The director of the new reboot of The Naked Gun has said that a short clip from the Ricky Gervais sitcom Life’s Too Short convinced him to make the film.
Adapted from the hit spoof films starring Leslie Nielsen, The Naked Gun stars Liam Neeson as bumbling police detective Frank Drebin Jr.
The film’s director Akiva Schaffer, best known for being part of the comedy trio The Lonely Island, opened up about the film’s origins on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast.
“I definitely thought it was a bad idea,” he said. The filmmaker explained that the first Naked Gun movie, released in 1988, was “a perfect movie”, and that it was only out of “morbid curiosity” that he met with Paramount to discuss a reboot.
“The thing that changed my mind was them saying Liam Neeson was interested,” said Schaffer.
He cited a scene from Life’s Too Short, the 2011 sitcom created by Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and actor Warwick Davis, in which Davis plays an exaggerated version of himself.
In the scene, Neeson, also playing himself, meets with Gervais and Merchant to discuss his desire to get into comedy.
Playing off his reputation at the time as a strictly dramatic actor, Neeson solemnly suggests ideas for comedy that revolve around harsh and inappropriate topics, such as cancer, famine, and Aids.
Referring to the cringe-inducing skit, Schaffer explained: “It’s all in that clip. He’s playing Liam Neeson in it, but it’s clearly a caricature. That’s an amalgamation of every action movie he’s made for the last 10 years, and he’s playing it so serious and so humorless and saying crazy s***.
“That’s also why when they said Liam Neeson, I went, ‘Oh,’ because when you see that clip, you’re like, what an amazing untapped resource. The leading-man, old-school gravitas – that doesn’t exist anymore, but also [he] hasn’t used his power for comedy yet, almost ever, except that clip and a cameo in [the 2015 Seth MacFarlane comedy] Ted 2.”
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The Naked Gun has received glowing reviews from critics, including The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey, who wrote in a four-star review: “Neeson isn’t quite the same as Nielsen, who exploited his run of dramatic roles as trustworthy authority figures for pure deadpan comedy.
“Yes, he’s an Oscar nominee, but he’s also the man with a ‘particular set of skills’, already associated with a slightly absurd brand of action film. His Frank comes with a mischievous twinkle in his eye – he’s loving every second of it, and retroactively inviting us in on the joke of some of his past career choices.”
The Naked Gun is in cinemas now.
