A biography for Jay Chandrasekharhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“Whether I'm performing or directing, I'm aways thinking about rhythm; sometimes it's nailing the right rhythm, and sometimes it's intentionally breaking the rhythm. Those two things are what make something funny or not. How long a shot is and where you put the camera are all part of that rhythm of directing.”
“I did a lot of standup from ages 19 to 24 but then stopped to focus on sketch with Broken Lizard.”
“A lot of people come from small towns, and they come here wondering 'Can I really make it in Hollywood?' When I went to L.A., I knew I was going to make it. There's no doubt about it. Why? Because I'm from Chicago!”
“I took one film class at NYU over a summer and learned the basics - you know, how to load a camera and how to light and how to edit - and I became a film editor.”
“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.”
“I think, in a film that's supposed to last an hour and a half, I think you have to really pay attention to what kind of movie you're making, what is the audience experiencing, and does this joke fit with this joke?”
“When we had Brian Cox in 'Super Troopers,' we learned that when you put a great actor in the center of our lunacy, it grounds everything.”
“The funny thing about any cop uniform is that people will do what you say when you're wearing a cop uniform.”
“Frankly, I love 'Scream': I think it's one of the great scary/funny movies.”
“Growing up, I was the only Indian kid around for miles, so I ached to belong. I had a neighborhood pack of nine guys and two girls, and we hung out all the time. We played football, baseball, and broom-hockey on the iced-up lake.”
“I have always felt a comedy's story is undercut if you have a villain who is not really menacing.”
“All I can do is keep my nose down and shoot the scene, shoot the scene, make it funny, make it funny, make it funny.”
“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.”
“You see any movie, and it's just a feat of human strength and perseverance. It is a brutally challenging business.”
“Every time you jump to another format in the 'picture business,' meaning film, television, commercials, the people in the other format go, 'Ah, yeah, you made a lot of features, but you don't know how to do TV' or the commercial people go, 'Oh, you can't do 30 seconds.'”
“I think that Broken Lizard movies typically have to be able to star five guys, so it's like, policemen, spacemen, a basketball team.”
“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.'”
“One of my random skills is I have a very strong memory for dialogue and moments, and I don't know why.”
“I would never be comfortable with an edited name. I have never hidden the fact that I am of Indian origin.”