bros suggested creating a drinking game for the movie, just a dot that appears every few seconds.
KH: The new one is that since we reused a lot of the extras, you put a picture of the extra up and every time you see that guy in the movie, you drink.
DRE: Kevin, are you going to be naked again in this?
KH: I guess Im supposed to be, but I dont know if Ill subject the world to that.
DRE: Everybody has their moment. You have yours in Super Troopers, Jay has his with the tuck in Club Dread.
SL: The mangina.
I had a speedo in Club Dread and my naked ass is in Puddle Cruiser and Super Troopers.
We had a very funny experience when we were making Club Dread. This guy Mike Weaver, who was one of the local cops in Super Troopers, left the dinner table and came back 15 minutes later laughing. You could hear him down the hall. He told us this story about how he has a gay friend whos into bears, in the gay community theyre big hairy guys. This gay friend of his was a bear lover and had been on a bear website. He saw this photo of the Bear of the Day. It was a still from Super Troopers of Mike hosing and brushing down Kevin in the show. So Kevin was actually the bear of the day.
KH: I didnt get a trophy or anything. The next day some other guy was Bear of the Day. Its cruel.
SL: We have a friend of ours who is a bear himself and a bear lover who corrected us and said that Kevin is not a bear because he doesnt have any hair on his body. Hes an otter. I was like, What am I? He was like, Youre a twink. Actually a twink could kick your ass, since a twink works out really hard. Youre just a short gay guy. Theres no category for me.
DRE: Kevin, besides Broken Lizard you are acting in a lot of other films.
KH: Yeah, I did a movie right before this called Strange Wilderness, which is really funny with Steve Zahn and Justin Long and Ashley Scott. Its a Happy Madison movie. I think its going to come out probably in the fall. Its about a late night wilderness show and they go in search of Bigfoot.
DRE: How excited are you guys about the three year production deal with Warner Bros?
KH: Its great because they gave us an office. Its a good place.
SL: Its nice. After Club Dread we thought we might have one foot in the grave. With Dukes of Hazzard, the one guy that we really needed to impress was Jeff Robinov, who is the head of the studio. Somehow he took a fancy to what we were doing.
In fact we had walked out of a particularly distasteful meeting at a place, I wont say where, and said Oh God. This a terrible situation were in here. We got the news about Warner Bros literally as we walked out.
KH: Its good though. It allows us to write movies for Warner Bros and Jay can direct movies for Warner Bros and then at the same time, we can make these movies.
DRE: What does it mean to be on the Warner Bros payroll?
KH: Its so great because the interesting thing is that Warner Bros has been more into the big blockbuster action movies. They havent been in the comedy world so much and they really want to be there. Its flattering that they would like us to come in and help them find things to create. Last year The 40 Year Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers showed that you could make big budget R rated comedies that are appealing to a lot of people. I think they want to get into that business and we are happy to help them.
SL: No disrespect to Fox/Searchlight, but when they bought Super Troopers and then they gave us the chance to make Club Dread, I dont know that they trusted us so much. But Warner Bros is taking us as an established entity. I think its been a great relationship. With Beerfest they havent really given us notes since we started shooting.
DRE: Jay said that he was honored and flattered at the Razzie nominations for The Dukes of Hazzard.
KH: I can see that. He didnt win though.
SL: Im sorry he didnt win.
KH: Yeah. It wouldve been great if he had won.
DRE: What would you have done?
KH: I think we would send him a nice basket of flowers. Maybe some muffins.
SL: The fun part was that the script for Dukes of Hazzard was up for worst screenplay. We went through a particularly nasty arbitration and did not get credit for it. We were hoping it would win worst screenplay because we had nights where we would spend the entire evening discussing what we were going to send those screenwriters as a gift.
DRE: Jay was the point man for the Super Troopers script and Kevin you are point man for Beerfest. Why is that?
KH: I think it was a matter of how it felt. Steve was a point man on another script that we wrote, which we did not make. Erik [Stolhanske] was point man on a script we wrote for Paramount last year that didnt get made. It gets shifted around.
SL: Greek Road is something weve been working on since a couple years after college. Its the one weve been dying to do forever. After Club Dread we came up with a contingency plan which was that we wrote a low budget script that we could do for two million bucks, we wrote Beerfest as something we could do for maybe between five and ten.
KH: Yeah, we wrote the two million dollar one after Club Dread just in case we couldnt get the money. Thats the one Steve was point man on.
SL: Wed still like to do that one. Its a fun thing that takes place in a restaurant. Essentially Mike Tyson owns a seafood restaurant and we are the waiters in the place.
KH: He rules by fear.
SL: He rules by intimidation and fear.
DRE: Did you talk to Mike Tyson about being in the movie?
KH: We would lose production days.
SL: We should be careful what we say here. [in Tyson voice] Lemme log onto some websites to see whats up with Broken Lizard. WHAT? Steve Lemme, whos he? Im going to get him. Im going to eat his face.
DRE: Do you ever hear about cops doing the games from Super Troopers?
KH: We get guys coming up to us all the time. There were two cops who got suspended for doing the Meow Game. When I was shooting another movie in Pasadena, two cops came up to me and said they do it all the time.
SL: I had an experience where I was driving on the freeway after I had just gotten my new car. It was this straight, perfect highway about 300 miles long and I was doing about 120. It was nighttime and I realized I had been doing this for about four hours and hadnt been pulled over by a cop yet. I was reveling in this when I looked up and saw the cop car behind me. I was trembling, I was going to jail and looking at a big, heavy fine. I rolled down the drivers side window and I waited and I waited and the tap came from the other side. I rolled down the window and he looked at me and said, Mister, do you have any idea how fast Super Troopers? I was like, You got me, and he was like, We do all those games! We do the Meow Game, we call dispatcher Radio, he hates that. Then there was an awkward silence and he says I had you at 110. I was like, Yeah you sure did he said, Ill tell you what, Ill let you off with a warning on this one. Are you in a rush to get someplace? I was like, Uh, no, no, honestly, I was just driving too fast. He says, Good, can I trouble you for a photo and an autograph? I said, sure and I got out and he came to me and his hands were trembling as he brought a carbon copy of the speeding ticket he wanted me to sign. He had his camera and he put his arm around me and took a photo of the two of us. Cops have a sense of humor, which is how the idea for Super Troopers came about. Thats why they love us.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
AndersWolleck said:
no, its a word he made up
Ah, okay. I only mention it because my incredibly nerdy friends and I had a competition going to see who could memorize the longest word way back when. That was the winner.
Cheers, though. I can't wait to see this movie.