Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with an interview I did last week with the fellows who make up the comedy troupe Broken Lizard. They were in Austin to show BEERFEST at the Alamo Drafthouse and conceded to do this half-hour sit down with me in the day leading up to the big screening. The group are thus: Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Erik Stolhanske and Paul Soter.

I interviewed all but one of these guys a few years ago when they came into town to pimp the CLUB DREAD DVD. Paul Soter was absent from that screening. I'm a pretty big Broken Lizard fanboy. Yes, that means I actually like CLUB DREAD. I seem to be the only one, but I have a blast with that movie, as goofy as it gets. But then again, my tastes in comedy can go pretty retarded... hell, I like FREDDY GOT FINGERED.

Anyway, SUPER TROOPERS is still one of my favorite comedies of the last decade and BEERFEST was fun as hell, so I was happy to do the interview. You'll find it goes all over the map. We diverge a lot here. It's very conversational, but never boring. It's hard to have a dull conversation with these guys. We start talking about the Alamo Drafthouse while waiting for Paul Soter to make it down to the table. We did this interview in the lobby of the Omni hotel, which has an odd arrangement... Office buildings on one side, hotel rooms on the other, both overlooking an indoor court with a bar and restaurant among other things. We sat in that bar for the chat. Without any further ado, here's the interview!!!

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: There's another theater here (in Austin) that serves beer, too... at, like, a mall. Didn't we show PUDDLE CRUISER where Quentin (Tarantino) came and saw it?

QUINT: Well, Quentin'll bring his own beer.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: It was in a mall... it was at SXSW...

QUINT: Then it was probably the Dobie.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Yeah, that's what it was.

QUINT: That's the UT Campus theater, yeah. I don't think they ever served beer, but I do have fond memories of the first years of QT Fest at the Dobie where you'd hear empty bottles knocked over and roll down the isles during GOOD OL' BOY NIGHT. They definitely weren't sold there, but they were there nonetheless.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: (laughs)

[At this point a Warner Bros person brings Paul Soter to the table.]

STEVE LEMME: Wow! He delivered Soter!

QUINT: How's it going? Good to meet you.

PAUL SOTER: Good to see ya'.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN (to me): Have you been over to that set?

QUINT: To GRINDHOUSE?

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Yeah.

QUINT: Nope. I'd love to. I'm a huge Kurt Russell fan...

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Yeah, yeah me too.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: When did the Kurt Russell thing happen? I had heard it was Mickey Rourke.

QUINT: On the script it said starring Zoe Bell and Mickey Rourke, but... apparently he changed his mind.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: That's great. I love Kurt Russell. (pointing to Heffernan) They worked together.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: We were in SKY HIGH together.

QUINT: SKY HIGH was great. I loved it.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Me and Kurt... like this (crosses fingers)!

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Lotta SKY HIGH fans...

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Good movie. You guys should check it out. Support your friends.

STEVE LEMME: I own a copy.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: I've seen it.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: I saw that one scene...

QUINT: It's a surprising one. One that really shouldn't have worked.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: It's well done. Good sense of humor. Mike Mitchell... Mike Mitchell.

PAUL SOTER: Is he a good man?

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Very good man.

PAUL SOTER: How's Drew McWeeny doing?

QUINT: Drew's doing well. He's got another project with John Carpenter.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: What's that? Sorry, I missed it...

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Drew... McWeeny... is...

QUINT: Drew writes as Moriarty on the site...

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Right-right-right.

QUINT: He's working with Carpenter again.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: I love John Carpenter...

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Nice! That's great! Is he gonna be here (at the screening tonight)?

QUINT: He's in LA... if he's in town he didn't let me know about it!

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Tell him congratulations for us.

QUINT: Definitely... So, I saw BEERFEST yesterday...

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Nice. What was your venue? Alone in a room somewhere?

QUINT: (laughs) Kind of. It was at the Alamo S. Lamar, like tonight, but it was just me and maybe half a dozen other people.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Not as raucous as it's going to be tonight?

QUINT: No. Tonight's going to be a whole different experience.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Yeah, it'll be whole-hog, for sure.

QUINT: Last time I talked to you guys, about CLUB DREAD, I was complimenting your use of film reference. You had the great JAWS reference in CLUB DREAD and in this film you still have tons... DAS BOOT, FIGHT CLUB, but the one that got me was the AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON reference. It was so random... I loved it. Do you guys just watch a shitload of movies while writing and find unexpected ways to slide in references to the script?

(laughs all around)

ERIK STOLHANSKE: It's just amazing how it just comes up in writing that you just find yourself thinking about and talking about other movies and... you know... See how many you can sneak in...

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: And you surprise yourself. I was watching it last night. There was the PREDATOR thing. Nat Faxon does, like, a PREDATOR thing and then right after is your (Stolhanske) thing with the RAMBO... you know, "We'll give 'em a war they won't believe..."

QUINT: I noticed the PREDATOR one... "Kill me! C'mon! Do it! I'm right hee-ear!"

[The guys randomly throw in dialogue like "Do it now!" "Do it!" "C'mon!"]

ERIK STOLHANSKE: You laughed at Nat and then that's all he did the whole shoot! If there's ever a dead space, suddenly there's, "C'mon kill me! Do it! What're you waiting for?"

STEVE LEMME: That's how he prepared for the movie. He watched a lot of Schwarzenegger movies.

QUINT: So, is there a lot that you shot that didn't make the final cut?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Oh, yeah. Our first cut was 3 hours long. There's a bunch of stuff.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: More beer.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: More training, lot of plot.

STEVE LEMME: "A lot of plot!" You don't need plot!

PAUL SOTER: In CLUB DREAD we cut out gags and left plot. Then we're like, "You know? Let's just cut out the plot and leave the gag." One of these days we'll learn.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: There was more Germans... a good amount more Germans...

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: We cut a scene where the Germans end up on an Action News segment where they're posing as...

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Immigrant workers.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: ... laborers who work in the kitchen of these guys' restaurant. And they're complaining because one of them cut their finger off while making a cake and they were told to keep cooking it. And in the new Schnitzingiggle Brew they find a rat's fetus inside... So, it's like...

STEVE LEMME: It's a schmear campaign.

[Everybody laughs]

PAUL SOTER: It's a schmear campaign focused on shutting down the Tavern and the brewery. When they wouldn't give them the recipe they had to go around town and figure out how to shut 'em down.

QUINT: Try to KFC 'em?

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Yeah, exactly.

STEVE LEMME: Which is funny because as we pitched it that was the big crux. Like, "The Germans show up and they engage in this schmear campaign," like that was always a big part of the pitch and now it got lopped out of the final cut.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: No more schmear campaign and no more Schwedes.

STEVE LEMME: We cut back on the Swedes a little bit, yeah.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: One of the Swedes tries to seduce him to get him (Lemme) out of the match so we won't be able to win. He uses his little frog masturbating trick on her...

STEVE LEMME: I turn her into a frog. She ribbits.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Swedish Frog... extremely graphic camel toe shot that's not in the movie.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: It will be on the DVD!

QUINT: The Camel-Toe Edition?

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Camel-Toe Edition! (laughs)

STEVE LEMME: We have a fun scene with the Germans in the motel room when they first come to the states. You know, the dad is sort of dressing down Cherry, his spy, on the phone...

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: In German. He goes on a German tirade.

STEVE LEMME: It's all horribly tense and then Nat Faxon steps out of the bathroom in a speedo and a shower cap and asks if anybody wants to "Hit zee pool?" Great scene.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: I like that one, too.

QUINT: We need to talk about the cast a little bit. I was talking about film references... I kept watching Cloris Leachman in the movie and I couldn't help but think this is where Frau Blucher ended up! Through this film we see where she was a little bit before YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and after!

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Right!

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: She was awesome. We kinda didn't think we could get somebody to play a bawdy elderly lady like that. We always thought Cloris Leachman, but we didn't think we could get her, but then we got her.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: For me, she was the only actress who could do it. And she was also the only one who could do it and pull off the accent, but we really were shocked when she said yes.

STEVE LEMME: But she has a much dirtier sense of humor than we ever imagined!

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Yeah, yeah. Really funny.

PAUL SOTER: We were all ready to call Linda Hunt and see if she'd step in, but Cloris came through for us!

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Linda Hunt was our second choice.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: That is probably the first Oscar winner we've worked with.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: I know... well, (Donald) Sutherland's won an Oscar, right? He'd be the second.

QUINT: This is your Oscar Spectacular?

[All at once: Yeah.]

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: This is it.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: We have a lot of weight in this movie.

PAUL SOTER: Good acting in this movie.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Cloris had a little crush on Jay.

QUINT: Oh yeah?

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Yeah.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Little?

STEVE LEMME: She wouldn't come out of her trailer unless Jay kissed her.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Yeah. In order to act every day she had to kiss Jay.

STEVE LEMME: And Mo'Nique, who has a love scene with Jay, has gone on record as saying she wants to do a love scene with Heffernan.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: (shrugs) What're you gonna do?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: What can you do?

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Irresistible.

STEVE LEMME: That's right. Delightful. Animal magnetism.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Yeah. And she won an Oscar, too, right? Mo?

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Mo'Nique as well.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Did Mo win an Oscar?

QUINT: You talked a little about Donald Sutherland. He has a very small part in the movie, but he was great.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: He came in for one day.

STEVE LEMME: One day, drank 15 beers and then left.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: He did. He drank so many beers. He was like, "I don't even drink beer anymore!"

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: He chugged all those beers.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: He did.

STEVE LEMME: We tried to stop him!

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: There's no stopping.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: We were like, "We'll cut away... whatever, you don't have to drink the whole thing." "I'm drinking it. I'm drinking the whole thing!"

ERIK STOLHANSKE: It's the Method!

STEVE LEMME: Method acting.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: We shot on the set of ER and he was like in a hospital bed and kind of confined... and he held it. He held it for long hours.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: He took some big bathroom breaks.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: He did take a couple, yeah.

STEVE LEMME: When did he break the seal? After how many beers?

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: It was after quite a while.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Six or seven.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: But then... once you break the seal... you gotta go...

STEVE LEMME: As we know, when we were shooting... every 5 minutes. After every take there was a bathroom break.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Sutherland told some good ANIMAL HOUSE stories, some good John Landis stuff. He said John Landis was, like, a PA on some movie Sutherland was working on, and that he would just bug him all the time, saying, "When I make a movie, you're going to be in it!" And Sutherland would go, "Okay, okay..." And he said (Landis) was just relentless. Finally, he called up and said, "I got a movie!" and he said, "I just did it because he was so annoying."

Then he said that famous butt-shot wasn't planned. He did it as a joke and made Landis promise he wouldn't use it.

STEVE LEMME: Sort of like the Heffernan penis shot in SUPER TROOPERS.

QUINT: I was going to say... there's been something missing from the recent movies... Full frontal male nudity.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Right. Well, we got a little... uh... anus nudity. Anal...

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: A butt. No anus.

PAUL SOTER: Anus? His (points to Jay)?

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Yeah.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: You don't see my anus.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: In the morning after...

PAUL SOTER: Oh, butt.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Do you know what an anus is?

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: I do... I like to think of it more as an umbrella term...

[everybody laughs]

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: "Nice anus!"

STEVE LEMME: "You see the anus on that guy?"

ERIK STOLHANSKE: God, I don't remember that scene at all.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: You don't remember when he spread his ass-cheeks for camera? You don't remember that?

[Lemme looks up and sees something interesting...]

STEVE LEMME: Look at this high powered executive standing up there...

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: With his basketball hoop.

STEVE LEMME: Think he's got one of those bluetooth things on and he's just chewing somebody out right now?

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: He's farting on us.

[A mouth fart noise escapes from one of the group]

STEVE LEMME: What if the glass shatters?

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: He falls to his death.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: (makes a breaking glass sound) "I regret nothing!"

STEVE LEMME: (high-pitched and nasally "I'm sorry I farted!"

QUINT: He has to know that there are people down here that can see him, right?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: I know, 'cause he was just staring at us.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: He's trying to show us his anus.

PAUL SOTER: "I'll show you anus!"

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: "Look at my anus!" Weird.

QUINT: Kraken, get a picture of that!

(laughs)

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Hurry!

ERIK STOLHANSKE: This is for one of the more bizarre set-ups, for a magazine called Executive Anus.

PAUL SOTER: (looking to the hotel part of the lobby, where the windows from the rooms face the interior) Do you think that there are people having sex over there and on purpose leave the curtains open?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: Hell yeah!

PAUL SOTER: Some exhibitionist has done something.

STEVE LEMME: I myself got pinned up against...

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: He did!

STEVE LEMME: ... the elevator... by a bigger woman... pushed me up against the glass.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Mauled him.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: As we all stand in the lobby and watch him get mauled.

STEVE LEMME: All the way down.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Ten years ago.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: We were here for SXSW and we were up there, hanging out... getting drunk.

STEVE LEMME: We were actually in a hotel room first, with these girls. This bigger girl had me... I was trying to get away. I was like an animal that you've got by the tail, just scratching on the floor. Then these guys were down here waiting for me and she mashed me against the glass elevator there... It's a long way down.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: As we all laughed and pointed.

PAUL SOTER: She had her way with you?

STEVE LEMME: Yeah... Just for a few flights.

PAUL SOTER: That's Lemme!

STEVE LEMME: That is Lemme.

QUINT: I'm sure this is the most often asked question, but I can't help but be curious... Was that always beer that was being drunk by everyone involved?

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: A lot of it was.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Some of it was real beer.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: 'Cause we're method actors. Some of it wasn't. Some of it wasn't, but most of it was.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: The Strikeout was real...

[In the film Lemme does a Strikeout, which is when you take a bong hit, then chug a glass of beer, do a shot and then exhale the smoke]

STEVE LEMME: Yeah... did that a few times.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Kept makin' him do it.

STEVE LEMME: It was fun, though. I had a good day.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: I found him after wrap, wandering around the parking lot... just wandering. I was like, "What're you doing?" He's all "Aye awaha..." I said, "Get in the car. I'll give you a ride." He goes, "Okay, okay."

STEVE LEMME: That was the one day that somebody drove my car home and Jay gave me a lift.

PAUL SOTER: Friends don't let friends drink and drive... strikeout and drive.

STEVE LEMME: Or get there before the guy can get to his car, that's what I was looking for. (drunk slur) "Did we do it, Jay? Did we do it tonight?"

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: (slurred) "Did we get it? Was it beautiful?"

STEVE LEMME: "Did we get the shot?" (laughs)

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: "Yes, it was beautiful."

STEVE LEMME: "Yes, we did oh good..." (snorts) "G'night..."

QUINT: What was Jurgen Prochnow like to work with?

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: He was cool. It was like... he never gets to be in a comedy. It is the same thing like with Brian Cox.

QUINT: He was in HOUSE OF THE DEAD and that was pretty funny.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: That was pretty funny.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Was that intentionally funny, though?

QUINT: Oh, God no.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Not at all.

QUINT: It's one of the worst movies ever made.

STEVE LEMME: BEVERLY HILLS COP 2. He was in that... with Brigitte Nielsen.

ERIK STOLHANSKE: He was the heavy.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: He used to do comedies with Wolfgang Petersen, apparently, in Germany, so he was happy to get back to it. The guy laughs, like, after every sentence. (imitates the laugh, a boisterous, drawn out sounding thing). After every sentence, he's laughing!

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: That was the thing I noticed when I first met him. Everyone was talking about how intimidating of a guy he can be. I met him in the make-up trailer and he was just laughin'. He was laughin' all the time. After every sentence (he does the laugh, too... Jay joins in with him doing the laugh). Hey, this guy's not so bad.

STEVE LEMME: Sometimes you don't even have to say anything funny to make him laugh. You just talk to him and "Bwah-ha-ha-ha." Like, "Good coat..." "Bwah-hahahaha."

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: But he was a sport, that guy. He did everything. He has, obviously, a real German accent and we have these bastardization German accents. We would have it written in the script of how to say a line in German. There was one line where he says, like, "Say ello to da Schtable Boy!" or whatever it was. And he kept saying, "Stable Boy," and we're like, "Could you say, 'Schtable Boy?'" (laughs). He was like, "Why would I say that?" "'Cause that's what you guys do, right?" Listen to American guys talking German. You can tell.

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: It was ridiculous. There was a big difference between how our German German's spoke and our American German's spoke. The American German's have these ridiculous over the top cartoon accents and the real Germans are very sort of subdued. But we were pushing... "Could you German it up a little bit?"

QUINT: "Make it a little bit more like the propaganda cartoons from the '40s!"

(everybody laughs)

JAY CHANDRASEKHAR: Yeah, exactly.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Hogan's Heroes. That's the direction. "Make it more Hogan's Heroes."

STEVE LEMME: We should have gotten Jurgen to, you know, watch some Schwarzenegger movies.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Someone told me he played Schwarzenegger in the biopic.

QUINT: He did.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: He played the Older Schwarzenegger? Did they CGI a gigantic body on him?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: I don't know, I don't know.

STEVE LEMME: Did he wear his Hans & Franz suit?

(laughs)

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: I'd like to see it.

QUINT: You can find it anywhere. It's out on DVD.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Have you seen it or no?

QUINT: I've seen pieces of it on TV... but the parts I saw weren't very good... Like the guy the guy they have playing Young Schwarzenegger is pretty laughable.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Is he? Like just a body builder type of guy?

QUINT: Pretty much. And he doesn't really look like him, but they gave him the look... like the gap in the teeth.

PAUL SOTER: How do you fake a gap in your teeth anyway? Like just a black marker?

ERIK STOLHANSKE: It's a sharpie.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN: Simple sharpie. Depends how big your budget is.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART 2 OF THIS INTERVIEW, WHICH HAS MORE BEERFEST DISCUSSION, MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS AND INFO ON ALL OF BROKEN LIZARD'S UPCOMING PROJECTS!!!!