Broken Lizard, the five-man comedy troupe which formed in 1990 at a fraternity on the upstate New York campus of preppy Colgate University, have been stoner icons since the very first scene of their 2001 breakout hit “Super Troopers.” That’s when Jay Chandrasekhar’s mustachioed Vermont cop Lieutenant Arcot “Thorny” Ramathorn pulls over a car full of potheads and proceeds to terrorize and freak them out.
Like they did in 2018 with “Super Troopers 2,” their newest film, “Quasi,” a reimagining of Victor Hugo’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” is a no-holds-barred, scatological combination of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” crossed with Mel Brooks’ “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.” It premieres today — April 20 — as a Hulu Original through Fox Searchlight.
Boasting their own cannabis brand, Smokin’ Lizard, Chandrasekhar notes, “When we get high with friends like Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg, they take it seriously enough to try to smoke us into the ground and knock us out. Those two guys really ruined us. We smoked every day at Colgate and then several decades after that.”
And while the group’s eight features to date don’t necessarily spotlight pot-smoking like Cheech & Chong, it’s all in the inspiration, according to Chandrasekhar.
“They’re stoner movies in the sense that we wrote them at least partially stoned,” he admits. “A major part of the writing process takes place when we’re smoking and riffing on a lot of silly stuff through the first half-dozen drafts before we go into a sober phase where we do the structural work on the narrative. Then, we smoke more joints and add more jokes.”
“Quasi” offers more of the same, with Steve Lemme’s title hunchback less about original star Charles Laughton and more a nod to both Marty Feldman’s Igor in “Young Frankenstein” and Peter Falk’s Columbo.
“It’s all of those,” acknowledges Chandrasekhar. “That’s the stuff we grew up on. We’re big fans of John Landis and R-rated comedies like ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ and ’48 Hours.’”
Filmed during the pandemic in Santa Clarita and Spain, “Quasi” offers the kind of gross-out humor – including an explicit scene of a scrotum being nailed to a chopping block — Broken Lizard has become known for.
How do they traverse these politically correct times? “The way we look at our humor is, if they come with pitchforks, I will stand at the podium and defend every joke,” he says. “Woke culture is coming from a place of, can’t we just be considerate to one another? Which I’m all for, but I’m also in favor of making fun of things. We’re equal opportunity offenders.”
As a dual European history major and philosophy minor – who was ready to go to law school if comedy didn’t pan out – Chandrasekhar points out the movie’s “church vs. state” confrontation, along with sly social commentary on income inequality, women’s rights, a dash of homoeroticism and an obsession with slurping oysters from the shell and making fun of French pronunciations of “mon dieu” and “croissants.” Which raises the question of offending the same Gallic sensibility which championed such physical comedians as Jerry Lewis.
“We made ‘Beerfest,’ which took place in Germany, and they tried to ban it in Munich,” says Chandrasekhar of the troupe’s 2006 film. “They said it made German culture look bad. Now, it is a very popular movie there. I don’t know about the French, though. They can be prickly, but we’ll be OK.”
With a 10-year gap between 2009’s “The Slammin’ Salmon” and “Super Troopers 2” – Broken Lizard went to GoFundMe to produce the latter, raising $5.4 million from 55,000 fans, which convinced a wary Fox Searchlight to spring for prints, advertising and distribution – the group’s following has only grown in the interim.
Modeled after classic improv groups like Second City, the Committee, the Credibility Gap, SCTV and Firesign Theater, but also structured like a comedy “rock band” such as Monty Python and Kids in the Hall, Broken Lizard are experiencing a resurgence.
“We can’t believe they’re still letting us do this,” says Chandrasekhar, with the other members – Kevin Heffernan (who directed “Quasi”), Paul Soter, Steve Lemme and Erik Stolhanske – all in their 50s. “We had the advantage of seeing the rock groups of the ‘60s and ‘70s, reading about the conflicts and why they broke up. We vowed not to do that. We don’t quibble over who wrote what joke. We’re all part of the whole, we’re all riffing. No one is taking more credit than he deserves. We’re not going to break up over nonsense. If we play this right, we can make another half-dozen movies.
For Broken Lizard, who established a direct-to-fan relationship long before social media, critical disrespect comes with the territory.
“’Super Troopers’ got a 35% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 90 critics, but 90% Fresh from 250,000 fans,” he says. “Same with all our movies. I’ve completely stopped reading reviews — good or bad — because they’re written by strangers to us.”
Chandrasekhar says he briefly considered shortening his name, but decided, “if Arnold Schwarzenegger can become a Hollywood star, why can’t I?”
Indeed, Chandrasekhar was the first of a wave of Indian American and Southeast Asian comedians, including Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, Hasan Minhaj and Pakistan’s Kumail Nanjiani.
“I am the Jackie Robinson of Indian comics,” he boasts, “And they all acknowledge that. I had to do it on my own. Let’s be honest, when they wanted an Indian in a comedy, they put Peter Sellers or Fisher Stevens in brownface, even though they did a great job.”
With “Super Troopers 3” about to go into production, Broken Lizard is also considering future scripts based in ancient Greece and one a sci-fi satire in outer space.
As for his own all-time favorite stoner film, Chandrasekhar insists, “’Spinal Tap’ is the greatest comedy of all time, but if you’re looking for a movie with smoking in it, a tie between ‘Up in Smoke’ and “Pineapple Express.’”
