Set
Visit Intro / Jurgen
Prochnow / Paul Soter & Erik Stolhanske / Steve Lemme &
Kevin Heffernan / Jay Chandrasekhar

Jurgen
plays such intensely fierce dramatic roles that you half-expect him
to knife you with a concealed sword if you so much as look at him the wrong way. As we learned, nothing could be further
from the truth. Not only was he the nicest guy in the world, he
relished the opportunity to do something funny and silly like BEERFEST.

Jürgen
Prochnow

Who’s
your character?

My
character is the great beer baron of Munich and owns one of the
greatest breweries in Munich. And of course that means real wealth
because if you know how much money beer is and how much beer people
drink and consume every year…so very influential person. And he
opens always the Oktoberfest inside of the story and so that means
tapping the keg. The ceremonial keg. And that’s a very important
duty. You mustn’t spill any drop there otherwise it’s bad luck
for the Oktoberfest. And we’ve got a guy there, his
[character’s] great grandson, telling him about the whole thing
and that’s the opening of the movie.

Are
you a fan of these guys? Have you seen their previous films?

Oh,
you mean the Broken Lizard?

Yeah…

Yeah,
I’ve seen the SUPERTROOPERS. And yeah, I like them very much.
That’s why I’m doing this.

Do
you play it straight or is it really silly?

No,
I think I try to play it as straight as possible because the
situations are really funny and I think you have to go for the
character and take it really seriously otherwise it’s not funny
anymore.

They
seem to like to take very respectable actors like Brian Cox and make
them do silly things. Have they asked you to do anything unusual?

Not
really, no. For example, as you probably know, I did a movie years
back [called] DAS BOOT. And I was the captain in that movie and we
had a little u-boat scene in here and in that movie. And I’m
wearing this hat here [in both movies] and that was my intention to
do this because the guys are going for recipe [for beer] from
Germany to US in the u-boat and find the recipe over there. Which is
really funny so you have to give credit to those guys. They’ve
done a lot nice scenes here.

They
doing a good job of recreating it (Germany)?

Yeah,
definitely, in terms of costume, everything is really authentic.

Did
you give any advice on how people might act?

Yeah,
of course, I can help a little bit cause I’ve seen it all. I’ve
lived there in Munich a couple of years so I know how it feels and
what it is like. I’ve been to the Oktoberfest many times and I
know all about the Bavarian stuff.

How
are they writing the German characters?

Yeah,
I mean, this is for a comedy, of course, sometimes it’s supposed
to be over the top a little bit, which is necessary for a comedy. So
we have five German guys in lederhosen here and they’re all my
[character’s] great grandsons. (laughs) That’s very funny. And
they’re my team and the drinking team here.

Is
there any German with subtitles?

There’s
some German dialogue in there with subtitles, yeah. I’ll speak
some German, they asked me to. I even translated my own scene once
into German. [The scene was] being shot in German and in English.

How’s
Jay as a director?

Very
nice, very nice guy to work with. I mean, they [Broken Lizard] have
been together for many years. And then they’re writing scripts
together and so they know what they wanna do. And everybody’s here
almost every day [and they know] what they’re doing. It’s nice
to work with them.

And
how is the research going? You’re drinking?

Well,
me, of course, I mean, I’ve been there so I know about the
situations. I’m very well accustomed…

So
beer drinking in advance for this?

Beer
drinking in advance as a special gift I would say (laughs)

What
does the movie beer taste like?

What
do you mean?

They
have to use fake beer, right?

For
drinking purposes, there’ll all kinds of different techniques
they’re using but they’re mixing stuff, of course. It looks like
beer but it isn’t.

I
can’t imagine it’s very good, what does it taste like?

(laughs)

American
beer in general…

(laughs)
American beer in general taste terrible.

You
haven’t done many comedies over the years.

No,
that’s why I’m doing this. I’m happy to do this because all
over the years, I’ve done so many movies but hardly ever a comedy.
People generally cast me for the heavy [drama] so this is a nice
opportunity.

This
is a fast shoot. They’re doing it in a month or so. Is there
pressure on you to perform?

No,
no.

How
many days are you working?

I
was here three weeks in February and now I’m back here for a
couple of days and that’s it.

So
it’s a fairly major role in the film?

Yes.

So
do you run the games that they’re doing?

Yes.
In the Beerfest that is a special invention for the movie that’s a
competition of beer drinking, all kinds of plays involved there in
an arena like in a boxing arena, very similar to that. A lot of
people are watching. And that’s a key to that scene, in a way. And
every team has five guys – and I have five German guys in
lederhosen – and there are teams from all over the world –
Eskimos – and there’re all kinds of different techniques to
drink beer.

Do
they actually have beer drinking contests at the real Oktoberfest?

Well,
I would say they make it up themselves. If you watch the Australians
over there, for example, or the U.S. guys or the Italians or
whatever, you know, it’s just hilarious, what they drink, it’s
unbelievable. And the Bavarians as well, you know, (laughs)

What’s
been the most fun sequence for you to shoot?

Well,
I would say that it was the Beerfest scenes that were really very
very funny. And then the u-boat scene for me personally…

Besides
breaking the keg, what else do you do in the movie?

My
part is in the opening scenes and then being after the recipes and
the training scenes. Oh, that was a funny scene as well – training
my guys for the beer drinking competition with computers and high
tech and everything, watching it like a trainer, a coach, coaching
them how to do the best that they can.

Is
there a lot of ad-libbing?

A
little bit. I think more with those guys. But sometimes with me as
well.

You
like doing that? You like ad-libbing?

Yeah,
yeah, I do. The other day we had a scene in a cab here and it was a
lot inventing scenes, start a dialogue in there, it was fun.

What’s
Wolfgang gonna think of the U-boats?

I
have no idea. (laughs)

Ok,
thank you very much.

BEERFEST
goes wide on August 25th