Broken Lizard regular Kevin Heffernan says his fellow comedy mates honestly tried to make a kinder comedy this time around than the hard-R antics found in “Super Troopers” and “Club Dread.”
Their better instincts just wouldn’t allow it.
Heffernan tells Big Hollywood he and his cast mates watched the dailies for “The Babymakers,” out tomorrow in select theaters as well as Video on Demand networks, and felt like they didn’t do sufficient button pushing.
“It needs to get a little raunchier there … whether it needs it or not,” says Heffernan, best known for the unctuous character he played in “Super Troopers.” “We don’t want to turn people off … then, afterwards, we thought we were wimps.”
It’s safe to say “The Babymakers” offers standard Broken Lizard mayhem along with a few fuzzy moments you might find in a standard rom-com. Olivia Munn and Paul Schneider star as Audrey and Tommy, a couple trying – and failing – to start a family. When Tommy learns his sperm can no longer get the job done, he decides to steal the good baby making material he submitted years earlier to a sperm bank.
Heffernan stars as Tommy’s pal, part of the group who help their buddy embark on one unconventional theft.
“The Babymakers” is directed by fellow Broken Lizard Jay Chandrasekhar, and Heffernan says it took a little while for the non-Lizard cast mates to acclimate to the set’s raw honesty. Lizard mates routinely wear multiple hats on set. For “The Babymakers,” Chandrasekhar directs and co-stars as a professional hoodlum.
And Lizards don’t hold back during production.
“The other actors will be looking like, ‘did he really just say that sucked?'” Heffernan recalls. “After the first week, the others see that and they feel comfortable with it.”
It’s not like fellow Lizards, many of whom met at Colgate University doing comedy routines, see eye to eye on every project themselves.
“We’re college friends. If we were the Monkees and someone assembled us, then there’d be more of a probem. We literally can get into knock down, drag out fights, and then the next day it’s, ehh,” he says. “Our success has come from being together.”
In addition to his feature film work, Heffernan now criss-crosses the country as a stand up comic, often with fellow Lizard Steve Lemme.
“It’s just so hard to get movies made, especially comedies,” he says. “Eighty percent of your time you’re fighting to get stuff made. The beautiful thing about stand-up is you can create and immediately deliver, perform and get paid for what you do.”
Heffernan’s stand-up includes behind-the-scenes Broken Lizard stories and very little politics. He doesn’t rule out political content, but for now he’s content trading in bawdy gags his fan base expects.
Broken Lizard fans will have to deal with one reality. The group’s humor will have to change – at least a little – as time passes.
“[Babymakers] definitely deals with issues that we deal with now … having kids and getting married,” he says. “We don’t deal with that in ‘Beerfest,’ necessarily.”
Follow Christian Toto on Twitter @TotoMovies