Rebecca Kemp find out if David Zucker, Anna Faris and Simon Rex had triple the amount of fun making Scary Movie 3
We could say all horror movies are spoofs, or at least camp versions of the nightmarish unknown. From the ridiculously sinister Frankenstein and Dracula films of the thirties and forties through the Hammer Horrors of the sixties, to the stalk and slashers of the eighties and the Wes Craven tongue in cheek parodies of the nineties, none can be said to have taken themselves too seriously.
Then comes along the Scary Movie franchise to go one further than them all. Devised by the unstoppable Wayans brothers, responsible for such over the top parodies of the blaxploitation genre as I'm Gonna Get You Sucka and Don't be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, the series could only be a no-holds-barred assault on horror. Releasing them thick and fast, the Wayans have produced their horror spoof trilogy in as many years. Beginning in 2000 with parodies of I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Blair Witch Project and Sixth Sense, the Wayans followed on with number two a year later taking on The Exorcist and Hallowe'en and finally this year their latest project, which they co-wrote, chooses the likes of the less horrible Signs and 8 Mile.
The first two Scary Movies were directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans and co-written by his brothers Shawn and Marlon with a key team of regular contributors. The latest film is a move away from the first two not only with a new director, David Zucker, but also with additional writers Craig Mazin and Pat Proft (who worked with Zucker on the Naked Gun trilogy and Police Academy) joining the original Wayans' team. It's not clear why Keenan Ivory Wayans stepped aside for Zucker on Scary Movie 3 (perhaps his successful TV talk show The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show has tied him up), but it marks a clear separation from its predecessors.
Directed by the man who in essence created the genre with Airplane! and Naked Gun, Zucker really is on home ground and back with old pals Pat Proft and Leslie Nielsen. In this sense Scary Movie 3 can be said to be an extension of Zucker's previous satires than from the first two Scary Movies. "It's a completely different style," says Zucker, "I'm making Scary Movie 3 as a successor more to Naked Gun and that's why taking over this franchise is different from doing like the seventeenth Police Academy because that wouldn't really be fresh. But in a spoof you can always do new movies and we have all these movies to spoof in the past year or two so that makes it original. It really didn't matter that it was the third. I think they have created a successful franchise and it's a smart franchise because horror movies will always be made so I think there's an unlimited number of possibilities."
Zucker admits there are few things they wouldn't parody: "I think just about anything could be fair game, as long as it's something the audience agrees on. Many of the things we feature are things that the audience has a feeling about but hasn't really given a voice to and we're kind of saying what everybody's thinking." Does that include the President? "It's tough to satirise a sitting president. There's a certain respect for the office. In this case we use the office of the president as a dignified office and then Leslie (Neilsen) is there just to be the goofball he always is whether he's a police detective or member of parliament or a president. When we portrayed the Queen she was put in an awkward position by our idiot police detective, it wasn't her being less than intelligent."
Certainly with the array of cameo appearances it seems stars are queuing up to be satirised by the Scary Movie gang. That is probably apart from Michael Jackson. Internet rumours abound that he plans to sue the Scary Movie makers for their less than child friendly portrayal of him and his appearance, but Zucker isn't losing any sleep. "I met the director of 8 Mile going in to the opening night at the Mann Chinese Theatre and he was all smiling saying he was looking forward to seeing it, but I never heard from him after that," he laughs, "but I think everybody enjoys having their movies sent up. We always did some kind of Spielberg movie and we always got positive feedback from him."
What most Pop Idol fans will appreciate is the justice meted out to judge Simon Cowell. "We wanted to do all kinds of nasty things to him and we compromised," recalls Zucker, "the studio encouraged us to keep pushing it and give him his comeuppance. At one point we wanted this very large woman that's in the movie to sit on him but he was uncomfortable with that and just wanted to play himself. He was happy to have avoided embarrassment and it got a good reaction, the audience just laughs at the mere sight of him so I think he was pleased with the whole thing."
Newcomer Simon Rex who plays the hopeless white rapper George (after Eminem's character in 8 Mile) was similarly pleased with the results his performance evoked: "A friend of mine works with Eminem and I got him to ask him if he'd seen the movie and he said he thought it was really funny but then he was still gonna make fun of me in a song." But Simon could well get his own back: "I actually did karaoke a couple of weeks ago in a bar in LA and I think it's a blast. I get up there with my friend and we make up our own words and it seems to be a hit. It's quite therapeutic. We usually do Snoop Dog Gin and Juice. It's very random."
Anna Faris who plays Cindy is now a veteran of all three Scary Movies and has recently broken into wider critical acclaim for her performance in Sophia Coppola's Lost in Translation. This move from funny to straight is not too difficult a transition for the talented Faris who has a background in theatre. "In the middle of Scary Movie 2 I filmed an independent film called May and it was really challenging for me to go from two different genres back to back. But given a short break like from Scary Movie 3 to Lost In Translation it's not that challenging."
Faris' drama background meant that she felt comedy wasn't her natural calling: "I went for the first audition for Scary Movie and I had done nothing, I'd done some commercials. I was in the middle of doing Cindy acting scared and the killer in the house and Keenan (Ivory Wayans) would be laughing, and I'd be thinking: I'm really messing it up, I don't know, what am I doing? When Scary Movie came out my old college roommate said 'God I can't believe you got that you're just not that funny'! and that original experience has repeated itself through other auditions." Faris recently auditioned for TV series Six Feet Under: "The scene's a bit heavy and really serious and Alan Ball (series director) was just laughing and laughing and he said 'Oh you are funny' and I thought God this is terrible I was really trying to be a good actor what is wrong with me!" With few women in Hollywood doing comedy, Faris' work with Scary Movie has at least earned her a few Goldie Hawn stripes.
As the actors find it hard to adjust back into delivering straight lines after the spoof script of Scary Movie, so it becomes hard to take any film seriously. Zucker seems intent on sending up Seabiscuit for Scary Movie 4 and certainly Cold Mountain: "We'd have Cindy meets a guy for ten seconds and they have a huge love affair where they're trying to reach other through war and destruction and every other character in the movie has more chemistry than the boy and girl." Such relentless comedy begs the cynical question: Are you having fun yet? To which the answer is whether or not you are, clearly the cast and crew are only just beginning ...
Rebecca Kemp
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