Naked Gun/Police Squad

"I haven't had this much sex since I was a Boy Scout leader"

Jane: I've heard police work is dangerous.
Frank: It is. That's why I carry a big gun.
Jane: Aren't you afraid it might go off accidentally?
Frank: I used to have that problem.
Jane: What did you do about it?
Frank: I just think about baseball...

more

Producers wanted to include the John Belushi "guest star" appearance in the rerun of the "Testimony of Evil", which had been cut from the episode due to Belushi's death in 1982. The footage could not be located, and is now presumed to have been lost or destroyed.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083466/

shame they never had the same guy play his boss in the movies as in the series. he had a hillarious face!

win/win

Mayor: Now Drebin, I don't want any trouble like you had on the South Side like last year, that's my policy.
Frank: Well, when I see five weirdos dressed in togas, stabbing a man in the middle of the park in front of a full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards, that's my policy.
Mayor: That was a Shakesphere In The Park Production of Julius Caesar, you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones!

Hapbsurg: Lieutenant, I don't remember seeing you on my guest list.
Frank: No need to be embarrassed – sometimes I go by my maiden name.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f325/caek/a.gif

I like Ed Helms, but what's the fucking point of this? http://variety.com/2013/film/news/ed-helms-firing-up-the-naked-gun-reboot-for-paramount-exclusive-1200950237/

'Night at the Museum' writers on board to script

bleurgh...

this photo is funnier than the remake will be imo

http://mrrob.home.xs4all.nl/policesquad/store/ps25.jpg

"It's Enrico Palazzo!"

Very nice party, Hapsburg. A lot of familiar facelifts.

'Night at the Museum' writers on board to script

bleurgh...

without reading the story, or thinking this isn't a terrible idea, presumably this is Lennon and Garant tho?

This is like remaking a marx bros movie. Take away the star and the writers and you have nothing.

yeah a Zucker/ Abrahams movie without either!

http://iv1.lisimg.com/image/154064/600full-son-of-the-pink-panther-poster.jpg

Hapsburg: Do you speak French, lieutenant?

Drebin: Unfortunately no, but I do kiss that way.

i like ed helms but casting him seems to indicate a complete misunderstanding of what made leslie nielsen so great in those zucker movies

on a similar not apparently they're going to remake the odd couple w/ matthew perry as...oscar

I want a car out front, something fun, a Porsche, then I want a plane ticket to Jamaica and I want a nice hotel, no touristy place, something really indicative of the people and their culture.

― Ned Trifle II,

underrated roffle

Is there anyone in modern hollywood analogous to Leslie Nielsen?

well, the sight of DiCaprio in a serious movie makes me roffle the second he appears

You need someone EXTREMELY self-serious and a little bit stiff to play Frank Drebin

i.e. a bad actor

baldwin might just carry it maybe

yeah who can imagine alec baldwin in a comedy just the idea wow

lol

yeah I was just gonna say it should be someone not too good.

maybe he meant Stephen Baldwin

wasnt me said it needed to be a bad actor nor did i claim he'd never been in a comedy so idk what yr wow is for tbh

tammy baldwin for lt. frank drebin

dmac it might help if you'd seen the naked gun or were in any way familiar w/ leslie nielsen or alec baldwin.

im perfectly aware of ms nielsen's work, and sliver is one of my favourite movies so gfy

Vin Diesel

i thought 'maybe vin diesel?' also so that might be a good choice

otoh

http://www.movieguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/stop_or_my_mom_will_shoot.jpg

god stallone's comedy phase

am i the only person here who saw this?

http://www.homevideos.com/movies-covers/Oscar.jpg

peter riegert's in it so maybe morbs saw it

idk is estelle even still alive

xp i saw the trailer to that before a movie once and it put me off the whole thing iirc i just pulled the plug on the vcr, left the house

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say Tahmoh Penikett. Seems to have the right profile of square-jawed role after square-jawed role in not-huge shows and I just have the feeling he could be really ridiculous if called upon to do so.

I like the idea of pulling the plug and running before Estelle and funny Stallone invade through the cable.

Diesel might fuck it up and try to hard to play it funny though

oh i guess that's what you were getting at with stallone

oscar not available on netflix but stop or my mom will poop is. more importantly STAYING ALIVE is so that's my saturday night.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f2/Pinkpanther_mp.jpg/220px-Pinkpanther_mp.jpg

the amount of good will ppl feel toward steve martin (and i include myself here) despite being a part of some of the biggest comedy war crimes of our time is something else

Love Martin, but it seems like he spent a good 20 years filling the coffer so he could write plays and novels and essays and play banjo with impunity.

more naked gun quotes plz

Frank: Wilma, I promise you; whatever scum did this, not one man on this force will rest one minute until he's behind bars. Now, let's grab a bite to eat.

Doctors gave him a 50/50 chance at survival, but there's only a 20 percent chance of that.

:D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGFHHeyHVCQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0Ce_FQtJkY

I can't watch that without losing it

"Well we've shot a lot of people together, it's been great. Today I retire, so if I do any shooting now it will have to be within the confines of my own home. Hopefully, it'll be an intruder, and not an in-law like at my bachelor party."

i like ed helms but casting him seems to indicate a complete misunderstanding of what made leslie nielsen so great in those zucker movies

― balls, Saturday, December 14, 2013 2:46 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean it's not like there's another leslie nielsen just hanging around but yeah this

this Chris Morris quote about The Day Today always stuck in my mind
".. the news is considered so important, an untouchable area of BBC excellence. But I don't think it does anyone any harm to realise they're being manipulated. The way 'The Day Today' worked was the gap between how stupid it is, and how seriously it's said. It's that Leslie Nielsen effect." http://sotcaa.org/pressarchive/ifitbleeds.html

all six episodes of police squad! are awesome and worth tracking down btw. on par with the best ZAZ movies.

amazed to discover that this is a real place not just a gag for the film!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w_wm72CNjsg/TzrSIH___vI/AAAAAAAAAuE/GfrF9UE-h38/s1600/San+Onofre.jpg

Is there anyone in modern hollywood analogous to Leslie Nielsen?

A guy with no actual comic talent who makes ppl laugh? Maybe that guy who plays Machete?

This is like remaking a marx bros movie

I keel you

what made leslie nielsen so great in those zucker movies

In Airplane! he was fresh enough to just read the ridic lines in his sober '50s drone, same in Police Squad! the TV series. Afterward he ruined everything.

An actor with no comic talent who makes people is BY DEFINITION better than an actor with comic talent who makes people laugh!

I will die a little when this remake comes out. xp

only saw the Naked Gun for the first time recently...the baseball scene had me and my m8s literally CRYING with laughter.

But yeah Airplane + Police Squad is better than most comic actors have managed. Talent => useless as a concept. xp

Any love for Top Secret? Haven't seen in eons.

all six episodes of police squad! are awesome and worth tracking down btw.
They're all on Youtube, btw.

(I wish I was intentionally echoing that "btw")

Any love for Top Secret? Haven't seen in eons.

Rewatched it not so long ago, it's slow to get going but pretty great once it hits its stride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8XQV0PYf3c

Laughter => useless as a concept.

^ failed stand up comic

the East German national anthem in Top Secret has stuck with me thru the years

I've only just noticed possibly the most noticeable gag in the film: the East Germans are portrayed as Nazis and the underground resistance are all French.

ballsack, why dontcha join a club and beat yourself over the head with it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15IRXKn9LSU

Danny Trejo as the lead in a Naked Gun reboot would be great.

steve carell interview:

You've written scripts in the past – a couple of episodes of the US version of The Office, The 40-Year-Old Virgin – but not for a while. Will you go back to that?

I've actually written a very silly TV pilot with my wife [Nancy, also an actor] called Tribeca. It's essentially a comedic version of Law and Order with a female protagonist and it's completely silly. There's no sentiment at all; it's sort of in the vein of Naked Gun and Police Squad. I'm going to direct the pilot episode in February, so we are casting right now. It's a hard thing to find the right actors who will play it straight; again, not indicating that they are doing anything funny but at the same time doing the most ridiculous things.

Laughter => an action, not a concept.

Love those Touch of Cloth movies. I think a bunch of the jokes are too UK-specific to translate, but they have some Naked Gun-worthy conceptual gags, e.g. whenever Detective Cloth walks into the crime scene, a technician flags him over and says "boss, you're going to want to take a look at this," then when Cloth walks over the technician quickly moves from pointing at something in the crime scene to a window across the street where a woman is getting dressed. Cloth soberly stares for a moment; nods; "thanks - keep me posted."

Or Cloth walks in and a guy is fingerprint dusting a shelf full of LPs.
Cloth: "Any prints?"
Fingerprint Duster: "Just Lovesexy."

They get way closer to classic ZAZ with that show than anything since actual ZAZ, for my money.

They should've tried for Liam Neeson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2USXEJuvXT4

Neeson became comedy-era Leslie Nielsen years back

The thing about Nielsen is he's bad and good at the same time. He has great delivery, great timing. The absolutely perfect rhythm of the way he speaks those lines is a big part of what makes them funny.

It's a hard thing to find the right actors who will play it straight; again, not indicating that they are doing anything funny but at the same time doing the most ridiculous things.

And the thing about Nielsen was that he was always aware he was doing this and understood why it worked, it's not like Zucker and Abrahams just found some sap to use as a vehicle.

yeah, Nielsen's mugging is pretty bad in the later comedy films he did but they were also bad films so

Good comedic straight men are about the hardest type to find in comedy. Nielsen did some good work before he went the dopey caricature route.

Anyone besides me else ever see this totally forgotten movie?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWPmXJ3Kwqw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdhF-jHSYM

xpost Straight men isn't quite what I mean. More people who are funny and know they're funny and aren't dripping with the levels of insecurity and neediness that (for me) often severely undercut a comedic performance.

yeah I know what you mean. He did get almost a little too loose in later movies, but as NV said, they were bad movies.

Actually, the trend in the current comedy era seems to be all straight men. Will Ferrell et al, what makes them funny, or ostensibly funny, is that they never break character. In a movie like Old School he's trotted out to be silly, but in most of his other movies he's acting silly, but doing so seriously. The other actors, too. It's sort of this post SNL mentality of the humor coming from them not cracking up, no matter how ridiculous the movie around them.

Will Ferrell is a good example, except there's always this just detectable, knowing smirk behind everything. He's funny but he always comes off to me like the school cut-up rather than an actor. Sometimes I wish he could be a little more subtle.

xpost Yeah, Wills Ferrell & Forte, Fred Armisen, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd...whether their respective styles do it for you or not, they're all pretty good at a straight delivery when that's what they're going for. I'd still argue that they're the exception.

Armisen, you could always see on SNL, would fall just short of making eye contact. He'd always be doing some goofy act, but looking just past the people he was talking to, to keep it straight.

Carrell, too, plays it straight a lot. If anything, shows like The Office and Parks & Rec are the same sort of thing, playing it straight in ridiculous situations.

Armisen, you could always see on SNL, would fall just short of making eye contact. He'd always be doing some goofy act, but looking just past the people he was talking to

This is because he was reading cue cards

You don't need to avoid eye contact in order to "play it straight"!

I think Carrell is a much better actor than most of the SNL crew. There's been something amateurish about most of the SNL cast for years now. Armisen is kind of bad.

Actually a good example of a "funny straight man" imo is Kevin Nealon. I always thought he was great and underappreciated.

xpost No, it was something else. They all dart around for cue cards, but Armisen has his own straight man tiks. He does it live, and on "Portlandia" ...

It always makes him look a little cross-eyed.

I watched the first one again last night. SO GOOD. Now watching 2 1/2. I forgot Robert Goulet is in this!

Quentin Hapsburg: Que sera sera... You do speak French, don't you?
Lt. Frank Drebin: Unfortunately no, but I do kiss that way.

Also Ed Helms is probably the worst possible choice. Like whereas Neilsen delivers that "Mr. Poopy Pants" line in such a great deadpan way, you can just picture Ed Helms trying way too hard to be cute.

I nominate Robert Forster.

Ed Hocken: [as Savage is surrounded] All right, Savage! What do you want?
Hector Savage: I want a car out front! Something fun. A Porsche! Then I want a plane ticket to Jamaica. And I want a nice hotel. No touristy place. Something really indicative of the people and their culture.

Banquet Doorman: Your coat, sir?
Lt. Frank Drebin: Yes, it is. And I have a receipt to prove it.

^This feels like a Groucho homage!

They sneak into the presidential ceremony dress like a mariachi band, and then they almost get caught and end up improvising an amazing version of "Besame Mucho" to get out of it. So good! I wonder if that's really Leslie Neilsen singing.

Also, is it me or does Lloyd Bridges make a cameo earlier as his stunt double? When he falls through the skylight it sort of looks like him for a minute.

And they spin their guitars like ZZ Top.

BEEEEESSAME

(hey!)

BESAME MUUUUUCHO

while 33 1/3 is the weakest, I love the untouchables/potemkin opening scene

(mouths) "MY BABY!"
...
(mouths) "MY LAWNMOWER!"

I guess love is like the ozone layer, you never miss it 'til it's gone.

END ZONE LAYER

Hector Savage: I want a car out front! Something fun. A Porsche! Then I want a plane ticket to Jamaica. And I want a nice hotel. No touristy place. Something really indicative of the people and their culture.

man this joke holds up

might wanna read this unproduced script from PS! vet David Misch

HOCKEN
Frank, I'm afraid you'd better
prepare yourself for something
sickening.

DREBIN
You're not going to read from Kahlil
Gibran again, are you?

http://davidmisch.com/images/TVPSTestimonyOfTerror.pdf

saw it the other day. can totally visualize the episode just from that script, altho obviously they recycled some of the gags for the movies

“Assault with a concrete dildo!”

I'm a locksmith, and ... I'm a locksmith.

Wait, wut?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Gun_(2025_film)

They should've tried for Liam Neeson.

― Flute Juice (Old Lunch), Monday, December 16, 2013 7:10 AM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Old Lunch called it 11 years ago.

Neeson as Good Cop / Bad Cop in the Lego Movie does give me some hope...

After the talk above (ten years ago!) about Vin Diesel - John Cena might be pretty good?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFhpctuUwb4

Old Lunch called it 11 years ago.

― Hideous Lump, Wednesday, October 9, 2024 1:04 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

OMG, lol. I can't believe that I willed this of all things into existence. At least Akiva Schaffer is involved so I don't feel quite so much like I have to preemptively apologize.

Ricky Gervais might be an ass, but we can thank him for revealing Neeson's straight-man comedy chops.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvVFvqd3lqA

based on an original story written by Seth MacFarlane, who produced

hopefully Akiva Schaffer can cancel this out and then some, otherwise gonna be a sad situation

for some reason I love the episode so much where Frank becomes a nightclub singer. ALso seeing Leslie Nielson in a serious role is very weird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet

Tony De Wonderful?

based on an original story written by Seth MacFarlane, who produced
hopefully Akiva Schaffer can cancel this out and then some, otherwise gonna be a sad situation

looking at decade-long production history for this on wikipedia doesn't inspire much hope that this will be any good, unfortunately

Also, that it is a reboot of a dormant franchise whose creative linchpins are not involved and whose iconic star is dead? We might have a Pink Panther situation on our hands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPL5PiQUw0

Just saw a TV trailer for the Seth MacFarlane remake (sequel?). I gotta say, the O.J. joke drew a genuine "Whoa" from me--I'm really pretty non-plussed by stuff like that, more than most, I think, but I'm surprised they'd venture there with so many Goldmans and Browns still alive.

Let's anticipate the new Naked Gun film starring AI Liam Neeson

I would base my expectations on the past work of Dan Gregor, Doug Mand and Akiva Schaffer, together and separately, more than on that of someone who lost their screenplay credit after WGA arbitration

(I didn’t know Macfarlane had previously written a draft until the above post)

So it's going to be as good as the Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers movie.

The trailer I saw on Sunday was DREADFUL. The point is, Liam Neeson's a good actor, while Leslie Nielsen sucked. Neeson kept winking at the audience. I did laugh at a sight gag, though.

Movie is less than 90 minutes, a plus, but looks terrible, a negative.

Looks good, tbh. Laughed at the OJ Simpson gag, laughed at the many handed poster with "no AI was used in the making of this poster".

Some positive murmurings on X from people who saw it..

‘The Naked Gun’ is so deliciously stupid, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Very true to the spirit of the Leslie Nielsen movies I grew up loving. #NakedGun pic.twitter.com/RXbSSIPVr5

— Katcy Stephan (@katcystephan) July 15, 2025

I saw The Naked Gun and I can now say they ARE making them like they used to! There are so many great jokes in this and you can tell the filmmakers had so much fun making an actual comedy movie. #NakedGun pic.twitter.com/uPWtfM1dE2

— Jeffrey Vega (@jeffreyvega) July 15, 2025

cool! Reminds me why I don't watch or trust trailers.

I mean, I hope it's funny, but you see those sorts of positive embargo-respecting one liner social media blurbs in advance of literally everything.

The trailer I saw on Sunday was DREADFUL. The point is, Liam Neeson's a good actor, while Leslie Nielsen sucked. Neeson kept winking at the audience.

I kind of thought that the trailer looked promising, mainly because Neeson seemed to be playing it straight, like Leslie Nielsen in Airplane/Police Squad, and *not* winking at the audience, like Leslie Nielsen by the end of the original Naked Gun series?

Nielsen got worse by the time he made the third film; he thought he was a comic actor or something.