Super Troopers: Cop That.

Super Troopers opens in cinemas on Thursday.

Take five Vermont State Troopers, deprive them of mental stimulation, threaten the existence of their jobs, and see what happens. Welcome to the world of Thorny, Mac, Rabbit, Foster and Farva, five officers who’ve taken the arrest to an art form, mercilessly screwing with any unfortunates who would happen to break the law round their parts.

While you’ll have to wait until Thursday for Super Troopers to open in cinemas, the entire Broken Lizard crew (Jay Chandrasekahr, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske) are seated before me, and are quick to bounce jokes off each other. Super Troopers marks the second feature for Broken Lizard, an outfit that began its life as a college comedy troupe. After long hours on the road while travelling for sessions with their 30-minute debut feature Puddle Cruiser, the genesis for Super Troopers was born.

“It comes from spending a lot of time on the road and thinking about the funny things you do see on the highway or tat you might see. Things that five guys would see who spend their lives on the road. It’s five guys who have a powerful position, but also have a sense of humour and are regular guys. Cops are usually portrayed as humourless, all business. They just want to keep themselves entertained.”

With five voices on a tape, it can be a bit hard to tell who said what to whom, so you’ll have to forgive me for reporting answers as coming from a singular entity. Filming in uniform seems to have its advantages…

“We had seven miles of the highway to shoot the film on, but just one side of it. We needed to shoot something where there were no cars on the other side of it, but we didn’t control that. I just walked onto the other side of the highway and put my hand up, and traffic just stopped for miles. You naturally listen to cops. We had moustaches, fake guns, police cars, donuts. People just stopped.”

verything in the shoot was not as easy as stopping traffic.

“Everything was really stressful with schedules and not going over budget. We were really smart and shot the hardest stuff first, showing out blatant lack of experience. Everything on the highway was done in the first week, and by the third day of shooting out producer broke down and cried. By day five there was a huge storm, and we were hiding inside these metal trailers. It was very stressful, which can make it hard for a comedy film”

Don’t go making the assumption that because it’s a comedy about the police, it’s a Police Academy movie. That it ain't.

“We were trying not to make Police Academy. We tried to make it look like we were real cops, but they didn’t fit their uniforms, they weren’t cops. It was really important to us to do real characters and invest some of our personality into it. We wanted it to be a part of who we are.”

Getting the film together without the backing of a major film studio was no small feat in itself.

“We’ve had the idea for about a year and a half, and we wanted a studio to make it, but no one was interested. Five guys they’ve never heard of, and we asked for five million bucks. So we said, fine, we’ll make it ourselves. We asked everyone we knew that financed films, and they all said no except one guy, who’d never done it before. He didn’t know any better… If I had five million dollars would I invest it in someone independent film? No fucking way. But no he thinks it’s the easiest thing in the world. We took it to the Sundance Film Festival and sold it and he made his money back and more. He like, why don’t more people make these independent films?”

With Super Troopers in the bag, work has begun on the next Broken Lizard production.

“We basically wrote a film where we get to hang out on a tropical resort. We figured out where you can write yourself into a nice place.”

"It’s called Club Dread,” one member explains to the shock of all. “You’re supposed to tell them about the film before the title, then it makes sense. It’s a horror movie at a holiday resort. We play the staff members of s sexy singles resort and people start getting murdered… Hence Club Dread.”