"Super Troopers" (Broken Lizard)

Interview: ‘Super Troopers 2’ cast on the big sequel, Cannabis Cup antics

After raising more than $2 million via Indiegogo in 24 hours to make “Super Troopers 2”, the Broken Lizard comedy team isn’t slowing down. Instead, the group has released a series of new packages and perks for supporters attending the Cannabis Cup today, including “Potfest“, where contributors can enjoy a private party with the gang and stoner icon Cheech Marin.

They’ll also be screening the original “Super Troopers” film with stars Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Paul Soter, Steve Lemme and Erik Stolhanske at 4:20 p.m. on 4/20.

Heffernan, Lemme and Stolhanske sat down with The Cannabist to talk about man-crushes, their favorite sequels and how they’ve grown to love doing promotions in their trooper uniforms.

The Cannabist: I just came from a charity event where marijuana industry people were arm wrestling. If you guys arm wrestled right now, who would win?

Heffernan: Oh man, I suck at arm wrestling.

Stolhanske: I thought you anchored us in Australia?

Heffernan: I did, but it was at one of those deals where — ultimately, it was why we made “Beerfest.” We got into a huge arm wrestling contest in Australia at this beer festival. These guys challenged us, and I’m a terrible arm wrestler, but because I’m a bigger guy they always think I’m good so I get squared up against their big guy. And off camera, we talk and he admitted he was in the exact same situation. We went head-to-head, and I won, and the place went crazy. He’s terrible, I’m terrible, but I guess he was more terrible than me.

Lemme: Jay (Chandrasekhar) has got the longest wings, so he’d probably have the most leverage.

Heffernan: He’s more partial to Indian wrestling, though. (*audible groans*) Thank you, thank you.

The Cannabist: Going back to before your Indiegogo campaign, how concerned were you that no one would be interested and you’d raise, say, $10,000?

Lemme: You never know!

Heffernan: We were a little scared, you know? But the cool thing was our guru here Ivan said we’d know in the first couple days. So we were sitting around in a room doing a Reddit AMA, and we just started to answer the questions and thinking “Oh f—, oh s—, we don’t know what’s going to happen.” And then it took off, and we were all going: (*mimes sighs of relief*) And all the anxiety went away. But we were scared s—less.

The Cannabist: Reddit AMAs can be grueling. How long did you hang in there?

Stolhanske: Six and a half hours. We were having a lot of fun because we were all in a room together.

Lemme: In the beginning, we were just going (*makes gun shot noises*).

Heffernan: It’s because we were hiding our fear. You need something to do to not be afraid.

Stolhanske: … typing our fear away.

Lemme: It was like a life-support machine. I found after six hours when I got up and walked away that my brain collapsed. I stopped being able to communicate

The Cannabist: So you have all the guys in the same room for this Reddit AMA, how often are you able to get everyone together with all of your side projects and families?

Lemme: You know what’s funny is that Kevin and I have a podcast, and we have done 104 episodes, and we have never had all of Broken Lizard at one time.

Heffernan: But over the last month or so, it’s been different. It’s been intensive.

The Cannabist: Let’s qualify your ability to make a sequel. What’s your favorite movie sequel that isn’t Godfather 2?

Stolhanske: “Empire Strikes Back.”

Lemme: That’s what I was going to say! That was the best one of them all.

Heffernan: What about “Aliens”, though? That was a more action version of the original.

Lemme: I’m just like, “Empire Strikes Back” ended with Han Solo in that carbon freeze, and Darth Vader was Luke’s father. That’s how you do it.

Heffernan: I’ll tell you how you do it: “Rocky 2.”

Stolhanske and Lemme: He wins.

The Cannabist: So it’s going to be mustache time pretty soon here for you guys. How are you going to break that to your families, especially your children?

Lemme: I’ve already grown two during the campaign.

Heffernan: You’ve been off and on. He can do it in a day.

Stolhanske: You (Lemme) are facial hair bi-polar. You go in and out.

Lemme: I’ve come to embrace the mustache. The first time around, I grew a full beard and mustache and then shaved it in. Now I just go mustache. I’ve learned how to wear a mustache.

Stolhanske: I tried to grow a pencil mustache once and trim it at a 90 degree angle, but it was so blonde it didn’t register. The human eye almost couldn’t make it out.

Lemme: Only a cat could see it.

The Cannabist: One of your Indiegogo rewards is sperm donation. Who would donate it?

Heffernan: We talked about everyone doing it in the same cup and just swirling it around.

The Cannabist: Like a centrifuge?

Heffernan: Yeah! Then we hand it over.

Stolhanske: That way, it’s like a lottery when the baby comes out.

Lemme: It’s going to be brown, short, fat, small head, big calves. Just a gross little baby.

Stolhanske: But a strong swimmer.

The Cannabist: You guys have talked about not remembering how much you liked being these characters until you were back in them. Are these characters aging with you?

Heffernan: I think they’re going to be the same. I don’t think there’s any life-changing events that have happened. Like, I’ll still be an asshole. (*laughter*)

Lemme: Well, one funny thing about writing a sequel — we’re at 16 drafts already — is that we were familiar with the characters. When we wrote the first it was like, you’re getting to know a guy and getting a feel for them. You’re discovering them through going “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if Farva said this? Farva and Rabbit should have a rivalry because that would be kind of funny.” This time around, since we know them, we’re not concerned with that so one thing I’ve noticed is that Farva is now Farva 2.0. We’re not wasting any time. It’s like in the last 10 years he’s gone insane. [Laughter] I don’t think he has any logical dialogue in this, it’s all crazy f—ing s—.

Heffernan: But that’s been the whole mindset since we started getting the costumes for the Farva in the trunk videos.

Lemme: But if you watch “Super Troopers”, Farva’s actually a normal guy that’s an a——. This Farva is out of his mind.

The Cannabist: What’s it like coming back to those characters and being able to inhabit that time in your life again?

Heffernan: It’s great. It’s a license to be a d—. The biggest d— you can be.

Lemme: When we did the promotional tour for “Super Troopers”, the movie hadn’t even come out yet and the studio was insisting we go everywhere in these cop uniforms. We were in Australia at the opening of a tire store, no s—, we went to a mall.

Stolhanske: We did radio in full cop uniforms, too.

Lemme: Yeah, we were judging the Limp Bizkit (to) audition a new guitarist contest on the radio in our highway patrol uniforms. It didn’t quite make sense, and kids were nervous to perform in front of these cops. And it was uncomfortable, and I think we all kind of hated it because you just felt like kind of a dork.

The Cannabist: So is that not a part of promotion this time around?

Lemme: No! Now it’s great.

Heffernan: We got to throw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium the other night in our uniforms.

Stolhanske: We’re there at Dodger Stadium, we put on our uniforms and a female reporter that looks over and goes, “Oh! Now I get it.” It takes people a moment to put two and two together.

Heffernan: There’s times, like when I went to shake hands with Tommy Lasorda, where I’m sure he thought I was a real cop.

Lemme: Dude, Mattingly looked cool and good.

Heffernan: He did! He looked tan.

Lemme: Ask us who our man-crushes are.

The Cannabist: Okay, this will come out on “Man Crush Monday.” Who’s your pick?

Lemme: One time, Kevin’s parents used to host us at their house in Connecticut for July 4th weekend. It’s right on the Long Island Sound, and we’d go out there and have some beers, and Kevin’s dad would make chicken and hot dogs, it was great. And Big Mike would talk about his chicken all day long and force you to eat ten pieces of chicken, but one time we were watching the “old timers” game. Mattingly had just retired the season before, and he came out and I heard a little sniffle, and I looked over at Kevin. He was crying.

Heffernan: (*sniffles*) It’s true.

Lemme: And I hadn’t said anything, and I looked over at him and he said, “It’s the one time of year I’m allowed to cry!”

The Cannabist: Eric, who’s your man crush?

Stolhanske: Paul Newman. I cried when I heard he died.

Lemme: I have a number of them, let me be honest with you.

Stolhanske: Kevin Kline?

Lemme: Not Kevin Kline, I just think he’s the best actor on the planet. My first man crush was Mick Jagger, and then I really liked Travolta as Danny Zuko.

The Cannabist: So you dumped Jagger for Travolta?

Heffernan: Oh no, there’s plenty of room in that man’s heart.

Lemme: Yeah. This heart seats five.

Stolhanske: That’s a song right there. “This Heart Seats Five”.

Lemme: Sam Elliot, too. Big man-crush on Sam Elliot. Also, a guy named Ronn Moss who played Ridge Forrester on “The Bold and the Beautiful”. I had just gotten out of college and was channel surfing, and I started laughing at how comically good looking this guy was. I’m like, “I love this f—ing guy.” When the Internet was invented a few years later, I looked him up. (*laughter*) Turns out, he’s part of a group called Player. (*sings “Baby Come Back”*)

The Cannabist: So 4/20 weekend, why Denver? Is this an Indiegogo money grab?

Lemme: What a cynical thing to say!

Heffernan: I don’t think there’s going to be much of a money grab this weekend, I think it’s more that this is definitely our fanbase.

Stolhanske: Where else would you want to be on 4/20 weekend?

Heffernan: Right. And me, I have a curiosity about it. When we came here last summer, I feel like things were just kind of in motion. I was totally curious to find out what the Cannabis Cup in Denver is now.

Lemme: Yeah, I mean a lot of times at our live shows people will come up and try to slip me some weed, and this time it was just out in the open. We were like, “Whoa! Whoa!” And they just said “It’s legal, man!” We were invited to dispensaries. Denver had definitely changed.

Stolhanske: (*shows a cell phone picture of a joint rolled like Johnny Chimpo, a cartoon character from “Super Troopers”*) Somebody made that for us. That’s why we came to Denver.

(*At this point, there was a side-discussion about how the High Times media kit claimed, inaccurately, that they were premiering “Super Troopers 2” at the Cannabis Cup on 4/20*)

Lemme: We were just talking about when we hosted the High Times Stoney Awards and we were amused at how unorganized it was.

Heffernan: It was refreshingly unorganized.

Lemme: We heard we were up next to present, and we walked up and they said, “Go find a stage manager.” And we were like, “What’s up?” and the guy says “Hey man, what’s up?” We were like, “You tell us. We’re here to present the next award.” And he’s goes, “Oh cool. What award is it?” (*laughter*) We’re like, “You tell US.”

Heffernan: But the funny thing was, they had headsets and clipboards so it looked like an awards show but they were f—king baked and didn’t know what was going on.

Lemme: Like, we’re hosting this s— tonight, and we haven’t had one conversation about what we’re about to do.

The Cannabist: Cheech Marin is going to be at the party tomorrow night. Any chance he has a cameo in “Super Troopers 2”?

Heffernan: Probably there’s a chance.

Lemme: Maybe, yeah.

Stolhanske: That’s the problem with cameos: there’s only so many roles, especially when we’re on the sixteenth draft already.

Lemme: “Potfest” is a different story. We just did an interview with Snoop Dogg a couple days ago, and he said, “I’ll do ‘Potfest’.” We know we can get Cheech and Chong, we know we can get Willie. That’s a pretty formidable team right there.

Heffernan: It’s the “Cannonball Run” of pot movies.

The Cannabist: So it’s 4/20 weekend. Who’s planning on smoking?

Lemme: Not me.

Heffernan: It seems like everyone is. Is it possible to avoid it?

Stolhanske: I’m interested in trying some of the different cuisine. Maybe a spaghetti or a fettuccine alfredo or something.

Tickets are still available for the 4/20 screening and the Broken Lizard private party at the High Times Cannabis Cup.