Jay Chandrashekhar is the toast of the town

Arthur J Pais

Out of the 150 films that Hollywood produces each year, about 20 per cent break even, usually after three months. So, any film that breaks even in its second week catches the attention of the tinsel town and big studios throw big deals to its makers.

Steven Spielberg hasn't yet called Jay Chandrasekhar, the writer, actor and director of Super Troopers, which released on February 15, 2002. But the thirtyish filmmaker is the toast of the town, as his film grossed $16 million on March 3, just 17 days after its release, and is heading for a potential $25 million gross. The film, which received mixed reviews, has already become profitable.

While $25 million gross is peanuts for most films, Fox Searchlight ( a division of 20th Century Fox that distributes low budget films) is thrilled with Chandrasekhar and his team.

For, the distributor bought Super Troopers last year at the Sundance Film for $3 million. The film was made for $1 million. Searchlight spent another $3 million to promote it.

The film, which was on the list of 10 top box office grossers in America for two weeks, has returned $7 million to its distributors. It is scheduled to be released in video after three months and abroad, in two months.

"We made the film for anyone who wants to have good fun," says Chandrasekhar, son of Chicago physicians, who grew up in America.

He made the film with members of the Broken Lizard company that he had formed when he was a student at Colgate University about six years ago.

The first film Chandrasekhar and his pals made was Puddle Cruiser, a 1996 campus dating comedy that was screened at a number of film festivals including the one in London but did not get a theatrical release. But it was widely shown on Comedy Central channel.

Super Troopers is about a group of close friends, Thorny (Chandrasekhar), Rabbit, Mac and Foster who are state troopers in Vermont.

Stationed near the seemingly quiet Canadian border, they spend the bulk of their time toying with speeders and taking impounded sports cars for spins on the highway.

Their superiors realise they have hardly any work and plan to get rid of the division.

Things look bleak until, unexpectedly, they uncover a drug smuggling operation running across the border to Canada. Seeing a chance to salvage their jobs, the troopers race the clock to crack the ring. To their horror, they discover soon they aren't the only ones in the hunt.

The film received negative reviews from The New York Times, which called it "bad and tasteless," and Entertainment Weekly that called it "hit and-often-miss comedy."

But it wasn't without a few significant champions. Giving it three (out of four) stars, The New York Post wrote: "Laugh-out-loud comedies are so rare that you shouldn't casually pass up Super Troopers, which is essentially a smarter and much funnier version of the old Police Academy flicks."

The Village Voice called it "a breath of fresh air," and The San Francisco Chronicle noted it is an "oddly sweet comedy."

Chandrasekhar says nothing pleases him more than working on comedies. But he certainly doesn't want to be an one-genre director. His heroes include director Ron Howard, whose film A Beautiful Mind, is nominated for eight Oscars.

"I like the way he has handled all kinds of films," Chandrasekhar says, noting Howard made a crime thriller Ransom with Mel Gibson, a beautiful fantasy Cocoon and a family comedy Parenthood.

"I am working on several scripts," Chandrasekhar says. "One of them will be a horror comedy."