Skip to Content

Don't miss Joystiq's up-to-the-minute live coverage of E3!

Posts with tag KevinHeffernan

Interviews with 'Strange Wilderness' Stars Kevin Heffernan & Allen Covert

Filed under: Comedy », Casting », New Releases », Paramount », Scripts », Fox Searchlight », NSFW », Movie Marketing », Interviews »



Strange Wilderness is a new comedy starring Steve Zahn as the host of a wilderness television show with plummeting ratings. To increase viewership, he assembles a motley crew and sets out on an expedition to find Bigfoot. The cast includes Jonah Hill, Justin Long, Ashley Scott, Peter Dante, Jeff Garlin, and -- believe it or not -- Ernest Borgnine! The red band trailer for Wilderness just hit the internet. (Need a little incentive to check it out? There's nudity. You're welcome.) Cinematical spoke with two of the film's stars -- Kevin Heffernan (of Broken Lizard fame) and Allen Covert (pretty much every Adam Sandler movie, Grandma's Boy) -- about this film and their careers. First up is Kevin Heffernan...

Cinematical: Who do you play in the film?

Kevin Heffernan: I play a character named Whitaker. When they go out on this trip, they need to hire an animal wrangler. I'm a car mechanic and I have no animal wrangling experience. Basically, I'm just looking for a job. So I go and interview with them and I win the job but I have no knowledge of animals. I don't even like them that much really! It's got this great ensemble cast and some great cameos...

Cinematical: It does have such a great comedy cast, was improvisation encouraged on the set?

KH: Yeah man. The script was so good, I mean it was written by Fred Wolf and Peter Gaulke who have a lot of comedy writing experience, but it was just one of those kind of movies where there's always like six or seven people on the screen. And they left it free for us to do the improv stuff that we all love to do. So there were a lot of people going off, and they had to kind of pull you back to the script a little bit.

Broken Lizard Boys Ready 'The Slammin Salmon'

Filed under: Comedy », Casting », Fandom », Newsstand »

I'm conflicted on the Broken Lizard comedy troupe. I thought Super Troopers was pretty funny, but Club Dread was a complete disaster. Beerfest was extremely uneven, but had some really hilarious moments. So I approach their new project with a mixture of excitement and indifference I'm calling "indiffitement." The Slammin' Salmon will get all the Broken Lizard guys back together -- Kevin Heffernan, Jay Chandrasekhar, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske. Chandrasekhar typically directs Broken Lizard projects (and also did the dreaded Dukes of Hazzard), but this one will be helmed by Heffernan (he played Farva in Super Troopers), making his directorial debut.

According to Variety, the comedy will revolve around "a restaurant owner and former heavyweight champ who pits his wait staff against each other in a Glengarry Glen Ross - like competish." (Hey Variety, I love you -- you supply me with a lot of my movie news and for that I am grateful. But..."competish?" I like abbreves as much as the next guy, but writing out "competition" only takes two more strokes of the keyboard!) Sounds like it could be funny, and The Slammin' Salmon is certainly a title you don't forget. The gang is doing this film independently, to beat a potential Screen Actors' Guild strike. "We wanted to go back to our independent roots and get a project off the ground and into production quickly," says Heffernan. Expect Salmon to swim (upstream of course) into theaters next year.

Post our RSS feeder to your own Web site!

Sponsored Links