Thomas Lennon in Balls of Fury Gemma La Mana/Courtesy of Rogue Pictures

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During their brief but glorious two seasons on MTV (1993–1995) the comedy troupe The State was never really into metaphors. One of their most famous sketches was called "The Jew, The Italian and the Red Head Gay," which just about sums up the punch line of the sitcom parody. Yet there is something appropriate about the fact that when the 11-member group reunited for the first time in over a decade on the set of Reno 911!: Miami, each of the eight State mates who weren't part of the Washoe County Sherriff's Department were subjected in one way or another to the end of a tattoo needle. Permanence. Pain. A sense of camaraderie…it is fitting.

"We all looked around and we all said, 'Wow, we have been eating in tents in goofy outfits for a long time together,'" says Robert Ben Garant, who along with fellow Staters Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney-Silver created the Comedy Central cop show–turned–movie. "And we never discussed what anybody was going to do at all. We just said, 'You work in tattoo parlors.' It was really great to be with people who we have such a shorthand and such trust [with] that we can just kind of set them loose."

While the troupe drifted apart following a disastrous CBS special in 1995, none of the members can ever shake the brand of "The State." Even if Kevin Allison or Todd Holoubek find the cure for cancer, they'll still only be asked when The State will finally come out on DVD. (By the way, the five-disc set will arrive October 10th.) But in the meantime, they have all been set loose on the multiplex. In August alone, former Staters-turned-directors Garant and Lennon's Reno 911!: Miami follow-up Balls of Fury, Michael Ian Black's Wedding Daze, and David Wain's The Ten each carry on the troupe's unique comic sensibilities. And that's without even mentioning Joe LoTruglio's scene stealing turn as a hapless driver in Superbad.

"Our real heroes were Monty Python," says Michael Showalter, who with David Wain became the first Staters to really put their stamp on the big screen with the nostalgic 1980s summer camp comedy Wet Hot American Summer. "The template for us wasn't Saturday Night Live. We weren't the big live troupe. Our bread and butter was making short films on location, so I think it was a natural progression to move into a feature-length medium."

Unlike with SNL, State fans were never led to expect, say, pudding lovers Barry and Levon to make it to the movies. (In fact, the troupe was reluctant to have recurring characters at all.). After they disbanded in 1997, Garant, Lennon, and Kenney-Silver created the Sabado Gigante spoof Viva Variety for Comedy Central with Michael Ian Black, while Michael Patrick Jann — the Terry Gilliam of the group — went on to direct the beauty pageant comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous for New Line. Showalter and Wain's Wet Hot American Summer was met with ambivalence when it was released in 2002 but has since gone on to become a cult classic.