The Naked Gun writers are proud to have stuffed their reboot with references to the classic movies.
Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, who co-wrote Paramount’s comedy reboot with director Akiva Schaffer, sat down with The Hollywood Reporter after the film’s solid opening weekend at the box office. Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson star in the franchise’s fourth movie that revives the spoof series that featured Leslie Nielsen playing detective Frank Drebin and kicked off with director David Zucker’s original 1988 film.
During the interview, Gregor and Mand discuss acknowledging O.J. Simpson previously starring in the franchise as Officer Nordberg; potential ideas for another sequel; and how they landed on the movie’s memorable cameos.
The film’s villain definitely feels Elon Musk-coded.
DAN GREGOR Musk-y?
Were there concerns about igniting the wrath of someone like Musk?
GREGOR Honestly, the funniest thing is, no. Our hope is that Cane is an amalgamation of all of the terrible billionaires in the world. We were really set on wanting this movie to have a certain amount of comedy timelessness, and so not getting pigeonholed in any one specific was really important for us. It’s one of the miracles of the original movie, too, that it dated better than just about any comedy ever.
There’s that R-word conversation, which feels of the moment, but it has probably been going on for decades, too.
GREGOR I mean, the Black Eyed Peas wrote that song in 2003, and that song is not available to download anymore. It’s just, “Let’s Get It Started.” And so the Black Eyed Peas were having this conversation as they were releasing and un-releasing their own album [The E.N.D.] in 2009. These are pretty long-term conversations and comedy.
What was the discussion like about how to address O.J.?
DOUG MAND The O.J. thing was one of the first questions aKiva, Dan and myself got when people heard we were doing Naked Gun: “What are you going to do about Nordberg and O.J.?” It was one of the first joke areas we worked on in the movie, and we knew pretty quickly that we wanted it to be a fast reference [and] that we didn’t want to live in the idea of O.J. too long. Pretty quickly, we came into the idea of a Hall of Fathers because it also was attached to another question we got, which was like, “Is Liam playing Frank Drebin?” We had a lot of alts of different O.J. jokes in the first couple of weeks, but then settled into this area.
There is a lot of talk about Liam and Pamela’s real-life chemistry. Did you sense that sparks were flying?
MAND I am getting more texts about what’s going on with them than anything else. All I can say is what I know — which is, on set from the beginning, the two of them had immediate chemistry. They liked each other. You only dream that your two co-stars are connecting on that level. I am pulling for the two of them in a very big way.
Obviously, an appearance from Weird Al in this franchise feels de rigueur. What went into the cameos from familiar faces, including Priscilla Presley?
GREGOR Weird Al, from the jump — there’s a couple things to us that feel like the fan-service demands that we have to give, in some way or another. It’s the same thing with having credit-sequence jokes and just some moment to hear that old wonderful theme song and see the police siren light. We did write at least a half dozen different places for him within the movie. There was one point where he was going to be the singer at Cane’s gala.
MAND Priscilla, we talked about just because she’s an icon, and she’s still with us. We didn’t want to force it in. Luckily, she was game to do it, and that was really exciting for us.
Have you been discussing ideas for another movie?
GREGOR Oh, immediately we were already having fun doing that on set. This movie is a tight 85 minutes, but the truth is, every line had a dozen alts.
MAND Dan and I have notebooks already that we’re already starting to just jot down ideas on. Akiva is the same way, to a degree.
You previously worked on the movie Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. There was a viral social media post last week criticizing that the film seemed to villainize the real-life Peter Pan actor. Do comments like that surprise you?
GREGOR When you’re touching someone’s childhood, you do not know what you are going to stir up. There are Gadget fans out there that I would not want to meet in an alley in the street at night. It’s functionally the ethos that we go into everything we do. There’s so much IP-driven stuff now, [and] we really feel like you have to have a certain amount of kicking up dust to make it worth it. You can’t be so reverential to the thing that came before. Rescue Rangers came completely out of that ethos, which was like, “How do we completely destroy the concept of nostalgia?” But even going into [Naked Gun] was the same thing, which was like, “We really need to make sure that it has a real reason to exist on its own.”
Any Naked Gun lines or moments that make you the proudest?
GREGOR The joke that just has never gotten old, especially in the performance of it, is the ending where the Danny Huston-Liam Neeson fight happens. The whole movie is building up to them fighting each other, and the very first punch, he’s like, “You hurt my tummy.” That whole run never, never, never doesn’t make me laugh every single time I watch.