I've been watching a lot of cable shows like 'The Wire' and 'Breaking Bad' and 'Downton Abbey.' I love how real the moments are.
— Jay Chandrasekhar
'Super Troopers' benefited from the old way of watching films, the way we watched at Colgate, when you went to someone's house, looked at their DVD collection, and then just picked one.
Colgate is the epitome of having it both ways. Academically, it ranks in the top twenty schools in the country, but it is also a famous party school.
What makes Broken Lizard, I think, is our timing.
A lot of comedy films, there's the opinion, 'Well, if it's funny, put it in.' But I think you have to be more disciplined than that.
To me, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and my identity is of a suburban Chicago person. It's not like, 'Oh, I'm Indian.' I'm not. I'm American.
I have always enjoyed outlaw films such as 'Smokey and the Bandit.'
I don't like soft villains in comedy films.
Occasionally, we would shoot something and think, 'This is it; we are over the line.' But the test audiences didn't have a problem with it.
There has been a stigma around letting movies be seen on home screens on the same day as theatrical screens. Universal said they were going to do it with 'Tower Heist,' but they backed off when challenged by the theater owners. I understand where the theater owners are coming from on big studio movies.
Often, when you're in some of these writing rooms for... and the most restrictive is network television, right? They say, 'Wow, that's a great joke, but we can't do that. Okay, let's try the second joke. Oh, you can't do that one. But the third joke you can do,' and hopefully it will be great, but it will remind people of what the joke really was.
We shot 'Super Troopers' on the side of the road in the summer in Poughkeepsie.
We can't make movies without scripts, and there's no cost to writing a script, so my advice to newcomers is do it yourself: Write your own script, shoot your shorts, edit your shorts.
I have used the name Jambulingam while editing films such as 'Super Troopers' and 'Puddle Cruiser.' I like the look and sound of it.
Philosophy teaches you to think big.
The thing about people from Chicago and the Northwest suburbs is that they're very cocky. I think that serves us well in the show business world.
Ultimately, in regular television, you've got seven or eight executives and maybe 50 people in the room with dials who are deciding whether a show goes - and it's not a great way, because we're making mass entertainment.
We write and write and write until we think, 'If we have to shoot this script, we'll be happy, and it's going to be a great movie.' I meet with all the actors two weeks before, and I ask them, 'What lines don't work? What is uncomfortable for you? What jokes do you think aren't good? If you're not getting it, here's what the joke is.' You fix it.
There was a Burger King in Hamilton, N.Y., where Colgate is, that had three sizes: Small, Medium, and Liter. I would go in there and order a large. And they'd say, 'We don't have large; we have liters.' So they'd make us order liters of cola, which I found to be just anti-American.
What I do when I act and direct is I do a small version, go a little bigger, do a medium one, an over-the-top one, and then even bigger than that. I'll do six readings of the line. And they're not all the same. Just so I know if I was wrong about what I should have done, I luckily have this more subtle version.
With 'Puddle Cruiser,' the first 15 minutes are the weakest. When you're total unknowns and you have a weak opening, it's a real problem. At some screenings, we'd see the odd walkout before the movie even got going. But to counteract that, we'd do sketches before the show to introduce the film.
'Spinal Tap' influenced me, I think, specifically in making me really pay attention to tone.
I think that society is aspiring towards racial indifference, but the reality of life is not that. And so when you meet someone, you can see their race - it's right there on their face - and I feel like it's interesting.
I have always felt a comedy's story is undercut if you have a villain who is not really menacing.
People always ask us, 'Hey, is there going to be a 'Beerfest 2'?' I don't know if I have another beer joke in me.
Frankly, I love 'Scream': I think it's one of the great scary/funny movies.
In the summer of 2000, four college friends and I grew mustaches, bought highway patrol uniforms, and shot a $1.2 million budgeted independent film called 'Super Troopers.'
It's never a matter ever, ever - are - we're never trying to gross anybody out, or ever are we trying to shock people. We're just trying to make it funny in a way that makes the audience go, 'You know, that was the first joke they thought of, and they weren't afraid to do it.'
I took one film class at NYU over a summer and learned the basics - you know, how to load a camera and how to light and how to edit - and I became a film editor.
One of my random skills is I have a very strong memory for dialogue and moments, and I don't know why.
I would never be comfortable with an edited name. I have never hidden the fact that I am of Indian origin.
History is ultimately storytelling. I think the more stories you write in life - and I've written a lot of screenplays, a lot of short stories - you realize it's your interpretation of events that people read, and they absorb that.
What I've found is that humans do laugh at the same things everywhere.
I actually like and love Chevy Chase.
Showbiz works well when you give the audience what they want.
In 2010, The Princeton Review ranked Colgate the most beautiful campus in America - I agree.
I remember walking into the editing room when I was a junior in college, and I watched the guy make cuts, and I didn't know what the hell was going on. He was just putting these shots together and telling the story, and it was amazing.
I think, in a film that's supposed to last an hour and a half, I think you have to really pay attention to what kind of movie you're making, what is the audience experiencing, and does this joke fit with this joke?
I think that Broken Lizard movies typically have to be able to star five guys, so it's like, policemen, spacemen, a basketball team.
I find that there's so much funny stuff in real life, and I am much more interested in super grounded, real stuff, so now I just want things to feel real and authentic.
I am convinced that tough villains help make a comedy sparkle because they provide a contrast to the funny guys.
You can't halt time.
There used to be lots of legitimate independent distributors: Fox Searchlight, Miramax, Lionsgate, Warner Independent, Focus Features, Paramount Vantage, Picturehouse and Fine Line. Most of them have closed.
I myself downloaded and watched 'The Wire,' 'Breaking Bad,' 'Downton Abbey,' 'Mad Men' and 'The Walking Dead' on my iPad while walking on a treadmill. I never turned a TV on once. I never inserted a DVD.
We've always had a philosophy that we would always go wherever the joke is.
That movie - 'Airplane!' - it influenced so many of us.
I've written close to 20 screenplays and 100 sketches - I know exactly how to do them. They're judged by set criteria that I know.
If you hang around people from L.A., they're, like, used to having their city being maligned.
A lot of people come from small towns, and they come here wondering 'Can I really make it in Hollywood?' When I went to L.A., I knew I was going to make it. There's no doubt about it. Why? Because I'm from Chicago!
'Super Troopers' did well but not crazy-well theatrically. But it did so well after that it - in ancillary markets - that it became impossible for us to get away from it. We'd get pulled over by cops who would thank us and then would let us go.
