The 5: Broken Lizard’s Five Most Quotable Movie Quotes

Sixteen years after the release of Super Troopers, the Broken Lizard gang is back on patrol with the release of the long-awaited sequel, Super Troopers 2. The movie opened last Friday, April 20th, with an impressive $15 million box office, landing it in fourth place for the weekend- not bad for a film that financed through a combination of indiegogo, and private investors. To celebrate the big opening, we got together with the Broken Lizard team to create this week’s 5. Jay Chandrasekhar, Paul Soter, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme and Erik Stolhanske put together for us a list of five of their most quoted movie quotes, explaining where it came from and why they started (and keep) saying it. They chose quotes from Predator, The Matrix, Reservoir Dogs, Braveheart, and Vernon, Florida.

Check out their picks, and make sure you go see Super Troopers 2, in theaters now.

#1 “Dillon! You son of a bitch! What’s the matter? The CIA got you pushing too many pencils?” – Predator

A favorite of Broken Lizard. Of course. our re-enactment would be incomplete without the accompanying physical move… that manly clasping of hands, that mid-air arm wrestling close up, that glisteny-pulsating bicep-mano a mano showdown…. you know what I’m talking about: the Schwarzenegger/Carl Weathers greeting in Predator. No performance would be proper without that clasp after “son of a bitch.” AND no performance would be proper without the whole thing delivered in a bad Schwarzenegger accent. We’ve attempted to pay homage to this moment a few times in our own movies. In Club Dread it, unfortunately, didn’t make the cut. When Lars and Juan jump from the cliff into the ocean, they make a plan to get off the island. We shot the hand clasp moment there but it never quite had the oomph it needed so it didn’t make the cut. But in Super Troopers 2, we make another go of it and it IS in the movie. Keep an eye on Mac toward the end of ST2 and you’ll see it!

#2 “These are very exciting times!” – The Matrix

When Joe Pantolionionioni bites into that perfect piece of steak in The Matrix and says, “Ignorance is bliss,” he pretty much hits the nail right in the cojones. Would you rather be eating that steak, not knowing you’re actually a human battery suspended in a slime-filled pod with a thingy in your neck or… be in the shit, part of the resistance, fighting a billion flying machines that could interrobang the crud out of you? Regardless of your answer, Neo’s new reality is a mind fuck, plain and simple, especially because he’s being told he’s “The One,” and it’s all up to him to free the human race.

Some are skeptical about this last part but others are pumped about Neo’s arrival. Tank, in particular, is so fired up about the current state of affairs that he enthusiastically delivers a Broken Lizard fave, “These are very exciting times!” Welp, whenever things are going really well for Broken Lizard, one of us, without fail, blurts out that line with mega-enthusiasm and the rest of us giggle like schoolchildren being licked by puppies.

 

#3 “How about a little Remy Martin?” – Reservoir Dogs

 

One of the movies that’s influenced Broken Lizard the most was unquestionably, Reservoir Dogs. The soundtrack, the casting… the dialogue! At the time no one was writing dialogue like Tarantino. We thought that if Reservoir Dogs was made on a low budget and sold at Sundance that we, too, could make a dialogue-driven, independent film and take it to Sundance. And thanks to Tarantino’s example that’s what we ended up doing with Puddle Cruiser and Super Troopers.
We quote A LOT of lines from that movie, but here’s the one you’ll catch us quoting most often. Shortly after Vic Vega is released from prison he pays a visit to his old friend, Los Angeles crime boss, Joe Cabot played by Lawrence Tierney. Joe is so happy to see his old friend Vic he proclaims, “How about a little Remy Martin?” There is something so catchy about the way that Joe delivers the line that we still find ourselves repeating it over and over again.
Not only did Joe’s cadence grab us, but his little, hand motion forever etched his line into our consciousness. (No Broken Lizard reenactment is ever complete without the requisite hand motion.) And to top it off, right after Joe delivers the line, Vic Vega laughs in such a genuine way that it’s hard to tell if Vic, the character, is laughing or Michael Madsen is breaking character.

You can decide for yourself.

#4 “Phillip!” – Braveheart

The most acted-out scene in the history of Broken Lizard bake-sessions is this horrific/comic moment when Edward Longshanks – upon being told by his foppish son that he has promoted the gorgeously wet-lipped Phillip to the position of High Councillor – calmly and coldly proceeds to throw his son’s advisor/boy-toy out a window and to his death. Shocked and heartbroken, Prince Edward attacks his father with a dagger, only to be effortlessly thwarted and bitch-slapped for his troubles.

When performed by Broken Lizard, whoever is playing the role of Prince Edward cries out “Phillip!” before lunging at (and getting bitch-slapped by) whoever happens to be playing the role of Longshanks.
Except here’s the thing… Upon review of the clip, Edward never actually utters “Phillip!” He just gasps dramatically before launching his feeble assault on his Dad. So it turns our most quoted line in cinema history was never actually spoken. “Play it again, Sam” indeed!

#5 “That’s just the top of it!” – Vernon, FL

Strangely, among the Tango and Cashes and Stone Colds we watched on repeat there was a quiet little 1981 documentary by Errol Morris that we couldn’t get enough of. Vernon, FL is really nothing more than a series of interviews with the residents of a tiny Everglades town. Hunters who talked about turkeys. Old fellas swinging possums around by the tail. And this one dude with a really high-pitched voice. He talked about the possibility of different planets all made up of different races, and the science of mirages. This guy fucking rambled and it was awesome. His best moment was looking out over the surface of a swampy river where he acts out his favorite joke. “One guy says Sure is a lot of water, and the other guy says Yeah and that’s just the TOP of it.” Something about that delivery just killed us. That’s just the TYAAAAAAP of it.”

Sometimes it’s the littlest things.

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