Danny DeVito Produced ‘Super Troopers’ But Never Actually Watched It
Danny DeVito has obviously had a long and storied acting career, starring in acclaimed dramas, appearing (occasionally in the nude) in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia for the past 18 years and making perhaps the greatest movie of all time that predominantly focuses on a filthy ‘70s sex van. But it should be noted that DeVito is also a prolific movie producer.
Since the early 1990s, DeVito’s company Jersey Films has produced movies such as Reality Bites, Erin Brockovich and Garden State – yes, without Danny DeVito, Zach Braff’s raging ennui may have gone wholly unexpressed. He also produced a little movie called Pulp Fiction, which he bought the rights to before it had been written. DeVito hadn’t even seen Reservoir Dogs, he just liked the way Quentin Tarantino “was talking about it. The guy was just so cool.”
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Jersey Shore — and by that we mean Jersey Films’ “arthouse offshoot” not the MTV reality show — also produced one of the most beloved cult comedies of the 21st century: Broken Lizard’s Super Troopers.
Director and star Jay Chandrasekhar finally had the opportunity to meet DeVito, one of his film’s executive producers, at a Directors Guild of America dinner. Seeing as he writes DeVito two “sizable” royalty checks per year, Chandrasekhar introduced himself as the director of Super Troopers. According to Chandrasekhar, the diminutive star responded, “I cash those checks!” before adding, “Yeah, I’m involved with that film. It’s on my list of films to see.”
“This motherfucker hasn’t seen it?” Chandrasekhar thought to himself. This random encounter later ended up inspiring one of the most memorable scenes in Super Troopers 2. While shooting the belated sequel, the director recounted the story to the rest of the Broken Lizard guys while they were smoking a joint outside their hotel. “I told everybody that story,” Chandrasekhar explained, “and we started riffing on the idea that, with the Mounties, one of them might not know who Danny DeVito was. We’re joking, we’re laughing, and then we put it in the movie.”
So despite the fact that it didn’t appear in earlier drafts of Super Troopers 2, there’s a prolonged scene in which several of the film's cartoonishly insulting Canadian characters argue over who exactly DeVito is. One of the villainous Mounties drives his buddy nuts by suggesting that DeVito the producer from “Always Sunnys” is not the same person as the actor from Taxi. “They’re the same guy, how many 145 centimeter actors do you think there are?” he responds.
Even some of the cast members were unsure that the scene would make the final cut of the film, believing it to be too “weird and esoteric.” According to Broken Lizard’s Kevin Heffernan, their skepticism subsided after the movie was finally shown to an audience and the sequence killed. “We were like, holy shit this is really funny,” he recalled.
Chandrasekhar hoped that the scene might finally convince the Twins star to check out his work. “We wrote a lengthy Danny DeVito joke into Super Troopers 2 to make him see it,” he admitted.
No word on whether or not DeVito has seen Super Troopers as of yet, or if he’s caught that other early 2000s cop comedy he also produced.
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