Broken Lizard
| Broken Lizard | |
|---|---|
| Medium | Film |
| Nationality | United States |
| Years active | 1996-present |
| Genres | Physical comedy, Gross-out humor |
| Notable works and roles | Super Troopers (2001) Club Dread (2004) Beerfest (2006) |
| Members | Jay Chandrasekhar Kevin Heffernan Steve Lemme Paul Soter Erik Stolhanske |
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 usually the director.
Film career
Broken Lizard's first film, Puddle Cruiser, was shot on campus at Colgate University and around the town of Hamilton, where the comedy troupe all attended the same college. Broken Lizard's first wide-release film was Super Troopers, which focuses on five apparently inept Vermont highway patrol officers. The film premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, was sold by Cinetic Media and acquired by Fox Searchlight, which released it worldwide in February 2002. The film received a mediocre critical response during its theatrical release. The group's next film, 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. Broken Lizard's next film, The Slammin' Salmon, began shooting on January 7, 2008. It stars the Lizards alongside Michael Clarke Duncan and the film will reunite the group with Bill Paxton, who starred in the troupe's Club Dread.[1]
Side projects
Chandrasekhar has established a 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.
Chandrasekhar directed the 2005 film The Dukes of Hazzard, in which each of the members of Broken Lizard appear.
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.
Planned films as of 2008
- The Slammin' Salmon is about employees of a restaurant who compete to see who can earn the most money in one night. Currently in post-production, it is scheduled for release in late 2008.[2]
- The Babymaker involves a married man, Kevin, who, after his wife wants a baby, learns that he has become sterile. He had been a sperm donor some time ago, however, and gathers his buddies to break into a fertility clinic and steal his old sperm back.[3]
- 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.[4]
- Marcus Raboy, best known for helming Friday After Next, has signed on to direct the urban comedy Tow Truck, a joint venture between Broken Lizard and Our Stories Films, the studio behind the box-office and critical bomb Who's Your Caddy? The film is about two brothers who resurrect a moribund tow truck business to earn enough money to save their neighborhood from commercial development. The movie began[citation needed] filming in late spring 2008.[5]
Other projects
Over the past few years, the members of Broken Lizard have expressed the intent to work on several projects:
- Super Troopers 2 - A prequel to the 2001 film Super Troopers has been talked about since the original became a cult classic. As of January 2008, Broken Lizard has a general outline and had begun negotiations with Fox.[6] The movie is expected to be set in the 1970s and follow the fathers of the main characters in the original film.[7]
- Ambulance Chasers: a comedy that tells the story of a couple of ferociously aggressive personal-injury lawyers fighting over a new client.[8]
- Take My Wife: a comedy directed by Chandrasekhar that revolves around an average guy who jokingly swaps wives with a Hollywood superstar.[9]
- 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.[10]
Filmography
- Puddle Cruiser (1996)
- Super Troopers (2001)
- Club Dread (2004)
- Beerfest (2006)
- The Slammin' Salmon (2008)
References
- ^ My Space: Broken Lizard
- ^ Yamato, Jen (2008-03-05). "Sneak Peek: Inside Broken Lizard's Next Film, Slammin' Salmon". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2008-03-08.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Worst Previews
- ^ CHUD.com - A film site for the brilliant
- ^ Variety.com - Raboy takes wheel of 'Tow Truck'
- ^ My Space: Broken Lizard
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0859635/ Super Troopers 2 (2010)
- ^ Moviehole.net - After Beerfest, Ambulance called
- ^ Take My Wife
- ^ Moviehole.net - What's next for Broken Lizard?