“Frank Drebin was a com­bi­na­tion of Lee Mar­vin and Clint East­wood” – David Zuck­er on The Naked Gun at 30

“When I see it again, I still laugh,” admits direc­tor David Zuck­er, reflect­ing on the lega­cy of his 1988 crime com­e­dy The Naked Gun. The film­mak­ing team known as ZAZ – com­prised of Zuck­er, his broth­er Jer­ry and fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Jim Abra­hams – first intro­duced the world to the com­e­dy genius of Leslie Nielsen in 1980’s laugh-a-minute dis­as­ter flick spoof Air­plane!. How­ev­er, it wasn’t until the For­bid­den Plan­et star stepped into the squeaky gum-shoes of Lt Frank Drebin and thwart­ed a plot to assas­si­nate the Queen that Neilsen’s true comedic poten­tial was realised. As The Naked Gun turns 30, Zuck­er reflects on his first solo direct­ing gig and how he birthed one of the most quotable come­dies of all time.

“We tried writ­ing The Naked Gun as a movie but had trou­ble fig­ur­ing out how to do it in three acts,” recalls Zuck­er. ​“Michael Eis­ner, then at Para­mount, said he could get us on ABC and sud­den­ly we were doing it as a series – but it was a lot of mate­r­i­al to pour into a tele­vi­sion series. I always thought our kind of humour works bet­ter on a big screen where peo­ple real­ly have to pay atten­tion.” Writ­ten and direct­ed by ZAZ, 1982’s Police Squad enlist­ed Nielsen for six episodes but was ulti­mate­ly axed by ABC lat­er that year. ​“The pres­i­dent of ABC at the time said to a press con­fer­ence of news out­lets dis­ap­point­ed about Police Squad’s can­cel­la­tion that the show didn’t work because you had to watch it,” laughs Zuck­er. ​“In those days, they didn’t real­ly give things enough time to find an audience.”

Unde­terred, ZAZ poured their col­lec­tive ener­gy into 1984’s Top Secret! and 1986’s Ruth­less Peo­ple – yet there was still unfin­ished busi­ness as far as Frank Drebin was con­cerned. ​“We real­ly want­ed to do Police Squad as a fea­ture,” Zuck­er says, ​“and it was an easy pitch because by that time Frank Man­cu­so Jr was the head of Para­mount and essen­tial­ly, he just said yes. He didn’t say you’re out of your mind or ask how we intend­ed to take a failed TV series and con­vert it into a movie.” With the go-ahead secured, work on Drebin’s first big-screen out­ing began – but not before a quick title change. ​“By then, Police Acad­e­my had been released which was cre­at­ed by Pat Proft, our Police Squad writ­ing part­ner,” remem­bers Zuck­er. ​“The Para­mount mar­ket­ing depart­ment gave us a list of about 50 titles to choose from and The Naked Gun stuck out as some­thing which appealed because it promised a lot more than it could ever deliver.”

Next stop: the cast. Priscil­la Pres­ley joined as Drebin’s on-off love inter­est, Jane; OJ Simp­son was recruit­ed as wrong­ly accused clutz Offi­cer Nord­berg; and Zuck­er even man­aged to secure Oscar win­ning actor George Kennedy as Drebin’s boss Ed Hock­en. And con­trary to what you might have heard, stu­dio insis­tence had noth­ing to do with it. ​“There’s no truth to that,” con­firms Zuck­er. ​“We want­ed George for Air­plane! and Uni­ver­sal wouldn’t give him to us because he was in all those air­port movies so we jumped at the chance to cast him in The Naked Gun. We thought OJ would be good to round-out the cast,” he adds. ​“He was a celebri­ty, a sports hero – not a great actor but he did improve with every movie.”

And then there was Leslie. ​“At the time Leslie said he was a clos­et come­di­an and was itch­ing to do com­e­dy. We didn’t know that but he was so seri­ous and good at what he did that we thought he was per­fect.” In fact, Nelsen’s lengthy career in dra­ma only added to his com­e­dy chops. As Zuck­er points out: ​“Not only were we doing a failed tele­vi­sion series and con­vert­ing it into a fea­ture but Leslie had a long his­to­ry of doing seri­ous movies. He was part of a greater ensem­ble in Air­plane! but made his mark and had some of the best lines. He deliv­ered them so straight and that was the style we were going for: to not have a come­di­an deliv­er them. He was a nat­ur­al choice for Frank Drebin.”

Despite being known as an on-set prankster, Nielsen was a true pro­fes­sion­al when cam­eras rolled. ​“He had a great sense of humour but he didn’t write his own lines,” Zuck­er says. ​“There was no impro­vis­ing on set. He knew where the joke was and knew bet­ter than to mess with the style, try to wink or be fun­ny. He absolute­ly trust­ed me and nev­er tried to gild the lily. We pur­pose­ly used straight actors in all roles and the humour came from behind the cam­era. Jer­ry, Jim and I would fight over every word and if you look at the speech­es in the script, there’s noth­ing over six lines. There’s a cer­tain rhythm to them. When Leslie died, they quot­ed dozens and dozens of great lines and they were all writ­ten by Pat Proft.”

Unlike many ZAZ-inspired spoofs, The Naked Gun made a point of choos­ing genre over spe­cif­ic titles as its main source of fod­der, a tech­nique which slowed its age­ing process. ​“The genre was police movies and melo­dra­mas,” recalls Zuck­er. ​“Police Squad was based on a 1958 series called M Squad. We also tried to make jokes plot points and plot point jokes. We didn’t like to pause to do plot, we always had to have a joke involved if we could. By the time we got to The Naked Gun, we broad­ened it to include the Dirty Har­ry movies. Leslie’s char­ac­ter was a com­bi­na­tion of Lee Mar­vin and Clint East­wood. I lat­er met Clint at a func­tion and asked him if he knew that Lt Drebin was based on Dirty Har­ry. He didn’t real­ly care – he just smiled and nodded.”

The Naked Gun’s dead­pan humour was so infec­tious it even bled into its sound­track and end cred­its, as Zuck­er explains: ​“Elmer Bern­stein was the com­pos­er of the film’s theme and he’d done clas­sics like The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en. We showed him the movie and he thought it was hys­ter­i­cal so we asked him to write a B‑movie theme. For­tu­nate­ly he didn’t take that as an insult and pro­ceed­ed to write this great, over­ly seri­ous B‑movie score. We con­tin­ued the jokes into the cred­its which were always tak­en seri­ous­ly. We couldn’t wait to explode those clich­es and oth­er movies have since copied.”

Zuck­er believes that the expe­ri­ence of bring­ing The Naked Gun to audi­ences was not only a nec­es­sary career step but some­thing that paved the way for future ZAZ fea­tures. ​“We use The Naked Gun as a rule­book. In all the movies I’ve done since we ask, ​‘What’s the dri­ving instruc­tor?’ For exam­ple, we do a typ­i­cal car chase in The Naked Gun and when Leslie jumps into a car, it’s a dri­ving school car – that’s what made it fun­ny. Do that and the jokes write them­selves. The Naked Gun was the first film I did on my own and that was real­ly sig­nif­i­cant for me because I had to get my sea legs. It was an expe­ri­ence I had to go through.”