THE CULTUREPULP Q&A: Broken Lizard





As promised to readers of today's CulturePulp comic: Here's my long Q&A with Erik Stolhanske and Steve Lemme -- two members of the five-man comedy/filmmaking troupe Broken Lizard.

We talked for a half-hour on an open patio last month -- in full view of the fans waiting in line to play beer pong with Stolhanske and Lemme at the Oregon Brewers Festival. (I've edited out the fans' occasional and highly amusing interruptions.)

Topics covered (in a relaxed, meandering fashion) include: their new comedy "Beerfest," brewing your own amber ale, unhelpful studio notes, Adam Sandler, the "Super Troopers" sequel, "The Onion Movie," Patrick Swayze, and much more. An edited transcript follows the jump.




THE ART OF THE SMOOTH FINISH


MIKE RUSSELL: So I understand that you brewed your own beer for this appearance.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: We did. We went to a place called Brubaker's in, I wanna say, Long Beach. And we're kind of Budweiser men -- so we picked a little honey amber. We aren't into sweet beers, but Lemme likes raspberry beers --

STEVE LEMME: But only in the summertime.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: -- but the guy said that a little bit of honey "gives it the smooth finish." And everybody loves a smooth finish, right?

STEVE LEMME: I mean, if you don't like a smooth finish, you're not alive.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Right. You haven't lived unless you've had a smooth finish.

STEVE LEMME: And you can quote us on that.

Q. Now, Erik, your press bio plays up your "Scandinavian humor." So "Beerfest" must have felt like "Lawrence of Arabia" for you. It’s a Scandinavian-humor epic.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: It is. It goes all the way back to Vikings drinking skol. Steve has been to Sweden a couple of times, and he -- from Argentina -- had to tell me what "skol" meant.

STEVE LEMME: When they say, "Skol!," that's actually from the Vikings. When the Vikings defeated their enemies, they would drink out of their skulls. And "skol" means "skull" in Swedish. You smash skulls together and yell "Skol!" and drink.

Q. Isn't that what Donald Sutherland says in his funeral video in "Beerfest"?

STEVE LEMME: No, he says, "Prost!," which is German for "Cheers!" I don't know what the origin of that is.




THE JOYS OF STUDIO DEVELOPMENT
STEVE LEMME: You've seen the movie?

Q. Yeah. They showed me an unfinished version.

STEVE LEMME: You liked it?

Q. I did.

STEVE LEMME: Good. It's my favorite that we've made so far.

Q. It's faster-paced than "Super Troopers" and "Club Dread," but it still does the same thing "Super Troopers" did: It takes the conventions of frat-house comedies and comes at them from weird angles.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Yeah, we try to break it up a bit. When we first were developing this, we had this thing where a character dies, and a character played by the same actor walks into the room and replaces him. And Sony didn't want to do it. They said, "You guys are so cynical." To us, that was breaking the convention and finding a new angle. Or trying to.

Q. Uh, did they see the rest of the movie leading up to that scene?

STEVE LEMME: [laughs] What Erik's talking about is when we had originally set it up with Sony -- we were writing at the time. ["Beerfest" was ultimately released through Warner Bros.]
With Adam Sandler's company, Happy Madison [which shepherded "Beerfest" through development]? Those guys were awesome. We went to a meeting with Happy Madison and they were like, "We don't have one note on this script. We think it's ready to go." And then we went into Sony and they just missed it completely. The guy there went, "I think your main characters are going to be really unsympathetic -- because these are guys who, like, drink Budweiser. We don't think the audience will be on their side because they're like Budweiser guys."
And we went, "Uh-huh."
And he was like, "Nobody drinks Budweiser. How about Stella Artois?"
We were like, "I think you missed the point on this one. This is about American beer."
And then he was like, "And you guys have crafted this like a sports movie. This isn't a sports movie, is it?"

Q. Man, that is just the perfect embodiment of the sort of Hollywood executive who justifies his job by "finding a problem" where there isn't one.

STEVE LEMME: And then that same guy called us cynical. "You guys are really cynical, aren't you?" And we were like, "No, we actually like this moment."




DELIBERATE DISORIENTATION
and 'SUPER TROOPERS '76 (or '77)'

Q. Your movies tend to start in the middle of something -- a pot bust, a murder, and in "Beerfest," what looks like a gangland drinking contest. It's disorienting, and it seems to be a big part of your writing. You take story structures that have been done before and you mess with them.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: That definitely was deliberate. When we wrote "Super Troopers," we definitely liked the scene where the cops messed with the two teenagers. We loved starting with that. And whoever we were developing it with at the time didn't want us to do that -- they said, "You're not going to know who the heroes are, who the main characters are, who to root for. You're not introducing anybody."
But we were doing that on purpose. We wanted to start with a scene where you were in the shoes of the kids in the car.

STEVE LEMME: It was the only time in that movie where you don't know who the good guys are. Because the inspiration for the movie came from us being pulled over so many times. We wanted to have one time where you were in the car -- feeling what it's like to get pulled over by these guys.
The studio said, "We have a terrific idea! Let's have a scene with the Super Troopers as children! We'll have little boy versions of them!" And were like, "Naw. Naw. We have a plan here."

Q. Though I suppose there's a possibility of a scene like that happening in "Super Troopers 2," where you're going back into the '70s with the fathers of the first film's characters.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: We haven't really announced that yet.

Q. It was on Cinematical.

STEVE LEMME: Oh, we said it at Comicon.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: We did?

STEVE LEMME: Yeah. We do have plans to do "Super Troopers '76." Or "'77." We can't decide on the year. Where we would play our dads, with hot rods and bigger mustaches. But we're gonna shoot, I think, two more movies before we do that.




NICE THINGS SAID
ABOUT ADAM SANDLER

Q. I'm happy to hear you guys worked with Happy Madison. I actually think "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore" are sort of absurd little masterpieces. And I hate that Sandler gives strong performances in films like "Punch Drunk Love" and "Spanglish," and then critics immediately forget he gave those performances when his next movie rolls around. It strikes me that his sensibility and yours might be really similar.

STEVE LEMME: He was really cool. He had us come into his office, and he said, "I went to the movie ['Super Troopers'] by myself. I pulled my hat down and got my snacks. I think you guys are the real deal, and you're going to have a hard time making R-rated comedies. So if you ever need any help with anything, come talk to me."
And then "Club Dread" came out, and they were like, "Your movie's not tracking well. There's no advertising. It's not going to make money." And we said, "Don’t worry! 'Super Troopers' made a lot of money!"
And then it tanked at the box office. And Sandler called us up the next week and said, "All right -- now you guys are gonna need my help. So come on in." And that's why we pitched him "Beerfest" and set it up with Sony. He's been nothing but cool to us.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Yeah, we wrote the first couple of drafts with his company.

Q. Do you find youselves going through an emotional process with the release of your films -- where they do okay-to-bad business in theaters, and then audiences really find them on DVD?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Yeah, it's hard, because you get slammed pretty hard. We learned a lot from Sandler about thick skin. When he has a movie come out, the critics usually just slam it, and it goes to make $100 million. He's basically like, "Who cares what they say? It doesn't matter." He can still get movies made, and he's one of the most powerful comedians in Hollywood because of it.
He says, "Critics always slam comedies. But you're gonna have your followers. So keep doing what you're doing, basically."

STEVE LEMME: His comedy albums are hilarious. And they're R or NC-17 material.
But for us, "Super Troopers" was a success. For us to make $18 million at the box office on that budget was a pretty big deal for us. That opening weekend, on Friday night, we were all in New York waiting for the call to see how it was gonna do. And then they called at midnight and told us the projections for the weekend. We partied.
"Club Dread," we were not so fortunate.




HIRING YOUR HEROES

Q. You work serious character actors like Jürgen Prochnow and Brian Cox and Donald Sutherland into your films. How did Prochnow react to all those "Das Boot" jokes in "Beerfest"?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: One of the first things we shot in "Beerfest" was the submarine scene. We wrote that for him, and he was really into it. He's got a couple of kids, and they loved "Super Troopers." He's always getting cast as the heavy.
It's fun when you can write a scene like that and get an actor like that. It adds layers. I think most people think we're sophomoric or pretty stupid humor, but we try to have layers of higher-brow stuff that some people may … disagree with. But hopefully they get the layering of it.

Q. Well, [fellow Lizard] Jay Chandrasekhar has described your comedy as "sophisticated lowbrow." And I think you guys are pretty obviously referencing the golden age of smart-dumb comedies from the late '70s and '80s -- the Reitman/Ramis films, all that.

STEVE LEMME: Landis. Monty Python.

Q. Landis, definitely. Have you had any encounters from the filmmakers of that era?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Jay knows Landis, right?

STEVE LEMME: They might have met one time. One guy we have met is George Folsey Jr. -- who's like the editor of all those movies. His son edited "Club Dread," but George came in to consult on it. And he would tell us stories: "Ah, Belushi would be so loaded when he came to set."

ERIK STOLHANSKE: He'd tell great stories. He came in after "Super Troopers" was bought at Sundance and did a quick edit. That's how we met him. It was awesome.

STEVE LEMME: Having Donald Sutherland in the movie was pretty cool. And Cloris Leachman…

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Yeah, we're such fans from "Young Frankenstein" and "High Anxiety" -- and of course Donald Sutherland from "Animal House"…. We try to get in all those people we respected.

STEVE LEMME: He's sick in "Animal House."

Q. Good call with Cloris Leachman. She may be the only actress I've seen who gets dirtier and dirtier roles the older she gets.

STEVE LEMME: I hope there are outtakes and deleted scenes on the DVD, because she is one filthy old lady.




METHOD-ACTING BEER SCIENTISTS
and 'THE ONION MOVIE'

Q. Steve, you're almost unrecognizable as a Jewish beer scientist in "Beerfest." I literally thought for a while that a non-Lizard actor was playing that role.

STEVE LEMME: I got a perm and I shaved, like, the first three inches of my head. Every day they would take a straight razor to my head. By the end of every week, I just had a cherry patch up there. I got so chafed. I put on glasses and a different voice…. It was fun going there.
I hate to sound actor-ish, but I actually finally disappeared into a role.

Q. Eric, what's going on with the "Onion" movie?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Well, we shot it a while ago -- and I think when they put it together and edited it, it only came out to be like an hour long. Because it’s a bunch of sketches that were kind of connected through one of the characters I play, a news producer, and Len Cariou…

Q. Len Cariou! Sweeney Todd!

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Yeah, he's great. It was cool getting a really serious actor and having him play a straight role in a comedy movie -- sort of like what we do.
He plays this really serious anchor guy, like in "Network," and I'm one of the young producers coming in. That was the thread that went though the film. But it was only an hour long. So I think they're trying to figure out how to re-write it and extend it a little bit.



THE PATRICK SWAYZE STORY

Q. Steve, you are not alone in your love of "Road House." Do please tell me about the time you met Patrick Swayze.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Great story.

STEVE LEMME: It was at a party… And you know, they just released --

Q. I know! A special edition!

STEVE LEMME: We've got to get that. [To Eric] That's a good stocking-stuffer for me.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Your birthday's in November.

STEVE LEMME: November 13.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: I got you that shirt.

STEVE LEMME: Yeah, Eric gave me this shirt. He bought it on eBay and it was too tight for him, so he gave it to me. It's too tight on me, too.
What were we talking about? Oh, yeah -- Patrick Swayze. So we were at a party, and we looked over and were like, "Holy shit! It's Patrick Swayze! What would you say to Patrick Swayze if you met him?" You'd have to go through all the movies -- "Red Dawn," "Road House," "Ghost," "Point Break," "Youngblood," "Dirty Dancing," even….

ERIK STOLHANSKE: "The Outsiders"…

Q. "Black Dog"…

ERIK STOLHANSKE: I ran into Randy Travis down in Fort Hood, and I told him how much I loved "Black Dog." He told me some good stories about it -- like, he seriously injured his back, because they put him in a rig and he had to go like this all the time [Erik shakes around vigorously], and he just messed up his back.
And then he turns to me and goes, "Could you excuse me for a second?" And he turns around, and there are 30,000 people out there, and he just walks on stage and started playing. It was the coolest thing ever.

Q. [looking around at the gawking spectators, chronicled in the comic ] Kind of like what's happening here now.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Only with beer pong.

STEVE LEMME: So we're at this party, and we're looking over at Swayze and going through this list of movies, and this girl we were with goes, "Steve, do you want to meet Patrick Swayze?"
"Oh, shit yeah -- I definitely want to!"
And so they pulled me over into the circle, and I didn't know that everyone in that circle knew this was about to happen. They all their arms around each other like proud parents. It was Swayze and his wife, his manager, his manager's wife, and then the girl that brought me over.
And the manager goes, "Well, it looks like we've got a real Patrick Swayze fan in the mix here! This is Steve!" Which was an embarrassing way to start it off.
And then Swayze turned to me and said, "Seriously?"

Q. He had a sense of humor about it.

STEVE LEMME: Yeah. And I was like, "I'm dead serious."
And he was like, "Okay. Cool."
And then everyone was looking at us, expecting us to say something. So I said, "Uh -- let's go talk over here."
So I pulled him away from the group. There was like a little Japanese lantern between us. And I croaked. I had no idea what to say.
The first thing out of my mouth was, "Tell me about 'Youngblood.'"
And he goes, "What do you want to know?"
And I was like, "I don't know. Anything."
Already, he's saying to himself, "I've got a fucking psycho on my hands now." So he says, "Well, as you know, I was a figure skater for a while" -- which I did not know --

Q. Well, he figured, as a big fan, that you would know.

Yeah, I guess so. I knew he went to Julliard…. So he tells me, "So I could skate, but they didn't want me to get hit -- so they made me raise my hand and I told the hockey players they weren't allowed to check me."
And I say, "Oh! We did a movie called 'Puddle Cruiser' that never came out -- but in that I played rugby and I had to do the same thing! I raised my hand and they weren't allowed to hit me, either!"
And he's like, "Cool."

Q. Man. I can feel the awkward pauses.

STEVE LEMME: Yeah. And then we were just sitting there. And then Vincent Spanno walks up -- obviously, Swayze had given him some sort of signal to come over -- and Spanno says, "Excuse me for a second," and he sticks his back between me and Swayze. I was staring at the dude's shoulders. And then I got the picture…. So I skulked away and walked back to the guys.
They were like, "What happened? How'd it go?"
"I tanked it. I totally froze."

Q. Maybe there can be some sort of rapprochement.

STEVE LEMME: Well, there was retribution. Because Stuff Magazine threw a "Super Troopers" party at Sundance, and publicists were calling up and getting people on the guest list. And somebody came into the office and was like, "Lemme. Lemme. Guess who just called up to get on the guest list for the party."
"Swayze?"
"Swayze."
He showed up shitfaced. But we got a photo.




'THE GREEK ROAD' SOUNDS
KIND OF AWESOME

Q. A lot of the moments in your films feel unscripted, but I understand you guys hew pretty close to your scripts.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Well, we did for the first three ["Puddle Cruiser," "Super Troopers" and "Club Dread"] for sure. "Beerfest" was the first one where we would do a take and then say, "Let's go off the cuff and see what we can do." And some of the most fun stuff in the movie is from improvising.
Like, [in the movie] we brewed our own beer, and it's an epiphany moment, and we all started making up lines. Jay made up one that made me spit beer through my nose into a cup. I had to get toweled off and re-do my makeup. That's on the blooper reel.

Q. I think that moment is shown in the end credits.

STEVE LEMME: That's my favorite scene in the movie, and I think all the lines were improvised.

Q. I'm fascinated by the premise of "The Greek Road" -- the film you want to make where you're playing characters like Plato and Socrates and there are Greek Gods, the Olympics…. It sounds ridiculously ambitious. It is going to happen?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Jay has described the plot of "The Greek Road" in an interview as follows: "Plato is a Freshman wrestling recruit at Athens University. [It's] big-time wrestling, so they've given them a little two-seater chariot [for him] to wrestle for them, and they want him to wrestle in the Olympics, but he's failing his philosophy class -- Basic Thought -- so they hire a senior philosopher, Socrates, to tutor him... We're gonna play Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, who are like, these brothers who are fighting all the time and betting all the time, betting on sports, and they bet on whether these guys are going to make it and of course put obstacles in their way."]

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Ha! Please go see "Beerfest" if you'd like to see "Greek Road."

STEVE LEMME: See "Beerfest." See "Puddle Cruisers." See everything we've done.
We actually wanted to do "Greek Road" first -- but we just couldn't get the budget down under $20 million. It's like $25 million now. That’s the next movie that we're gonna try to make.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: We're hoping people will go see this, and it'll allow us to make that.




THE IMPORTANCE OF R-RATED COMEDY

Q. What has Jay bringing back to Broken Lizard from working with guys like Judd Apatow? I was actually told Jay might be here, so this was a question for him.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: [laughs] He's just finishing post-production. He really wanted to come.

STEVE LEMME: You know, we worked with Sandler's company through the first couple of drafts of the script. It was cool to see how those guys worked. And it was nice because, so often in Hollywood, you're working with a creative executive who's never been a performer.
Sandler would say, "If I don't think it's funny, don't worry about it. You guys are the performers. You do it." It was like getting notes from someone who's coming from the place you're coming from.

Q. He would let you find a personal voice for your stuff. Which I'd imagine, from watching your films, is a priority for you guys.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Absolutely.

STEVE LEMME: That's why we like to make them R-rated. You can make a good PG comedy, but it's not an honest comedy. In life, people swear. They take their clothes off.

Q. Yes, you're part of the movement to return bare breasts to American comedy.

STEVE LEMME: Well, we all remember our first naked boob.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: I remember seeing "Airplane!," and all of a sudden it just shows up.

Q. And that was in a PG movie.

STEVE LEMME: Or "Kentucky Fried Movie" -- "Samuel L. Bronkowitz presents Catholic High School Girls in Trouble." The boobs are just getting smushed up against the shower. [He makes a smacking noise]

ERIK STOLHANSKE: That was nice.


THE HIGHWAY PATROL STORY

Q. I keep reading that "Super Troopers" has a pretty hard-core following in the law-enforcement community.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: [laughs] Steve, tell him your driving story.

STEVE LEMME: I bought a new car. I was bombing up the highway -- I was not drunk -- but I was the only car on this highway, for the most part, and there were two perfect straight lanes of black ribbon. And I got pulled over doing 110. Which is a jailable offense.
And the cop comes over and goes, "Mister, do you have any idea how fast -- 'Super Troopers'?"
And I was like, "Yeah, man."
And he said, "That movie's awesome!"
And I was like, "Thanks a lot, man."
And he says, "We play all those games! We do The Repeater, we do The Meow Game, we call the radio guy 'Radio'…"
I said, "Do you do Bulletproof Jockstrap?" He said, "No, man -- that’s the one we haven't played! When are you coming out with something?… Oh, yeah. I caught you going 110. I'm going to let you off with a warning. Were you in a hurry to get someplace?"
"No, man."
"Could I trouble you for a photo and an autograph?" And he comes over with his ticket book for me to autograph, and his hands are shaking… He said, "The guys aren't gonna believe this."

ERIK STOLHANSKE: They always tell us, "There's always one Favre in every station."




INSPIRED BY AUSTRALIANS

Q. How does on train for a movie like "Beerfest"? I'd imagine you'd have to really learn how to chug.

STEVE LEMME: Oh, we already knew that.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Well, did you hear how we got the idea for "Beerfest"? Fox had sent us around internationally to promote "Super Troopers." We were down in Australia, the movie hadn't come out, and no one knew who we were. And they would send us in our police uniforms to malls in the middle of Melbourne. And some lady and her kid would come up, and they'd put us on a little platform about six inches off the ground, and they'd look at us like animals in a zoo: "Who are you? Super Troopers?" They'd poke at us and prod us as we stood there in our uniforms. They sent us to a tire-store opening. I swear to God. The weirdest things.

Q. Did you have the mustaches?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: No, no, no. This was years after.

STEVE LEMME: They had fake mustaches they wanted us to wear, and we were like, "No!"

ERIK STOLHANSKE: The fact that we had to put on the uniforms was enough. No other comedian gets dressed up and parades at tire-store openings in their costumes.
So finally they sent us to an Australian beer garden, and once again they wanted us to go onstage in our uniforms. We're like, "Come on -- this is getting ridiculous." So we decided to challenge an Australian beer fest to pit its five best drinkers against the five of us. And we got up onstage and did a line-chug.

Q. I'd imagine that champion Australian drinkers would be hearty guys.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Yeah. It was a blast.

STEVE LEMME: And they were there for a bachelor party -- so we came off stage and they said, "Yeah, you're with us now, mate!" And we started arm-wrestling and doing more chugs. And the people who thought it was a good idea to get us into this beer fest were suddenly losing control of the situation.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: At first we were up there and people were like, "Yanks get off the stage!" And then we started chugging, and we put up a pretty good fight, and the whole time they were chanting, "Oz! Oz! Oz! Oz!" And they started getting rabid.
And that's when we started thinking: What if teams from all over the world got together for a festival like this?

Q. I'm surprised no one thought of it sooner, frankly.

STEVE LEMME: Well, it does exist. They do have, like, a "Beer Olympics."

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Yeah. We did some research online.

STEVE LEMME: The original thought was, "Okay, we're at a beer fest -- how do we turn this into a movie?" Our original idea was that two guys got kicked out of Oktoberfest and then went and created a competing Oktoberfest in America at the same time. And the thing they were going to do to make it bigger was they were going to hold it on an Indian reservation, so you could have underage drinking. But then we realized you can't….

ERIK STOLHANSKE: And we didn't have the budget to re-create a huge Oktoberfest. That's why we took it underground -- like "Bloodsport." Have you seen "Bloodsport"?

STEVE LEMME: Great movie. It's one of the movies that we watched.

Q. I feel like you guys may have some sort of '80s action-movie pastiche in you, what with all this fascination with "Bloodsport" and Patrick Swayze.

STEVE LEMME: And in fact, in "The Greek Road".… Have you ever seen "Stone Cold" with The Boz -- Brian Bosworth? It's actually a great movie with plot twists and turns that are outside the box, that are not formulaic. It's a great movie. We're totally serious.

Q. I know.

STEVE LEMME: Okay. Good.



Posted: Fri - August 25, 2006 at 12:00 AM        

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