The great troupe behind many cult classics give a Q and A like only they could.
Cult classics are one of the great mysteries of movies everywhere. It often involves a film that had a weak theatrical release and then a massive revival afterwards, which involves being ingrained in our hearts and minds forever. Super Troopers is unique in that it’s getting a sequel over a decade later, all thanks to the fans. The cast and director of this iconic film is a really close knit group of guys who have been friends since college and you can tell. A Q and A session is often revealing for several reasons, but the biggest one is that you get to see the chemistry between the cast and director as well. This one was especially interesting, as director Jay Chandrasekhar was coming late due to appearing on the Tonight Show, so Steve Lemme, along with the rest of the cast, came up with the brilliant idea to plant questions in the audience to ambush him when he got back. Here’s the result:
Explain Johnny milk bags.
Jay: Well, I like milk I guess. [small laugh] We were at breakfast and the waiter asks “what are you having?” and I’m like “He’ll have the short stack of pancakes.” and he thinks it’s a short joke, which it is. So then he calls me Johnny milk bags because… when I was a little weightier, my boobs were a little bigger. That’s all.
Can you please sing “twinkle twinkle little star” like your uncle?
Steve Lemme: Do you want to explain what she’s talking about or do you want to get right into it ?
Jay: At Thanksgiving, my uncle, who was always a little bit of a ham, would always try to get someone to make him sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to entertain the family. [Jay sings in an Indian accent with timely but overly dramatic pauses between lines]
I have a question for Jay. Why do you call yourself Wheels even though Steve Lemme has beaten him in numerous footraces.
Steve: You’ve been set-up, b****.
Jay: Next question. [crowd erupts in laughter]
Does anybody sleep with their eyes open?
Steve: That’s a strange question. I know I don’t.
The rest of the cast, save for Jay, replies with “I don’t”.
Jay: I do. [Heavy laughter] I like to see when people are coming at me.
Steve: Jay sleeps with his eyes open and snores very loudly. So back in the day when we would be in one hotel room and you’d be sleeping in the same bed with one another, inevitably you wake up and look over at Jay and his eyes would just be open and he would be snoring heavily, staring right at you. Terrifying.
For Jay, how many vodka sodas deep are you?
Jay: (To Steve and the crowd) Well done. Well done. Three.
Now for some (slightly) more serious questions.
What is your writing process like? Do you plan your jokes before hand? How high do you get?
Steve: My dad’s here, come on dude. [laughter]
Jay: We wrote 37 drafts. We write a plot and we spend a lot of weeks organizing the story, and then we just break it up into sections of 5 and we each write like 15 pages and we do that for about 3 or 4 drafts then we turn it over to one guy and he sort of incorporates the notes of the next thirty three drafts and we fight over jokes and we, you know, end up with what we end up with.
Steve: 90 percent of the process is the five of us in space trying to make each other laugh, taking the piss out of each other, that’s the best version of what we do. When you’re friends with each other, cause we’re friends from college, that’s often when some of the best jokes happen.
The film hits theaters this Friday1
