Beerfest"s Broken Lizard

When Beerfest came out in theaters, it was pretty tough to bring your own beer pong table inside with you. Stupid security guards. But now, that problem’s been solved: the quintessential drinking game flick is available on a conveniently portable “digital video disk,” which means you can bring it to the party instead of the other way around. To celebrate the release of Broken Lizard’s fourth film, two of the comedy troupe’s members—Jay Chandrasekhar and Erik Stolhanske—talked to us about their favorite drinking games, full-frontal male nudity and the rewards of making stoners laugh.

What’s your drinking game of choice?
Jay: I would say beer pong with paddles, but I also like the game Beirut, where you throw balls into cups. I am happy to do just a quick speed chug too.

Were there any games you wanted to include in Beerfest that didn’t make the cut?
Erik: There’s a great game that I always liked called the Beer Hunter. You take one beer, shake it up, mix it up with a bunch of different cans and then each person has to put one up to their head and open it, hoping that it won’t go off like Russian roulette.

Jay (second from left) and Erik (second from right) get ready to throw down in Beerfest.

Where’d you guys get all the rules and regulations for the games you played in the movie?
Jay: Well, we knew a lot of the games because we’d played them, but there was also a book that I found called 101 Beer Games and it sort of filled in some of the details that we were missing. It was written by a couple of Dartmouth guys I think.

How do you know if you’re too drunk to keep playing?
Jay: One of the first signs is that you’re yelling everything. You’re yelling at your partner, or maybe you yell at your own reflection if you catch it in the mirror—that’s usually a good sign of it. Falling down is usually a good sign of it. Spilling on the table over and over again is a good sign of it. Covertly trying to pour your beer on the ground and getting caught repeatedly is a good sign of it too.

Jay (bottom left) and Erik (bottom center) try not to throw up in Beerfest.

Jay, you appeared in Jackass: Number Two. Who do you think would win if Broken Lizard and Jackass went at it in beer pong?
Jay: I think we’d kill them. Johnny Knoxville’s a pretty good ping-pong player actually. I played with him down in Louisiana. I hear Spike Jonze is a very good ping-pong player. I’ve been trying to get a game with him going.

That would be a pretty high profile match up.
Erik: It would.
Jay: It will happen soon… In beer pong though, I think we play a lot more than the Jackass guys do.

So you guys are almost professionals at this stuff.
Jay: That’s right. That’s right.
Erik: Jay played in a tournament at Palm Springs.
Jay: That’s right.

How’d you do?
Jay: I played okay. It was actually a ping-pong tournament but we played a lot of beer pong afterwards.

Should we expect to see more of your trademark male nudity on the Beerfest DVD?
Jay: There’s no full frontal male. There is an extra little sex scene between Steve Lemme and one of the Swedish drinking team girls. It’s pretty hot.

Erik and Jay in one of Broken Lizard's previous flicks, Super Troopers.

Your first big film, Super Troopers, had a huge cult following, especially on college campuses, and Beerfest could very well follow suit now that it’s on DVD. Would you guys rather have a movie be a cult hit or a box office hit?
Jay: I personally would rather have it be big on college campuses because there were so many people with such a great sense of humor at Colgate where we went to school. People have nothing to do all day except smoke pot and tell jokes. You had to go to class but most of your life is spent having fun and trying to hook up with girls and basically tying to be funny. So to get that kind of positive response from a group of people that have nothing to do all day but try to be funny, to me is really the most rewarding thing.
Erik: Sure, getting box office gold is great, but there are a lot of bad movies that have done well in the box office. It would be nice to get both, but if I had to choose I would pick what we’ve got.

The Beerfest DVD is available everywhere this week. Drop Jay, Erik and the rest of Broken Lizard a line at MySpace.com/TheRealBrokenLizard.

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