Super Troopers: Interview

Review by By Clint Morris

Interview with Jay Chandrasekhar, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhankse, Steve Lemme and Kevin Heffernan
Starring in the new comedy Super Troopers.

In the new film, Super Troopers, comedy troupe Broken Lizard are under the semblance of squalid nonconformist state troopers. When Clint Morris met up with the five guys to promote the film, he envisioned five uninhibited maniacs - not unlike their on screen counterparts. Instead, he met a group of bright guys who could be the next thing in filmmaking. Best of all, they might be making their follow-up picture in Australia.

The Broken Lizards and Clint, behind, right. Hi Clint!

The novel knack these five men possess starts with their name, Broken Lizard. "That was Jay's idea. It just sort of came up and all of a sudden it was on posters and everything. If you spend enough time with us, you'll soon realize that any important decision is made in a very immature fashion," Steve explains. "We are still asking ourselves where the name came from."

Jay, somewhat the ringleader of the troupe, offers another explanation. "There's no real great story. I suppose we should make one up! Ok this is partly true - I had a fish tank when I was a kid, because I was allergic to dogs and cats so I got three lizards.

"I put them in a tank, and then after a night's sleep, I awoke and they'd escaped. I pictured they had gone into the basemen and mutated… to like come and get me! So that goal was broken."

Broken Lizard's first film, Puddle Cruiser, premiered at Sundance a couple of years back - and it opened up many doors for the comics. "Well, when we started it was more live comedy. For a lot of years it was like sketches, little short videos - like Saturday Night Live. We would shoot up little video sketches. Then we just sort of got more and more into video stuff," explains Steve.

"We had been to Sundance to sell our first movie, so we knew how hard it was to sell a film in the first place. We made it for $1.2 million bucks - we thought it might be in like two theatres; and it went five," he adds. "Fox Searchlight have been great - but we financed the thing ourselves basically," Kevin coyly reveals.

If the film's unscrupulous exploits will rouse any controversy - it will be from the cops themselves. "Well we saw one bit of feedback from a woman who said this movie is awful and a disgrace to cops - so that was an unpleasant experience with a dispatcher," says Steve.

"A guy, in reference to the scenes taking place on the border, told me that was exactly what happens. What they used to do with migrants," adds Jay.

Paul underlines the reason behind the subject - "In relation to stories, everyone's got stories. Everyone knows what's it's like when you have that guy walking up to your car; and we thought wouldn't it be interesting to turn the tables and see what it's like on the other side of the experience. And we thought if these people were up to the humor - they'd enjoy it."

But it seems the characters are a lot distant from their real life counterparts, so much so that seeing each other in another guise was unnerving. "It was actually kinda scary in the movie. We had the moustaches and the look going on, and occasionally had a night off to party. I look over and Kevin's in the corner with sunglasses on, chewing gum and having beer. Scary. We're actually pretty different from the characters; if you see our previous film our characters are even more different. We're like three quarters of the way and then we start casting - personality traits come into it too," says Jay.

Oh boy...

The other cast members were hired via the usual channels. "Standard audition process. Brian Cox wanted to do like a broad comedy, because he had never done one before. He kinda pursued it. And Marisa went to the same high school as Erik," explains Kevin.

Erik adds "We had mutual friends, and I saw her in Teaching Mrs. Tingle and thought she was funny, so sent her a script."

"Lynda Carter was the first person to come on board. We were like… Wonder Woman! Wow!" Says Steve.

Most of the reviews for Super Troopers have been positive, but they do mention it in comparison to Police Academy. "You know I've never seen that (Police Academy)," says Jay. "When I was a kid it didn't interest me. It didn't seem to be real to me." Kevin adds.

"Come on, what about the guy that made all the noises?" Jay adds.

"Well I guess a smart mans Police Academy is better than being called a dumb mans Police Academy. The goal for us was to look like real cops. Maybe we didn't succeed at that, but that was the goal. I remember telling people in wardrobe that we're not making Police Academy. We had to tell Gutes (Steve Guttenberg) to go home," he laughs.

Following the success of Super Troopers; Broken Lizard have been snapped up to pen another movie; titled Club Dread. "We're the staff members of this singles resort and we find out the people are getting murdered there," says Steve. "There are a lot of roles for young actors. We loved some of the guys from our first movie too, so we will drag some of these guys kicking and screaming to this new movie too." Jay adds.

"Some of the college kids from the movie and the guys that played the local cops were good." Steve jokingly says, "So it's a bit of a murder mystery (serious look adorned). There's like scenes where these singles are about and then 90 seconds later get done with."

Jay, who will also direct, reveals the movie might be getting made down under. "We're pushing to make it here. It's very beautiful and tropical, and Australians are sweet. We could cast Paul Hogan as the old guy and kill him off."

"We're starting to make lists of who we like -- we need one star male actor and one female. So we're here looking," adds Steve.

What die-hard fans really want to know, though, is whether or not a sequel to Super Troopers is a possibility. "I wouldn't rule it out - I don't know, maybe," says Jay. "We had this idea of setting it back in the 70's, playing our fathers. We'd be on the beat with hot rod cars and sideboards. The problem with sequels is that we've done all there is to do; so pulling more people over - they’ve seen that. And we've also got like four or five other scripts that we would like to shoot… Then again, if someone threw a lot of money at us. Three years we could be back here promoting Super Troopers 2."

Brought to you by MovieHole