If you had grown up with the original “Naked Gun” trilogy (1988-1994) as a writer/director Akiva Schaffer, Chances are that you would also have thought that a 2025 franchise -about start was a horrible idea.
Schaffer, 47, looked at the original “naked gun” countless times in middle and high school, but his “horror and pessimism” when he received a call about the remake went beyond the typical knob cost to protect a fetched childhood memory. “SNL” and Single Alum is an equally serious student in forgeries as anyone in comedy, and it was his significant professional opinion that a restart was an idiot.
“I definitely thought it was a bad idea,” Schaffer said when he was a guest in this week’s episode of IndieWire’s Filmmakers Toolkit Podcast to discuss his new ”The naked gun. “” The first movie is specifically a perfect movie. It’s almost a magical trick. Every time you think you figured out what they did to make it work in terms of the rules, the next scene usually breaks in a way – somehow their instincts were so good what the audience cared about and did not care. ”
Schaffer said he took the meeting with Paramount of “sick curiosity”, and wondered what the studio’s plans were for the respected property.
“What changed me was that they said Liam Neeson Be interested, Schaffer said.
One of the keys to success for brothers David and Jerry Zucker, along with Jim Abrahams – ZAZ Producing -Directing Trio Behind “Airplane”, “Top Secret” and “Naked Gun” movies– Be casting of dramatic actors in Hollywood’s first counterfeit films.
“It’s not that they play it straight. It’s like they really play it,” Schaffer said. “When people are thinking of playing it straight, they think about playing it seriously, which means they can be very humorless and flat, and that’s not. It is that you play it as if you are an actor who is so stupid, they do not know what they say is crazy. That it is so genuine.”
Schaffer is not alone in believing that no one was better at this than the original “Naked Gun” star Leslie Nielsen, but even more important, to go into his detective Frank Drebin’s shoes would be a mistake.
“Leslie Nielsen is unchanging, one of one, as they say,” Schaffer said. “Every actor who would try to make a Leslie Nielsen impression of some kind would be a failed idea.”
The reason for the possibility of Neeson fascinated Schaffer, does the door open a crack to the potential to restart? A four -minute piece “taken” star did in Warwick Davis, Stephen Merchant, and Ricky GervaisComedy -Series 2011 ”Life is too short.”
It is a well -known clip in comedy circles that Schaffer had seen countless times. In the scene, Neeson plays a serious version of himself, the dramatic actor who wants to try his hand on comedy, but seemingly unaware that AIDS, cancer, famine and his “Schindler’s list” preparations are not appropriate comical conditions to rip. You can look at the scene below.
“It’s all in that clip. He’s playing Liam Neeson In it, but it is clearly a caricatur. It is a merger of every action movie he has done over the last ten years, and he plays it so seriously and so humorless and says crazy shit, “Schaffer said.” It is also why when they said Liam Neeson, I went, ‘Oh,’ because when you see that clip, you are a fantastic unused resource. The leading man, the old school Gravitas-that no longer exists, but also (he) has not used his power for comedy yet, almost ever, except that clip and a como in ‘Ted 2.’ “
Schaffer pointed to other handsome leading men, such as Alec Baldwin and Jon Hamm, who had successfully made the pivot a comedy, but then held a career foot properly planted in the comedy world.
“Liam never made that pivot. He’s just really rare that way,” Schaffer said. “It lets me know that we would not make an imitation.”
With Neeson, it would not have to try to replicate or mimic Nielsen’s work on the 1980s and 90s films. Neeson would instead pull from his own well -established, dramatic personality on the screen.
“What you see in the Gervais clip, what he showed me, he is willing to make fun of this iconic person he has developed,” Schaffer said. “I could be like,” Oh, that’s who he is. That’s his version of it. “It’s not Leslie’s version.
At the beginning of Schaffers 2025 “Naked Gun”, it is noted that NEESON’s detective Drebin is the son of Nielsen character. His character honors his father’s legacy, from which he could draw lessons, but he is his own man who lives on his own time. It is a nice analogy for how Neeson’s presence allowed Schaffer to approach the original films.
An edition of Paramount Pictures, ”The naked gun“Is now in theaters.
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