[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: What was comedy like then when you started and what is it like now?
David Zucker, Director/Writer/Producer: Well, movie comedy was great in the 80s and the 90s.
Pat Proft and I did the Scary Movies and during that time and then with the advent of PC, I think audiences would still laugh, but it’s the studio executives who became frightened.
I think because of that filmmakers are a little more careful now. You just have to put in what you want to put in and let the audience decide. But too often in a script if you put something if we put material that we had in Airplane or the Naked Gun’s studio executives may today say Oh, no that’s that’s a little too risqué or it might offend someone.
We were lucky to have Bob Weinstein during the Scary Movies because he encouraged us. He said do more.
Then Michael Eisner and Jeff Katzenberg during the Naked Gun era Airplane were also really encouraging. They never tried to censor us or interfere.
But now there is no movie comedy. There’s nothing good. I mean, you have mild stuff that is kind of reminiscent of sitcom things.
I mean, Ted has been very successful, but it’s mild. It’s kind of cute and clever. It’s one of our rules now, Merely clever isn’t enough.
But there’s no zany comedy anymore like Mel Brooks or Woody Allen or what we used to do. But The Wayans are very funny. They did the first Scary Movie and they’re doing another, they’re doing a sequel. They’re doing Scary Movie six, I think. We did five, so they must be doing six. But they’re good.
Mike Myers, when he did Austin Powers, he did spoof and didn’t neither of those people followed any of our rules, but that’s okay because it’s their own style…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
MASTERCRASH: A Crash Course In Spoof Comedy
BUY THE BOOK – Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!
About:
Born on October 16, 1947 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, director/writer/producer David Zucker, along with brother Jerry (Ghost, 1990) Zucker and longtime friend, Jim (Hot Shots, 1991) Abrahams, has established himself among Hollywood’s (or at least Wisconsin’s) most successful filmmakers. Starting out after college, with a borrowed video tape deck and camera, the soon to be legendary trio created the Kentucky Fried Theater, on the UW Madison campus, and moved to California in 1972, quickly becoming the most successful small theater group. in Los Angeles history.
After parlaying this success into The Kentucky Fried Movie, the three conceived the idea that would create a whole new film genre. Airplane! (1980) broke all conventions, featuring dramatic actors like Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen performing zany jokes with straight-laced sincerity. The spoof became the surprise hit of 1980, beginning a streak of hilarious movies including Top Secret! (1984) and Ruthless People (1986), after which David branched out on his own to direct The Naked Guns (1988, 1991, 1994), BASEketball (1998), Scary Movies 3 (2003), and 4 (2006), and others.
David also found time to produce the successful, but somewhat less hilarious A Walk in The Clouds (1995) and Phone Booth (2002), and recently completed a feature script, The Star of Malta, a comedy set in the Film Noir era, and an international spy thriller, “Counter Intellijence!”.
MORE VIDEOS WITH DAVID ZUCKER
CONNECT WITH DAVID ZUCKER
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New book from Film Courage! – See it on Payhip here
New book from Film Courage! – See it on Payhip here
