INT: Jay Chandrasekhar

Set
Visit Intro / Jurgen
Prochnow / Paul
Soter & Erik Stolhanske
/ Steve
Lemme & Kevin Heffernan
/ Jay Chandrasekhar

Here’s
an interesting story director Jay Chandrasekhar told us before we
started his BEERFEST
interview: In order to get through to the aquarium section of the
bio-park, you had to walk through the Oktoberfest area. On a
particular day, they were filming a scene in the Oktoberfest area
involving a wet t-shirt contest at the same time that a lot of
families (with children) were passing through to get to the
aquarium. Needless to say, the families got a little more than they
were expecting from the park that day but hey, the kids gotta learn
the birds and bees sooner or later, right? And if they do, why
shouldn’t it be through a wet t-shirt contest?

Jay
Chandrasekhar

Do you think there’s a shortage of beer drinking
comedies and how you’re starting them up again?

I don’t know. I feel like the country’s gotten a little
bit crazy in terms of how alcohol is only bad, and considering how
much beer this country drinks and the world drinks, I think
there’s a good side to drinking beer and drinking it heavily.

It’s
probably been 20 years since…

Since
Strange Brew, right, I mean I don’t know. I do see there’s
a danger to making these kind of movies, in that when you’re drunk
or you’re stoned, you think that everything’s funny, and so I
think you have to have more than just “we’re drunk and stoned.
Isn’t that hilarious?” We tried to build in a plot that’s not
“The Godfather” but at least, there’s some story to it and
some structure to it, and you know, if you don’t drink a ton of
beer every weekend or every night, then you’ll still enjoy the
movie.

I
know Rob Reiner is trying to push forward something like anyone who
smokes cigarettes in a movie is a bad guy and it kinda is anyone who
smokes pot or drinks a lot in a movie is kind of a bad guy…

I
hear the Rob Reiner thing is just about cigarettes. Did you hear
that it’s more than that?

No,
no, I see it can go that way. It’s like this, I remember BLADE 2
with the guy that smoked weed and he turned out to be evil…

Well,
they want that if you smoke pot, there be some repercussions, but
there really aren’t any repercussions when you smoke pot…

Except
being awesome.

Except
being awesome, I dunno.

Nothing
bad happens in this movie to people because they’re drinking?

Both
the heroes and the villains drink beer in large amounts. Bad things
don’t happen to people because they drink beer in this movie.

There isn’t a differentiation where heroes drink
American beer and the baddies drink European beer?

No, everybody drinks all kinds of beer.

Are
you using real German brands of beer?

We
are, actually. There’s a company… I can’t remember the name,
it’s embarrassing. There’s a poster of there stuff right there.
They’re like a big German beer company but they’re trying to
break here in America…Rotterberger! Rotterberger. Yeah.

Has
anyone hit the wall on drinking on the set? Is there a day where
it’s like “I’ve had five gallons of this fake beer and I
can’t do it anymore.”

Uh, Will Forte from Saturday Night Live, who I hate to say is
the fastest chugger in the cast. I still have a few days to beat
him, and you gotta beat him on film in order to really be the top
chugger, but he chugged a massive glass of beer so unbelievably
fast, and it was shocking, because I thought, “Oh, it should take
about 9 seconds.” It took him 5 seconds. And then of course, I
said, “Well, let’s see what you can do on Take 2” and he
poured it down again, and I’m like, “I wouldn’t mind one more
take,’ and he left, threw up, came back, downed it again!
Apparently, his Freshman year in school, he was 40 pounds heavier
than he is, so he’s a professional.

Is
this the longest shoot for a Broken Lizard movie? Paul said that he
hit the wall after 27 days, but you probably won’t be shooting
longer on this than you did on Dukes, right?

Yeah,
Dukes was about 55 days. He said he hit the wall on this? Really?
Well, you go til it’s done. Every day has been fun, so you show up
and there’s funny stuff happening, you know?

How much leeway do you have to do anything?

Yeah, the president of Warner Bros Jeff Robinoff, he’s a
young guy and he’s into this kind of comedy and he trusts us, so
he basically said, “Try very hard to stick to the budget, fellas,
and don’t embarrass us out there.” But he thinks that if he
trusts that we’ll make a good movie and…

Did
you get a lot of notes on the script from the studio?

Not
a great deal, but the notes we got were good. I personally think
that a little bit of resistance makes for better movies. I think
that if this movie made a ton of money and the executives stop
telling us notes, I’d bet you’d see a bit of fall-off.

How does the budget compare to Club Dread? Is it double?

No, it’s about another… Club Dread was about 8 ¼… 8 ½
and this is about 12 ½. You know, the incentives down here in
Mexico has added about a million to our budget, so I mean, you get a
bunch of money back just by shooting here.

What
kind of drinking games have you come up with to go along with the
movie?

No,
I don’t know. I’ve never played that game where you watch a
movie and drink. I imagine…we were gonna try to create something
like that, but we didn’t. I think you kinda have to see the movie
and figure it out.

You mentioned how much beer American drinks. What aspect
of beer culture that exists have you drawn specifically?

Well, we all went to Colgate in upstate New York, and it was
a farirly hard drinking school. It was a really hard drinking
school So there’s…I don’t know if it’s rumor or fact but way
before we got there, sometime in the mid-80’s, Playboy ranked the
top drinking schools and they ranked Florida State as #1 and then
supposedly, there was an asterisk and Colgate was right next to it
saying “Colgate would be #1 but it’s a professional drinking
school.” I don’t know if it’s true, but when you go to
Colgate, they tell you that.

Were
you surprised that Jurgen [Prochnow] was a fan of Super Troopers?

Yeah,
absolutely. Are you kidding me? He’s such a scary guy in movies.
You never really see him smile, but then you meet him in person and
he’s laughing after every sentence. He’s just a funny… it’s
just surprising. And you know, we need that kind of guy to lend
credibility to our stuff, I think. To me, it’s great to have real
actors who can sort of ground the film, and he’s funny, too.
He’s got all sorts of funny lines.

Is his energy like Brian Cox at all?

Yeah, he was the one who sort of said, “I’m playing the
Brian Cox character” and he said that they’re up for similar
parts sometimes. I think so. He’s done a lot of serious stuff, and
for him, I think it’s fun to get a chance to goof off a little
bit.

What
about Cloris Leachman? Did she know your stuff beforehand?

She
didn’t. She didn’t know us at all but I mean…

Did
you send her the script?

Well,
we sent it to her, but she was the only one…we wrote the part for
her, and we assume that when you write a part for somebody, you
don’t get them. And amazingly, we got her, because I don’t know
who else would have done the frankly really bawdy wild stuff that
she’s done in this movie. Some of her dialogue is like (whistles).

What
does she play?

She
plays the great grandmother to the two brothers.

Did the horses freak out around her?

We didn’t let her get near any horses.

We
heard that she’s very fond of you.

She
is fond of my lips. She thinks they’re big and thick and cushiony,
and she’s right.

What do you think of the state of comedy today?

I feel pretty good about it. I think that…I always really
look forward to Todd Phillips’ movies. I think the stuff that Wes
Anderson is doing is great. I love what Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson,
Ben Stiller and Jack Black are doing. I think they’re all like
kind of top…you know, comedians that are funny but are still men.
I think that some of Sandler’s stuff when he’s…I was actually
a big fan of Spanglish and what he did with Paul Thomas Anderson. I
think he’s great.

Did
it help having WEDDING CRASHERS and 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN both having a
hard R and doing what they did business wise?

Yeah,
big time! I think that…you know, we stated fairly early on that we
were only going to make R rated movies, so…

You
can’t really do Beerfest as PG-13, can you?

The
whole thing just falls apart. We’ve felt that way all along, but I
was worried that maybe…I don’t know…there was a really clear
direction that the studios were going which was PG-13, PG-13, and
you weren’t sure if it was to be good for Washington or if it was
for the money. It turns out it was for the money. You know, those
two movies have made it so every studio’s like, “Okay, we can
actually make good comedies and make money.” Look, the key is I
think that you have to have some sense of taste, and you have to
have some plot, and something to draw people in.

Well, it’s a different climate then when you made Super
Troopers.

100%. Absolutely.

What
about in terms of your guy’s deal [with Warner Bros.] to discover
new comedians?

They
want us to find young up and coming people, I mean, like for
example, like Steve Carrell. I was talking to them about it, and
they said, “Oh, we could have done that movie and we just didn’t
know. We’re hoping that we have our fingers on the pulse and can
bring in guys like that.” We’re psyched to make funny movies,
whether we’re in them or not. We’re not competitive with
anybody. We just want great movies to happen.

Is
this any different from doing something like DUKES as opposed to the
other Broken Lizard movies? Big Hollywood movie – do you come
at this with a different take?

I
think the thing about Warner Bros for me, was for the first time I
realized, they really do want to make great movies. They want the
movies to be…respectable is probably the wrong term…It’s going
to push boundaries and be a little bawdy, but they want it to be
good. It’s not just “hey we gotta hit that number” which was
our experience at another place. You can talk to these people
and they’re really involved in trying to make it good, and I
learned that on the DUKES. They were like, “oh, okay, it’s going
to cost a little more. Okay, you can have it.” If it was
justified, they would say “yeah, you can have it” so in this
movie, we actually ended up staying on budget, but more importantly,
the movie has been good everyday. I’ve never said “oh, that
sucks but we can move on.” I’ve said, “that sucks. We have to
fix it.”

How
about doing a sequel to DUKES?

I
think we made it…it was fun. I loved it. I had a blast. I hear
they’re talking about going forward with a low budget prequel.

So you’re not interested in directing it?

Not for me. Look, I had a blast. I loved the Dukes of Hazzard
show and I loved the movie we made. I know some people trashed it,
but I don’t really give a fuck. I loved the movie, and we had a
ball, me and Johnny and Sean and Burt and Willie and Jessica. I
thought she was great in what she had to do. Another one? We made it
and we’re done.

Was
it kind of an honor to be nominated for a Razzie? Like a pop culture
sort of thing?

I
thought so. We have a Stonie from High Times magazine. I was a
little disappointed that we got six Razzie noms and we got shut-out.
You’d figure we’d get one, you know?

Is
there a lot of pressure to be the comedy person at Warners? To be
called upon to bring the comedy to them?

Uh, well you just hope that what you tell them is good is
good. I mean, we’re extremely…the sieve is pretty tight. Not
a lot of stuff is going to get through. Just stuff …I believe in
the story, I believe in the filmmakers, I believe in the producers,
okay now we’ll bring it to ‘em, because I don’t want to get
left hanging out there with some piece of crap.

I
got to interview Shethal for the Albert Brooks movie. Is there an
Indian contingent?

Well,
I don’t know. I know that Sheethal and I are friends. You meet
them now and then, yeah, absolutely. I know AJ Nadu from New York.
He’s in one of Linklater’s movies and he’s funny, and I met
the guy who was in Harold and Kumar. Yeah, we find each other.

Oh,
okay, but there’s not like a guild….

No, there’s no Indian guild. The DGA actually invites
Asian Americans all together. I mean, it’s a little
weird…we’re here because we’re all brown. It’s never been my
game.

And
is this legend of Beerfest? Is that something you totally made up or
is it based on anything?

It’s
100% true. (laughter)

BEERFEST
goes wide on August 25th