Broken Lizard Beats Hollywood Strike to Punch With New Movie; Variety Drops Syllables in Protest

Written by: Tony Lazlo, CC2K Staff Writer

OK, I guess I'm glad that the Broken Lizard clowns have another project in the pre-strike pipeline, but did Variety just shorten the word "competition" to "competish"?

In case you don't have to read Variety regularly like the idiots here at CC2k, the vaunted Hollywood trade magazine foists a jaunty, rat-a-tat-tat shorthand on its reporting staff that bases its style on the shortening words by arbitrary syllable amounts or the use of vocabulary from the 1913 edition of The Quaintsburg Picayune.

For example:

• "Screenwriter" becomes "scribe."
• "New" or "rookie" becomes "tyro." I checked Dictionary.com for the etymology of that gem, and it turns out it originated in 1611.

In any event, this rant was sparked by Variety's synopsis of the new Broken Lizard flick, to be titled The Slammin' Salmon. You can read the synopsis after the jump!

Kevin Heffernan will direct and co-star along with Broken Lizard members Jay Chandrasekhar, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske. Story, to be penned by the troupe, revolves around a restaurant owner and former heavyweight champ who pits his wait staff against each other in a "Glengarry Glen Ross"-like competish.

There it is at the end: "Competish."

Anyway, the Broken Lizard team raised the money for this project on their own so they could get it made before the imminent Hollywood writer's strike. Nice work! I thought Beerfest was a solid entry (and return to form) in their series of grabasstic comedies, though they've yet to match their freshman effort, Super Troopers.