Top 55 Jay Chandrasekhar Quotes

A lot of comedies in the 1980s and 1990s had all these colors and were so brightly lit. But John Landis had this dark style, like a Scorsese film.

What makes Broken Lizard, I think, is our timing.

Making an independent film is so great because you’re your boss. And you have to be disciplined. You know? Because there’s nobody telling you anything. But you have to kinda, you know, if you have an instinct to do something, you do it. There’s nobody to run it by.

I have always enjoyed outlaw films such as ‘Smokey and the Bandit.’

People always ask us, ‘Hey, is there going to be a ‘Beerfest 2′?’ I don’t know if I have another beer joke in me.

History is ultimately storytelling. I think the more stories you write in life – and I’ve written a lot of screenplays, a lot of short stories – you realize it’s your interpretation of events that people read, and they absorb that.

The smartest thing a filmmaker can do is to become a good editor.

In the summer of 2000, four college friends and I grew mustaches, bought highway patrol uniforms, and shot a $1.2 million budgeted independent film called ‘Super Troopers.’

Integrity matters. What our fans think matters.

Violence is totally accepted in this country.

I have always felt a comedy’s story is undercut if you have a villain who is not really menacing.

’48 Hrs.’ is very tough and funny.

When I started, there were no Indians on television or films, except for Sir Ben Kingsley. I was an actor in high school, college, and I played leads. And when I graduated, I knew that I couldn’t go to Hollywood and audition for shows or films. I could try, but where was the evidence that it was going to happen?

There was a Burger King in Hamilton, N.Y., where Colgate is, that had three sizes: Small, Medium, and Liter. I would go in there and order a large. And they’d say, ‘We don’t have large; we have liters.’ So they’d make us order liters of cola, which I found to be just anti-American.

This career is a relentless hustle because Hollywood is crowded with too many smart, talented people pursuing the same dream and the same pool of entertainment investment dollars. And unlike in law or medicine, there are no college degrees required – no barriers to entry.

You can’t halt time.

Frankly, I love ‘Scream’: I think it’s one of the great scary/funny movies.

Showbiz works well when you give the audience what they want.

A lot of the original people on ‘SNL’ came through Chicago – and Toronto, I’m sure – but Chicago was the center of it all. When I was there, Chris Farley – I knew him; we hung out and stuff – he went off to ‘Saturday Night Live,’ it was like, ‘It’s possible to be from here and make it.’

I don’t like soft villains in comedy films.

I myself downloaded and watched ‘The Wire,’ ‘Breaking Bad,’ ‘Downton Abbey,’ ‘Mad Men’ and ‘The Walking Dead’ on my iPad while walking on a treadmill. I never turned a TV on once. I never inserted a DVD.

I am convinced that tough villains help make a comedy sparkle because they provide a contrast to the funny guys.

I’ve been watching a lot of cable shows like ‘The Wire’ and ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Downton Abbey.’ I love how real the moments are.

I was pre-med for a semester, and then I got a C- in organic chemistry and was washed out of that program. Then I imagined I’d be a lawyer. I was gonna go to law school.

Philosophy teaches you to think big.

I did a lot of standup from ages 19 to 24 but then stopped to focus on sketch with Broken Lizard.

When Broken Lizard writes a movie, we reject everything that doesn’t have five guys as leads, so it needs to be cops or a basketball team; that’s what we can do.

Ultimately, in regular television, you’ve got seven or eight executives and maybe 50 people in the room with dials who are deciding whether a show goes – and it’s not a great way, because we’re making mass entertainment.

I think there’s a pedigree that comes with being from Chicago that gives you some cache outside of L.A. and New York, where, frankly, most of show business really is.

The reality of show business – and I suppose a lot of businesses, but specifically show business – is that it is this business of ‘no’s.’ It’s mostly ‘no’s.’

‘Spinal Tap’ influenced me, I think, specifically in making me really pay attention to tone.

I remember walking into the editing room when I was a junior in college, and I watched the guy make cuts, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on. He was just putting these shots together and telling the story, and it was amazing.

Our fans often tell us that they see themselves in us. The relationship between the guys in Broken Lizard rings a bell with them, because they have their own little friend groups, with their own complex dynamics, and their own private jokes.

I think that society is aspiring towards racial indifference, but the reality of life is not that. And so when you meet someone, you can see their race – it’s right there on their face – and I feel like it’s interesting.

I’ve never thrown a javelin. What kind of sport is that? It’s hilarious.

If a joke makes our tribe laugh, we assume it will make other friend-tribes laugh.

A lot of filmmaking is just sort of slowed down by lawyers who feel they’re more important than the filmmakers.

The reality about shooting films is that you can shoot many jokes and decide later which one works. So it’s not worth fighting about jokes.

It’s never a matter ever, ever – are – we’re never trying to gross anybody out, or ever are we trying to shock people. We’re just trying to make it funny in a way that makes the audience go, ‘You know, that was the first joke they thought of, and they weren’t afraid to do it.’

I think romantic comedies in general are marketed towards women, and I think men are half the romance, so why not have some that are truly from a male point of view.

I’m from Chicago. And I was an actor in high school and college, and I wanted to see if I could make a run of it in this job. So, I went downtown in Chicago, and I went up on a stand-up stage and did an open mic. It went well, so I’m like, ‘Alright, I’ll give it another try.’

To me, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and my identity is of a suburban Chicago person. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m Indian.’ I’m not. I’m American.

In 2010, The Princeton Review ranked Colgate the most beautiful campus in America – I agree.

The first thing I do in the editing room is the ‘radio edit,’ where you listen to the dialogue and don’t even look at the visuals. The rhythm, the music of the comedy, has to work.

If I had to be in the Olympics, I suppose I would do the javelin throw.

Like hitting a baseball, comedy is very much about timing. To some degree, you either ‘got it or you don’t.’

If you’re not doing something or saying something in comedy, the camera is going to go somewhere else.

We hoped to get a TV show, and we almost did, but ‘The State’ beat us out for this MTV show. So because they were there, and ‘SNL’ and ‘Kids in the Hall’ were there, we thought, ‘Let’s go try to do what Python did, and instead, let’s make movies.’

‘Smokey and the Bandit’ is tough and funny.

The funny thing about any cop uniform is that people will do what you say when you’re wearing a cop uniform.

Many films you see in theaters are financed through outside sources. With big films, the studio will pay, hoping to reap the reward of their big bet. But with medium and small-sized films, outside production companies and financiers often foot the bill.

With ‘Puddle Cruiser,’ the first 15 minutes are the weakest. When you’re total unknowns and you have a weak opening, it’s a real problem. At some screenings, we’d see the odd walkout before the movie even got going. But to counteract that, we’d do sketches before the show to introduce the film.

That movie – ‘Airplane!’ – it influenced so many of us.

The thing about people from Chicago and the Northwest suburbs is that they’re very cocky. I think that serves us well in the show business world.

Colgate is the epitome of having it both ways. Academically, it ranks in the top twenty schools in the country, but it is also a famous party school.