By Gill Pringle
The first film has been hugely popular in Australia.
Jay Chandrasekhar: Well, we went down there and did a press tour for ten days. And introduced ourselves to Australia. We loved it. And we were sad that we couldn’t go back this time. As soon as I heard the date, I called International and was like, ‘change the date, we’ll go down there’. And they said, ‘it’s too much prep, everything’s already in play.’ So, my heart is broken not going to Australia.
Erik Stolhanske: Yeah, that press tour we did was amazing.
Do you have any particularly funny Australian memories from that?
Steve Lemme: It was funny, because nobody knew who we were, when we went down there the first time. And we went to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. And, I’d say that for me, there were two that really stood out. We went to the opening – well, it wasn’t the opening of a tyre store, it was the new season of a tyre store, they were unveiling some new tyres, and we went in our Super Troopers uniforms, to do some promotion there, and the people there were like, ‘eh, who the hell are these guys?’ So that was just a little awkward.
ES: We cut ribbon. At a mini mall. At a tyre store. On a Sunday. Dressed like American cops. It was so weird.
Did you go and see kangaroos and do that stuff?
JC: We saw kangaroos just hopping around. Actually, I found out that female kangaroos have three vaginas. I saw that on my twitter feed today.
SL: Does that mean that male kangaroos have three dicks?
JC: I don’t think they do! I just think that, in addition to having that great pouch, they’ve got three vaginas.
SL: Interesting. You learn something new every day. Can they make three babies?
JC: I don’t know.
SL: They also took us to like a beer festival in a beer garden. And we went up on stage, and we thought, if we’re going to come here in our uniforms, let’s go on stage and challenge somebody to a beer drinking competition. We did that, and we went up against a bachelor party.
JC: We were winning dramatically, we just have one guy who’s a very slow drinker. He’s not here, but they ended up barely beating us. But they were shocked that these Yanks were kicking their asses.
SL: We earned their respect.
JC: So then we challenged them to an arm wrestling contest, and we won that.
SL: We turned it into a free for all, then, little pockets of people were chugging against each other, arm wrestling against each other, it got pretty rowdy and we had to be whisked away in a van.
JC: And that was the origin of our film Beerfest. That Australian moment.
SL: That was also when Fox Searchlight gave us the nickname Broken Lizard. They meant it as a derogatory thing, but we were like, ‘yes, sweet nickname!’
Going back to the inception of Broken Lizard, so you guys have known each other for thirty years.
ES: Since we were teenagers, eighteen.
JC: We were friends before we had any ambition, right? We were friends before we had any idea what we would do with our lives. So, it was a real friendship, it wasn’t just, ‘oh, we’re in the same movie together.’ It was, ‘oh, we’re friends, let’s make a movie’, which means, I’m still friends with people from high school, there’s no reason not to be.
You didn’t do Super Troopers 2 immediately because you didn’t want to only be known for that? So, what made you decide that now was the right time, and did you worry that you’d missed the boat?
JC: We certainly worried that we’d missed the boat, but, Law and Order did 250 episodes of their show, we just made another one, we just did another cop show. And there are many shows across show business. We made another one and we put some references in to the old film. Also, once you get a crew cut and put that moustache on, it’s not that huge a jump.
SL: In terms of not doing it right away, also, for us, the thing that we wanted to be the most was Monty Python. They never did the same thing twice, it wasn’t like they made Holy Grail and then did another version of it. So for us, as comedians, and guys who started out doing sketch comedy, making more movies meant, ‘great, never being the same characters twice’. And like, he’s the romantic lead in the next one, and I’m the scummy asshole in the next one. So that was part of the fun, keeping it mixed up. But I think, over the years as it became clear that people had really, really gravitated towards Super Troopers, it became like, we missed that world, we missed those characters. It seemed like a good idea.
Paul Soter: It might’ve been a little naïve too, like perhaps we should have done Super Troopers 2. Truthfully speaking, these guys chugged two bottles of maple syrup each and got violently ill for a minute, he was naked, covered in powdered sugar with his manhood hanging out, in front of his family, and I think we realised, when you write these things you do have to shoot them at some point. We joked about, ‘let’s pitch an idea where we’re on a tropical island surrounded by girls in bikinis’ and they went for it, and that was what we did next. Club Dread. It was such a tonal shift for our audience.
What was it like getting Brian Cox back, and also, how did you convince Rob Lowe and Emmanuelle [Chriqui] to be a part of this?
Kevin Heffernan: Well with Brian, we had run into him maybe five years after the first movie, and he couldn’t stop talking about how this was the most recognised he gets, when people stop him on the streets, it was mostly for Super Troopers, so even at that point he was eager to revisit the character, so he was happy to home back. And with Rob and Emmanuelle, Jay had worked with them.
JC: With Emmanuelle, I had auditioned her for an Amazon pilot I did and we became friends, jut texting here and there. I knew she spoke French, and we needed a French-speaking funny person. And she’s Canadian, so I called her and said, ‘would you do this part?’ She said, ‘you mean audition for the part?’ I said, ‘no, do the part’. ‘Fuck yeah!’ And then Rob, I’ve always wanted to work with him, so it was a real joy. I directed him in his show The Grinder, which he did with Fred Savage. I directed four episodes of that, and at the end I said, ‘would you ever consider being in Super Troopers 2?’ And he said, ‘yes, any part, I don’t need to see the script, I’m in’. And Fred’s right there, he goes, ‘what about me?’ So we gave him a part too.
Have you been to Canada yet with the film? What was the response?
ES: We went to Toronto a couple of weeks ago, and there’s a quick joke that comes at the beginning of the movie. And then we made seven more jokes at the Canadians’ expense, and on each one you can hear their mood getting less and less enthusiastic, and being like, ‘oh, so this is the way it’s going to be, eh?’ And then they start coming back to us, and then they’re roaring with laughter. Once they realised what the dynamic was going to be…
JC: Once they saw it was going to go back and forth both ways, because the way the movie’s structured, it’s all us bitching about having to go to Canada, so it’s a bunch of pot shots, and then when we get there, it opens the flood gates.
ES: And the Mounties start taking pot shots at us. Stuff that we’re saying about them is just stereotypes. But the stuff they’re saying back to us is reality, and it’s good stuff. They’re drilling us.
Did you go to any Canadians for input with the script?
JC: Well, we tried to hire as many Canadians as possible. Two out of three of the Mounties are real Canadians, Emmanuelle’s a real Canadian, shot probably 140 days in Canada, so I’ve spent a lot of time with Canadians… I mean, it’s right next door. So we have a pretty good sense of how they feel.
ES: The cool thing about Canadians is, I find them to be very similar to Australians, in that they really like to take the piss out of themselves. They have a sense of humour, they’re self-deprecating. They’re like Americans without all the hang-ups that we have. It’s enjoyable to go to those countries because everybody’s so light-hearted and having a great time.
What was the hardest scene to shoot?
JC: The bear because it spoke English, but it didn’t, you didn’t totally trust a 1700-pound bear. And you know, it was five feet away, growling, working for meat, and you’re like ‘I’m made of meat’. It was fine when it was hitting its mark and doing everything, but we had to have it run, and that requires putting a pillow on a fishing wire and reeling it in, and the bear chases the thing. Once it chases that thing, I said, ‘hey, can we do another take?’ And the guys said no, because the bear’s in kill mode now. So, we got to put the bear away, in the cage, and nobody should look at the bear in the cage, because if it sees you looking at it, when we open the cage it’s going to come and tell you who’s really in charge. So, we just walked by, it’s in there snorting and ‘arrrrggghh’.
ES: The bear’s not a very generous scene partner. By the way, you know how in articles, you have an interview with a very enlarged quote?
PS: A pull quote?
ES: I’d like, ‘I’m made of meat’ – Jay.
PS: It’d be a great pull quote.
So when you’re writing the script, who decides who’s going to be the love interest?
PS: It kind of rotates.
ES: It’s not the best thing in the world.
KH: It’s regarded as a burden more than anything else, because you’re always like, ‘these are the scenes that are going to get fast-forwarded through’. The alternative is to always be an idiot and be as funny as you can possibly be, but inevitably, as funny as the movie is, there’s got to be some degree of sincerity in these scenes, but you feel like a dope, you’re like, ‘oh, so now I’m being this guy’.
ES: You’re getting tooled on. Like the first movie we made was Puddle Cruiser, before Super Troopers, and I had the dubious honour of being the romantic guy in that. There’s a scene in the rain where we’re kissing, and actual dialogue, like, ‘you said you were broken up with him!’ You look off camera and the guys are giving you the bird, and after that I was like, ‘I don’t want to do that again, I’m not doing that again, just jokes’. But then the grass is greener, you see this guy making out with the girl in the next movie, like, ‘I miss that’.
You’ve been talking about a third Super Troopers?
JC: Super Troopers 3: Winter Soldiers.
PS: He wants to put us in the snow.
So there’s no Captain America reference, you just want to be in the snow?
JC: Captain America’s retiring, right? He’s got a great moustache, he can join us.
PS: Crossovers are all the rage.
ES: It’s funny, because Jay really wants us to do that in the winter, and I don’t disagree that it’d be nice to change our look, but we were just up in Burlington, Vermont. We open the door to the van and immediately Jay was like, ‘It’s cold up here! I don’t have the right coat!’
JC: Jay’s got three words for you: battery powered socks.
KH: Every time we say we’re not shooting in the snow, he says, ‘battery powered socks’.
ES: But we shot Super Troopers 2, the scene on horseback, in like 45-degree weather, and Jay was like, ‘I can’t feel my face! I can’t speak, I can’t tell jokes!’
Kevin, what kind of law do you practice?
KH: Oh, I never did practice, I graduated from law school, and then we shot our first film that summer. I took the bar exam in the event that we were a failure, hedging my bets, and then we ended up moving out here to make more movies. I got the degree, I got admitted to the bar, but I never practiced.
Did you never consider getting admitted to the bar in California and becoming the band’s lawyer?
KH: No, you wouldn’t want to do that with these guys.
PS: The first contract we signed, there was a huge loophole and we lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it’s his fault.
SL: Can I just say, nothing makes me happier than when you refer to us as ‘the band’. We’ve always had the word ‘troop’. It always suggests tights, and juggling balls, so you know, it warms my heart.
ES: But somebody explained it to me today, we keep getting called a troop, all these years later, we’ve pushed back for a while, we don’t anymore, but I pushed back today, the movie’s called Super Troopers so we’ve really hammered it home.
What’s next for Broken Lizard after this?
JC: Possibly Potfest, which is a sequel to Beerfest, or maybe an original one, I don’t know, we’ll see.
ES: The movies all have to be about a group of guys, where five guys could be the lead actors, so, a basketball movie we could do?
PS: Any bands where there are five lead singers?
Super Troopers 2 is in cinemas April now.
