Broken Lizard - History

History

The group formed at Colgate University in 1990 when Jay Chandrasekhar was asked by a student theater director to put together a comedy show. Chandrasekhar agreed and assembled a sketch comedy troupe which included Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske, all members of the Beta Theta Pi Fraternity. The team performed a combination of live stage sketches and short videos under the name "Charred Goosebeak". Charred Goosebeak continues to exist at Colgate to this day.

After graduation, the members reunited in New York City and spent the next few years performing at various clubs, mostly Greenwich Village mainstay The Duplex, under the name "Broken Lizard". The group offered various explanations of the origin of this moniker over the years, ranging from a euphemism for loss of virility, to a tribute to Chandrasekhar's pet allergies. Most recently, the members admitted that Chandrasekhar simply made up the name "off the top of his head" when he had their first flyer printed. Another possible name that was discarded was "Chocolate Speedo".

Broken Lizard spent the next few years performing at clubs and college campuses. Its membership dwindled to the five current performers. By the mid 90's, the group's interests shifted away from live material as they became more interested in filmed content. They wrote and acted in Dante's Levels of Hell, a series of interstitial shorts for Comedy Central's "Is This On?" feature.

At this time, the Broken Lizard members also made their first foray into long-form film, shooting the 30-minute 16 mm project, The Tinfoil Monkey Agenda, an absurdist media spoof that earned them a trip to the Ft. Lauderdale Film Festival, and cemented in the group's minds that they should be creating full-length feature films.

In 1995, the group went back to the campus of Colgate University to shoot Puddle Cruiser, their first 35 mm full length feature, using a tiny budget cobbled together from family loans and maxed-out credit cards. (Chandrasekhar claims his Indian surname caused credit card companies to believe he was a doctor, and therefore offer him generous cash advances.) The movie, a compilation of characters and story lines from their own college experiences, was quickly accepted for the Hamptons International Film Festival where it won the top jury award, The Golden Starfish. It was also accepted for the Sundance Film Festival, and it eventually aired on the Sundance Channel and IFC.

While adapting the film into an NBC comedy pilot, the group put together the script for their next feature, and first wide-release movie Super Troopers. The film, which portrays rural highway patrolmen as regular guys desperate to make their jobs entertaining, was shot in 2000, and was also invited to Sundance, where raucous screenings earned the film a distribution deal from Fox Searchlight Pictures, a unit of 20th Century Fox. The movie was released in February 2002 and only enjoyed moderate theatrical success, but it eventually developed a cult following.

Fox Searchlight sponsored and distributed the group's next feature, 2004's Club Dread, a parody of slasher films that takes place at an idyllic tropical resort.

After Chandrasekhar directed The Dukes of Hazzard for Warner Bros., Broken Lizard was offered a deal with the studio. This relationship resulted in Broken Lizard's fourth feature, 2006's Beerfest, about two brothers who discover an underground Oktoberfest beer-drinking Olympics and assemble a team to compete.

As of late May 2010, Broken Lizard had completed their fifth feature, The Slammin' Salmon, about a group of waiters who are terrorized over the course of a busy night by their unstable boss (Michael Clarke Duncan). Heffernan directed The Slammin' Salmon.

Broken Lizard is now in the post production phase with their latest film, Freeloaders.