I have always enjoyed outlaw films such as 'Smokey and the Bandit.'
'Smokey and the Bandit' is tough and funny.
I think that Broken Lizard movies typically have to be able to star five guys, so it's like, policemen, spacemen, a basketball team.
Look at the opening sequence of 'The Blues Brothers,' which starts at the prison. The way it was filmed, it does not look like a comedy. I thought that was great.
A lot of comedies in the 1980s and 1990s had all these colors and were so brightly lit. But John Landis had this dark style, like a Scorsese film.
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.
I actually like and love Chevy Chase.
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.
When we had Brian Cox in 'Super Troopers,' we learned that when you put a great actor in the center of our lunacy, it grounds everything.
Many films you see in theaters are financed through outside sources. With big films, the studio will pay, hoping to reap the reward of their big bet. But with medium and small-sized films, outside production companies and financiers often foot the bill.
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.
The film you know as 'Super Troopers' is a film that almost didn't happen. The script was originally commissioned and developed by Miramax, but when it failed to get a green light, Harvey Weinstein was kind enough to give it back to us so we could make it elsewhere.
You see any movie, and it's just a feat of human strength and perseverance. It is a brutally challenging business.
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.
What makes Broken Lizard, I think, is our timing.
When Broken Lizard writes a movie, we reject everything that doesn't have five guys as leads, so it needs to be cops or a basketball team; that's what we can do.
I did a lot of standup from ages 19 to 24 but then stopped to focus on sketch with Broken Lizard.
Our fans often tell us that they see themselves in us. The relationship between the guys in Broken Lizard rings a bell with them, because they have their own little friend groups, with their own complex dynamics, and their own private jokes.
If you hang around people from L.A., they're, like, used to having their city being maligned.
I have always felt a comedy's story is undercut if you have a villain who is not really menacing.
