Road scholars

LIZARD KINGS Broken Lizard delivers it lying down—and standing up.

The last time we saw Broken Lizard perform live, it was back in the ’50s. Sort of. At the 2005 Aspen Comedy Festival, the five jokesters—Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske—mounted a 30-minute show in which they played Eisenhower-era high-school basketball players; during halftime, their coach dies in the bathroom.

Formed at Colgate University in 1990, the sketch group, known for its college-crowd-pleasing humor (stoners, slackers and heavy drinkers factor heavily into its plotlines), turned into cult-comedy filmmakers with the success of Super Troopers (2001), followed by Club Dread (2004) and Beerfest (2006). Now Broken Lizard hits the road for its first nationwide tour, combining stand-up, sketch, improv and Q&A, which arrives at the Lakeshore Theater October 8.

As it happens, they also got a movie to promote. The Slammin’ Salmon (December 4), a parody of the restaurant industry, is their first film since Beerfest and their first to be independently financed since Super Troopers, whose backer put up the cash for Beerfest while Hollywood was on hold because of the writer’s strike. Like all of Broken Lizard’s films, Slammin’ Salmon mixes highbrow with low, physical comedy with slapstick.

The film takes place at a fancy Miami seafood restaurant, where the waitstaff competes to ring up the most sales in a single night for a prize of $10,000. Given that art often imitates life with these guys—Beerfest was inspired by a drinking competition—it’s not surprising the comedians have waited a few tables themselves. “Steve, Erik and I were waiters together in New York City,” Hinsdale native Chandrasekhar explains. “We were never those mean waiters who did nasty shit to your food. To me, that’s not what’s funny about it. There’s a ton of fun happening behind the scenes.”

Thanks to the troupe’s democratic structure, each member writes and stars in every film while Chandrasekhar and, more recently, Heffernan take on directing duties (they count Monty Python and Kids in the Hall among their influences). “Films that star five guys are not the norm,” Chandrasekhar says. “If you take five guys and put them in the normal film structure, you’re going to end up having one or two of them lead the movie. That’s the way Hollywood works; they only want one or two to make it anyway. That’s why you have to be ready to make it independently and keep on finding your own sources of money.”

Still, while Super Troopers, a comedy about five Vermont state troopers, received mixed reviews, it grossed a respectable $18.5 million and garnered a loyal cult following. And in 2005, Chandrasekhar directed The Dukes of Hazzard, which led to a three-year, multipicture deal for Broken Lizard with Warner Bros., including a Super Troopers sequel slated for a 2010 release. “It is incredibly fun to have a crew cut and a mustache and a gut,” Chandrasekhar says. “People do what you say just because of the way you are dressed.”

In the meantime, Broken Lizard’s focusing on the live shows. “The purest form of show business is live entertainment,” Chandrasekhar says. “Yes, movies are tremendous and amazing, but there’s nothing quite like seeing somebody in person.”

But as with so many other improvisers and sketch comics who become movie stars, we wonder if Broken Lizard can still cut an impressive stage presence live. Chandrasekhar isn’t worried. “It took us a couple days to get comfortable,” he says, “[but] we’re confident up there. A number of us will end up getting individual stand-up careers out of this.”

Broken Lizard hits the Lakeshore Theater October 8.

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