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"Beerfest" First Look In Theaters August 25, 2006  The Broken Lizard comedy group returns to the big screen in a new comedy that proves revenge, like beer, is best served cold. When American brothers Todd and Jan Wolfhouse (Erik Stolhanske and Paul Soter) are sent to Germany on a mission to spread their grandfather’s ashes at Oktoberfest, they stumble upon a super-secret, centuries-old, underground beer games competition—Beerfest—the Olympics of beer drinking. At Beerfest, the brothers receive a less than warm welcome from their German cousins, the Von Wolfhausens, who shun Todd and Jan, slander their heritage, and worst of all, drink them under the table. Vowing to return in a year to defend their family honor, the Wolfhouse boys assemble a ragtag dream team of beer drinkers and gamers: Barry Badrinath (Jay Chandrasekhar), a consummate skills player with a dark past; Phil Krundle (Kevin Heffernan) AKA “Landfill,” the one-man chugging machine; and Charlie “Fink” Finklestein (Steve Lemme), the lab tech with a Masters degree in All Things Beer. With the inspiration of their Great Gam Gam (Cloris Leachman) and the support of her caretaker, Cherry (Mo’Nique), this “Magnificent Five” train relentlessly, using their hearts, minds and livers to drink faster, smarter and harder than they ever have before. STARRING: Paul Soter, Jay Chandrasekhar, Erik Stolhanske, Steve Lemme, Kevin Heffernan, Cloris Leachman, Will Forte, Mo'nique, Ryan Blanchard, Eric Christian Olsen DIRECTOR: Jay Chandrasekhar STUDIO: Warner Bros. RATING: R WATCH TRAILER Wild About Movies Grade: D "Beerfest"
THE INSPIRATION BEHIND BEERFEST The writing-producing-performing comedy group Broken Lizard has been honing their unique brand of unapologetically irreverent comedy for over a decade. The idea for Beerfest was tapped in 2002 during the international promotional tour for their outrageous state trooper satire, the cult hit Super Troopers. While in Australia, director Jay Chandrasekhar recalls, “At first we were booked at local shopping malls, and there were just a bunch of middle-aged women with their children, and they’d be saying, ‘Who the hell are those scrubbers?’ So we were taken to this beer festival in Queensland, figuring that would be more our crowd. But this was a mob of drunken guys, who really couldn’t give a dingo’s dollop who we were. So we went up on stage and said, ‘Hey, we’re with the movie Super Troopers, and we want to challenge the top five guys in this room to a chug-off.’” Still confident from their drinking days at Colgate University, the Broken Lizard five boldly challenged the drinking prowess of a nation known for its rough-and-tumble lifestyle. Chandrasekhar reflects proudly, “We went to a fairly hardcore drinking school in upstate New York, and so we’d learned a thing or two about fast chugging.” Not to be outdone by five relatively skinny actors from Tinsel Town, five roughneck Aussies stepped up to the challenge and rallied the mob of proud Australian beer connoisseurs behind them. Chandrasekhar continues, “So we start the chug, and by the first two guys, we’re winning by a whole mug. The crowd was totally shocked at the prospect that a bunch of Hollywood actors might actually beat Australia’s best. But when the chug line got to one of our guys who’s not a fast chugger, we lost the lead. The Aussies got to their next guy, who finished easily. Meanwhile, our teammate, who shall remain nameless, was STILL working on his beer. By this time, we were too far behind to catch up.”
A pessimist might say that total humiliation in front of a drunken mob can leave scorching emotional scars. But for Broken Lizard, humiliation was a great motivator. Despite having had their confidence shaken and egos bruised, the group did what any red-blooded American comedy group would do. They wrote a screenplay about it. The writing process can oftentimes be the most painstaking part of filmmaking. For Broken Lizard, the writing process was indeed very painful. With five creative minds in one room, a cynic might complain about there being too many Lizards in the kitchen. Kevin Heffernan offers the Tao of Broken Lizard: “When we write, there’s a lot of fist-fighting and wrestling. Whoever wins gets to own the joke.” Erik Stolhanske affirms, “We knew that just the name alone—Beerfest—conjured up an image that we could create a lot of comedy around, so it was totally worth giving Heffernan a black eye.” SHOOTING BEERFEST
While writing a screenplay about competitive drinking is one challenge, shooting a film about it is another. Stolhanske recalls, “We spent so much time in the writing room that we hardly had time to practice any of these games we were writing about.” Paul Soter admits, “We started playing quarters again, which I hadn’t played since college. We were in terrible chugging shape, so we had to do a lot of work on that. Those drinking games are a lot harder than they look.” On the contrary, Lemme boasts, “I’ve been training for this for 24 years. You know ‘Tsunami’ Kobayashi, the hot dog eating champion at Coney Island? He puts cabbage in his stomach to expand his stomach the night before the competition. So I ate cabbage every night before I went to bed.” As gloriously cinematic as filming competitive beer drinking can be, Broken Lizard dug deeper and crafted their screenplay with a unique backstory. Chandrasekhar offers, “The reality is that if you’ve ever done any chugging, it’s pretty exciting. There’s a lot of natural drama in a line chug—granted, momentary drama—so to add depth, we built the story around this idea of two brothers who didn’t know much about their family heritage. But along the way, they discover that they are the rightful heirs to a famous German brewery, and unknowingly are in possession of a stolen secret beer recipe, which brings its share of both grief and good fortune.” The film begins with an offbeat funeral service for Todd and Jan’s recently deceased grandfather, who bids farewell to them in a videotaped speech from his hospital bed. Their great-grandmother, “Great Gam Gam,” played by Cloris Leachman, wastes no time in sending the boys on a mission to carry on a long-observed Wolfhouse tradition—to spread their grandfather’s ashes at Oktoberfest. Jumping at the chance to attend Oktoberfest, Todd and Jan arrive in Germany and find themselves enjoying the spectacle, blissfully engaging in a drunken sing-along, which unfortunately turns sour and sets off a series of events that bring Oktoberfest to a crashing halt.
While attempting to escape a thirsty Oktoberfest mob, Todd and Jan are spirited away to an event beyond their wildest imaginations, an event best described by producer Bill Gerber as “waking up in a beer commercial, surrounded by beautiful women, and having unlimited access to alcohol.” This event is BEERFEST, Germany’s best kept secret, and the ultimate underground drinking tournament that makes Oktoberfest look like an afternoon tea party. It is here that Todd and Jan meet their distant German cousins, the Von Wolfhausens, who shock the brothers by renouncing their family connection with lurid details about Great Gam Gam’s sordid past, and accusing their late grandfather of stealing the secret family recipe. This incites Todd and Jan to challenge the cousins to a drink-off, the outcome of which only humiliates the American brothers further. Adding insult to injury, the Great Beer Baron of Munich turns out to be Baron Wolfgang Von Wolfhausen, played by Juergen Prochnow, who indeed helps Todd and Jan spread their grandfather’s ashes...over their heads. “Todd and Jan face tremendous humiliation in Germany, but they are the last hope for redemption of their aging great-grandmother’s good name. So they put together the best beer-drinking team they can, and then they train, Rocky-style, and try to beat the best team in the world—the Germans,” says Chandrasekhar. Production on Beerfest began during the onset of the 2006 Winter Olympics, so feelings of national pride further inspired the group. “It’s good to see America compete in an event that is beer-related because, more often than not, American beer gets the shaft at the international level,” states Heffernan. “The Germans, the Dutch, the Jamaicans—they all think their beer is so great. But America is overlooked. So it was up to us to carry the mantle of America in the beer-drinking world.” The Wolfhouse brothers struggle to assemble a team that can carry “the mantle of America.” This pool of cracker-jack talent consists of Barry Badrinath, a once-skilled beer games hustler who has hit rock bottom in a variety of ways, played by Chandrasekhar; Phil Krundle AKA “Landfill,” the broadly gifted one-man chugging machine who redefines the meaning of super-sized consumption, played by Heffernan; and Charlie “Fink” Finklestein, a research laboratory genius with more than a few tricks under his yarmulke, played by Lemme. The German team is coached by Prochnow’s Baron Wolfgang Von Wolfhausen and includes his lederhosen-wearing, trash-talking grandsons: Otto, an eager-beaver Yankee-hater, played by Will Forte; Gunter, the wisecracking loudmouth, played by Eric Christian Olsen; Rolf, the tightly wound instigator, played by Nat Faxon; and Hammacher and Schlemmer, the muscle-bound, vein-popping, keg-lifting duo, played by former Mr. Universe bodybuilders Ralf Moeller and Gunter Schlierkamp, respectively. Gerber notes, “We definitely wanted authenticity on the German side, so that’s where Ralf and Gunter come in. They represent the brute force of the Germans. And for the Baron, we wanted a very dangerous heavy, and Juergen was at the top of the list.”
Having natives of Germany on-set proved useful in creating ad-lib banter between the cousins. Interestingly, the most demanding part of acting German was speaking English with caricaturized German accents. Ralf Moeller points out the irony of a native German parodying a stereotypical German accent. “The problem is that Jay didn’t think I sounded German enough. When you hear me speak English, do you hear any accent at all? I’ve lived in LA since 1993!” Cloris Leachman adds, “The first time I ever used a German accent was in Young Frankenstein. For Beerfest, I felt a bit rusty during rehearsal, but I’ve had fun relearning. You really have to master relaxing the muscles in your throat,” she says, slyly referencing a particular gag in the film. Nat Faxon, who starred in Broken Lizard’s comedy-thriller Club Dread, reunites with the group. Faxon, who grew up with grandparents that emigrated from Germany, conveys his technique both on and off the set. “I just followed my grandmother around for a while, and tried to sound like her. Once I got on set with the other guys, we got together and collectively tuned our voices onto the same pitch, so we sound somewhat similar, although Will Forte did sound a little Chinese.” Not having German-speaking relatives of his own to follow around, Forte shares his method for learning the accent, “I actually bought a CD that teaches you how to speak English with a German accent, but somehow I ended up sounding Chinese. No big deal, because the best part of playing a German in Beerfest is that I get to wear lederhosen. It just puts a smile on my face every time I put them on. It’s a very special feeling.” Rounding out the multifaceted ensemble cast is Mo’Nique, who plays Cherry, Great Gam Gam’s caretaker who does a fair share of both caring and taking. “The only thing that I did not get to do in this movie was have a love scene with Landfill,” declares Mo’Nique, “I think that it would have been sexy. They need to write that in the sequel. If you can hear me, Landfill, I’m rooting for it, baby. Rooting for it.” MARCHTOBERFEST IN NEW MUNICH
The first Oktoberfest took place in October of 1810 in Munich. Nearly 200 years later, Broken Lizard’s version of Oktoberfest took place, not in October but in March; and not in Munich but in New Mexico. Producer Richard Perello states, “We had just missed Oktoberfest 2005 when we began shooting, and didn’t have time for Oktoberfest 2006 to roll around, so we created our own. And who can think of a better place to do this than in New Mexico?” The art department worked hard to emulate the look and feel of the Bavarian bash from scratch. Perello shares, “There were many streets we had to recreate here in New Mexico to mimic Munich, but, fortunately, we were blessed with a fantastic art department that was incredibly experienced and resourceful.” Filling the Beerfest stadium with a multitude of background talent for the final showdown proved to be a formidable task. “We expected to have a difficult time in New Mexico finding the range of different ethnicities represented at Beerfest. We even have Eskimos, Tobagonians, and Russians competing,” recalls Perello. “Fortunately, there’s been a lot of enthusiasm in town for Broken Lizard movies, which was tremendously helpful in getting the word out about local casting.” A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF PRODUCTION CHALLENGE
With the script, the cast and locations in place, Broken Lizard faced a particular production challenge. Heffernan recalls, “Maybe a month before we started shooting, we realized that we had to drink a lot of beer to do this movie—and not just because we drink a lot of beer in the story, but because we could end up doing 10 or 12 takes for one scene.” Not only was there the problem of having to do 10 or 12 takes for a scene with regular mugs, but, for the big finish, the script called for a drink-off with the boot-shaped mother-of-all high capacity mugs—playfully referred to in the film as “Das Boot.” Property master Dwayne Grady notes, “In Germany, they actually have glass boots they drink from, but they’re only one, maybe two liters. We had a glass blower in Sante Fe make us three-liter ones.”
One perilous fact about drinking from Das Boot is that, as beer is consumed, an air bubble forms at the toe of the boot that expands until the tipping point is reached, at which time a rush of beer explodes in the drinker’s face. Steve Lemme expounds, “Das Boot is particularly tricky because of the air bubble factor. Anybody who’s ever done a yard or a boot knows this, but the general public may not. We do not advise anyone at home to try drinking out of Das Boot because they will die. We didn’t die because we’re professionals.” In spite of the high professional caliber on set, something inevitably manages to go wrong. Eric Christian Olsen cites, “In one of the major drinking scenes, Will Forte started drinking and everyone was just caught in the moment —cheering and everything—so Forte just kept chugging away.” Forte affirms, “I was the first one in line during the first beer race we shot, and I underestimated the amount of liquid I would have to consume from the oversized mug, take after take. I just couldn’t let everyone down!” Heffernan adds, “By take three, Forte realized that he was in trouble, so he snuck behind the building and met up with chuck, if you know what I mean...THREE TIMES.” On any given film production, it’s not unusual for the cast and crew to share a few cold ones after a hard day’s work. On Beerfest, however, day after day of filmic drinking wore on even the most die-hard of drinkers. As production wrapped, Forte expressed a sentiment that rang all too true for most of the cast. “At wrap time, someone usually wrangles a group or two for beers after-hours, but on this shoot, if anyone asked, ‘You want to get a beer?’ We were like ‘Nope, I don’t want to get a beer. Maybe a glass of wine, a margarita, or a shot of antacid—but no beer, thanks.”
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