If you need an actor to carry a gun—or an action film—you can’t go wrong by calling Liam Neeson. But as it turns out, all those Taken-like performances inadvertently prepared him to pick up the Naked Gun mantle.
Akiva Schaffer knew that from the get-go. The Emmy-winning writer, director, and producer is the mastermind behind this summer’s continuation of the famed comedy trilogy from spoof masters Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. The original franchise starred Airplane! veteran Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin, a well-meaning but inept cop who constantly finds himself surrounded by bonkers events and gags. Despite more than a decade of talk about rebooting or reviving the franchise, the case seemed uncrackable until Schaffer heard four magical words: “Liam Neeson is interested.”
Schaffer and cowriters Dan Gregor and Doug Mand were taken by the idea of a new Naked Gun centered on Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. This Naked Gun has the younger Drebin hoping to make his late father proud as he aims to solve a murder and save the Police Squad, with the assistance of a mysterious femme fatale played by Pamela Anderson. With his film now in theaters, Schaffer undresses his 85-minute joke machine, from writing a song for Neeson to saving the studio comedy.
Vanity Fair: The last time we talked was in 2019, for Lonely Island’s The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience. What was the bigger swing: a visual rap album about Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, or a legacy sequel to Naked Gun? Both seem pretty bold.
Akiva Schaffer: I agree. I guess the lesson here is that I enjoy a challenge. First off, Bash Brothers is a “visual poem.” Let’s put the respect where it belongs; it’s a piece of art. In a way, Naked Gun is a visual poem as well, even though I haven’t called it that yet.
So what made you want to create this visual poem?
When they came to me, at first I was similar to a lot of fans of the original: very pessimistic and doubtful. Because the rule of rebooting or remaking something is that it’s supposed to be something that was a little broken and has room for improvement—and the first Naked Gun is perfect. The moment that opened my mind was when they said, “Liam Neeson is interested. We just need to figure out how to do it.” I’d been watching all his movies, and then I realized in hindsight that I was researching. I saw how the last 30 years could feed into a new tone.
Neeson in this role makes total sense, even if he’s never done anything like it before.
It’s because of the way he’s been playing this action hero. You understand how he could play the same tropes in a way to make fun of them. And it also clears it of Leslie, who is a unicorn and irreplaceable. The fact that Liam comes with his own—I’m just trying not to say “particular set of skills”—[way] of doing this sets you free of Leslie and trying to chase him. And that’s also why we made him Frank Jr. and had him say, “I want to be just like you but, at the same time, completely different and original”—just to step back and be like, We love those, we’re honoring them, but we’re not trying to copy it.
When looking for inspiration, were you mostly studying other spoof films, or the things that you want to spoof?
It’s a balance. I mean, there aren’t that many truly fantastic spoof movies. There’s a handful that everyone thinks of: Mel Brooks, Monty Python, the Wayans brothers, and, of course, the ones from [the Naked Gun creators]. But there was stuff to learn.
The really good ones are under 90 minutes. Anything over 90, you’re exhausted.
And there’s a way that Austin Powers, Naked Gun, Airplane! tell their stories that is deceptively complicated, but comes across incredibly simple. You can’t ever confuse the audience; if there’s any confusion, they’re gonna be out on the jokes. Your story has to be interesting enough to keep them engaged, but then the movie is over and people can go, “What was it about? Oh, the story doesn’t matter.” That’s the sleight of hand of it.
The first Naked Gun is deceptively complex. There’s a Manchurian candidate element of these sleeper cells programming people, and the bad guy is a real estate tycoon who is hired by a terrorist to kill the Queen of England. If you had to stop and explain all that in a drama, it would take the whole movie. And they were able to be funny, entertaining, and succinct in a way where you were never confused.
So I was looking at those old spoofs, not for jokes, but for the mechanics that allowed their jokes to flourish. And my cowriters and I would watch every action movie: I’d watch Taken 3, somebody else would watch In a Lonely Place, and the other would watch the pilot for CSI. So we were reminding ourselves of tropes from the genres and finding inspiration from the real movies.
Your first teaser concludes with an incredible bit acknowledging O.J. Simpson’s place in this universe. Did you always know that you had to hit the O.J. of it all directly on the head? To your credit, that scene happens very early, and then it never comes up again.
I was really happy with that teaser, because marketing knew to include all the stuff we wrote in the first week. As fans, we were like, Let’s make him the son so that we’re not messing with the legacy of the originals. Then, as a filmmaker, how do I want it to look and feel? I wanted a modern 2025 movie, and the teaser and movie starts in the bank to announce to the audience that this should feel big and real. It doesn’t look like a throwback or an overlit comedy; my goal was to look like Tony Scott in 1990.
And then the next thing was, anytime I said, “I’m thinking of trying to write a new Naked Gun,” people would go, “What are you gonna do about O.J.?” That’d be the first question! And so we were like, We gotta figure out O.J. That scene with Frank kneeling to his dad’s photo, and then revealing that they’re all kneeling to their dads, was one of the first things that got written. I was just like, Here’s a possible scene that could address it. Sometimes it was in different places in the movie, but it would always stay in. We just gotta take this break to address all the elephants in the room.
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.
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