When we got back to Manhattan, I talked to Sloss, who said that our plan had worked. Puddle Cruiser had great buzz, and check-writing company heads had requested film prints. Per the strategy, John told them that no prints were going out, and if they wanted to see the film, they had to come to our distributor screenings. The distributor screenings were crowded, great, and got big laughs, but the bosses, who assured us they were coming, each canceled at the last minute, leaving us with multiple $500 theater-booking bills. We just weren’t a priority. Now what?
John had an idea. He called Geoff Gilmore, the head programmer of Sundance, to rib him about missing out on the discovery of Puddle Cruiser. Geoff was curious, so he went to one of our distributor screenings. Afterward, he called John, saying he agreed the film was really good and he wanted to talk to me. When I called Geoff, he said he really dug the film, but he had one question.
“Why didn’t you send it to Sundance first? I would have definitely programmed it there, but I can’t now, since it already premiered at the Hamptons.”
When I told him I had sent a rough cut to Sundance a year ago, he said he never saw it. Ouch. My heart sank. I get it. Sundance gets thousands of films every year. How can the head programmer see every one? When I told Sloss, he said he’d work on him.
Meanwhile, we had been invited to the London International Film Festival, which took place the week of Thanksgiving. The film played well in London, except for one seventyish-year-old woman, who followed me for two blocks, chastising me for the foul language in the film. That night, I was spending a lonely pre-Thanksgiving night in my hotel room when the phone rang. It was Sloss.
“You got into Sundance.”
This was a big moment for me. I had been to Sundance as a spectator three years in a row, lurking around the edges, unable to get into screenings or parties. Now we were going with our own film. It was really happening. Geoff Gilmore, bucking precedent, had made us the first-ever film to premiere at another US film festival and then be let into Sundance. It was a big give and it had a huge impact on our careers. So, thanks, Geoff.
When I got back, Broken Lizard took a trip out to Los Angeles, where we were wined and dined and then officially signed by CAA. CAA held a couple of screenings of the film at their agency screening room to “introduce us to the town.” They connected us with one of our childhood heroes, David Zucker, codirector of Airplane!, The Naked Gun, and many others. Our agent, Ken Hardy, had come up with the idea of David putting his name on our film—something like: “Presented by David Zucker.” It would be an old-guard comedy guy giving his seal of approval to the new guard. We spent a lot of time with David and his crew, talking about their films. David told us that Airplane! was written to be a black-and-white film set in a 1940s propeller plane, but Jeffrey Katzenberg said the studio would green-light it only if the Zuckers shot the film in color and set it on a jumbo jet. They reluctantly agreed, but in an act of rebellion, in the sound mix, they made the sound of the plane that of a 1940s propeller plane.
Going to Sundance with a film can be one of the great joys in life. The audiences are enthusiastic, the press is bountiful, and you are treated like a real artist. But Sundance is also a place of intense stress, because most filmmakers arrive in Park City in some form of debt, having rolled the dice on their dreams. The pressure is on to make a sale, erase the debt, and get the film into theaters. Accomplish that, and your chances of making a second film just went up. Sundance is also the first time a filmmaker is going to read reviews. When they’re negative, as inevitably some will be, it can feel personal, embarrassing, and crushing. As the days drag on, it becomes painful to read about other films selling when your phone is quiet. You beat the odds to make it to Sundance, but you didn’t sell. Now what?
Sundance scheduled four screenings for us, two in the six-hundred-seat Library screening room, one in the legendary four-hundred-seat Egyptian Theatre, and the last in the lobby of the Yarrow Hotel, which sat seventy.
Our job was simple: Get the check-writing bosses into one of the first three, big screenings, where they would be swept away by the enthusiasm of the crowd. If we could do this, we figured they’d make the obvious decision to buy our movie, which would put us in the company of other DIY films like Slacker, Clerks, The Brothers McMullen, Reservoir Dogs, and Swingers in getting a theatrical release deal.
The Hamptons had showed us that the film played great to audiences, but it also showed a potentially fatal flaw. Puddle Cruiser didn’t open well—the first fifteen minutes are its weakest. And when audiences are trying to decide if they like your film, starting slow can turn them against you. I saw this phenomenon in person when the one check writer who bothered to come to our Los Angeles distributor screening left at the fifteen-minute mark. Sloss had told the guy that Puddle Cruiser was a good, commercial movie, but the guy was bored by the first fifteen, decided he’d been conned, and walked out—right by me.
Conversely, starting a movie well tells the audience that this filmmaker knows what he’s doing, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. The best example of this is any James Bond movie.
To counteract our slow start, we decided to perform a live sketch before every screening to warm up the crowd. We figured that if we could get the audience laughing, we’d win them over and be able to move past the first fifteen. We tried a few different sketches, but the one we settled on for the biggest stage was called “Billy the Dummy.”
Our first screening at the sold-out, six-hundred-seat Park City Library was buzzing off of the word of mouth from the Hamptons. Starting our preshow sketch, Kevin and I walked up to the front of the theater with long faces. I quieted the crowd and told them the bad news.
“Folks, I hate to tell you this, but at the run-through earlier, reel one of the film print”—the first twenty minutes—“got mangled in the projector.” The audience groaned. Then I’d say, “Don’t worry. Another print landed in Salt Lake twenty minutes ago and is being hand delivered directly to the screening. So we just need to kill a little time.” The audience looked at their watches.
Then Kevin would start in. “So, has anyone seen any good movies?” More groaning from the high-powered, overscheduled audience, who were debating whether to get up and bail.
Then our plant in the audience, Paul Soter, would stand up, dead serious, and start heckling us. “Why did you come to Sundance without a backup print? Guys, I’m sorry, but this is really unprofessional!” This would embarrass the audience, who would start to feel bad for us, causing them to shush Paul.
At this point, another audience plant, Steve Lemme, would stand up and shout Paul down for being rude. The audience would usually clap for Steve. Emboldened by the audience support, Steve would then offer to help Kevin and me kill some time.
“You guys are in luck, because I’m a professional ventriloquist and I just happen to have my friend Billy with me.” Steve would pull out his dummy (Billy) and start doing a preposterously high-voiced bit, where Billy would insult Kevin and me for being unprofessional because we didn’t have a second print. Steve was an intentionally terrible ventriloquist, and the voice he used for Billy was so ridiculous that the audience, sensing a bit, started to laugh. On cue, the back doors to the theater would fly open, and Erik Stolhanske, dressed as a UPS guy, would run in.
“Did someone order a film print?! I’ve got it right he—” And he would trip, à la Chevy Chase, sending the “film print” flying into the air and unspooling all over the aisle. This always got the biggest laugh, which meant it was time to start the show.
The opening sketch got us through the first fifteen minutes, making the first Library screening a huge hit. After the screening, we did a raucous question-and-answer session—“Who are you guys? Where did you meet? Do you really all write together?” After the Q and A, we threw Puddle Cruiser T-shirts into the smiling crowd. We were pulling out all the stops.
After the screening, John told us th
at many lower-level acquisition executives had been there and were reporting back good things to their check-writing bosses. Screening two was going to be big.
The buzz on Puddle Cruiser had made its way around Park City, which made for a packed second Library screening. People wanted to see for themselves what all the excitement was about. The opening bit killed, and the screening was even better. Afterward, I talked to Sloss, who said that decision makers from Trimark and Overseas FilmGroup were there and very interested. Also there were some Miramax execs who were interested and trying to get Harvey Weinstein to come. John told us to keep the excitement going and we’d sell this fucker at the next screening.
The third screening, at the famed Egyptian Theatre, went just like the first two, with big laughs and lots of love. After the screening, John said Trimark and Overseas FilmGroup wanted to partner up, with Trimark taking domestic rights and Overseas taking foreign. They hadn’t made an official offer yet, but they were talking about a five-hundred-screen domestic release. Oh yeah! Meanwhile, Miramax again expressed interest, and they assured us that Harvey’s number two, Meryl Poster, was coming to the fourth screening.
The fourth and final screening was in the lobby of the Yarrow Hotel, where they’d set up seventy folding chairs and projected the film on a fold-up screen. The place was packed, but here’s the thing—seventy people, regardless of how much they’re laughing, isn’t enough to move the excitement needle. Miramax’s decision maker was there; she passed. We were frustrated and pissed. If she had come to screenings one, two, or three, we were sure Miramax would have bought the film. Fuck! Okay, but someone else was going to buy the film, right? Sort of. We got the five-hundred-screen offer from Trimark and Overseas FilmGroup. Between the two companies, their offer was for zero dollars. Swingers had sold to Miramax at a distributor screening for a whopping $5 million advance, and these companies were offering us, in the words of Dean Wormer, “zero point zero.” Their pitch was that they would spend the substantial money necessary to get the film in front of audiences and, if it took off, we’d get a share of the profits. We turned both offers down. We just felt in our guts that the big buzz out of Sundance would translate into a better offer later. Maybe we could get some of the decision makers who didn’t see it in Park City to come to watch it in LA or New York. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
There was some good news out of Sundance. Those raucous screenings had introduced us to young Hollywood, which put Broken Lizard on show business’s radar. NBC and ABC execs, who had been at our Park City screenings, were excited to hear our ideas for shows. Broken Lizard on network TV? Because of our R-rated style, it didn’t sound like the obvious fit, but maybe we’d adapt and show MTV what they had missed out on.
That February, I went to the Berlin International Film Festival market, where we screened the film for foreign buyers. The mostly German and Dutch crowd appeared confused by our humor. But Berlin was fun. I spent the week with a filmmaker named John O’Hagan, who directed a cool doc about America’s first suburb called Wonderland. John and I had such a good time that we named our captain in Super Troopers after him. We met up with his NYU film school friend, a beautiful, blond, six-foot-tall German girl named Adelheid, who gave us a tour of Berlin. She took us to the stadium where Hitler gave one of those insanely yelly speeches. The same place where he would watch Jesse Owens win four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, thus discrediting his theories about Aryan superiority.
That night, Adelheid took us across the Brandenburg Gate into the former East Germany. The billboards on the western side of the gate were bright and colorful, while on the eastern side they were still black-and-white. The cab dropped us off on a desolate street, and we walked down an alley into a courtyard. Adelheid led us down another alley, into another courtyard, and then down another alley to a third courtyard. We were deep inside the bowels now. Finally, she led us up some wooden stairs, where she knocked on a rusty metal door. The door opened a crack, revealing an eyeball and part of some lips. Adelheid whispered a password in German and the door swung open. If this seems familiar, it’s because we used this whole gag in Beerfest.
We walked up two more flights of stairs to a hoppin’ disco, where they were playing American music from the fifties, primarily Buddy Holly. We got hammered on German beer, or as they call it there, beer. Toward the end of the night, Adelheid and I started making out. I could feel the unhappy eyes of East Germany on me. Because of World War II, you might assume Germany is going to be this horrible, racist place, but it’s not. At least west Berlin was not. It boomeranged so far the other way that it became inclusive and multiracial and very liberal. The east, though—the east was still a racial work in progress.
When I got home, Kevin, Steve, and I drove down to Austin, Texas, to show the film at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Austin is the gem of Texas. It’s groovy, smart, hip, and fantastic, and we were excited to visit the place we had only seen in Richard Linklater’s Slacker. When we arrived in town, our mind-set was conflicted. We’d won the Hamptons Film Festival, but no sale. We’d kicked serious ass at Sundance and got two offers for zero dollars. Now we needed to come down here and pull off a Texas miracle. We needed to become the first film ever to sell out of South by Southwest. SXSW was beginning to build a name for itself as a hip place to show a film. Tons of filmmakers went, but not as many check writers.
At the opening-night party, we saw Quentin Tarantino talking to Richard Linklater, Mike Judge, and Robert Rodriguez. We sent Lemme over to infiltrate. He stood there for about a minute before bursting out with, “Hi, I’m Steve, and you guys should come see our movie, Puddle Cruiser!” It went over like a lead balloon.
The screenings at SXSW were sold out, rowdy, and terrific, thanks to the best film crowds in the country. Austin folk are smart and laid-back, and they get every single joke. Sloss brought Richard Linklater to our screening at the legendary Paramount Theatre, which was a big moment for me.
That week, we befriended a filmmaker named Sarah Kelly, who had directed the cool, behind-the-scenes documentary Full-Tilt Boogie, which chronicled the making of the Tarantino/Rodriguez film From Dusk Till Dawn. We loved the film, and when Sarah saw Puddle Cruiser, we formed a mutual admiration society.
Sarah told us that she had been talking up our film to Quentin, who said he was going to come see it. But we had only one screening left. An hour before showtime, Sarah called to say Quentin was coming with ten people and to save them seats. We held eleven seats in the front row, turning away people from the overflowing crowd. Fifteen minutes after the scheduled start, Quentin still wasn’t there. We killed some time, doing a really long opening sketch, but still no Quentin. The crowd was restless, and it was time to start, so I signaled to the projectionist to roll the film. On cue, in came Quentin, with Richard Linklater, Mike Judge, and eight others. The screening was great, and the Q and A after was better, with Quentin and Mike Judge asking questions. Afterward, we all went out and got hammered. Amazing, right?
Years later, when we had a deal at Warner Bros., Quentin called me from Berlin, where he was making Inglourious Basterds, to ask for a copy of Beerfest to show to his cast and crew. I later heard that he put a nod to Beerfest into Inglourious Basterds—it’s the scene where the black-clad Nazi is drinking a beer in the basement bar. He is drinking the beer out of a glass boot.
When we got back to New York, I called John. “Fuck it. Let’s take the Trimark/Overseas offer. Let’s get the film in theaters.” Five hundred screens was a big release for our tiny film. Guess what? Trimark and Overseas were no longer interested. They were offended that we had turned them down and had moved on. Ouch.
We moped around New York for a week, back at our jobs and unsure about what to do next. I was sitting on a lot of debt and had no idea how to move forward. How would we get another film made if we couldn’t sell the first one? Then, as if by divine intervention, Sloss called to tell me that Harvey Weinstein had finally watche
d Puddle Cruiser, and he wanted to meet. Was this our last-second miracle in the making?
I met Harvey in his small office at Miramax headquarters in Tribeca. I was dating a Miramax executive at the time, and she delivered me to Harvey’s office, mouthing, “Holy shit!” I sat on the couch as Harvey poured on the charm, telling me that his acquisition staff kept hounding him about this movie, so he finally watched Puddle Cruiser on a VHS tape in his office and laughed his ass off. He even said the directing was great. I was thinking, Holy shit! We’re about to get a theatrical offer. Then Harvey shifted gears, telling me that Miramax just signed a deal with ABC Television, and he wanted us to adapt Puddle Cruiser to make it one of Miramax’s first shows. I should have said yes. I know. Instead, I said, “Harvey, you watched the film alone in your office. This is a huge crowd-pleaser. Yes, let’s make the TV show, but buy the film and put it out theatrically first! Let’s build the audience!”
He smiled, broadly. “Why don’t we test it?” Holy shit! We were alive. We were finally going to get Harvey in a room with a laughing audience! It was all turning our way!
Miramax set a date for a recruited test screening and asked us where we wanted to do it, Manhattan or the New Jersey suburbs. We chose Manhattan, figuring that would give us a better chance of getting Harvey there.
The screening was at a theater on Third Avenue and Eleventh Street, just blocks from NYU. Packed with film students, the screening was going great, with steady, big laughs throughout. But Harvey wasn’t there. Miramax execs Robert Kessel and Elizabeth Dreyer were there, though, and they were calling Harvey with frequent updates about how wild and raucous the screening was. Harvey told them he was on his way and planned to catch the end of the film.
Mustache Shenanigans Page 11
