Frank makes mention during the film that he wrote a love song for Beth, and you end up paying that off with the track that plays over the credits. Considering your musical background, was that a must-include?
I’m happy you like that, because I added it three weeks ago. For months we’d been going, “Wouldn’t it be funny if he had a song?” But I was just underwater trying to get the movie done, and so there was no time for anything bonus. We finally locked picture on a Wednesday, and suddenly I had this free day ahead of a screening on Thursday night, and I was sitting in the edit room with my laptop and podcasting microphone and I just improvised the song. I would hit pause, play back, erase a few things, move a few things, tell everyone to be quiet, and I would just sing in my Frank voice. [Laughs] I threw it in the end credits for that night with my voice. I texted Liam, “I know you don’t think of yourself as a singer, but would you be willing to do a song if it was very silly and low-key singing?” And he was game. He went into the studio in New York and recorded it while I was on Zoom.
Everything else, I test, I screen for friends, I make sure it’s working. But that was a last-second toss-in. The only problem is how late it is. There’s only some people that are going to stay and listen to it. Anyone who knows Naked Gun should stay through the credits, because there’s always jokes in the words, which we have in ours as well. But there’s also a “Weird Al” Yankovic coda at the very end.
I feel like whenever there’s a new studio comedy these days, there’s all this pressure, like, “Is this the movie that will save big-screen comedies?!” And you guys even got in on the conversation with a PSA.
Then, whenever a movie works, it’s an anomaly. Everyone talks about, “What did we learn from Barbie?” And you’re like, To make lightning in a bottle? What did we learn from Minecraft—the world is unpredictable? There’s very little you glean from these massive, billion-dollar hits, so it’s always funny that they assign all this meaning. It’s like that anytime anything comes out besides a superhero movie. But also every time a superhero movie doesn’t do good, it’s like, “Well, superhero movies are dead,” and then the next one makes a billion dollars!
In the creative process for something like Naked Gun, are you able to ignore how comedies have struggled in theaters? Or does that seep in at all?
I’m not thinking about it at all. I do know when I’m signing up for this that this specific subgenre of comedy—the spoof—has been dead for a long time. And that’s part of why I get attracted to it, because I grew up loving these kinds of movies, and then they’re just gone. At screenings, certain 15-year-olds truly didn’t understand what they were seeing for a while. If they hadn’t seen Austin Powers or one of the Scary Movies, then they wouldn’t know anything. It was interesting introducing the genre. And you could see some kids lit up—being like, Oh my God, adults can be this silly. And others couldn’t wrap their heads around it. For me, similar to Bash Brothers, there’s that level of misguidedness, punk rockness, of going into something that you know is unpopular on purpose because there’s something a little dangerous about it.
Between this and another Scary Movie coming from the Wayans brothers, hopefully we’ll get the spoof going for that next generation.
To go to my own stuff, MacGruber is an offshoot of this genre. Popstar is a different version. So they do exist, but Popstar was nine years ago. What we’re also missing is Will Ferrell and Adam McKay having a new movie every two to three years, or even Adam Sandler—all of his are on Netflix. So there is definitely a hole there. When you’re writing a comedy, you’re visualizing: What if Liam Neeson says this line, and then one day I’m at a movie theater, with a packed house, and everyone’s laughing at it? That’s the whole dream of making any comedy.
