The Naked Gun creator David Zucker thinks this year’s reboot “totally missed it”.
The 77-year-old filmmaker helmed the original Leslie Nielsen-starring comedy series and despite the success of the franchise’s reboot – which was directed by Akiva Schaffer and produced by Seth Macfarlane and Erica Huggins – he believes the Paramount comedy’s big budget meant “technical pizzazz” overshadowed the spoof styl.
David told Woman’s World: “My brother, Jerry, and our partner, Jim Abrahams, started doing spoof comedies 50 years ago, and we originated our own style—and we did that so well that it looks easy, evidently.
“People started copying it, like Seth MacFarlane for the new Naked Gun. He totally missed it.”
David explained that he, Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams had “a certain method to the madness” with their original 1988 movie and hopes if another film is made to follow this year’s – which starred Liam Neeson – it will be done “right”.
He added: “We had our 15 rules, and I’m teaching them in the hopes that if anybody tries to do a movie like this again, they’ll do it right.
“You shouldn’t spend too much money on comedies, and one of our rules is about technical pizzazz.
“Big budgets and comedy are opposites, and in the new Naked Gun, you could see that they spent a lot of money on scenes full of technical pizzazz while trying to copy our style.”
The filmmaker had initially worked on a script for a fourth Naked Gun movie with Pat Proft and Mike McManus – which would have focused on Frank Drebin’s (Nielsen) 30-something-year-old son – though Paramount Pictures ultimately chose to move ahead without the original creators for the reboot.
And as a result of feeling burned, David admitted in August he had no plans to see the film.
He told The Hollywood Reporter: “I’m not gonna see it, but I don’t see any of the sequels that were of my material done by other people, and that’s fine. I’ve told Akiva that I have no intention to see it.
“He actually invited me to come see an early cut of it, but I told him there’s nothing I could do to help because it really isn’t what I would have done.
“That’s not to say that he didn’t actually end up doing a good movie. But I don’t think I could help with that.”
David added he didn’t want to be credited as an executive producer for The Naked Gun, even though Paramount had offered him just that.
He said: “I won’t take credit on anything that I didn’t work on from the beginning. I don’t need the money.
“After the agents and managers, it would have paid three electric bills, probably. If it’s a big hit, Akiva should get the credit, and he deserves it.”
However, the director wishes the best for The Naked Gun and is glad producer Seth MacFarlane spoke with him shortly after the reboot’s script was finished.
Zucker said: “He spent the first 10 minutes telling me how much he loved Airplane, The Naked Gun and Top Secret.
“I can’t get mad at anyone who will tell me what a genius I am. That was a good conversation. I was glad that Seth called, but I told him politely, ‘Good luck, but I can’t put my name on this.’ [But] everything happens for a reason.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.movies.yahoo.com ’
