The Press Box - 4/20 Special: Jay Chandrasekhar’s ‘Super Troopers’ Return | The Big Picture (Ep. 457)

Episode Date: April 20, 2018

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey chats with comedic actor, director, and writer Jay Chandrasekhar about returning to make a ‘Super Troopers’ sequel 17 years after the original. Chandrasekhar also discusses what it’s like being an Indian American in Hollywood, returning to his roots, and bridging the divided audiences in comedy. More from Sean Fennessey on Movies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

But that's one of the things about show business, right? When I walk around, everybody who interacts with me says, hey, when's the next Super Troopers coming out? So in my mind, there's a huge audience. But the reality is, they just happen to run into the Super Troopers guy. So they said the one thing to him that you would say. I'm Sean Fennacy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture,

a conversation show with the most interesting filmmakers in the world. It's 420, and I'm not above a little 420 content. Neither is today's guest Jay Chandra Saker. Jay is a member of the Broken Lizard Comedy Troop, a quintet of friends who met at Colgate University nearly 30 years ago. The world was exposed to Broken Lizard with Super Troopers, their raunchy stone comedy about a group of goofball highway patrolmen in Vermont. That movie became a dorm room classic,

playing on a loop on DVD players across the country. Chandra Saker and the crew have made movies like Beer Fest and Club Dread in the interim, but this weekend, they're back in uniform for Super Troopers, too, more than 17 years after the original. Shandra Sakear has led a fascinating career as a director, taking for higher gigs like the Dukes of Hazard movie, the Broken Lizard films, and dozens of episodes of TV, including memorable runs on arrested development and community.

He's made himself into a Hollywood lifer without abandoning what got him there in the first place. I talked to Jay about being an Indian American in Hollywood, returning to his roots, and bridging the divided audiences in comedy. Here's Jay Shandra Sagar. Jay, thank you so much for coming in today. Thanks for having me. Jay, Super Troopers, too. It's here. I feel like I've been hearing about it for 10, 12, 14,

years? Why, why now? I mean, the joke is that we were trying to wait until 420 landed on a Friday. Nailed it. That only happens every 20 years. The reality, why now? Yeah, why now?

We didn't want to be... Look, we made Super Troopers. It had a good little run in theater and then had a like a bit of a monstrous run on DVD. And so, naturally Fox was like, why don't you make another one? We said, well, we could see the future if you just looked at what the police academy guys did.

And now, granted, I think they made nine films, right? So you can't argue with that success rate. But they are decidedly known for those films only. And we had dreams of a more python-esque path, which is different movies. You know, so we wanted to make, we made a horror movie Club Dred, we wanted to make Beer Fest, you know, we made a waiter movie, Slam and Salmon. But eventually we always knew we would always, we would come back and make another Super Troopers because it was fun. And because it's really fun to have a crew cut and a mustache and a cop belt and those sunglasses and, you know, act like Clint Eastwood. It's fun.

And, you know, so that's the real, that's the creative research. about why now? There was also like a financial reason as to why now because the first one surprisingly made so much money that there naturally was an argument about how much and that was in the court system for a little while and that was resolved and part of the resolution was you can make another one. The other third issue is that the studio business has become one that is completely devoted to spending their money on capes and tights. I wanted to ask you about this. You know, like, that's really what they want to spend it on. And, and the reason is because, you know, major corporations bought all the studios because they thought they'd have a fun media

piece. But reality is once they saw what Iron Man did, they said, oh, we can actually make profit here too. We could don't just have to use it to pump our other products. And so then they said the directive became make movies that can make $250 to $400 million a pop. Now, some of them are not going to make that, but some of them do. And they want to make movies that. the stock price. So when they look at our little movie, they're like, it's not going to make that much money. And so they basically said to us, look, we know your movie is going to make a profit. We just don't think it'll make enough of a profit, right? And so basically they said, why don't you guys raise the money and we'll release it, which is, I appreciate them releasing

a big time. And now they've put, now that they've seen the movie, they put a whole bunch of money of theirs into it as well. So we're truly partners. But I mean, you know, we had to raise $13.5 million. And I'm sure you're going to ask me, but the first part of that was 4.6 from a crowdfunding campaign, and then the rest we raised on our own. When did that officially start? Because I feel like I was hearing stories about drafts and when you guys were writing it literally 10 years ago. So when were you like, it's official, we're all going to get together, and this is going to be our project for the next X number of years? We started writing it, writing it about three years ago. Okay. And we did the crowdfunding campaign around then.

And we probably had about 10 drafts by the time the crowdfunding campaign started. And then, you know, the draft we shot was 37, you know, so. Wow. We tend to write a lot of drafts because our budgets tend to be a little smaller, and we want to just show up and say, this joke has been worked through the ringer, and we know it's good. And if the worst thing that happens is if we shoot this joke, then we're going to be happy with it. Now, we also improvise some in place of this joke.

you could do these three or four. We'll try. We'll shoot those two. But, you know, we're a tight unit because we have to be. You know, the budgets are fairly, like the first one we shot in 28 days. The second one we shot in 28 days. You know, it's like... Wow. Such synchronicity. Yeah. I mean, it's a movie that's 10 times more complex, but I also know how to make movies now. So instead of wasting all this time, shooting shots I'm never going to use, this movie, I'm like, we need 14 seconds of this shot and we need 45. seconds of this shot. Then we need three minutes of the shot. So we'll spend all the time on the three minute shot. You know, it's like you got a filmmaking is just a big puzzle. You're just putting together these pieces to tell the story and then in between you're cracking these jokes. But they have to be sort of, the angles have to be right and the timing has to be right and the coloring and the lighting has to be right in order for it to sort of the audience to fully disappear into it. I was going to ask you if all the TV directing that you've done gave you that kind of militaristic

approach to things where you know that you've got X number of seconds to accomplish something but it seems like you were on that way before that. No, no, that's 100% true. I mean, I've directed now like I think 110 episodes to television. So the thing about TV is the whole game is organized

around a five day, at least in the half hour comedies organized around a five day schedule. If I can finish my episode in five days, then the next director can come the next week and shoot theirs in five days and then so on. If I need a six day, then the next director now has four days, and then now they're shooting their

fifth day on Monday, which compounds the problem for the next director. And then if they take six days, suddenly they're starting the episode on Tuesday. Like, it's a big, big machine that requires getting it done in five days. So sometimes the producer will come down and say, you're running out of time. You've got this scene to shoot, and you have basically 90 minutes. right? It's two and a half pages long. What are you going to do? And I say, well, what I need to shoot this scene is these exact six shots, and then it can be TV quality ready. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm not going to give you all these different choices. We're shooting six shots. We'll be done in 90 minutes. And that's what TV allows you to do.

You're like, okay. And sometimes when I'm on a movie now, I'm like, I'm really out of time. And I could try to bump the budget up by going over and adding a day. Or I can shoot these six shots in 90 minutes and it's going to be good. So let's go back to the crowdfunding thing because I find that interesting. You guys set out to raise a certain number of money. Was it to show Fox that there was enough interest in the film? How does that work?

It was sort of a high-risk endeavor because Fox said go raise the money on your own. And, you know, Veronica Mars had raised, I think, 5.8 million for their film. And we thought, wow, is that, I mean, that was a very popular TV show. We were a very popular movie. if we could do that. You know, we could have probably gone to investors and raised a certain amount of money.

I don't know how much, but the thing was, the sequel was coming at an orthodox time compared to the first one. You know, most sequels don't take that much time to get there. So the investors were like, is there still an audience? You know, Fox was to some degree that too. They're like, we believe there's an audience.

However, show it to us by raising the money. See if the investor class out there wants to put the money in. We said, we will show you that there's an audience by crowdfunding it. But that's one of the things about show business, right? When I walk around, everybody who interacts with me says, hey, when's the next Super Troopers coming out? So in my mind, there's a huge audience. But the reality is, they just happen to run into the Super Troopers guy. So they said the one thing to him that you would say.

So true. It's like when I run into, you know, if I run into George Cleland, I'm like, when's the next ocean's 11? He's thinking, everybody wants to see Ocean's 11. Right? I mean, it has no real bearing. No one's asking about Michael Clayton too, though. Maybe not.

Maybe not. I am. But that's the point. It's like my sample is just me, right? It's just, that's what people would say to me. When's pot fest coming out? Oh, do they want to make another pod fest? So I think ultimately it was a risk.

Because you don't, you know, these crowdfunding things can turn on you. They can turn on you. I mean, Zach Braff's campaign, I didn't study it, right? I just know that he was unhappy with the partial reaction of his crowdfunding. Right. The crowd, you know, granted, he got some money and he made the film, but some of the crowd did go after him. And he was sort of hurt by it, and he kind of was defensive about it. And I get, I like Zach.

I'm friends with him. Did you have any trepidation then that you'd be like, ah, you know, You know, Jay has been making movies and directing television for 15 years, 20 years in the business. Why do they need this? Because I feel like people don't quite understand the mechanics of how you raise and then spend money in Hollywood. The thing about our campaign was it was the beginning of the campaign was actually the beginning of the advertising campaign for the movie, right? So we needed to make every piece of art fit the tone of the first film. So we needed to like get in shape, grow mustaches, get crew cuts,

then write A-level jokes that you could have put into the first film, but they were organized around the campaign to raise money for the second film. The reality was this. The studio said, we'll release the film if you bring the money. Okay. So they gave us a gift of a hook for the campaign. Like, I don't have $13.5 million in the bank. I know everybody thinks, you know, Hollywood people are rolling in it.

That's all part of the showbiz too. Like part of the show. I always say this about show business. Everything in show business is show business, right? Part of the dream of Hollywood is that I'm living on a cliff and I've got millions and millions in the bank. The reality is I'm living in a nice house and I don't have millions in the bank. Right. Right.

And so, but I want to perpetuate the idea. in show business that we're like, we're loaded and we're driving Lamborghinis and we're having sex with all the women. Like, that's part of the fun. Yep. Right? We don't want to pretend like that's not true.

It's not true, but we don't want to tell everybody that, right? But it dovetails with what you're talking about, right? Because you have to create a marketing campaign. So you're the filmmaker. You're one of the writers, the creator of this brand, for lack of a better phrase. But then in an effort to raise money, you also have to start writing around the thing you're going to be making.

Is that right? Yeah. I mean, let me be really clear. Like, we went to investors and said, we need to raise the money for SuperCoopers, too. And a lot of them were like hemming and hawing and maybe and, you know, like, it wasn't like they were rolling out the dough. And it was purely a function of how much time it had been. So the crowdfunding campaign was literally the dream for us because it was a mechanism to say, 54,000 people put up their money for this, you know?

Yeah. $4.7 million was put up for this or for six or whatever it was. And then the investors were like, okay, sold. And the studio was like, got it, you're right, got it. Did it emboldened you to make the movie even more then? Were you like, we're going to make it twice as good as we were going to make it because we know that there's a ravenous group of people that would literally just give us money to do it? No.

I mean, how much money we raise has no bearing on how good or how hard we're trying. Okay. Like, you try hard out of pride and out of a fear of later insult. You know, like we were, we made a film with our friends, and it was, you know, it turned out to sort of strike a nerve with a certain crowd in the country. And then because of the DVD market the way it was, they watched that movie over and over and over. And I think had it been a streaming time, they probably wouldn't have watched it 20 times. or 10 times, whatever they watch it. I mean, maybe, we'll see.

I don't know. I don't know. I would argue actually it's the perfect kind of movie for that. I mean, I was a kid in college when Super Troopers came out and I had that DVD and it was on in the dorm room all the time. You had the actual DVD, and that's part of the reason it was playing.

You know, if some other DVD was there, that might have been playing two. Right. Now you have so many options that you're like, should we watch Super Troopers again or should we watch the Crown? You can do both. No, I know.

I just mean the amount of times that it was watched. You're right. It became a... You think they're watching the Crown in dorm rooms? I don't know about that. I'm watching The Crown. But, I mean, I think that the... You know, that people ended up forming an emotional attachment to that first film

so that when the second film came up, if we messed it up, we were really going to mess up two films. We were going to make people unhappy that we made a sequel and unhappy that we ruined the first one because there's this other one out there where all the same characters and it sucks. Like that's why you work hard

out of sort of respect to the emotional tie they had to the first one. Was it fun to actually start doing it again to start growing the mustache to do the writing to get back into the characters? That was great. I mean, it was great to do.

I mean, we felt we had a great script. We felt we, you know, knew the tone, knew why the first, one worked. The timing, you know, was, I knew what the timing was of that film and could basically give a version of that same timing that is modernized a little bit now. Yeah, I mean, we were kind of excited and ready to go, was it going to work? Who the hell knows, right? I mean, you can't guarantee a film that's going to work just because you know all those things, right? I'm a way better filmmaker now, but does that mean it be a better film? You can't guarantee

that at all. The film we've now shown the sequel and the audiences are reacting very, very positively. Now, that doesn't even mean that it's going to land with everybody. You don't know, right? We'll know after probably on April 23rd what the first, you know, what the first whiff of opinion will be. What's the broken lizard chemistry like now? You guys are in your 40s. You've made a lot of stuff together.

But I assume you're not seeing each other and talking every day, right? You must have families and lives and you have other projects. Well, I mean, we have a lot of other projects. Three of us tour as stand-ups a ton. But we were friends. We met. We were teenagers. We went when we were 18.

You know, so we were friends before any of us had ambition. And so those are friendships that are like deep, like very deep. I have memories of 18 with these guys. So our friendships never. go stale, you know, there. And, and, and they're refreshed by, you know, frankly, press tours. We just did a 30-day, 17 city tour where we were just flying around the country, showing the movie, you know, smoking grass and, and, uh, drinking and telling jokes and, you know, got a whole bunch of new jokes for number three. Is that something that's going to happen?

If people go in enough numbers, then Super Drupers 3 will happen. It's entirely up to the studio. They control the property. So if they want to make the third, they could say raise the money again, right? That'll mean the movie didn't make quite enough money. Right, right. But if it makes enough money, they'll go, let's make three now. And Warner Brothers will call up and say, let's make Pot Fest.

Our fans are, from a stand-up perspective, their last-minute buyers. They're on the couch getting high and they're like, let's go CJ. And they, you know, the club will call me, be like, we've only sold 100 tickets and we'll sell out because the people who walk up, you know, they're unpredictable. What can't happen if they want to see a third one is they can't wait for video because the way studios value the money they make. It's the same dollar, but they value the theatrical dollar more because the theatrical section of, the film company is the group that greenlights films. So if they're not happy, the film sequel doesn't get greenlit. If they make the money through the theatrical division, they say, let's make a third.

And then home video eats after that. Home video can't green light the sequel. And they're also so much smaller than they used to be, right? That's right. That dollar is so much smaller. So was there any part of you that was reluctant to go back to the well to do this, given how fondly people feel about super-supers? I just think they made 250 Law & Orders, right?

I mean, like, it's just a cop story, right? We just are making another one. That's all we're doing. Yeah. You know, like, I understand that there's an emotional attachment to the first one. I get it. You know, like, I'm not, we're not messing around. We're not trying to, you know, remake Caddyshack.

Like, somebody called me to remake Caddyshack. And I said, no, man. I mean, you can't remake a classic. But we're not remaking Super Troopers. We're just making another one. Right. You know, as I was thinking about it, I rewatched the first one and then I watched the second one.

And when I was watching the second one, I dug it, I was laughing. But I was like, most properties like this would be a streaming show now. Was there ever a time when you would try to sell eight episodes to Netflix to do a Super Troopers series? Instead of trying to do this thing where you've got to do the road show, you got to go out and sell it, you got to put in X thousands of theaters to get people to see it. I talked to a guy in Silicon Valley who was one of the early investors in Uber. And he was like, I'm going to create a film studio down in L.A. We're breaking your business up.

You know, we're destructive, all this fucking shit. And I can swear here, right? Yes, you can. Please do. And I'm like, I mean, I like the guy. And he's obviously done very well. And he has destroyed the cab business with his Uber company. It's not the guy who started over, but he invested.

But I don't think we should be letting the nerds up north control Hollywood. I mean, Hollywood is an established business. We know what we're doing here. We are the dream makers. We are, you know, we push, you know, entertainment and television and film is one of the biggest exports in the nation, right? So we don't need the computer guys to come down and break up our business. And this notion that we should just roll over and just put it on TV or Netflix or I think that's just such a flawed notion and a terrible idea. I think you've got to like hold on, you know, this superhero thing, it's a fever and it's been with us for a long time, but it will pass.

And when it passes, we still have to be able to make personal, interesting, raunchy, R-rated comedies that can go out. a theater and people can experience together that way. I'm a very strong believer in in holding on and trying to make these movies work in the theater. And what it means is, you know, maybe it means making more super troopers because it's a, it's like an unaided awareness property that people already know about. Maybe it means making pot fest, you know? That's okay. We'll do that and be very happy doing that until the fever breaks and they're like, let's make something interesting and new and maybe there'd be a new wave of like independent style cinema in the theater. It's not over yet. It's interesting that you say that. I had Kay Cannon here a couple weeks ago. We talked about blockers.

We were talking a little bit about Game Night. Good for her. That movie, that movie did well. I haven't seen yet, but it's very funny. I was rooting for it. But we were talking about this, studio comedy, you know, and we all have, people like us have an emotional attachment to those movies. We grow up on those movies. We like going to the theater. We like being around people and laughing. How do you feel about that thing? It feels like this year has, been a good one, but last year, there were not very many movies that were comedies that people actually went out and saw. Is there a part of you that is worried about that? Certainly worried about it because people kind of in my job will give up.

They'll be like, oh, what's the point? They don't want to make them, you know? But get out was a comedy. I think they made that for $5.5 million, you know? And, you know, look at this, this movie about people being quiet this weekend. I don't even want it. A quiet place. A quiet place. I mean, who saw that coming? Yep. I mean, you know, like that can't have been an expensive movie. No, I think it was $15 million. There's some rumblings out there.

You know, I mean, you know, Blockers obviously is a more traditional studio comedy, but it did well. You know, we'll see what happens with Supertypers, too. If it does well, it'll be another, hey, maybe there's a comeback, right? I think so. Even the studio executives are not happy about having to make superhero movies. they're not. They're just not. When they look back on their career and they see like blankety blank eight, the return, the soldier comes home, you know, whatever, seven, they're not going to be thrilled about that. They're going to be thrilled about having made Kramer

versus Kramer, the Godfather. That's what they want to make. These are people who are interested in telling good stories and they read a lot and they understand what stories are and they're being forced into making these movies about superheroes. Now, I get it. That's fueling the whole business. I get it. I'm like the jerk who's trying to kill the goose with the golden egg. No, not necessarily.

We can have all those things, theoretically. These people would love to make unique stories. Hey, guys, we're going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor. With the Google Assistant, you can complete over one million actions on your phone, in your car, and around the house. Living in L.A., we spend a lot of time driving. And one of the things that I love about the Google Assistant is while I'm driving, I can and just say, hey, Google, text Bill Simmons. I'll be there in 10 minutes.

Download the Google Assistant today. This movie is said in Canada. I wanted to ask you about that, too. Why did the Super Troopers are they going to Canada? Well, the world of the first one was on the northern border of Vermont, which is where we had gone to a bachelor party and a wedding, and it was a very quiet stretch of highway. And we thought that's kind of a funny place,

which is sort of like it's a non-violent police place where people could be bored and could dick around on the highways. It felt like a good spot for it. So we were already in that world, and we thought, you know, we all kind of read the New York Times a lot and we're fairly political, whatever. And this idea of,

there was a reassessment of the Canadian U.S. border after 9-11, and they did find that the markers were in the wrong place in certain spots, which meant chunks of Canada were actually U.S. land and chunks of U.S. were actually Canada's land. And there was a swap and they did all this thing. And we thought it would be funny if we could, if the markers were so off that they encapsulated a Canadian town. And this town turned out was now the northern tip of Vermont.

And so it meant that Canada was turning the land over to us. And they called us up to oversee the transition from Mountie. control to you know basically Vermont Highway Patrol control we thought that was kind of a fun idea I don't realize it was situated in the real that's uh yeah that's pretty cool

I mean it was it was situated in the real but the markers weren't as off as we had the most sure but did you have a reams of Canada jokes ready to go there's a lot of very good Canada humor well we wanted to make you know the the best film uh rivalry films tend to go both ways I think you know

And so we did go after Canada hard, but we gave, you know, the Canadians come after us too. And that's, I love, I love when they come after America. I think it's hilarious. You mentioned your Mounties. How did you go about picking and choosing the other members of the cast here that isn't broken lizard? We wanted to hire as many Canadians as possible. So Will's Canadian, Will Saso, Tyler Labine, Emmanuel Shriek, he's Canadian. Because ultimately, when you're making fun of a country, you want to put their,

countrymen in front so that you can just point at them when you get when you get grief, you know, and that's what we're doing. You know, Canadians have always been portrayed as these really sweet, nice, oh gosh, hi, thanks, cool, nice to see you. And we wanted to show, I mean, if you go out in, say, Vancouver, after midnight, you'll see fights on the street because the flip side of the Canadian coin is the hockey tough. And we wanted to show that side of it. Let's talk a little bit about Rob Lowe. This is quite a Rob Lowe performance. Was it easy to sell Roblo on the evil dick punching character in this film?

I mean, Rob and I worked on his show The Grindr with Fred Savage, and we really hit it off. He's got such amazing timing. And I kind of joke with him that he's like a comedian trapped in a leading man's body because he just gets it. He understands the joke. He understands why the joke's funny. He knows when to push it over the line. And he's got beautiful timing. I mean, we did three-minute, three-and-a-half-minute dialogue takes with him and Fred Savage

where you shoot the wide and you're like, it's really all we need. You don't need a single bit of a close-up. We don't because the guys understand the timing and they're nailing it. They know every line, you know, as he says, they're ninjas. Yeah, he does feel that way. I mean, 25 years under his belt, right? He is a ninja. And after the fourth episode, he and Fred and I were in his trailer.

And it was the end of the season. And I said, hey, Rob, we have a script for Super Troopers, too. And he goes, anything you want, I'm in. I don't even need to see it. Amazing. And Fred's like, what about me? And, you know, so. You have a moment for Fred, too.

We worked them both. And, you know, he'd play Canadian in Youngblood, the hockey movie. That's right. And he wanted to play a Canadian again because he has a lot of strong opinions about Canada and their mental inability to. to make a quick decision. And he, we talked at length. He goes, I want to get into this whole idea.

He cited an example of something called the Halifax Explosion. And that was a hundred years ago, a ship that was like packed with dynamite was coming into Halifax Harbor. And another ship was going out to meet that ship. And I guess, you know, get the crew off or whatever because maybe the big, the big ship was too, too. big to go through, get close enough. And his joke was that, you know, the captain of the dynamite ship and the captain of the greeting ship could not decide which way to turn. And so the captain of the dynamite ship is like, well, they're coming right at each other. And the captain of the dynamite ship is like, oh, should I go right? And they're like, well, if I go right and he goes left, then we're going to

hit. And on the other ship, he's like, should I go left? Well, if I go left and he goes right, then we're, you know. And the two ships hit. And what happened is it caused a spark which set the dynamite ship on fire. And it was a slow burn. And thousands of people came to the docks to watch a ship burn because that's kind of fun. I would do the same. Of course. Little did they know.

It was full of the most dynamite ever. And the thing blew up and wiped out, I mean, thousands of people. It was the biggest explosion on earth before Hiroshima. And Rob was like, that's a funny story. Yeah, well, that's a good lead into another conversation, which is like that's obviously a horrifying thing that happened, but we have a great deal of distance from it. That's right.

It's a great joke about it in the movie. Also, you know, you mentioned earlier, you're playing cops. You're in a nonviolent part of the world, but playing cops now means something slightly different than maybe it did 15, 20, years ago. Sure.

Did you guys think about that at all about how to portray yourself? Obviously Super Troopers is very lighthearted, but still. It's unfortunate, you know, and it's interesting. It's like it's always, you know, black guys are getting shot and killed by police. And part of your brain's like, well, it's not Highway Patrol. It's local police, but it's police, right? It's police. And part of me says when we made this film, and I got to tell you, I have a very strong political opinion.

right but I I was listening to Dennis Miller actually I was reading his tweets

and he was you know he's tweeting pro Republican tweets and I love Dennis Miller and I've done

his show a couple times and he's a fan of ours and I love it and I've seen him live but the tweets

made me they made me a little angry and I'm like well that's an interesting reaction that I'm angry at a guy I love

simply for tweeting about politics. And I'm like, because when I tweet about politics, a lot of, not a lot, but some people will be like,

do you not want us ever see your movie, you, cuck, whatever? And I'm like, I see. I mean, that's how they feel.

They're angry about my reaction to politics, and I'm angry at Dennis Miller. And I said, to the guys, I'm like, let's just take, let's stop.

Let's try to let the movie. The thing about our fans is like, if you go to a stand-up show bars, half of the crowd, are cops and half of the crowd are stoners. And the two crowds are laughing at the same jokes. And they're in the same spot. You know, and they're watching our movies, cops and stoners, cops and stoners, Republicans and Democrats, both sides. And I'm like, you know, there's so much

political commentary. There's so much sniping on both sides, but definitely by the left. And the right is sniping too. I don't think they're doing as good a job, but that's my opinion. Okay. The point is, like, the world, the president is not going to be impeached or not impeach based on my tweets. Right. I think about this all the time. Robert Mueller doesn't care what I think about Trump. So maybe what instead, what we can do is try to be what entertainment is sort of supposed to be, the role it should play in society, which is like a unifying force around art, you know. So our goal with this is to get the country to go.

okay, we disagree out there, but in this one movie, we're going to come together and say, you know what, we all agree that we're just going to, you know, enjoy that film and let it be funny and whatever, you know, I mean, that's, I think that's the goal. And if you ask me about what I think about cops, I'm against them shooting black people. We share that. You know, it's why I thought, I was voting for legalization of marijuana in California, I was like, I don't think it's, I think it's more fun if it's illegal, you know? I think it's like a little more forbidden.

I think teenagers will be more likely to see that as a rebellion instead of looking at cocaine as a rebellion. And I think it's a good thing that it's illegal. The bad thing is it's one more friction point between black people and cops and they're getting shot. So I voted to legalize it for that other reason. So I'm against it. I'm also sure that these cops are worried that they're going to get shot. And so they're probably thinking there's a gun. And certainly there are some people who are just flasked.

out racist and they're killing people. I get it. But the amount of guns in our society is making cops be on edge, you know? Do you worry about a movie like yours, which is intended to draw people together getting super politicized and then there will be the think piece about what Super Troopers 2 gets wrong about X? Do you think about, do you have to deal with that stuff? No, I don't. I don't. I don't because

we're trying to make, I mean, it's going to be eternal. Like we can't live without cops. We need them. without cops. I mean, the crazies... My father is a police officer for the record. I get it. The crazy, there are a large number, not a large, but enough of a number of violent and crazy

and predatory people in our society. And if we didn't have cops, they'd be turned loose, and it would be a nightmare. We need police. And police stories are so fabulous because the stakes are so high, you know? If you get busted, you're going to jail.

That's a high stakes thing. They have guns on their belts. That's a high stakes. thing. These are great stories for for Hollywood and for books and movies and TV, you know? So these stories will always be there. There'll always be

cop stories because there's always going to be criminals. We are, you know, there's probably some politics in the movie, but that's not overt. It's, you know, we don't mention the president. You know, we don't mention Clinton.

All purposeful, I assume. Well, frankly, we We didn't know who was going to win when we finished the film. You know, I mean, that too. That was part of it too. Let's talk about Jay a little bit. What else do you want to do? You've made a bunch of movies.

You've made 110 episodes of television. I started at 24. I mean, that's why I was able to get so many it. I mean, congrats. No, it's impressive. But what else is on your bucket list? I have a film. It's called American Indian.

And it is a conversation on race and language. And frankly, a little bit of politics, too. Like, not a little bit, a lot of politics. I want to make a movie just about this political moment. Because, you know, Indians occupy a spot between black and white. We're part of that, like, dreaded model minority category. And I say dreaded because some of the other minorities are like, fuck you guys, model minority, my ass, right?

And white people are, you know, to some degree, I'm going to be general, are like, hey, why don't you just act like the Indians? And it's a funny spot to be in because we're watching this black-white fight from the sidelines to some degree, you know? From the sidelines. And I think it's an opportunity to talk about race

in a way that I think can be very funny and hopefully interesting. I mean, you know, it's like, I think I say on my stand-up stage is that like the way the media portrays racism is that all white people, people are racist and all minorities are innocent angels. And I say, you know, you should have talked to my grandmother. And the reality is if you talk to these Indians who are coming here from India,

some of them, when they first get here, they're anti-black. That doesn't fit the narrative, right? But if you really bear down with these people, they're also kind of anti-white. And not because they think that white people are bad, they just think they're superior. They're brown supremacists, right? And that part of the conversation, I mean, you see it in minority communities. They're racist just like we are because we're all tribal. We're all animals. We see someone a little different. We have an opinion, right?

And so it's not like a convenient part of the narrative, but it is part of the narrative that we don't really talk about. In this movie, American Indian, that's really what this is about. It's like what language you're allowed to use now and what you're not allowed to use now. like the N word, right? I've been called, like, can I use the N word as an Indian? I'm not here to adjudicate that. Right, right. I think a lot of people would say no,

but I've been called the N word by a white guy and I've been called it by a black guy, right? So by the logic that, you know, that black people sometimes talk about who can use the N word, well, if you've been called it, then you can use it. Well, theoretically, I can use it. I can't use it.

But that conversation is part of the end word. this movie. Is this a narrative movie or is this you in more monologue form? It's a narrative movie. It's basically the premise of it is I go with a friend down to Austin, Texas, I meet a girl, we have a one night stand, and

she gets pregnant. And her father is like a hard core political Republican. And she doesn't want to tell him that she's pregnant because she doesn't want a pity party wedding. She wants a good night.

innocent wedding. So we have a, we're having a, you know, a wedding. And his, his, his, his view is like, why, why, why, why you bring this Indian guy and, you know, and obviously a Democrat and from New York and all this stuff. So it's a movie that pits the Democrats against the Republicans, the white against the Indian, you know, gay rights against not gay rights. It's all like, but also about language. Like, you know, it, it, it opens with a discussion of language among New Yorkers about what you're allowed to say and what you're You're not. Like, you know, when I was growing up, you could call if someone walked in with a pair of, like, salmon pants. You're like, hey, those pants are kind of gay. You can't say that anymore, right? But these conversations are, you know, that's what the movie's about. Is this movie happening? Are you in the process of trying to make it happen?

I have written 30 drafts of it. Okay. You got to get to 37 then. That's the point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hollywood, if you play it right, it's all about timing, right?

So if the film makes, Super Troopers 2 makes a certain amount of money, I can walk in with the script to a lot of places, and they'll say how much? And I'll say 15 million. They'll go, okay, because of the success of the box office. Now, if the film doesn't make that much money, this American Indian won't get made. Or it'll get made on a super independent level.

Either way, it's fine. I don't really take no for an answer. It just means it'll just take me longer to do it. If the studios say no to American Indian, then I'll raise five and a half and I'll make it that way. I hope you do. I want to see it. Okay. Jay, I end every episode by asking the guest,

what's the last great thing that you've seen? So what's the last great thing you've seen? The last great thing I've seen. the crown. I fell into the crown on Netflix, and I think it's like... You're like the third person to say it in that chair. What is it about the crown that you like so much? Well, I like to watch British women speak.

And what I find is that I watch the queen and her sister speak, and then I press the back button that goes back about eight or ten seconds. and then I watched them say that line again, and I'll do it like five or six times. I'm like a little psychotic weirdo. But I like the way they tilt their heads and the way they pronounce certain words in ways that are like,

they don't even seem British. They're like a high crust of British that you can't even imagine. Like the way they pronounce certain words. You're like, wow, is that great. I love that answer. Jay, thank you so much for doing the show today. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this week's show, Stoners. For more on movies, head to the ringer.com. I've got a new column on the glut of Netflix movies the service has added and what they're really good for. And tune in next Monday. I've got a special bonus episode and a special bonus guest. The iconic filmmaker William Friedkin was in the house to talk about his new movie,

The Devil and Father Amort, and a whole lot more. See you then.