Broken Lizard
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Broken Lizard is a comedy group best known for its films Super Troopers, Club Dread, and Beerfest. The five members of the group are Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske. They all jointly write and act in their films, with Chandrasekhar as director.
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[edit] Film career
Broken Lizard's first major film was Super Troopers, which focuses on five inept Vermont state troopers. The film premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by Fox Searchlight, who released the film worldwide in February 2002. The film received a mediocre critical response during its theatrical release, but it did cover its low production budget (the marketing cost for the film has not been included). The film also gained a sizeable fanbase through surprisingly robust DVD sales exceeding 1 million and with a strong run on cable television. Super Troopers exposed the world to the antics of Broken Lizard's unique brand of comedy and landed Chandrasekhar on Variety's "10 Directors to Watch" list in 2001.
Broken Lizard's follow-up to Super Troopers, 2004's Club Dread revolved around a killer being set loose on an island resort. The movie was a critical and commercial flop, but has proven popular on DVD.
In 2006, Broken Lizard released the film Beerfest which follows two American brothers who assemble a team of beer drinkers in order to defeat a team of Germans in an international drinking game tournament. The film fared decently critically and commercially.
[edit] Side projects
Chandrasekhar has established an impressive career as a television director. He has directed episodes of the Fox television shows Undeclared, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Arrested Development, Oliver Beene, and Cracking Up.
Heffernan co-wrote the screenplay to the 2005 film On the One and has acted in films like Sky High and Strange Wilderness.
Lemme has co-produced the movies The Decade and Boxes.
Soter has recently finished writing and directing the film noir comedy film Watching the Detectives, which stars Cillian Murphy and Lucy Liu. Soter, Lemme, and Stolhanske also appear in the film.
Stolhanske has acted in small parts in a number of television shows and films.
[edit] The Dukes of Hazzard
In 2005, Chandrasekhar directed the high-budget big-screen adaptation of The Dukes of Hazzard. The movie was a commercial success, but did not fare well with critics. Although the movie was not an official Broken Lizard movie, it was related to the troupe in several notable ways: all five members appeared in the movie; rewrote every line of dialogue, uncredited; and one particular scene even parodies Super Troopers.[1]
[edit] Future plans
[edit] Super Troopers 2
A prequel to the 2002 film Super Troopers is in production due to be released in 2008. This will take place in the 1970s and will follow the fathers of the main characters in the original film[2]
[edit] Other projects
Over the past few years, the members of Broken Lizard have expressed the intent to work on several projects:
- The Babymaker: a comedy about a man with bad sperm (Heffernan) who breaks into a sperm bank to retrieve some sperm that he had donated five years earlier, but which is now promised to someone else.[3]
- Ambulance Chasers: a comedy that tells the story of a couple of ferociously aggressive personal-injury lawyers fighting over a new client.[4]
- Take My Wife: a comedy directed by Chandrasekhar that revolves around an average guy who jokingly swaps wives with a Hollywood superstar. [5]
- Greek Road: an R-rated comedy set in Ancient Greece. The movie will follow Heffernan as a young Plato who is a freshman wrestling student at Athens University. Plato is planning to wrestle for the university in the Olympics, but he is failing his Basic Thought class; so the university hires Socrates, a senior played by Lemme, to tutor Plato. Plato ends up cheating and passing the class, and the two travel to Mt. Olympus together. On the road, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades (played by the other three members) make bets on whether or not Plato and Socrates will make it and begin getting in their way.[6] [7]
- Potfest: at the end of the film Beerfest, the main characters are invited to compete in a marijuana-smoking contest, and the words "Potfest - Coming Soon" appear on-screen. The group are now considering making Potfest into an animated sequel to Beerfest. However, on Broken Lizard's Myspace page they stated that this was just a joke that got turned into a rumor.
[edit] Filmography
[edit] External links
| Broken Lizard |
| Films |
|---|
| Puddle Cruiser | Super Troopers | Club Dread | Beerfest |
| Members |
| Jay Chandrasekhar | Kevin Heffernan | Steve Lemme | Paul Soter | Erik Stolhanske |
