Staff writer Samuel Petkus and A&E Editor Tyler Gaskill sat down with Kevin Heffernan and Eric Stolhanske, two members of the comedy team Broken Lizard. The two acted in, helped write and produced “Beerfest.” Drinking at the Milwaukee Ale House, they discussed “Beerfest,” which opened in theaters nationwide on Aug. 25.

Note: spoilers and inebriation ahead.

Q: So, the first thing I wrote down about “Beerfest” was “ethnic stereotypes.”

KH: Right, because they’re always funny. Just ask Mel Gibson. You can’t make fun of white people enough. Right?

Q: All of the members of Broken Lizard are listed as writers and producers, so how does everything get divided up? What is the creative process like?

KH: Pretty collaborative. We all write the script together ... we’ve been doing it since we were in college together. We sit around a table and write the script together. Producing wise ... we have this company now with Warner Brothers and they let us make movies. So, when that happens they let you throw your name on there as a producer.

ES: Another part of producing is in the developing. When you bring an idea to fruition, that’s part of producing.

Q: Even as far as writing the script goes, how does someone first come up with the idea?

KH: Yeah, usually we have a brainstorming session. But, you know there are certain limited ideas you can do with five guys having equal parts, kind of thing, you know what I mean? It’s like, “Hey! We’re a basketball team!” And so there’s a day and we’re sitting around, we had just come back from promoting “Super Troopers” in Australia, and they brought us on this stage and they were like, “Do something.” So we were like, “All right ... We’ll challenge the five best guys to a chug-off!” They kicked the s--t out of us. Then they were all yelling at us and cheering, so we thought this would be a pretty funny idea and so we shot the s--t about it a little bit and came up with the idea of having this international beer drinking blood sport — the kumite of beer drinking.

Q: Just watching “Super Troopers” and “Beerfest,” it looks like you guys are having so much fun. Am I wrong?

KH: No, it’s definitely a racket we’ve gotten ourselves into. We were college buddies and then we kinda kept it going and kept making the movies. So, it’s like working with four of your buddies and still making each other laugh. It’s what makes you comfortable when you’re doing it. Like, I’ve done other movies and I don’t have the same camaraderie with other people.

Q: There is this scene in “Super Troopers,” towards the end where you guys get all wasted and what not. Were you guys actually drunk on set?

ES: On “Super Troopers” we weren’t really expecting to have beer on set. “Beerfest” was a little different. We were sponsored by a beer company.

KH: The budget was so small, we made that movie (“Super Troopers”) for a million bucks, the budget was so small that you couldn’t f--k it up. The most expensive thing was the film. So, it’s not like a Jim Carrey movie where you can be f--king up takes for the fun of it. On this one, there’s a little bit more of a budget, so you may find yourself doing some drinking. Or when Lemme, Steve Lemme, does the “strikeout” in that party scene. That was late at night on the last night of the week. So, some of the elements of the “strikeout” can be real.

Q: The plot of “Beerfest” seemed to be mocking the cheesy sports-film genre, especially with the death of Landfill. Was that a deliberate commentary?

ES: You know that in every single movie there is a structure for writing screenplays. At the end of Act 2, you have to have the lowest moment.

KH: Yeah, that was us trying to f--k with the studio. ’Cause it’s like the end of Act 2, they’re at their rock-bottom. Then they rise, you know? So we thought, we’ll kill somebody and then five minutes later bring them back.

Q: At the beginning of the movie when all of the shirts are getting ripped off of the women at Oktoberfest, I thought the movie was going to be a surface level, “Woo! Beer!” and the like. But now, I see there are many levels to it.

KH: Warner Brothers doesn’t make a lot of unrated movies, so when they decided they wanted to, they were like, “Go for it. Let’s see some more (breasts) in there and maybe girls kissing each other.”

ES: We originally wanted every single woman in Oktoberfest to get her shirt ripped off, like seven hundred breasts ...

KH: But we couldn’t hire enough strippers.

Q: As if the film business isn’t cool enough already ... Any advice for those young people out there who want to be a part of it?

KH: Well, we didn’t really have this when we started, but these days there is so much high-quality DV equipment. I mean, you can get a camera for not too much and make some of your own s--t. We had crappy cameras and things didn’t start looking good until we put things down on good film. You know, people talk about going to film school and all that, well the thing is, we wrote. You just have to rally and write some s--t and then shoot it. I think you can actually make it look pretty good these days. It’s really just a matter of doing it.

Q: Should you do it, though, and write a screenplay, get a little cast together and shoot it? How do you make anyone else care?

ES: It all matters if you care. It all matters if you care. What’s in here? (Eric touches Samuel’s heart.) It matters what’s right in there. What’s in there? Huh? Right in the heart.

KH: There’s other ways to get things out there, like the Internet. Places like youtube.com and break.com ... But let’s not kid anyone, it really is kind of a crapshoot.

Q: So, what’s next for Broken Lizard?

KH: We are trying to get this movie made called “The Greek Road,” which is set in ancient Greece. It’s about Plato, who is a freshmen wrestling recruit at Athens University, but he is failing his freshman seminar, Basic Thought, and so the star senior, Socrates, tutors him. So he passes and they go on a road trip to Mt. Olympus for the Olympics and along the way the gods try to stop them because Plato cheated on his exam.

Q: Sounds funny. Good luck with that.

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