In Broken Lizard’s new film, Quasi, the characters eat a lot of oysters. In this exclusive interview they reveal strange details that made it difficult to film.
You might not know the comedy troupe name Broken Lizard, but you certainly know their films. They are behind hilarious comedies like Super Troopers, Super Troopers 2, Beerfest, and many more. Their latest film, Quasi, tells the story of the hunchback Quasimodo like you have never heard before. In this movie, oysters are the food of kings. Coveted by all and dreamed about by those who are too poor to purchase them. That leads to a lot of oyster eating in Quasi.
Broken Lizard Reveals Strange Quasi Oyster Details
During an exclusive interview with Mama’s Geeky, Quasi Director and Broken Lizard member Kevin Heffernan reveals that this wasn’t as simple as a task as you might expect. Sure, the actual downing of multiple oysters might be a bit hard to stomach, however they were not even allowed to do that.
“This is an interesting story. We wanted to shoot our oyster scenes and we got a letter from the A.S.P.C.A. (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) warning us that we couldn’t do it because no animals are supposed to be harmed in the making of the movie. They consider oysters, live animals, and we were killing the live animals.”
They learned there were very specific things that they could or couldn’t do surrounding the oyster scenes. For example, they could not shuck an oyster on camera and eat it. “So there were only two options. There was you had to have a pre-shucked oyster that was dead, which creates some bacterial problems. And then, what we also did, was we create fake oysters out of mushrooms.”
Paul Soter, who eats a lot of oysters in this film, chimes in to say that these were slimy. “Nobody in this movie ever slowly savors an oyster. Generally speaking, when somebody’s consuming an oyster in this world, they’re eating as many as they can as fast as they can because for some reason they’re magical.” He says he had to shovel the slimy things into his mouth as fast as possible, and they almost came right back up. “You saw probably tears in my eyes at some point because we did mushrooms for a while then I got oysters. If you go frame-by-frame you can see me just barely suppressing my gag.”
Broken Lizard member Steve Lemme admits that things got even grosser with the oysters. There is one point in the movie where Kevin is playing his character’s taster, making sure his food is not poisoned. “We did not cut. [Kevin] put the oyster in his mouth, or the mushrooms, chewed it up, and then put it into the shell and I ate that.”
Behind The Frere Jacque Sing-A-Long Scene
There is one scene in the film where everyone is gathered at a bar and having a bit of a sing-a-long. So what song did Broken Lizard settle on? Frere Jacque, of course.
Kevin says that its a little shot at the French, before going on to explain “There’s so many movies with sing-a-longs. Where people start breaking out in the bar to songs like Sweet Caroline, or whatever it is. And what would that song be in medieval France that broke out? Of course Frere Jacque.”
Steve throws in that this would probably be the same for modern day France, and Jay Chandrasekhar laughs, saying they thought that was the hot song at the moment.
Broken Lizard says that day was a lot of fun to shoot. It was pouring rain and everyone was in the bar, huddled together, and just singing Frere Jacque together.
Adrianne Palicki was jealous that all of the guys got to be two characters, so she wanted to be a part of this scene. The plan was to dress up as a man in the bar among every packed in there, making it almost a Where’s Waldo, but they weren’t able to make it work, unfortunately.
Quasi comes to Hulu on April 20th and you do not want to miss this one. See if you can count how many “oysters” made the final cut.
Full Broken Lizard Quasi Interview
Be sure to watch the full Broken Lizard interview to learn more about their new movie, Quasi.
NEXT: Beau Is Afraid Is Completely and Utterly Bizarre
About Quasi
A hapless hunchback yearns for love, but finds himself in the middle of a deadly feud between the Pope and the King of France when they each order the misfit to kill the other.
Cast: Steve Lemme, Kevin Heffernan, Adrianne Palicki, Adrianne Palicki, Jay Chandrasekhar, Erik Stolhanske
