BROKEN LIZARD

'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.

Contents

Film career

Side projects

''The Dukes of Hazzard''

Future plans

''The Babymaker''

''Taildraggers''

Other projects

Filmography

References

External Links

Film career

Broken Lizard's first film was entitled "Puddle Cruiser." It was filmed on campus at Colgate University and around the town of Hamilton, where Broken Lizard group all attended the same college. Various local attractions are seen, including The Old Stone Jug.
Broken Lizard's first wide-release film was ''Super Troopers'', which focuses on five apparently 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.
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.

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.

''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 (Jay Chandrasekhar and Eric Stolhanske reprising roles similar to those in Super Troopers, Paul Soter as the reporter on the scene at the Hazzard road rally, Steve Lemme as the older brother in the opening scene, and Kevin Heffernan as Sheeve), rewrote every line of dialogue, uncredited ; and one particular scene even parodies ''Super Troopers''.^[1]

Future plans

''The Babymaker''

''The Babymaker'' is the next film for Broken Lizard. The plot, revealed to MTV News by Paul Soter: "Kevin is a married guy in a couple that has no interest in having children. Suddenly his wife gets baby fever. It becomes a fertility comedy for a while; all about his attempts to impregnate his wife. Then they find out he has become sterile but he had been a sperm donor in the past. He finds out there's one batch left, and they won't give it to him. So he gets his buddies together for a heist to go steal his sperm back. We haven't gotten into whether the rest of us would take smaller roles. We could, but if this is going to be a Kevin Heffernan movie and if you put the Broken Lizard guys in supporting roles, it becomes a weirdly imbalanced Broken Lizard movie as opposed to a Kevin Heffernan movie."^[2]

''Taildraggers''

Jay Chandrasekhar and Julia Dray are developing the comedy ''Taildraggers'', written by Will Gluck. The film will be about five twenty-something pilots who work for a rinky-dink airline in Alaska. The plot kicks into gear when the guys find out a rival airline is siphoning oil from a nature preserve. This will be the first broad comedy produced by Participant Productions, a company known for making socially and ecologically conscious films, such as ''An Inconvenient Truth'', ''Syriana'', ''Fast Food Nation'' and ''North Country''. No word yet on whether Chandrasekhar will direct or if the Broken Lizard members will be appearing in the film.^[3]

Other projects

Over the past few years, the members of Broken Lizard have expressed the intent to work on several projects:

★ A prequel to the 2002 film ''Super Troopers'' has been talked about since the original became a cult classic. Paul Soter says that it won't be made for awhile (if it does, in fact, ever get made), now that ''The Babymaker'' is in production.^[2] It is expected that the movie will be set in the 1970s and will follow the fathers of the main characters in the original film.^[5]

★ ''Ambulance Chasers'': a comedy that tells the story of a couple of ferociously aggressive personal-injury lawyers fighting over a new client.^[6]

★ ''Take My Wife'': a comedy directed by Chandrasekhar that revolves around an average guy who jokingly swaps wives with a Hollywood superstar.^[7]

★ ''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.^[8][9]

Filmography

★ ''Puddle Cruiser'' (1996)

★ ''Super Troopers'' (2001)

★ ''Club Dread'' (2004)

★ ''Beerfest'' (2006)

References

1. http://www.moviehole.net/news/20050802_6025.html
2. http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=4140&count=0
3. http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=10646
4. http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=4140&count=0
5. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0859635/
6. http://www.moviehole.net/news/20060411_after_beerfest_ambulance_calle.html
7. [http://www.killermovies.com/t/takemywife/
8.
9. http://www.moviehole.net/news/20040210_3166.html

External Links

★ Broken Lizard's Myspace page

★ Unnofficial Fan Forum