I called up Sloss and told him we struck out at the studios and we needed three million bucks to make our film. So he picked up the phone and started shaking the money tree. Being involved with so many indie hits had made John a magnet for film finance. When I was his assistant, Wall Street guys would call, begging for five minutes of his time because they said they had millions of dollars they wanted to invest. We got five meetings. One producer said he’d be willing to finance the film, but only if we shot on video to save money. Since video, at the time, looked like absolute dog shit, we passed. Another guy said he’d finance it if we would put his pal Ben Affleck in the film to play the role of Thorny. I cleared my throat. “Um, I’m playing Thorny.”
He smiled. “You play something else. We need Ben.” We left.
Then we met Jim, a cool New York producer who was full of energy and loved sports. He said we were going to make Super Troopers for $3.5 million. All we had to do was cast a famous actor in the role of Captain O’Hagan—an actor who had “bankable foreign value.” A film’s foreign value is one of the greatest determiners of whether a film gets financed or not. Okay, you’ll need to pay attention for a moment: Foreign value refers to how much money a film is likely to make overseas. Action movies and superhero movies “travel” well; comedies, less so, because of translation issues and American pop culture references. Films with black actors don’t travel well because of foreign racism, which has led to studios green-lighting those films less often, and lightening the skin color of actors on foreign posters when they do. (Yes, I’ve been made to look almost white.) Actors can bring foreign value to a film if they have starred in films that were financial hits overseas. If you cast a “high-foreign-value” actor in your film, the foreign value of your film goes up, and a producer can go to a bank and borrow money against your film’s anticipated foreign box office.
In our case, Producer Jim was looking to cast an actor to play Captain O’Hagan who had enough foreign value that a bank would loan him the money to make Super Troopers. Jim made a list of actors who he felt fit the bill. On the list was one of our heroes, John Goodman. John read the script and dug it, and CAA accepted the offer for him to play O’Hagan. And just like that, we were green-lit. Holy shit! This is really gonna happen! But then Jim tapped the brakes, saying he “needed to recheck the numbers.” After an excruciating week, he came back to us.
“Um, sorry, the bank won’t loan me as much money as I thought they would.” Jim wanted to go back to CAA to ask John Goodman to reduce his already agreed upon salary. CAA wasn’t pleased and the movie fell apart again. CAA was right, by the way. A deal’s a deal, and this was embarrassing. With the trust broken, we parted ways with Jim, and we were back in the wind, and out of options. Nobody wanted to make Super Troopers—no studios and no independent financiers.
Months passed and we were adrift. We wondered if we should write a new script, but what would be the point? Financiers telling us that they didn’t want us to star in Super Troopers wasn’t code for we want you to star in something else. Some of us were in California and some in New York, so the group’s connection was fraying. Steve, Erik, and I wanted Kevin and Paul to move out to LA, but they were reluctant without anything concrete to do. We pondered breaking up and going it alone.
I flew back to New York to re-edit a film by the comedian Mitch Hedberg. Mitch was a hell of a joke writer, and his delivery style included a pace and cadence that were all his own. We were both managed by Dave Miner, who put us together. Mitch’s film, Los Enchiladas!, was two and a half hours long, and while it was funny and had a lot of great comics in it, including Mitch, Todd Barry, Dave Attell, and Marc Maron, it needed some paring back.
Mitch and I worked in an edit room, looking for ways to make the film funnier and better. Mitch would take fifteen-minute breaks and come back to the edit room wearing yellow sunglasses (the room was dark) and reeking of pot smoke. After a few too many breaks, I said, “You know, if you smoke in here, we’ll get more work done.”
He laughed. “I didn’t want to offend you!” He pulled out a joint and lit it, and our editing sessions got silly. In the end, we trimmed the film down to ninety minutes and it got into Sundance.
A couple of years later, Dave Miner called me with the news that Mitch had died of a heroin overdose in some hotel on the road. So now, that was Farley and Hedberg, and still to come would be the death of the great writer-comic Harris Wittels. Comedy folks, let’s be clear: I get it. Heroin is great, but it’s the fucking Devil. It’s that dipshit Russian game, Russian roulette. Doing it doesn’t make you cool. It makes you nerdy. There are plenty of other substances to do that don’t kill you and don’t deprive us of your comic genius. Don’t.
Meanwhile, we had all but given up on Super Troopers. I was making the final break with New York by ending our lease on our one-room Broken Lizard office. I was packing up boxes for storage when the phone rang. It was my college friend Cricket Lengyel. Cricket apologized for having to make this call, but her father, Pete, had recently retired from finance and loved movies and had decided to try his hand at script writing. Since I was the only person she knew “kind of working” in show business, she asked if I would consider talking to him. I said, “Sure. Whatever you need.”
When Pete Lengyel called, he asked me a lot of questions about the film business and script writing. Pete had written a comedy script and asked if I’d read it, so I said, “Sure. No problem.” But then Pete pulled back.
“It occurs to me that I don’t really know what your qualifications are. Do you have a writing sample I can read?” I was being auditioned to see if I was worthy of reading his script. I didn’t love that, but I did love Cricket, so I gritted my teeth and sent over the script to Super Troopers. Secretly, I was hoping he wouldn’t like it and that I wouldn’t have to read his script.
A week later, the phone rang. It was Pete. “So, I read your script. It’s funny. I think you’re on to something here.” I said thanks, thinking, What could a mid-sixties banker possibly know? Pete had another question. “What’s happening with this movie?”
I paused. I was talking to a (former) investment banker. Should I tell him the unvarnished truth—that no one in show business thought it was a good bet? Instead, I told him the other truth. “We’re raising money to make it.”
And then Pete asked the million-dollar question: “Can you make it for a million dollars?” I closed my eyes. Was this guy for real? When you’re trying to find money for a film, you meet all sorts of con artists. Many of them say they’ve got the money but then don’t come through. I had lunch with a “financier” who supposedly “controlled” a hundred-million-dollar film fund, but not only did I have to pick up the check; I also had to loan him money for the valet. Red fucking flag! Why do they go through the charade? Because they want to be near the excitement of Hollywood. They’ll tell a filmmaker they have the money to make a film, and after signing a contract, they’ll use the filmmaker’s name to run around and try to raise the money. When they strike out, and they always strike out, they call you back and say, “Sorry, it just didn’t work out.”
It happens all the time and it’s a huge waste of time. But Pete was different. You could hear it in his no-nonsense banker’s voice. I told him I’d talk to my producer and get back to him. I walked the twenty feet over to Rich’s office and said, “You think we can make Super Troopers for a million bucks?”
Rich said what he always says: “We can do anything for any amount of money; it’s just a matter of how much time you’re going to have to shoot it and how much money we’re all gonna make. With the stunts and fights and actors you want, a million dollars might get the job done, but we’ll all get paid scale”—union minimum. Rich asked how real the money was. When I told him that Pete was my friend’s dad, he rolled his eyes. But when I told him Pete was a retired investment banker, his mood changed. Rich was a former investment banker, so he knew people who knew people.
“Set up a call and I’ll check this guy out. Meanwhile, I’ll do a new budget and see if it’s even possible.”
When we met with Pete, Rich told him that we could make the film for $1.26 million. Pete paused.
“I’ve got $1.2 million, not a penny more. Take it or leave it.” We took it. After a short negotiation, Pete wrote the check and we were in preproduction.
Easy, right?
CHAPTER 9
—
Casting Super Troopers: How I Almost Played Farva
That we ever got Puddle Cruiser made was a minor miracle. And while Super Troopers was still a low-budget movie, our budget was going to be seven times that of Puddle Cruiser. Plus, it was the first time we were playing characters markedly different from ourselves. Were we good enough actors to pull that off? The pressure mounted.
We wrote fifteen drafts of the script before I cast it, to ensure that everyone was writing jokes for every character. When it was time to decide who played whom, the decision came pretty naturally. Since I was the head of Broken Lizard, I ended up playing the head trooper, Thorny. In real life, Kevin tends to be a funny, obstinate naysayer, so we made him the dick, Farva. Steve, in real life, has kind of a macho energy, which he injected into Mac. Paul looked the least like a real cop, so Foster felt right. Erik had a Minnesota gee whiz to him, so we made him the rookie. Truthfully, the only real decision was whether or not I would play Farva and Kevin would play Thorny. That was seriously contemplated.
We hired a casting agent, Jennifer McNamara, who got to work finding the rest of our cast. She landed the great Brian Cox to play Captain O’Hagan, which gave the film a much-needed respect boost. In addition to being hilarious in the great Wes Anderson film Rushmore and menacing as the original Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter, Brian also scored as Uncle Argyle in Broken Lizard’s favorite film, Braveheart. When Brian read our script, he told his agent he wanted in. That’s because when Brian was starting out, he always thought he’d be the next Jerry Lewis. Brian saw our film as a way to show the world how funny he is.
The late, great Daniel von Bargen played Chief Grady with just the right amount of sinister exasperation. Daniel and I got off to what I’ll call not the best start. On his first day, we shot a scene where O’Hagan comes to the local police station to ask Chief Grady if he knows anything about a cartoon monkey named Johnny Chimpo. Grady mocks O’Hagan, saying they should call in “Bobby the Baboon and Gerry the Giraffe” to see if they know anything. On paper, the lines were silly and Daniel played them that way—but that’s not how we intended them. We were looking to make a tough, funny film that was more like Smokey and the Bandit than like Police Academy. After take one, I went to Daniel and said, “Hey, the lines may seem silly, but we need Grady to be tough and real. We need him to have gravitas.”
He kinda shrugged, and then he did take two. Same result. I went back in with the same note, but I said it a different way. Daniel pushed back. He was worried it wouldn’t be funny if he didn’t tip the joke. Then he dropped his ace. You know on Seinfeld, we did it this way.
This is common for first days, where actors and directors feel each other out. The director has a view of how the performance should be, but so does the actor. This early conversation is critical because it sets the tone for the whole performance. Take four was the same. Goofy. At the monitors, Heffernan nudged me.
“I know, dude,” I said, heading back in. This time I told Daniel, “Forget the jokes. Just play it tough.”
He stared at me, annoyed. “Fine.”
And he did. He read it tough, and I loved it. So I went in to tell him.
“That’s it. That’s the tone.” And then I attempted to butter him up. “You’re a really good tough guy.”
He wasn’t falling for it. In his mind, he’d lost this first battle, but he wasn’t done swinging. “I’ve played six generals, four colonels, and three police chiefs. It is what it is.” He was basically saying that if I wanted a generic Daniel von Bargen performance, then that’s what I was going to get. I left with my tail between my legs.
Later in the day, after finishing another scene, Daniel took me aside. “Tough and funny. That’s where the joke is. I get this movie now.”
Daniel’s performance as Chief Grady is my favorite in the film. When he’s in the police station basement, asking Farva to spy for him, he’s at his best.
“The lice hate the sugar.” I fucking love that. Rest in peace, pal.
We wanted a seventies female TV icon to play Governor Jessman, so we were thrilled when Lynda Carter joined the cast. She’s hilariously dry in the pre–press conference scene with her aide:
GOVERNOR JESSMAN: “What is this thing, again?”
AIDE: “It’s a drug bust.”
GOVERNOR JESSMAN: “Cocaine?”
AIDE: “Marijuana.”
GOVERNOR JESSMAN: (Sighs) “Then, why are we here?”
—
I first saw Marisa Coughlan in the Kevin Williamson movie Teaching Mrs. Tingle, where she reenacts a possession scene from The Exorcist. She is great in that film, and Amy Cohen knew her and convinced her to do our film. Marisa fell in easily with Broken Lizard’s rhythm, which made her very popular with us. We named her character Ursula Hanson after our college friend, who was an original member of Charred Goosebeak.
I could talk about a lot of scenes she’s great in, but I’ll focus on the biker scene. In the script, Foster and Ursula meet in an out-of-town diner to discuss their plan. Worried they’ll be recognized, they agree to come in disguise, dressed as “bikers.” But the costume director wasn’t sure which kind of “bikers” we meant, so she bought both motorcycle leathers and bicycle road racer spandex. When we saw the foxy Marisa in her leathers and Paul in his spandex and bike helmet, we came up with the joke that Foster was confused about which kind of biker disguise Ursula meant.
“Oooooh, biker!” This was a low-budget mistake that turned into gold.
Charlie Finn played the Dimpus Burger clerk to perfection. The origin of the character came from Saturday mornings at Colgate, when we’d wake up hungover and drive into town to get large Cokes at Burger King. But the Burger King manager (who had to be Canadian) listed the “large” drink on the menu as “a liter.” So when we’d try to order “large Cokes,” a voice would come over the drive-through speaker:
“We don’t have large colas. We only have liters of cola.”
Unwilling to bend to this bastard trying to enforce the metric system in America, we tormented the BK staff, always ordering “large” Cokes, and always being corrected that they only had liters of cola. It was a classic pointless war, which we lost, because they were stubborn and wouldn’t give us large drinks unless we called them liters. Score one for Canada.
I actually “discovered” Charlie when we were casting an NBC pilot called Safety School, which was based on our first film, Puddle Cruiser. I went to the Improv Olympic in LA to look for funny people. Outside, after the show, I saw a tall, lanky dude, with a nasally Chicago voice, smoking a cigarette. He seemed kind of funny, and in the range of what we were looking for, so I approached. “Hey, are you an actor?”
“Sort of,” he said, in his trademark voice.
“You want to audition for a TV show?”
“I guess,” he said. Charlie later admitted that he’d never been on an audition before. He was also probably wondering if I was a chicken hawk, cruising boys on the boulevard. He got the part in the pilot and, years later, as the Dimpus Burger guy. Charlie is a funny guy and does a great Dennis Miller impersonation.
My high school friend James Grace was hilarious as Officer Rando, the local cop who gets hit in the head with an empty syrup bottle in the diner scene. In college the term “rando” referred to someone we didn’t know, as in, Who’s the rando?
Mike Weaver is the red-haired guy who played Local Officer Smy. Smy tries to dress down Ursu
la, but she undercuts him by telling him that he has toilet paper on his shoe, which makes Smy apoplectic. Weaver is a hilarious gem of an actor.
Our college friend Dan Fey is the oddball all-star who played Local Officer Burton with spaced-out perfection. Fey also played the part of the hopped-up rugby player in Puddle Cruiser.
Jim Gaffigan auditioned to play one of the local cops, but we had already cast our guys, so we cast him as the “meow” driver. Heffernan tried to block him because he and Gaffigan always went out for the same parts, and Gaffigan usually won. We overruled Heffernan, and Gaffigan nailed it in his funny, dry manner. It all ended well, as Heffernan and Gaffigan are now pals. Gaffigan, of course, went on to become one of the biggest stand-ups in the country; so Hot Pooooooockets to you, Heffernan!
Philippe Brenninkmeyer’s audition for the Porsche-driving German swinger was so good that we cast him before he left the room. Phil always delivers, so we cast him again as the master of ceremonies in Beerfest. What an amazing actor. Maria Tornberg played the female German swinger and was hilarious, lovely, and totally game for the sexy silliness the part required.
Mustache Shenanigans Page 13
