There are few filmmakers who can say they established the formula for an entire genre of film. Well, the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams certainly did! If you look at the most celebrated spoof films of the past 50 years, if they weren’t made by them, they were inspired by them. It’s hard to believe that some of their biggest hits almost didn’t even get made.
As David Zucker told Mashable’s Executive Producer, Mark Stetson: “Airplane was turned down by every studio. Believe me, it’s the story of my life!”
Lucky for them, Michael Eisner, President of Paramount at the time, heard about the Airplane script and wanted to make it. “You’re in,” he said. “You don’t even have to pitch this. I want to make this movie.” Airplane ended up grossing $80million, over 5 times the film’s budget.
Their next project was a short-lived tv series called, Police Squad, which ended up being the precursor to Naked Gun films. The tv show format wasn’t quite right fit for the now iconic character Frank Drebin, so they had to “put a pin it” until they could make the film. In the meantime, they took their obsession with WWII spy films and made the tragically lessor-known cult classic, Top Secret, starring Val Kilmer. After the films moderate success, they finally made The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad, and the rest is movie history!
David Zucker will be presenting a special screening of The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad at the Netflix is a Joke Fest on May 5th.
You can learn directly from David by joining his comedy community on Master Crash.
