Seventeen years ago, a comedy troupe called Broken Lizard created a landmark film for the modern cannabis culture — the slapstick police comedy “Super Troopers.” 

This April, the Broken Lizard crew is back with a sequel that they crowdfunded to the tune of $4 million, enough to convince film distributors Fox Searchlight to pony up the rest.

We interviewed Broken Lizard team member and “Super Troopers 2” director Jay Chandrasekhar during the troupe’s weekend appearance at SF Sketchfest, where they took questions, screened the new trailer and performed a live version of the original. Hilarity ensued.

In the following interview with GreenState podcast The Hash, Chandrasekhar details how there is a very specific method to Broken Lizard’s use of cannabis for creative madness. It’s akin to the old writer’s adage: “Write drunk, edit sober.”

Cannabis can help silence the mind’s inner censor and let the ideas flow, Jay said. The key is to capture the ideas on paper and sort the good from the bad later. Broken Lizard deployed this mix of wild free thinking and clear-eyed editing repeatedly throughout the creative process for both films. The consistency in approach may serve the goal of keeping alive the original vibe of “Super Troopers,” despite the bigger budget, and the passage of 17 years.

Listen in to Jay Chandrasekhar on The Hash, and click on over to SFChronicle.com for more details on the sequel’s creation.

Subscribe to GreenState’s weekly podcast The Hash on iTunes.

And here’s the new “Super Troopers 2” trailer. It’s gotten 1.5 million views in four days.