Episode 07: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

In this city. There's crime on every street. But one man has seen enough. He's Lieutenant Frank Dreben. Whatever's come did this?

Not one man in his support will arrest for one minute and the leave behind bars. Let's grab up white team. He's a good cop who's having a bad day. His best friend. Everyone should have a friend like you, is Imacoba.

As soon as Nordberg is better, He's welcome back at police squad. But I wouldn't wait until the last minute to fill out those organ donor cards. His girlfriend asked him to look her up nice beaver, Thank you, I just had it stuffed. Let me help you with that. And his city is in the hands of a master criminal with a sinister plan.

I must kill the Queen Yah. Any police story contained this much action, this much romance, or this much baseball, starring Leslie Nielsen a cop who's always on the alert, Mikhail Gorbacho, a Queen Elizabeth, Everyone's favorite Queen. Priscilla Presley, a woman who really cooks. How much you? Ricardo Montalban Ramon, thank you're both read?

George Kennedy the partner with an appetite or danger o J Simpson, As you've never seen him before. And Reggie Jackson in his first dramatic role in a movie so big it had to be filmed in color. The Naked Gun from the Files of Police Squad, The Welcome Too, From the Files of Police Squad in color. I'm your host, Mike Awake joined me. Of course, is mister Mark Begley did that slip down there?

Again? Also with us is mister christ as Shoe Let me never see any of you in America. We are talking about the nineteen eighty eight film The Naked Gun from the Files of Police Squad. Sounds very similar to our podcast. You know, man, that from the Files of Police Squad has so much cache.

Oh yeah, no it does not. The one thing I laugh every time? How did that resonate with an audience in nineteen eighty eight? Oh, they made a Police Squad movie? There, we're there in line at midnight, Bro, we're seeing it.

I'm dressed up as Frank Drebin and every like. That doesn't mean anything. It meant something to me back in nineteen sixteen years old. So I'm talking more now to be fair. Yes, I think even then I was Oh yeah, I think Mike and I were probably the two people that were like, oh, I remember that show fondly.

Not to be confused with the fifty sixth movie of the same name, by the way, Yes, yes, which is probably more why they put from the files of Police Squad more than anything else. I would assume maybe directed by David Zucker. Just David Zucker, not Jerry Zucker, not Jim Abrams, but David Zucker. David Zucker, who's kind of gone off the deep end over the last few years. He's the one that just recently was in the news complaining about, gosh, you just comedy isn't funny anymore because those darned PC police.

And he does talk about the thought Lease a few times in the audio commentary for this. It was a little embarrassing. I have to say, old man yells a cloud very much. The thought police like to shut up, to shut up, to shut up. I couldn't do that today.

And you know what, there are plenty of jokes in this movie that haven't aged well, but I think you could still do them. Yeah, I mean, there are definitely not a scene where Chinese actors in stereotypical Chinese hats with ponytails on them run away from a Fireworks Factory. If you couldn't do that joke In twenty twenty two comedy Truly is Dead, I would hope you can do that. Yes, written by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrams, David Zucker, and Pat Proft, who also worked on the original Police Squad and provide some good lines in this. This came out in nineteen eighty eight.

Like I said, we are returning to some very familiar territory. I listened to the audio commentary today. It was very sad to of them say that that the original Police Squad was canceled pretty much after the first episode because people had to actually watch their TV to pick up on all the jokes, which is true. It is true. You don't have to.

I mean I want the jokes. Yeah, it's such a bullshit excuse. I've seen Star Wars so many times. I've never watched the screen. I just listened.

There are so many shows where you do really have to watch watch, and I'm right there for it as long as it's not to pretentious. Sorry West World, I'm talking about I knew it was coming. That's such a low fucking blow, sir. I mean, hey, it got itself canceled so it has nobody to blame. But to your point, I would say, Naked Gun, you didn't have to like watch like a hawk to enjoy it, but your enjoyment would be greatly increased by doing so.

Just like with West World, I think your enjoyment is increased by paying attention. But right, yeah, if you want to just fucking put something on and just dick around in the background, like, more power to you. Just don't try to give me your opinion on it, like you know what you're talking about. That's a different story. I think they really pointed out their own foibles when it came to the commentary, which was we had to get away from word play because we were playing to a international audience, so we had to rely more on sight gags.

And I think the thing that I liked the most about Airplane and Police Squad were the verbal play. You know, how many times did I hit on and Sally Decker at Statesville Prison? We just don't get that here. We get a few word play jokes, a few things where it's funnier if you pay attention to the dialogue, but so much of this is physical humor. I mean, right from the beginning where we have all of the evil world leaders and this is this is something that I feel is very David Zucker, the way that he has to introduce politics into these movies.

And we're going to get into some real fucked up territory. And I can't remember how much of this is in hot Shots versus how much of this is in these movies, but they become basically like after nine to eleven they had that episode of South Park which was basically Cartman treating Osama bin Laden like Roadrunner and Coyote. We get really super cartoony with these world leaders and it starts here and it just goes and goes and goes until we have like, what is it, Saddam Hussein being mixed with the dog shots. Yeah, that's oh boy. Hot Shots Part one is the airplane flies over Saddam and drops a bomb on him and it like lands in his lap.

The second one is where he gets frozen and they do the toll to one thousand thing. Yeah, it's not naked gut You're you're thinking of hot Shots, but this is to your point. This is where it starts, and I think this is the only time it kind of works is because at this moment in time, you do kind of have all these figureheads again, figureheads of evil. I'm not going to go that far, David Zucker, but you know Idiomine, Gadaffi, Komani, air Fat, Cadastro, Cadastro and uh. And it's now now he sounds like a fucking Gijo villain and Gorbachev like you have.

They're all there, And this is the only time it works because it's one scene. It's the beginning of the movie. It makes no sense that he's on vacation in Beyrout is basically what they're trying to say to get away from Victoria. Yeah, Victoria her space, Yeah, all those world leaders and then some random thug in a newsboy cap. I noticed that today, I'm like, really supposed to be.

He dives into screen like twice and the Papschmir. There's pap Shmir there, which is weird as to why he's there, and no one really acknowledges him, right, But a couple of times in the melee, this just like street thug looking guy pops into frame and I thought, oh, I guess that's a comedy touch. But it happens so quickly it is a pay attention or you'll miss it gag. This is the first time I've ever noticed that, Like, oh, okay, just to end with all these evil world world leaders, is the street thug. Okay, that kind of got a chuckle from me when I noticed it.

It's a weird opening. It works here, it's funny. I think it's funny. I don't think any of the gags go on too long. I think all the gags are pretty on the nose.

I would say, like the thing with Gorbacheff and wiping off his wine stain. I knew it. That's the first time we get Dreben talking directly the camera. Yeah, we're gonna get a lot of mugging, a lot of my whole a lot of mugging. That's the thing that they mentioned in the commentary.

When Begley and I were watching the totally not sped up commentary because Zucker a Zucker, We're trying to watch the movie as fast as possible, they mentioned the mugging and they like kind of call themselves out about doing it too much, like, oh, we probably should have used a different take of Leslie here, and it's like, uh, yes, yeah, well, just how much stuff they shot for this movie, and you read the trivia about like, oh and the TV cut it's this, it's this, it's this, And reading the script it's like, okay, yeah, there's a lot of like little things that are cut out here to the point where I think it's Robert k Weis the producers like, so you shot about another hour and a half worth the movie for this.

It's like, oh yeah, yeah we did. Okay, wow, and this is the version they went with. Yeah, well, there's a lot of thing I like this. I can say I know a lot. I know Chris and I.

As I've mentioned on the Police Squad episodes, I haven't watched this in literal decades, at least twenty or more years. Also in those Police Squad episodes, I have said how much I like the deadpan style of Leslie Nielsen, knowing in my mind that it gets away from that more and more and more as the series go on. But as we were watching it the other day, I was like, oh no, it starts right here with this first naked gun where he is continually looking at camera and making faces and making goofy faces, which is you know, a whole other level. In that car scene, passing out smelling the old food. I mean, there's that's in the commentary, That thing with the fridge and the food is where they mentioned the we probably shouldn't have had Leslie mugs so much.

Duh. Well, And as I mentioned to you while we were watching that, I really think because you pointed out he wanted to be a comedic actor, and I think he really wanted to be funny, not to be dead pan and the straight man. And this is where that starts to happen. And it's just for me personally. It's not the humor that I enjoy.

I don't really care for slapstick. I don't care for physical comedy, and I don't like mugging at the camera. I like dry, dry, dry humor or completely idiotic humor. When you hit the middle there, it stops working for me. It's an uncomfortable mix.

It's not bad. It's just so. I was kind of shocked and watching it today with just the movie audio, thinking boy, this, Yeah, they really veered away from the police squad formula completely for this. Why they even went with that back to police squad, I'm not sure, because they don't. There are only a handful, maybe of callbacks to the show, like literal callbacks.

It almost maybe would have worked better as a spy spoof. My memory, I had very much a false memory of it. This movie I thought was riddled with Police Squad jokes, but instead it's only like five or six times where I'm just like, oh, yeah, this is from that. I mean, there are a couple of moments that are similar, like to either last week or the week before we talked about I think it was the Butler did an episode where they're talking about the ear that was sent back and the mom is getting hysterical about the ear and all this, and it's very much when Nordberg basically takes himself out from the whole drug sting that's at the beginning, and they start doing the same thing about like oh yeah, And I thought that it was much funnier in Police Squad, and especially the one that was maybe the first or second episode where they talked about like, oh, just tell him that a big monster came and took away daddy and all this kind of you know, So they do that several times, and they do that in this, but it's just that I thought that those were funnier in the earlier incarnations, and then you get things like al with the banana, and it's like, okay, yeah, I mean we literally just saw this four weeks ago, all right, you know, and tier point Mark.

They don't follow the formula of police squad. You know, there is no Johnny, there's Ed. The crime lab guy is there for a little bit, but there's no joke of them walking in in him with the little kid. Instead, it's the graffiti, which feels slightly racist, and it doesn't really pay off. That joke isn't a really good joke?

Is it a joke? I think it's supposed to be. Didn't laugh at it. I've never laughed at it. I think maybe I laughed at the first time I saw it when I was like twelve.

In the script, it plays out a little bit differently, but it's still not that funny. It comes more in the middle of that sequence rather than right at the beginning, and yet it's still just not that funny. Yeah, I missed the inappropriate dialogue with the kid. Oh yeah, Ted the lab guy. Yeah, he walks around the door exactly like and which was nice, though it was shot from a different angle so it didn't look his whole character is different.

I think Chris, you've kind of mentioned that he's more like a que in this, which is why I'm saying, maybe just have it be asle O seven spoof as opposed to Spyheart. Yeah, right, right, which so he is being cute and we all know that in a Q situation he introduces three gadgets or two gadgets to seven and he has to use those by the end of the film, which is one of those things I fucking hate about James Bond movies. Oh, Richard would have words for you, sir. And here we are with the Swiss army shoe and the cuff links. The cuff links get used multiple times, I think, maybe even more than twice.

The shoe, as far as I remember, never gets used at all. No, it doesn't. No, he uses the cufflinks to shoot the woman that falls on Reggie Jackson, and then he uses the cuff links to shoot Ricardo multiple right. Okay, so two shots, but it's still two more, right, and Ted shoots in right, and Ted shoots Ed. Why that's one of the best things.

That's a good line. Actually, Can we talk about something that does really work in the movie, recasting Ed Hawkin as George Kennedy. Oh, I really like Ellen North. I just don't think he would have worked in this movie. He wouldn't have worked in the movie.

That's my point. Like this to both of your points, because I've been sitting here trying to synthesize what y'all are both getting at. Given I watched this movie every year, and I know Begley you've seen him more recently than Mike. Honestly, I agree this movie has a lot of problems. The Drebin character is pretty much the only character that's the same, but even he is different.

If we were to watch Spyhart, we'd all be disappointed because Spyheart is four movies after Terrible It's Worth. Maybe that's what you think you want, but it's not that well, which is ironic because we've got Weird Agankovic and that one doing the Spyhard theme. Right, Spyheart is the worst offender of all these because it's not even Zai's doing it's it's Friedberg's dad is the one that's doing Spyheart. Oh. All that aside, At least for me, Leslie Nielsen is enough to get me through the movie because he's still funny.

Rewatching this movie. After having just watched this show, it is readily apparent how much of the show Zaz did not like, did not think was quality, did not did not think was good enough to replicate. Because, mind you, you guys were talking about the whole thing with Ed in the police station right where he's introducing all these gadgets in the show, that's just them ripping off themselves on airplane. It's not like they're doing anything unique even there. They're just taking the airplane gag with Robert Graves and doing it like six more times, right, I mean technically the fact that they change it.

I mean, if it had been in this movie and you'd only seen Airplane in this movie, you might have said, well, they're doing the airplane thing again. I think this is this weird balancing act that I think works at times, but then at other times it really doesn't work because it just kind of feels like it's flailing. Like the scene where they're in the car and it's just a bunch of mugging over and over for like, it feels like ten minutes. So I know it's not ten minutes, but it's just a lot of Leslie Nielsen going, which is fine, if that's what you're into, But there's not a lot of comedy to be mined from just looking at Leslie Nielsen making a funny face, even if that is his nickname. In the movie, when it comes to police Squad, everybody is clueless.

They live in this very self contained world, right, and there's not a lot of what did he just say? But in this one it's almost everybody is saying what did he just say? I mean, Ricardo Montelbond is not in on the joke. The mayor, Nancy Marshawn, she's not in on the joke, and it's just like, okay, well, you have to be in on the joke. Everybody has to, like you said, deadpan, everybody has to be in on that.

And occasionally Ed isn't in on the joke either, and it's just it's really difficult because, Okay, what kind of world is this? Like, how did Frank get to where he is? Unless the entire world is insane? The world has to be insane in order for this to work. But instead half of its sane, half of its insane.

And that is where I would agree with both of you. It is totally inconsistent because the world of the TV show is not reality, but this movie is trying to pass itself off, at least somewhat as a heightened reality. I'd like to believe they could have leaned on it harder, and I feel like they do a good enough job of it, But then they have something where the characters aren't in on it, and that is what made the original show so fun and Airplane for that matter, I mean, that movie's played brutally straight throughout, and this movie is not, you know, like the oh, you know, I practice safe sex and it shows them in two giant condoms, Like what movie is that from? Because it feels like a completely different kind of movie.

It feels more like a scary This feels like a proto scary movie more than it does like a true successor to Airplane. And then the joke itself doesn't even work because later on they say we exchange bodily fluids and it's like, no, you didn't. It's strange. And so there's the Nordberg plot as well, which is him running into another group of villains. They're all drug dealers.

There's this whole heroin deal going on. Ricardo Montalbana's Vincent Ludwig shows up, and then he is also this mastermind criminal who has to assassinate the Queen. And I don't think we're ever really given a reason for him assassinating the Queen. And I kind of would have liked a very ridiculous reason for him doing that, like she personally made him angry, or she is blocking something and he needs to take her out. But the assassination of the queen doesn't really make any sense.

She's in la and therefore Vincent Ludwig can kill her. That's okay. I guess. So he has the technology to make Manchurian candidates. I guess.

Yeah. I mean, did you end up watching Telephon for your Charles Bronson stuff? No? We did not, Oh, because this is I mean it's total Telephon type of stuff where you haven't right programmed killers, which is an interesting idea. Yeah, it kind of always goes the same direction, though, Yeah, aren't the Killers and Looker kind of manipulated the same way too?

Or am I misremembering that movie. I think that they've got that gun that makes you forget things. It flashes kind of like a photo flash and then you blank out. Yeah, it is more men in black. Yeah, you mentioned Ricardo Maltibon.

By the way, it is nice to finally have a true actor playing a villain in this show series Milange. Of all of these things, he is fantastic and he's wonderful, Yes, And I like his whole speech about the orange trees and all that. And you've got the whole thing with the fish and the pen and all that stuff going on, though I'm trying to remember if we do we see him find the fish with the pen stuck through it. Yeah, it happens a while later. Yeah, it's a nice little callback, one of the few to something that happens earlier in the film.

I mean, the whole thing of his office getting completely trashed again doesn't necessarily work without him actually coming in and seeing it. And I think that that was another cut scene, to be fair, though, that office scene is spectacular though. I think that's one of the funniest scenes in the entire movie. The amount of physical comedy that Leslie Nielsen is having to do in that scene and the lands I think, I mean, the sexual ass assault with a concrete dildo is still one of the great cinema lines. From the way that he's approaching her and just going that is hilarious.

But to what end? A lot of this does just kind of feel like vignettes of funny things like, Yeah, I don't mind comedy set pieces. No, No, I mean the master stroke of this movie for me is the third act. All of the stuff at the baseball game that just works for me, But the lead up to that it feels like just so, I don't know. There's a couple of good things here and there.

I like the stuff with the airbags. I like the stuff with the chase and the student driver and John Houseman and all that, but there are a lot that just land kind of flat. And again, like I mean, one of my favorite bits is the Joe Graffasi scene of him paying off Frank. You know, Frank's like, oh, maybe this would help you remember her, and you know what would I tell you? Yeah?

He was dirty, he was dealing. H I mean, it's very much Johnny. Yeah, the shoeshine boy, and I guess that goes on for longer as well, and I'm like, no, I wanted more of that. I wanted more of that exchange between them because that's really funny and the way that you keep building on that it's a great joke. Well there's apparently a relationship because he says, oh you again when Frank comes up to the door, and I was like, well, what's their history?

I want to know the history here. There's stuff in the script I think about him asking questions, Frank asking questions about the foreman's family, and I'm like, okay, yeah, these two know each other there. And then he's going to come back later on directing the Oscars in two films, so I guess he quits the former job and becomes a director. Well, speaking of Ray Burke and Papshmir, a character that is a waste of time in this movie. He comes back in the third movie.

Even now, I haven't seen the third movie since it was released at theater, so I'm very curious how he comes back. And if he comes back, I mean he's Patshmer again, yes, but I'm not sure how he plays into the story. I don't remember either, that's how little. There are three gags from that movie I remember, and that's it, and one of them involves Anatokole Smith having a penis, So you know, good good. I'm not a hundles sure, I've even seen that one.

To be honest with you now, as I'm thinking of the movies, I may not have even seen it. Which is more offensive ace Ventura or Naked Gun thirty three and a third Naked Gun because I'm not sure a Centura is super offensive. I get why it might be, but Naked Gun is much more offensive. It's like reveal of Annaikole Smith with a penis and then Frank Drebbon going right because of course, because by the time we're in the thirty third in a third movie, it's just all mugging all the time, and to prepare, prepare yourselves because it is not if we're having problems with this movie and mugging boy who boy, are you guys in for a rough time? You missed the best part of the statue gag though.

The thing that cracked me up the most when we were watching at Chris when he's reaching up in his mouth as wide O yeah and a big smile on the statue's face like Otto the automatic pilot. Yeah, yes, yes, like Otto exactly. I was so happy to see Nicholas Worth in here, the guy that plays the big beefy bad guy who has the fight the very abridged fight in the hot dog factory, and I'm just like, if you're going to cut out everything, why are we even here because it just seems like a really weird scene to just have this a dog factory, right. I liked the bring gag later on with Ricardo montele Bond. That was nice, but otherwise it's like, Okay, I really liked him a lot.

I mean I've been a fan of his since I saw him in Swamp Thing, and then of course his role in Dark Man is fantastic. Another actor who's just kind of in this movie with zero fanfare, Lawrence Tyerney just in this movie, yeah, just as the manager of the Angels. Sence Tyrney hanging sure. I believe they say that a lot of his stuff got cut as well, Yeah, because again, what's the point. What's the same thing with Dick Vitale.

A lot of his stuff was cut and I'm like, okay, like they set up all of those baseball announcers and like they put the button on it with and Doctor Joyce Brothers returning, right, but there's nothing else to it. There's no joke there after that, and it's like, Okay, you just set us up and the Joyce Brothers thing is not enough of a payoff. You need to take this one more step, if not two more steps, you know, those that rule of threes that I've been hitting on this whole time. It's just it's really not here for a lot of this to that point. I mean, can you imagine how expensive that must have been to get all those people in that room and then have them do nothing.

Yeah, well that's why they only show the two for most of the time. I think everybody else was probably gone, which, to be fair, the two that they pick are the funniest too, because they get about that is and that yeah, no, everything honestly everything at the Angels Stadium slash Dodgers Stadium slash Matt Painting Stadium, all of that. Like you said, Mike, I think that is the part that works the most. But that's also because it feels the most like episode of the show. It feels the most like airplane because it's situated in one place, can't go anywhere, and you're having to figure out all the creative, fun and interesting ways to get gags in this one place.

You don't have the entire city of la and they really milk that last thirty minutes for all it's worth. There's all kinds of gags, something that you might not even see coming, like the thing with the videotron playing all the insane sports bloopers, like they really take it as far as they can. And why that doesn't extend to the rest of the movie especially, I would say about midway through the first act is beyond me. I know this is gonna sound terrible, but Priscilla Presley, she's a fine actress. Her and Frank Drebbin.

It adds so little to the movie other than the one montage scene which is funny where they come out of the come out of the movie theater laughing about Platoon, which I think the original gag was supposed to be Philadelphia, which I think would have Is that right? Is that? What is that Philadelphia? After that? Yeah?

Because I know, really I'm trying to think that. I read somewhere that they like mentioned they were gonna do something else and they ended up going with Platoon, But I don't think they said it in the commentary. It must have been I read that somewhere, but Platoon was not the original movie. I think they kind of like dialed it back even Shindler's List, I think, right, which I think is too Yeah, yeah, that was I was just that was just me. You know, these are nice Jewish gentlemen and it is not about to do list.

Yeah, Platoon doesn't really work as well, I think as maybe something that's really more horrific. I mean, it's a war movie and it's brutal, but it's not like a weepe. Right, the protagonist dies of cancer and leaves their kids mother, you know, something like that, Go ask Alice or something like that. Yeah, or I don't know. The color purple would have been really inappropriates Cramer.

Yeah, Solo would have been way too ard for the audience seeing this. If the audience can't handle spoken word jokes, they're not going to handle Solo or one hundred and twenty Days a slum. No, that would be funny if that's they were watching. When I used to go see Rocky Horror Picture Show at the fairly in theater around here, somebody put together a little clip reel that they would show before the movie. They had clips of the naked gun.

So the line about nice beaver thanks, I just had it stuffed that and the how hot and wet Do you like It? Those were part of that, and so those are my favorite parts of this movie because I think they're really freaking funny, especially the nice Beaver thing. That's that's like gag that I really like, and it's a little bit of a you know, double entendra. Obviously, there's not a whole lot of those. There's a couple of things, like when he talks about his gun going off too early and how he thinks about baseball.

Now, like that stuff really works for me. It's the beaver Yoka rip from Top Secret? Am I misremembering that? I don't remember a beaver joke in that? Okay, But that's like the joke from this movie, right, Oh yeah, that's when Begley and I were watching it, I was like, that's the joke from this movie, right, Like, that's the joke, nice Beaver.

That's a good joke. It's a very good joke. I don't think Priscilla Presley needed to be in the rest of the movie. I just she doesn't add much, unfortunately, and that's not her fault. It's the script does gives her nothing to do.

Stand around and be a damsel in distress and play the straight man to Leslie Nielsen, who should have been the straight man. She is an exposition machine a lot of times, and especially at the end when it's like, oh, I overheard Ludwig He's going to kill the queen. It's in the seventh inning stretch at the baseball game today, and it's like, wow, okay, might have been good to see that scene or something. There might have been some tension there, you know, it might have been Pepper Potts trying to get the files off of Obadi Stains computer or something. But no, she just walks in, Oh I heard this.

It's like, all right, great, which is the only time I think that. We're in that bullpen at the police squad, which saw every single episode of the TV show, But we do get one of my favorite live well that but also the when I see six men in a park staff somewhere to death. I shoot the bastards. That was so good, Yeah, such a great dirty Harriet roof right there. Well that I guess that's the scene before that.

Then in the when they're in the police squad and goes, oh, the missing evidence in the killendar game. Oh, I guess it really was innocent Frank. He went to the Chair two years ago. Those gags are really funny. Honestly, it's it's when the movie feels like it has to pander.

Is that is that the right word? It wants to make sense? You know it really? I mean, gosh, we're talking about this baseball scene. The baseball scene I think starts at exactly night or sixty minutes into this.

I mean, there's so like Act one is thirty minutes, Act two is thirty minutes, Act three is thirty minutes, and that's that. We're gone, Wow, okay, you guys, like when they're talking about how much stuff they had to cut, I'm just like, you're so strict with this time frame in here that I'm amazing anything lasted. This movie's eighty five minutes, not even a full ninety. That's wild. And then the end credits.

I sat through those end credits waiting for like the joke things other than like Robert k Weiss's divorce attorney. I wasn't really seeing anything. I'm like, Okay, I'm waiting for like Warren peace By full story, like some of those good gags that we had from Airplane. I'm just like, where are they? Where are the gags?

Guys. I think there was one that was like safest corner of the building is like the south corners. You're right, yeah, where to go? Like a tornado? Yeah, there's like that.

It wasn't this one, But in one of these Zaz movies they have like a recipe for brownies? Was that airplane? It might have been? Where was that hot shots? One of them has like a full on just like brup recipe in the credit role.

The other thing that I really laugh at all the time is Mark Holton aka Francis from Pewe's Big Adventure. When he stands up and recognizes the umpire as Enrico Palazzo. That's some funny shit to me. It's Enrico Palazzo. I mean, all of that with him as the umpire is funny.

Him doing the whole like terrible singing, which apparently was just him actually trying to sing, which is in and of itself hilarious, which I thought was a riff on Rosanne when she sang, but I think that actually came after. Do you guys remember that when Roseanne bar sang the national anthem? It was terrible? Yeah, oh man, And then she grabbed her crotch afterwards. I was nineteen ninety, that's what it was.

Two years she was riffing on this though, because they do that whole routine with the grabbing and the spitting and the yeah, all the other ticks that baseball players have, all the players wives. I was really helping for more with them, and it was just they spit. I'm like, oh, okay, I was waiting for these are the players wives and these are the players mistresses, right, Yeah, that's what I thought the gag was too. And then now it's just this And like you say, with the announcers, I wonder how many more times they were commenting on what was happening on the screen that got cut. And well, if they shot another hour and a half of a movie, ye, yeah, they shot.

I mean again, this movie is not even a full hour. And I mean, but I'm sure it is, Like I'm sure it's at least an hour. I don't know why they cut so much of the movie out, because the second act feels very truncated. It really does, like the first act goes on for quite some time, and the second act ends with like you, Priscilla Presley is going and we have to get to the stadium somehow, let me tell you why, And it's like, oh my god, like show, don't tell it's a movie, a TV show or a book. I guess I was glad that they actually called themselves out too on the commentary where it was because they set up the joke so much and it never pays off, which is the cutting of the cake and giving the eyeball piece to someone, and I'm just I didn't get that.

Yeah, I was like waiting for that and it never materializes. And then I was just like okay, and then I listened to the commentary and it's just like, would I fucking see the joke that we're doing. That would have been nice. That would have been really That entire scene doesn't really even have any gags other than Leslie Nielsen doing the whole mugging thing. And one of the I think one of the more inspired gags are the one that I it's one of the few that sticks out to me from the movie, at least just right off top of my head, is the thing where Ed is having his wallet taken out of his pocket by rank Unknowingly anyone else have a picture of this man's wife like that?

That's like the only gag in that entire like five minute scene. What was the I get supposed to be? I missed it even on the commentary. They said it on the commentary, they were like, we cut into the eye, but they never like went anything. Why how is that funny?

I think it was supposed to be just like I think the Queen gets the piece with a big old eyeball right in the looking at her, which would be a little disconcerting, especially because it's her own face on there. That actress who just looks like the queen. And that's that was her entire career, That poor things. She never even gets a line. I don't think.

No, but but but but once she opens her mouth, she's not the Queen anymore. Right, that's true, That's true. She was also in uh do you know many times she played Queen a Litz. I mean that's a good gig man, you know. Yeah, she looks just like her.

She retired in twenty fourteen. She's ninety five, Jeanette Charles still kicking around. She might outlived the Queen. Yeah, National Lampoon's European Vacation. That's where I remember her from playing, wouldn't you guess it, Queen Elizabeth, that's funny.

I want to take a dinghy. How have we not talked about oh Ja Sipson. Oh boy, Well, because he's barely in the movie. Yeah, that was funny. I didn't remember how little he is in this.

It's like, oh, he's not even a character in this. Yeah, he's there at the beginning, he's there in two hospital scenes, and then he's there. Yeah. He barely gets any lines until the end of the film, you know, when he's just like, Oh, You're the best friend I could ever have or whatever. And I felt bad for the original nor Burke.

I'm just like that guy was hilarious, but no one said we've got oh Jay. I like that scene with him and Leslie Nielsen drugs, Frank drug right right, going to take me a coup days on that one. I think that let's take a cruise, take a cruise like last year he was talking about the boat. Oh all right, I see that now. And of course your husband can rejoin the force as long as he's not a drooling vegetable.

Everything in that first act of the movie is pretty funny. I think once we get into the scene where he's in the car, which on Houseman and stuff. That's kind of where the movie slows for twenty minutes right until the scene where they're back at the stadium, and it just slows the movie to a crawl. And I really hadn't noticed it the first time I watched this movie critically, which would have been a couple of years ago. But now it's just like it's readily apparent that they went, all right, well, we've got Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley, let's do a whole romance thing with them in the second act.

And it doesn't work, and news flash spoilers, Priscilla Presley comes back for not just the second one, but also the third one, so prepare yourselves for that. Hey. But yeah, it's like they use the romance as a breather. All right, I understand why you're doing this, and I understand that it's important that Frank fine love. I guess it's really not that necessary.

That wasn't part of the equation of the original show, so I don't know why they made it part of the equation of the movies. You should just have a male roommate like he does in the Yeah, first episode of Police Squad, I have a call back to that, just have him leaving the apartment, right, Frank. In a lot of ways, it's not as consistent as that first episode of the show was right, which is a problem, isn't it. And it's not as consistent as something like Airplane for Me, where that takes a lot of turns via flashback, where you get the whole bar scene, you get the going to Africa and selling temperware, a scene where you can get him in the mental hall. Middle scenes.

They're there for gags, but they work in the story because it's not taking place on the plane. It's not absurd things just constantly taking place on the plane. Here the story gets in the way. It's too much about story in this one. Yeah, we can't take those wild left turns unless they somehow make sense to the plot.

And like I said early on in one of the episodes, that's usually where comedies lose it for me, is when the plot takes over. Yeah, they are really beholden to this plot to its own detriment. It's just like, no, you can be more surreal. It's really okay, right that off the wall humor from out of left field is what And I again, I haven't seen it in a long time, but I feel that that's what Top Secret does a little bit better. Is the off the wall soldier falling off of a turret and cracking like he's porcelain or something.

Right. That's surreal that it doesn't make any sense, but it's funny because of that, And for me, that kind of strikes to what you both have really been talking about, which is, what are you inspired by here? What are you parody cop movies? Because not really, it's not a parody of cop stuff anymore. That is the thing that I noticed rewatching at this time, is it really feels like they just said, Okay, we've got a funny character with Frank Drebin, who is a funny character, but it's funny because it's Leslie Nielsen.

Okay, so we'll give him an interesting plot. I don't even know if I think that the setting of La works that much anymore. I don't know. For me, this movie doesn't work as well as it used to. It just doesn't.

And it's really strange because even in the script it's Chicago still all through the script. I don't know if it's just because they got the LA baseball team, but I don't think so. I think that they were going to do La no matter what. Well, they wanted to do the Brewers because they're from Wisconsin, but they couldn't get Yeah, so I think it was always going to be set in La. I just don't know why.

Other than passing those titty things on the highway, it really has no daring to be set there. No, everywhere I look, I see reminders of her. Right, that's a real thing. You can see those right right, mister Bagley. I've driven by him numerous times on the way to San Diego, Cuba's kind of missing the fake backdrops behind them when they're driving.

The use of real locations instead of sets felt. I found myself missing this set bound show. Yeah, it really feels like something else entirely. It doesn't feel like Naked Gun. It feels like the Furthering Adventures of Frank Dreban.

Naked Gun is a movie title created for this film. Yes, the show was called Police Squad, right, So the fucking idea that they just couldn't make something else with the Frank Drebin character is a little strange to me. The opening of the movie is a different movie. It's a different movie entirely, and then the rest of the movie is another thing entirely. I just don't know why they wanted to signal that they were going to be doing more Police Squad stuff when it should have just been its own thing.

I mean, at this point, it's it's not really Frank Drebin. It's just like Leslie Dielson, right, Like it's you're calling Leslie for all I care in the movie. Really, maybe it's just because it's an existing outline that they can cram the stuff and just you know, you don't have to come up with new names and character, just have Frank ed al Nordberg A'll still be there, but bring it up to a modern perspective, I guess, not have that dated fifties slash early sixties cop show. Look, it's which is fine, I mean, it's I think the problem for me is watching them so close together, even though by the end of Police Squad it was getting a little sketchy. I sort of miss even the sixth episode of Police Squad versus this, where we're still doing a lot of literalisms, we're still doing a lot of visual puns, we're still doing cigarette Pat's missing from this.

I guess it comes back, maybe in one of the other movies. But now that it's not there, even though bugged me in every episode, now that it's missing, I want that cigarette gag back. We've mentioned a couple of gags pulled directly from the show, with like al with the banana, the police officer talking into his bullhorn at two people, which is directly from the show, which doesn't make sense when you have both that gag and the police disperse. There's nothing to see here with the fireworks factory behind them, and pick one, it's not both. Plus it goes by too fast you barely even see the guy.

I missed it when we watched the commentary. I caught at this time, and I'm like, oh, that's the exact same gag, but it was held on a lot longer on the TV show, a little more obvious joke, And maybe that was part of their plan, was to have these callbacks just be sort of brief and unobtrusive and not like, hey, remember that show we did that didn't last very long. This is from that. The garbage can gags, they're in there, but then they're escalated and escalated and he's hitting everything now scaffolds, although it does lead to the great gag of his runaway car, which I think might be my favorite bit of the movie, especially with that explosion and those airbags that look like but sticking out of the car.

Yeah. I have a feeling that's another one of those instances where the explosion was a little bit bigger than they anticipated because it's pretty massive. They also do the gag where Drevin takes somebody hostage at the end of the movie, right, Yeah, that one too. I swear to god it's the same woman. Yeah, other Asian lady.

I totally yeah, I agree. You mentioned the Cuban line, you know, no Dutch Irish on my mother's side or whatever. That's one of my favorite bits. That humor is missing through of this film. The straight act humor is just not there.

Frank Raban is not the straight man anymore, No, which is a problem for this character. No, he's getting more into mister Magoo territory at times, and it's just like he wanders through the world and things explode around him and it just like does a double take. It's like, okay, great. I mean even the double take of the teen driver thing is to me completely unnecessary. The joke is that it's a teen driver.

He doesn't need to respond to the joke. Well, it's a thirty five year old teen driver, right with John Houseman as her Instructor's definitely gently extend your arm, extend your middle finger. I love that truck driver's look on this face. Talk about mugging, but it works for him because he's not he's not the straight man. There just wasn't enough of that.

There just wasn't enough of that. And again, like I really love this movie. I will stand by this movie as it is still a favorite comedy of mine, but it is severely diminished due to the show in positive and negative ways. I mean, to see the issues with a movie you really like, I think is not necessarily a bad thing to kind of make, you know, I'm making amends with there's problems with the movie, but it does also detract for my ability to enjoy this movie as well, which is an unintended byproduct of watching Police Squad and then sitting down to watch this. So I would suggest people not sit down and watch Police Squad and then run out and watch Naked Gun because you're not going to enjoy the movie as much.

Maybe you'll like it more, maybe you won't like the show. But I think the show. I think what's kind of crazy is watching the movie and watching the show. The show did have more legs, It really did. There was more to give with the show.

They just never got to that point the movies. This is the peak which should not inspire joy. And either one of you, neither one of you seem to like this a whole whole lot. It's just a different brand of comedy then Police Squad. And when I walk into this and I'm expecting a top secret and airplane a police squad from the files of Police Squad, right, and we veer off into this other territory, and I'm just not a fan of that territory that much.

You know. Yeah, I mentioned the imitators come off where they really are much more of a topical type of thing, where it's just like, hey, this happened two weeks ago, and we're going to put in this movie. I'm starting to get a little bit of that flavor here, not a lot, but a little bit. I mean, I guess the world leaders at the beginning a little bit of that, you know, is very much a specific time and place there's a lot more movie references in this one than we previously had in the show. And yes, of course an airplane, we get the two big you know, Saturday Night Fever, we get Jaws in there, and of course the whole thing is based off of Zero Hour, but Zero Hour, you know, thirty years old at that point or whatever it was, and it's just like, okay, I'm not really you know, and of course making fun of the airport movies at that point to your point, okay, Naked Gun.

Yeah, it's funny. It's a dick joke right there in the title, but it's not picking up like one particular film and saying we're going to hit every single beat and just do this like we did before. Instead, we're going to create this whole crazy plot that really doesn't play into old TV shows or disaster movies or spy films or any of those things. I mean, yeah, like Top Secret is a whole lot of stuff all stuck together, but it works in the way that it's stuck together, works in a Elvis Goes to Berlin type of way that this one just doesn't necessarily hold together that well for me, and I think as we go along into these other films, and again haven't seen them since they came out. I imagine that the humor is going to get more and more and more topical, that we're going to get you know, you mentioned hot shots with the Saddam Hussein stuff, and it's just like that was right in the news, you know, we were the Gulf War was like right then, you know.

So it's not like we're missing a beat here with this stuff. And that for me is always the issue with another show. You and I do Dreams for Sale. We talked about the New Twilight Zone and the New Twilight Zone was too topical for its own good. And yeah, topicality has a place in a moment.

There are shows that can work by being hyper topical, but these kinds of comedies don't work that way. They need to be just topical enough but also timeless enough that I can watch it in twenty twenty two and still get something out of it. This movie does on second, third, fourth, however many times I've seen it. Now, appraisal reappraisal have weirdly a lot of topical humor that doesn't land like the opening of the movie. If you watch this movie today, you might not know who half those people are.

Yeah, which is not a real problem, but it kind of is. Yeah, some of the jokes won't really land. Did you watch this with your daughter, Mark, No, I had planned to yesterday, and we celebrated my mom's birthday and had all this other shit going on. She had a bunch of homework. She wouldn't find it funny.

I honestly don't think this would go over as well as Airplane. I would be inclined to agree. It's who topical and kind of I don't know. It makes me laugh, but I've seen it a million times now, I'm not a good indicator of what the quality of this movie anymore. Like And again, like, you can say what you want about it being twenty twenty two and when this movie came out, but we can't go back to nineteen eighty eight and watch this movie in a vacuum.

We have to watch this movie now. And even if I want to turn my brain off to all the influences that have come since and the things that have come out since this movie came out, there are parts of this movie that just don't work anymore for me, and that's unfortunate. I'm not sure that they ever worked for me before. Maybe I just overlooked him. That was probably more to the case.

I mean, again, that's why we don't talk about comedies, because comedies are subjective. You're not if you don't find it funny, you don't find it funny. There's literally nothing any of us can do about it, finding things funny or not. I just don't think that this is a very well put together movie from a storytelling standpoint. I'll say this, I think, and I could be wrong.

I mean, I still plan on watching because we actually really only watched Airplane in the first two episodes of Police Squad together, and then the weekends that I planned on watching these, she was busy or I had to wait too long to do it. I still plan on watching most of this stuff with her. But if I were to bet, I think the one that we would go back to watch again in the future would be Airplane and maybe some of the Police Squad episodes, like, Hey, let's watch Airplane for a kind of like me with the young Frankenstein. That's one that I'll just watch. If I catch it, I'll watch it.

I'll sit with it no matter where I catch it. When I catch it, I'll usually finish it off. I sort of feel that way about Airplane Now where that works for me, if from any point in the movie to the end, I could sit there and finish it off. I wouldn't say the same for me for Naked Gun. It would probably depend on where it was in the movie.

Yeah, if we started at that third act and it was just the baseball stuff, I'd probably stick with it. Yeah, me too. I'll be curious to see what you guys think about the second one. I like parts of the second one a lot. Robert Goulay is a lot of fun in the second one.

It has a lot of really interesting character actors, not Anthony Zerba, but the other gentleman with an interesting face who has a mustache, he gets a hose jammed in his mouth in the second one. Anthony James. Yeah, Anthony James is in it. Richard Griffiths is in it, who I'm a huge fan of. I think the romance stuff is handled better because Robert Goulay plays the suitor to Priscilla Presley, so there's kind of a there's none of that in this movie.

There's a little bit of it, But I think in the next movie they actually do something with it. But I'm concerned now when we watch it because it's gonna be a lot of mugging. Just never know, true, I don't know. But the movie does open with George W. Bush George H.

W. Bush, excuse me. So it is similar to this movie, kind of just all over the place. There's a lot of stuff in this movie I like. I like the escalation of the escaping doctor going through the gas tank and then the missile carrier and then into the fireworks factory, the pillow gag, which is a call back to police squad done a little differently like that.

We got our hop Scotch as he's walking through the city, Chris finally, finally, yeah, finally the hop Scotch. Was so glad for that. The Peel a Way suit. I always remember that fondly. One thing I don't get, though, and I know they talk about it in the commentary, but that was when it was like way out of sync and they were referencing the red lips and all that, and we hadn't even gotten to it.

I don't get the pistachio gag, other than I guess it's funny that they have red lips and the door with all the shells. Yeah, I mean the vehicle shells, but sitting there, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. While I was watching it, I was just like, why are their lips red? And then finally, I think it wasn't until I saw all the pistachio shells outside that I was like, oh, okay, I get it. Yeah.

I don't think they still postachio is that way anymore, do they? Right? Oddly enough, Robert Goulay was a pistachio spokesman for a little while there, or at least he was in one of those Emerald Nuts commercials. Oh oh my god, those are good commercials. They were.

I haven't thought of that was in a long time. Every day, when you're not looking, Robert Couley sneaks into your office and tries to steal your Emerald nuts. They should have just said steal your nuts, but yeah, what can you do? And then the third movie has Fred Ward in it, so we've got Robert Gouley and Fred Ward to look forward to it. The casting in these movies is great.

The actors themselves are pretty amazing and everything else that they've been in. But I think we know who the weak link is. Would J Simpson. I think it's za z Oh. Well, yeah, I think they're good at certain things and not great at others.

I think they're good at taking somebody else's framework and doing something funny with it, but I'm not sure how good they are at whole cloth creating something original. Because this is what we got. This is the plot line that we get, which is this Even the plot line of the second movie makes more sense in the plot of this movie. The plot of the third movie is complete nonsense. But the plot of the second movie makes more sense than this one does.

I mean? And we should not even be talking about plot at all, right, I shouldn't be asking the questions what is Ludwig up to? And how does the queen play into this? And how does the heroin trade? And yeah, yeah, yeah, I shouldn't be worried about that stuff at all.

I figured I just missed that. Yeah, I'm like, oh, I missed the reason why you're handing us so many other things that I'm just like, I need an explanation for this. And they mentioned it in the commentary. That's like the evil genius plot, but he's not played off as if that were the reason. The only reason that's fine, but he's not Doctor Evil.

This isn't a James Bond spoof, so what's the motivation? It should have just been him selling heroin and Frank has to figure that out. And you know what, that alone may have been enough clearing Nordberg's name. I mean, that's essentially an episode of the show. So maybe they were like, well, we can't have it be this small scale.

Again, they didn't say any of this, but I would go out on a limb to wager that they probably thought, well, we can't have it be the small scales conflict. If it's a motion picture, we have to have this kind of world involved conflict of the Queen is coming and she's going to get assassinated to what end? Why? Who cares? I mean, it gets us to the stadium at the end with the Enrico Palazzo stuff, so I'm glad that it's in there.

But the stuff with Queen Elizabeth feels really forced into the movie. It really does, even if a lot of like the last surrounding setting that up are pretty good. It is a James Bond movie slapped onto a police movie. Watching it both these times and realizing not only is Oja, not really in the movie very much, but that he suffers abuse basically in every scene was I'm a nice little good there. I was okay with that.

Him getting heated into the oblivion at the end of the movie is a perfect way to end. That is my favorite gag from the movie. That it is you can see the plume of whatever they used to shoot him out of there coming out of the seat, which I don't even mind because it's so great. Those flips. I wonder how sometimes they shot that, but those flips are amazing.

Yeah, you get those little surreal moments like Ricardo mount to the bond, taking the Priscilla Presley Poppet up the stairs and stuff, and I'm just like, okay that it really makes no sense, but it's funny because it yeah, and it doesn't need to be It doesn't need to be explained or no, I ain't it out. That's the stuff that's funny to me. Why oh, I don't you know? Because why does he get smashed into the ground and then forced into the ground and then he's literally part of the ground at the end of right, Like why who cares? Don't explain it?

Make me laugh. It's funny Chris, because I said, oh, you know they still that in Austin Powers later on right, and then as the marching band went over him, I was like, oh, that's a riff on Animal House, not realizing that the band is playing Louie Louis as they're walking over him until I watched it today and I was like, oh, well, yes, it is most definitely a riff on Animal House. Kevin Bacon's character. Yeah, you're right, Kevin Bacon gets flattened in a movie where that's like the only time something like that happens in Animal House, right, where somebody gets actually like flattened. Yeah, and that's fine.

Yeah, yeah, I was really okay with that. I wonder what the Liam Neeson movie it's groomed to be like watching this movie, are you gonna have to come back after that? Good? Well, well that was a yes obviously. Yeah.

B what does because again, like Naked Gun two and three unimportant, we're going to talk about those, but they're remaking Naked Gun or making a movie in the vein of the original movie. What is that? What do we think that is? Like? What does that look like?

In twenty twenty two? How do you make people laugh with this kind of character in twenty twenty two, is it absurd comedy? It's not. I don't think it's literalism. I'm not sure anybody would find that funny.

But I just wonder, like, if this movie kind of doesn't work now in twenty twenty two, and again varying degrees of it working when it came out, what can they bring to this character and this setup in twenty twenty two, Like what is that? Yeah, if they were worried about an international the international audience in nineteen eighty eight not getting a right visual puns or visual language jokes, forget it now. I mean that's all they do is your things towards China, And I don't know, they should just redo three of the stories from the original show. That would be awesome, Just totally go back to the original and people would be like, what the fuck is this movie? But we would like it.

I'm of the same mindset. I think the movie should really just be a cop movie, like play it straight, just play it straight, but inject the comedy like they did with Airplane. Make how ridiculous it is on the phase of it. What we're laughing at, not Liam Neeson going over and over again, like, which I'm sure we're going to get plenty of. We don't really have cop movies right now, like Lethal Weapon, it's all on TV.

It's like all TV. Well and if anything, I mean, remember how Cops got canceled for a little while after the whole George Floyd thing. I was just like, oh no, we can't have cops being heroic right now. Yeah, I don't blame you. That's the other question that I have is like, is a cop comedy like this They're not going to do anything offensive in it because that would be a bad idea, But like, is making it to begin with a good idea?

Like I don't know. I don't know if Naked Gun needs to come back. Let's just put it that way. It will be interesting to see what they draw from for it. Hearing my friend Ronnie told me that, He's like, well, you know there's going to be one with Liam Neeson.

I'm like, I didn't know that, And it doesn't make any sense to me what you're telling me right now. So I need to think about this for a little bit as to how that even works. I mean, we know Liam Neeson could do comedy right, these kinds of movies don't come out anymore, Like nobody is going into the theaters to see Scary Movie seven, Like that train has left and it is far down the tracks. Freeberg and Seltzer movies, those aren't coming out in theaters anymore. Nobody's going and seeing them.

That was like the late two thousands, early tens. That's not a thing now. So like this will come out on like a streaming platform like Peaca or something or Paramount Plus and you know what that's that Like, I don't even see it being an actual, like in theater movie. I don't I'm just trying to think of what they would riff on right now. Mission Impossible.

I don't know. It's not even a cop movie. They're still making those. Yeah, I mean that's or like CSI or something again, like or the Blacklist. Right, Like this is so narrowly defined, like either they narrowly defined it off of one thing, or they're going to run into the problem of all these other movies where it's like I'm drawing from eight million different things and it doesn't really gel together as one cohesive idea.

I don't know it'll be interesting. Well, we will talk more about the Naked Gun twenty two and a second, No, no Gun two and a half, two and a half, two and a half. Yeah, Okay, we'll be talking about that one next week when we come back on from the files of Police Squad. Until then, Chris, where can people hear more of us? Three people?

You can hear more of us three people over at weirding Way Media, a podcast network that well, we're all a part of Mark Begley's Wake Up Heavy, Mike White's The Projection Booth, and my The Culture Cast, along with this show and plenty of other shows over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. And you know what, if you can find it there, should you really be listening to it?