‘Super Troopers’ Creators Developing TV Comedy for TBS
Broken Lizard, the comedy team responsible for stoner classics like Super Troopers and Beerfest, is developing a TV project for TBS. According to Variety, Quality Time will follow the various members of the filmmaking group (assumedly fictionalized versions), focusing on their struggles with raising children and clinging to the responsibility-free lifestyle of their glory days.
The show will be written by Broken Lizard’s Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske; they will also produce the project, along with Contend’s Steven Amato. No timetable was reported for the show and no mention was made of Broken Lizard member Jay Chandrasekhar, who has previously directed all of the group’s films.
Back in April, in honor of the film’s 15th anniversary (and, well, the perfect timing of stoner holiday 4/20), Rolling Stone spoke to Broken Lizard about their beloved cult classic Super Troopers.
Soter talked about the “goofy” comedic influences of his youth: “the Zucker brothers and things like Police Squad.” “I really liked absurd stuff,” he said. “I was a latchkey kid so I always watched what was on TV. My comic personality was crafted by the rerun power block of M.A.S.H. and The Bob Newhart Show, because it was on every single day at 3:30 when I got home from school.”
Meanwhile, Stolhanske (aka “Rabbit”) discussed the film’s endlessly quotable script, which was fueled by inside jokes and old stories. “We were writing something that made us laugh,” he said. “A lot of the stories that we wove together were funny stories that had happened to us while we were road-tripping to different places, either while performing or going to a wedding. We’d all pile into Jay’s car — it was the only car we had because we were living in New York City — and we’d go on these road trips and write down funny jokes or stories that we remembered laughing about. Then we strung them together to form a storyline. So we didn’t really have any expectations going into it, but they were always stories that made us laugh.”