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

It's six years after Police Squad! was unceremoniously canceled but you can't keep a good man down! Frank Drebin is back, as are Capt. Ed Hocken (now played by George Kennedy), Mr. Olson (still play by Ed Williams) and Nordberg (now played by O.J. Simpson, oof). Mike, Mark, and Chris get into the Naked Gun series where things seem very similar, yet also very different from PS. Drebin and team must foil a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II at a baseball game. Also with Priscilla Presley and Ricardo Montalban.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
In this city. There's crime onevery 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 oneminute and the leave behind bars. Let's
grab up white team. He's agood cop who's having a bad day.
His best friend. Everyone should havea friend like you, is Imacoba.

(00:31):
As soon as Nordberg is better,He's welcome back at police squad. But
I wouldn't wait until the last minuteto fill out those organ donor cards.
His girlfriend asked him to look herup nice beaver, Thank you, I
just had it stuffed. Let mehelp you with that. And his city

(00:52):
is in the hands of a mastercriminal with a sinister plan. I must
kill the Queen Yah. Any policestory contained this much action, this much
romance, or this much baseball,starring Leslie Nielsen a cop who's always on

(01:17):
the alert, Mikhail Gorbacho, aQueen Elizabeth, Everyone's favorite Queen. Priscilla
Presley, a woman who really cooks. How much you? Ricardo Montalban Ramon,
thank you're both read? George Kennedythe partner with an appetite or danger

(01:42):
o J Simpson, As you've neverseen him before. And Reggie Jackson in
his first dramatic role in a movieso big it had to be filmed in
color. The Naked Gun from theFiles of Police Squad, The Welcome Too,

(02:12):
From the Files of Police Squad incolor. I'm your host, Mike
Awake joined me. Of course,is mister Mark Begley did that slip down
there? Again? Also with usis 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 Filesof Police Squad. Sounds very similar to

(02:36):
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? Howdid that resonate with an audience in nineteen
eighty eight? Oh, they madea Police Squad movie? There, we're

(02:57):
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 yearsold. So I'm talking more now to
be fair. Yes, I thinkeven then I was Oh yeah, I

(03:17):
think Mike and I were probably thetwo people that were like, oh,
I remember that show fondly. Notto be confused with the fifty sixth movie
of the same name, by theway, Yes, yes, which is
probably more why they put from thefiles of Police Squad more than anything else.
I would assume maybe directed by DavidZucker. Just David Zucker, not

(03:40):
Jerry Zucker, not Jim Abrams,but David Zucker. David Zucker, who's
kind of gone off the deep endover the last few years. He's the
one that just recently was in thenews complaining about, gosh, you just
comedy isn't funny anymore because those darnedPC police. And he does talk about
the thought Lease a few times inthe audio commentary for this. It was

(04:03):
a little embarrassing. I have tosay, old man yells a cloud very
much. The thought police like toshut up, to shut up, to
shut up. I couldn't do thattoday. And you know what, there
are plenty of jokes in this moviethat haven't aged well, but I think
you could still do them. Yeah, I mean, there are definitely not

(04:24):
a scene where Chinese actors in stereotypicalChinese hats with ponytails on them run away
from a Fireworks Factory. If youcouldn't do that joke In twenty twenty two
comedy Truly is Dead, I wouldhope you can do that. Yes,
written by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrams, David Zucker, and Pat Proft,
who also worked on the original PoliceSquad and provide some good lines in this.

(04:48):
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 themsay that that the original Police Squad was
canceled pretty much after the first episodebecause people had to actually watch their TV

(05:09):
to pick up on all the jokes, which is true. It is true.
You don't have to. I meanI want the jokes. Yeah,
it's such a bullshit excuse. I'veseen Star Wars so many times. I've
never watched the screen. I justlistened. There are so many shows where
you do really have to watch watch, and I'm right there for it as

(05:30):
long as it's not to pretentious.Sorry West World, I'm talking about I
knew it was coming. That's sucha low fucking blow, sir. I
mean, hey, it got itselfcanceled so it has nobody to blame.
But to your point, I wouldsay, Naked Gun, you didn't have

(05:51):
to like watch like a hawk toenjoy it, but your enjoyment would be
greatly increased by doing so. Justlike with West World, I think your
enjoyment is increased by paying attention.But right, yeah, if you want
to just fucking put something on andjust dick around in the background, like,
more power to you. Just don'ttry to give me your opinion on
it, like you know what you'retalking about. That's a different story.

(06:13):
I think they really pointed out theirown foibles when it came to the commentary,
which was we had to get awayfrom word play because we were playing
to a international audience, so wehad to rely more on sight gags.
And I think the thing that Iliked the most about Airplane and Police Squad
were the verbal play. You know, how many times did I hit on

(06:39):
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, butso much of this is physical humor.
I mean, right from the beginningwhere we have all of the evil world
leaders and this is this is somethingthat I feel is very David Zucker,

(07:02):
the way that he has to introducepolitics into these movies. And we're going
to get into some real fucked upterritory. And I can't remember how much
of this is in hot Shots versushow much of this is in these movies,
but they become basically like after nineto eleven they had that episode of

(07:23):
South Park which was basically Cartman treatingOsama bin Laden like Roadrunner and Coyote.
We get really super cartoony with theseworld leaders and it starts here and it
just goes and goes and goes untilwe have like, what is it,
Saddam Hussein being mixed with the dogshots. Yeah, that's oh boy.

(07:48):
Hot Shots Part one is the airplaneflies over Saddam and drops a bomb on
him and it like lands in hislap. The second one is where he
gets frozen and they do the tollto one thousand thing. Yeah, it's
not naked gut You're you're thinking ofhot 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 becauseat this moment in time, you do

(08:13):
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 villainand Gorbachev like you have. They're all
there, And this is the onlytime it works because it's one scene.

(08:35):
It's the beginning of the movie.It makes no sense that he's on vacation
in Beyrout is basically what they're tryingto 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 divesinto screen like twice and the Papschmir.

(09:01):
There's pap Shmir there, which isweird 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 thuglooking guy pops into frame and I thought,
oh, I guess that's a comedytouch. But it happens so quickly
it is a pay attention or you'llmiss it gag. This is the first

(09:24):
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 fromme 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 gagsgo on too long. I think all
the gags are pretty on the nose. I would say, like the thing

(09:45):
with Gorbacheff and wiping off his winestain. I knew it. That's the
first time we get Dreben talking directlythe camera. Yeah, we're gonna get
a lot of mugging, a lotof my whole a lot of mugging.
That's the thing that they mentioned inthe commentary. When Begley and I were
watching the totally not sped up commentarybecause Zucker a Zucker, We're trying to

(10:07):
watch the movie as fast as possible, they mentioned the mugging and they like
kind of call themselves out about doingit too much, like, oh,
we probably should have used a differenttake of Leslie here, and it's like,
uh, yes, yeah, well, just how much stuff they shot
for this movie, and you readthe trivia about like, oh and the

(10:28):
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 pointwhere I think it's Robert k Weis the
producers like, so you shot aboutanother hour and a half worth the movie
for this. It's like, ohyeah, yeah we did. Okay,
wow, and this is the versionthey went with. Yeah, well,

(10:50):
there's a lot of thing I likethis. 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 inliteral decades, at least twenty or more
years. Also in those Police Squadepisodes, I have said how much I
like the deadpan style of Leslie Nielsen, knowing in my mind that it gets

(11:18):
away from that more and more andmore as the series go on. But
as we were watching it the otherday, I was like, oh no,
it starts right here with this firstnaked gun where he is continually looking
at camera and making faces and makinggoofy faces, which is you know,
a whole other level. In thatcar scene, passing out smelling the old

(11:43):
food. I mean, there's that'sin the commentary, That thing with the
fridge and the food is where theymentioned 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 reallythink because you pointed out he wanted to
be a comedic actor, and Ithink he really wanted to be funny,

(12:05):
not to be dead pan and thestraight man. And this is where that
starts to happen. And it's justfor me personally. It's not the humor
that I enjoy. I don't reallycare for slapstick. I don't care for
physical comedy, and I don't likemugging at the camera. I like dry,

(12:28):
dry, dry humor or completely idiotichumor. When you hit the middle
there, it stops working for me. It's an uncomfortable mix. It's not
bad. It's just so. Iwas kind of shocked and watching it today
with just the movie audio, thinkingboy, this, Yeah, they really

(12:50):
veered away from the police squad formulacompletely 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, maybeof callbacks to the show, like literal
callbacks. It almost maybe would haveworked better as a spy spoof. My

(13:13):
memory, I had very much afalse 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 coupleof moments that are similar, like
to either last week or the weekbefore we talked about I think it was

(13:35):
the Butler did an episode where they'retalking about the ear that was sent back
and the mom is getting hysterical aboutthe ear and all this, and it's
very much when Nordberg basically takes himselfout from the whole drug sting that's at
the beginning, and they start doingthe same thing about like oh yeah,

(13:56):
And I thought that it was muchfunnier in Police Squad, and especially the
one that was maybe the first orsecond episode where they talked about like,
oh, just tell him that abig 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, butit's just that I thought that those were
funnier in the earlier incarnations, andthen you get things like al with the

(14:20):
banana, and it's like, okay, yeah, I mean we literally just
saw this four weeks ago, allright, you know, and tier point
Mark. They don't follow the formulaof 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 jokeof them walking in in him with the

(14:43):
little kid. Instead, it's thegraffiti, which feels slightly racist, and
it doesn't really pay off. Thatjoke isn't a really good joke? Is
it a joke? I think it'ssupposed to be. Didn't laugh at it.
I've never laughed at it. Ithink maybe I laughed at the first
time I saw it when I waslike twelve. In the script, it

(15:03):
plays out a little bit differently,but it's still not that funny. It
comes more in the middle of thatsequence rather than right at the beginning,
and yet it's still just not thatfunny. Yeah, I missed the inappropriate
dialogue with the kid. Oh yeah, Ted the lab guy. Yeah,
he walks around the door exactly likeand which was nice, though it was

(15:26):
shot from a different angle so itdidn't look his whole character is different.
I think Chris, you've kind ofmentioned 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 allknow that in a Q situation he introduces

(15:50):
three gadgets or two gadgets to sevenand he has to use those by the
end of the film, which isone of those things I fucking hate about
James Bond movies. Oh, Richardwould have words for you, sir.
And here we are with the Swissarmy shoe and the cuff links. The
cuff links get used multiple times,I think, maybe even more than twice.

(16:12):
The shoe, as far as Iremember, 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 shootsin right, and Ted shoots Ed.
Why that's one of the best things. That's a good line. Actually,

(16:37):
Can we talk about something that doesreally 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 inthis 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 tosynthesize what y'all are both getting at.
Given I watched this movie every year, and I know Begley you've seen him

(16:59):
more recently than Mike. Honestly,I agree this movie has a lot of
problems. The Drebin character is prettymuch the only character that's the same,
but even he is different. Ifwe were to watch Spyhart, we'd all
be disappointed because Spyheart is four moviesafter Terrible It's Worth. Maybe that's what
you think you want, but it'snot that well, which is ironic because

(17:22):
we've got Weird Agankovic and that onedoing the Spyhard theme. Right, Spyheart
is the worst offender of all thesebecause it's not even Zai's doing it's it's
Friedberg's dad is the one that's doingSpyheart. Oh. All that aside,
At least for me, Leslie Nielsenis enough to get me through the movie

(17:45):
because he's still funny. Rewatching thismovie. After having just watched this show,
it is readily apparent how much ofthe show Zaz did not like,
did not think was quality, didnot 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 rightwhere he's introducing all these gadgets in the

(18:08):
show, that's just them ripping offthemselves on airplane. It's not like they're
doing anything unique even there. They'rejust 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 thismovie, you might have said, well,
they're doing the airplane thing again.I think this is this weird balancing

(18:32):
act that I think works at times, but then at other times it really
doesn't work because it just kind offeels like it's flailing. Like the scene
where they're in the car and it'sjust a bunch of mugging over and over
for like, it feels like tenminutes. So I know it's not ten
minutes, but it's just a lotof Leslie Nielsen going, which is fine,
if that's what you're into, Butthere's not a lot of comedy to
be mined from just looking at LeslieNielsen making a funny face, even if

(18:56):
that is his nickname. In themovie, when it comes to police Squad,
everybody is clueless. They live inthis very self contained world, right,
and there's not a lot of whatdid he just say? But in
this one it's almost everybody is sayingwhat did he just say? I mean,

(19:17):
Ricardo Montelbond is not in on thejoke. The mayor, Nancy Marshawn,
she's not in on the joke,and it's just like, okay,
well, you have to be inon the joke. Everybody has to,
like you said, deadpan, everybodyhas to be in on that. And
occasionally Ed isn't in on the jokeeither, and it's just it's really difficult

(19:37):
because, Okay, what kind ofworld is this? Like, how did
Frank get to where he is?Unless the entire world is insane? The
world has to be insane in orderfor this to work. But instead half
of its sane, half of itsinsane. And that is where I would
agree with both of you. Itis totally inconsistent because the world of the

(19:59):
TV show is not reality, butthis 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, andI feel like they do a good enough
job of it, But then theyhave something where the characters aren't in on
it, and that is what madethe original show so fun and Airplane for
that matter, I mean, thatmovie's played brutally straight throughout, and this

(20:22):
movie is not, you know,like the oh, you know, I
practice safe sex and it shows themin two giant condoms, Like what movie
is that from? Because it feelslike a completely different kind of movie.
It feels more like a scary Thisfeels like a proto scary movie more than
it does like a true successor toAirplane. And then the joke itself doesn't

(20:44):
even work because later on they saywe 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 intoanother group of villains. They're all drug
dealers. There's this whole heroin dealgoing on. Ricardo Montalbana's Vincent Ludwig shows

(21:06):
up, and then he is alsothis mastermind criminal who has to assassinate the
Queen. And I don't think we'reever really given a reason for him assassinating
the Queen. And I kind ofwould have liked a very ridiculous reason for
him doing that, like she personallymade him angry, or she is blocking

(21:29):
something and he needs to take herout. But the assassination of the queen
doesn't really make any sense. She'sin 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,

(21:51):
because this is I mean it's totalTelephon type of stuff where you haven't
right programmed killers, which is aninteresting 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 gunthat makes you forget things. It flashes

(22:15):
kind of like a photo flash andthen you blank out. Yeah, it
is more men in black. Yeah, you mentioned Ricardo Maltibon. By the
way, it is nice to finallyhave a true actor playing a villain in
this show series Milange. Of allof these things, he is fantastic and
he's wonderful, Yes, And Ilike his whole speech about the orange trees

(22:37):
and all that. And you've gotthe 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 fishwith the pen stuck through it. Yeah,
it happens a while later. Yeah, it's a nice little callback,
one of the few to something thathappens earlier in the film. I mean,
the whole thing of his office gettingcompletely trashed again doesn't necessarily work without

(23:04):
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 funniestscenes in the entire movie. The
amount of physical comedy that Leslie Nielsenis having to do in that scene and
the lands I think, I mean, the sexual ass assault with a concrete

(23:26):
dildo is still one of the greatcinema lines. From the way that he's
approaching her and just going that ishilarious. But to what end? A
lot of this does just kind offeel like vignettes of funny things like,
Yeah, I don't mind comedy setpieces. No, No, I mean

(23:48):
the master stroke of this movie forme is the third act. All of
the stuff at the baseball game thatjust works for me, But the lead
up to that it feels like justso, 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 chaseand the student driver and John Houseman
and all that, but there area lot that just land kind of flat.

(24:11):
And again, like I mean,one of my favorite bits is the
Joe Graffasi scene of him paying offFrank. You know, Frank's like,
oh, maybe this would help youremember her, and you know what would
I tell you? Yeah? Hewas dirty, he was dealing. H
I mean, it's very much Johnny. Yeah, the shoeshine boy, and

(24:32):
I guess that goes on for longeras well, and I'm like, no,
I wanted more of that. Iwanted more of that exchange between them
because that's really funny and the waythat you keep building on that it's a
great joke. Well there's apparently arelationship because he says, oh you again
when Frank comes up to the door, and I was like, well,
what's their history? I want toknow the history here. There's stuff in
the script I think about him askingquestions, Frank asking questions about the foreman's

(24:56):
family, and I'm like, okay, yeah, these two know each other
there. And then he's going tocome back later on directing the Oscars in
two films, so I guess hequits the former job and becomes a director.
Well, speaking of Ray Burke andPapshmir, a character that is a
waste of time in this movie.He comes back in the third movie.
Even now, I haven't seen thethird movie since it was released at theater,

(25:19):
so I'm very curious how he comesback. 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'tremember either, that's how little. There
are three gags from that movie Iremember, and that's it, and one
of them involves Anatokole Smith having apenis, So you know, good good.
I'm not a hundles sure, I'veeven seen that one. To be

(25:41):
honest with you now, as I'mthinking of the movies, I may not
have even seen it. Which ismore offensive ace Ventura or Naked Gun thirty
three and a third Naked Gun becauseI'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 witha penis and then Frank Drebbon going

(26:03):
right because of course, because bythe time we're in the thirty third in
a third movie, it's just allmugging all the time, and to prepare,
prepare yourselves because it is not ifwe're having problems with this movie and
mugging boy who boy, are youguys in for a rough time? You
missed the best part of the statuegag though. The thing that cracked me

(26:26):
up the most when we were watchingat Chris when he's reaching up in his
mouth as wide O yeah and abig smile on the statue's face like Otto
the automatic pilot. Yeah, yes, yes, like Otto exactly. I
was so happy to see Nicholas Worthin here, the guy that plays the
big beefy bad guy who has thefight the very abridged fight in the hot

(26:49):
dog factory, and I'm just like, if you're going to cut out everything,
why are we even here because itjust 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 alot. I mean I've been a

(27:11):
fan of his since I saw himin 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, LawrenceTyerney just in this movie, yeah,
just as the manager of the Angels. Sence Tyrney hanging sure. I believe

(27:33):
they say that a lot of hisstuff 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 cutand I'm like, okay, like they
set up all of those baseball announcersand like they put the button on it
with and Doctor Joyce Brothers returning,right, but there's nothing else to it.

(27:56):
There's no joke there after that,and it's like, Okay, you
just set us up and the JoyceBrothers thing is not enough of a payoff.
You need to take this one morestep, if not two more steps,
you know, those that rule ofthrees that I've been hitting on this
whole time. It's just it's reallynot here for a lot of this to
that point. I mean, canyou imagine how expensive that must have been

(28:17):
to get all those people in thatroom and then have them do nothing.
Yeah, well that's why they onlyshow the two for most of the time.
I think everybody else was probably gone, which, to be fair,
the two that they pick are thefunniest too, because they get about that
is and that yeah, no,everything honestly everything at the Angels Stadium slash

(28:41):
Dodgers Stadium slash Matt Painting Stadium,all of that. Like you said,
Mike, I think that is thepart that works the most. But that's
also because it feels the most likeepisode of the show. It feels the
most like airplane because it's situated inone place, can't go anywhere, and
you're having to figure out all thecreative, fun and interesting ways to get

(29:02):
gags in this one place. Youdon't have the entire city of la and
they really milk that last thirty minutesfor all it's worth. There's all kinds
of gags, something that you mightnot even see coming, like the thing
with the videotron playing all the insanesports bloopers, like they really take it
as far as they can. Andwhy that doesn't extend to the rest of

(29:22):
the movie especially, I would sayabout midway through the first act is beyond
me. I know this is gonnasound terrible, but Priscilla Presley, she's
a fine actress. Her and FrankDrebbin. It adds so little to the
movie other than the one montage scenewhich is funny where they come out of
the come out of the movie theaterlaughing about Platoon, which I think the

(29:45):
original gag was supposed to be Philadelphia, which I think would have Is that
right? Is that? What isthat Philadelphia? After that? Yeah?
Because I know, really I'm tryingto think that. I read somewhere that
they like mentioned they were gonna dosomething else and they ended up going with
Platoon, But I don't think theysaid it in the commentary. It must
have been I read that somewhere,but Platoon was not the original movie.

(30:07):
I think they kind of like dialedit back even Shindler's List, I think,
right, which I think is tooYeah, yeah, that was I
was just that was just me.You know, these are nice Jewish gentlemen
and it is not about to dolist. Yeah, Platoon doesn't really work

(30:30):
as well, I think as maybesomething 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 cancerand leaves their kids mother, you
know, something like that, Goask Alice or something like that. Yeah,

(30:51):
or I don't know. The colorpurple would have been really inappropriates Cramer.
Yeah, Solo would have been waytoo ard for the audience seeing this.
If the audience can't handle spoken wordjokes, they're not going to handle
Solo or one hundred and twenty Daysa slum. No, that would be
funny if that's they were watching.When I used to go see Rocky Horror

(31:15):
Picture Show at the fairly in theateraround here, somebody put together a little
clip reel that they would show beforethe movie. They had clips of the
naked gun. So the line aboutnice beaver thanks, I just had it
stuffed that and the how hot andwet Do you like It? Those were
part of that, and so thoseare my favorite parts of this movie because

(31:37):
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, likewhen he talks about his gun going off
too early and how he thinks aboutbaseball. Now, like that stuff really
works for me. It's the beaverYoka rip from Top Secret? Am I

(32:02):
misremembering that? I don't remember abeaver 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 verygood joke. I don't think Priscilla Presley
needed to be in the rest ofthe movie. I just she doesn't add

(32:22):
much, unfortunately, and that's nother fault. It's the script does gives
her nothing to do. Stand aroundand 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 lotof times, and especially at the end
when it's like, oh, Ioverheard Ludwig He's going to kill the queen.

(32:45):
It's in the seventh inning stretch atthe baseball game today, and it's
like, wow, okay, mighthave been good to see that scene or
something. There might have been sometension there, you know, it might
have been Pepper Potts trying to getthe files off of Obadi Stains computer or
something. But no, she justwalks in, Oh I heard this.

(33:05):
It's like, all right, great, which is the only time I think
that. We're in that bullpen atthe police squad, which saw every single
episode of the TV show, Butwe do get one of my favorite live
well that but also the when Isee six men in a park staff somewhere
to death. I shoot the bastards. That was so good, Yeah,

(33:29):
such a great dirty Harriet roof rightthere. Well that I guess that's the
scene before that. Then in thewhen they're in the police squad and goes,
oh, the missing evidence in thekillendar game. Oh, I guess
it really was innocent Frank. Hewent to the Chair two years ago.
Those gags are really funny. Honestly, it's it's when the movie feels like

(33:51):
it has to pander. Is thatis that the right word? It wants
to make sense? You know itreally? I mean, gosh, we're
talking about this baseball scene. Thebaseball scene I think starts at exactly night
or sixty minutes into this. Imean, there's so like Act one is
thirty minutes, Act two is thirtyminutes, Act three is thirty minutes,
and that's that. We're gone,Wow, okay, you guys, like

(34:15):
when they're talking about how much stuffthey had to cut, I'm just like,
you're so strict with this time framein here that I'm amazing anything lasted.
This movie's eighty five minutes, noteven a full ninety. That's wild.
And then the end credits. Isat through those end credits waiting for
like the joke things other than likeRobert k Weiss's divorce attorney. I wasn't

(34:37):
really seeing anything. I'm like,Okay, I'm waiting for like Warren peace
By full story, like some ofthose 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 waslike safest corner of the building is
like the south corners. You're right, yeah, where to go? Like
a tornado? Yeah, there's likethat. It wasn't this one, But

(35:00):
in one of these Zaz movies theyhave like a recipe for brownies? Was
that airplane? It might have been? Where was that hot shots? One
of them has like a full onjust like brup recipe in the credit role.
The other thing that I really laughat all the time is Mark Holton
aka Francis from Pewe's Big Adventure.When he stands up and recognizes the umpire

(35:22):
as Enrico Palazzo. That's some funnyshit to me. It's Enrico Palazzo.
I mean, all of that withhim 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 ofitself hilarious, which I thought was a

(35:43):
riff on Rosanne when she sang,but I think that actually came after.
Do you guys remember that when Roseannebar sang the national anthem? It was
terrible? Yeah, oh man,And then she grabbed her crotch afterwards.
I was nineteen ninety, that's whatit was. Two years she was riffing
on this though, because they dothat whole routine with the grabbing and the

(36:04):
spitting and the yeah, all theother ticks that baseball players have, all
the players wives. I was reallyhelping for more with them, and it
was just they spit. I'm like, oh, okay, I was waiting
for these are the players wives andthese are the players mistresses, right,
Yeah, that's what I thought thegag was too. And then now it's

(36:24):
just this And like you say,with the announcers, I wonder how many
more times they were commenting on whatwas happening on the screen that got cut.
And well, if they shot anotherhour and a half of a movie,
ye, yeah, they shot.I mean again, this movie is
not even a full hour. AndI mean, but I'm sure it is,
Like I'm sure it's at least anhour. I don't know why they

(36:47):
cut so much of the movie out, because the second act feels very truncated.
It really does, like the firstact goes on for quite some time,
and the second act ends with likeyou, Priscilla Presley is going and
we have to get to the stadiumsomehow, let me tell you why,
And it's like, oh my god, like show, don't tell it's a

(37:07):
movie, a TV show or abook. I guess I was glad that
they actually called themselves out too onthe commentary where it was because they set
up the joke so much and itnever pays off, which is the cutting
of the cake and giving the eyeballpiece to someone, and I'm just I
didn't get that. Yeah, Iwas like waiting for that and it never

(37:30):
materializes. And then I was justlike 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 gagsother than Leslie Nielsen doing the whole mugging
thing. And one of the Ithink one of the more inspired gags are

(37:50):
the one that I it's one ofthe few that sticks out to me from
the movie, at least just rightoff top of my head, is the
thing where Ed is having his wallettaken out of his pocket by rank Unknowingly
anyone else have a picture of thisman's wife like that? That's like the
only gag in that entire like fiveminute scene. What was the I get
supposed to be? I missed iteven on the commentary. They said it

(38:14):
on the commentary, they were like, we cut into the eye, but
they never like went anything. Whyhow is that funny? I think it
was supposed to be just like Ithink the Queen gets the piece with a
big old eyeball right in the lookingat her, which would be a little
disconcerting, especially because it's her ownface on there. That actress who just
looks like the queen. And that'sthat was her entire career, That poor

(38:35):
things. She never even gets aline. I don't think. No,
but but but but once she opensher 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 Queena Litz. I mean that's a good
gig man, you know. Yeah, she looks just like her. She
retired in twenty fourteen. She's ninetyfive, Jeanette Charles still kicking around.

(38:59):
She might outlived the Queen. Yeah, National Lampoon's European Vacation. That's where
I remember her from playing, wouldn'tyou guess it, Queen Elizabeth, that's
funny. I want to take adinghy. How have we not talked about
oh Ja Sipson. Oh boy,Well, because he's barely in the movie.

(39:22):
Yeah, that was funny. Ididn'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 haveor whatever. And I felt bad for

(39:45):
the original nor Burke. I'm justlike 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 thatlet's take a cruise, take a cruise

(40:05):
like last year he was talking aboutthe boat. Oh all right, I
see that now. And of courseyour 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 oncewe get into the scene where he's in
the car, which on Houseman andstuff. That's kind of where the movie

(40:27):
slows for twenty minutes right until thescene where they're back at the stadium,
and it just slows the movie toa crawl. And I really hadn't noticed
it the first time I watched thismovie critically, which would have been a
couple of years ago. But nowit'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 withthem in the second act. And it

(40:47):
doesn't work, and news flash spoilers, Priscilla Presley comes back for not just
the second one, but also thethird one, so prepare yourselves for that.
Hey. But yeah, it's likethey use the romance as a breather.
All right, I understand why you'redoing this, and I understand that

(41:09):
it's important that Frank fine love.I guess it's really not that necessary.
That wasn't part of the equation ofthe original show, so I don't know
why they made it part of theequation of the movies. You should just
have a male roommate like he doesin the Yeah, first episode of Police
Squad, I have a call backto that, just have him leaving the
apartment, right, Frank. Ina lot of ways, it's not as

(41:35):
consistent as that first episode of theshow was right, which is a problem,
isn't it. And it's not asconsistent as something like Airplane for Me,
where that takes a lot of turnsvia flashback, where you get the
whole bar scene, you get thegoing to Africa and selling temperware, a

(41:55):
scene where you can get him inthe mental hall. Middle scenes. They're
there for gags, but they workin the story because it's not taking place
on the plane. It's not absurdthings 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'ttake those wild left turns unless they somehow

(42:20):
make sense to the plot. Andlike I said early on in one of
the episodes, that's usually where comedieslose it for me, is when the
plot takes over. Yeah, theyare 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 offthe wall humor from out of left field

(42:42):
is what And I again, Ihaven't seen it in a long time,
but I feel that that's what TopSecret does a little bit better. Is
the off the wall soldier falling offof a turret and cracking like he's porcelain
or something. Right. That's surrealthat it doesn't make any sense, but
it's funny because of that, Andfor me, that kind of strikes to

(43:02):
what you both have really been talkingabout, which is, what are you
inspired by here? What are youparody cop movies? Because not really,
it's not a parody of cop stuffanymore. That is the thing that I
noticed rewatching at this time, isit really feels like they just said,
Okay, we've got a funny characterwith Frank Drebin, who is a funny

(43:23):
character, but it's funny because it'sLeslie Nielsen. Okay, so we'll give
him an interesting plot. I don'teven 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 itused to. It just doesn't. And
it's really strange because even in thescript it's Chicago still all through the script.

(43:45):
I don't know if it's just becausethey got the LA baseball team,
but I don't think so. Ithink that they were going to do La
no matter what. Well, theywanted 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. Ijust don't know why. Other than passing
those titty things on the highway,it really has no daring to be set

(44:09):
there. No, everywhere I look, I see reminders of her. Right,
that's a real thing. You cansee those right right, mister Bagley.
I've driven by him numerous times onthe way to San Diego, Cuba's
kind of missing the fake backdrops behindthem when they're driving. The use of
real locations instead of sets felt.I found myself missing this set bound show.

(44:34):
Yeah, it really feels like somethingelse entirely. It doesn't feel like
Naked Gun. It feels like theFurthering Adventures of Frank Dreban. Naked Gun
is a movie title created for thisfilm. Yes, the show was called
Police Squad, right, So thefucking idea that they just couldn't make something

(44:55):
else with the Frank Drebin character isa 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 isanother thing entirely. I just don't know
why they wanted to signal that theywere going to be doing more Police Squad
stuff when it should have just beenits own thing. I mean, at
this point, it's it's not reallyFrank Drebin. It's just like Leslie Dielson,

(45:17):
right, Like it's you're calling Lesliefor all I care in the movie.
Really, maybe it's just because it'san 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 Franked al Nordberg A'll still be there,
but bring it up to a modernperspective, I guess, not have that

(45:42):
dated fifties slash early sixties cop show. Look, it's which is fine,
I mean, it's I think theproblem for me is watching them so close
together, even though by the endof Police Squad it was getting a little
sketchy. I sort of miss eventhe sixth episode of Police Squad versus this,
where we're still doing a lot ofliteralisms, we're still doing a lot

(46:07):
of visual puns, we're still doingcigarette Pat's missing from this. I guess
it comes back, maybe in oneof the other movies. But now that
it's not there, even though buggedme in every episode, now that it's
missing, I want that cigarette gagback. We've mentioned a couple of gags
pulled directly from the show, withlike al with the banana, the police

(46:30):
officer talking into his bullhorn at twopeople, which is directly from the show,
which doesn't make sense when you haveboth that gag and the police disperse.
There's nothing to see here with thefireworks factory behind them, and pick
one, it's not both. Plusit goes by too fast you barely even

(46:51):
see the guy. I missed itwhen 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 lotlonger on the TV show, a
little more obvious joke, And maybethat was part of their plan, was
to have these callbacks just be sortof brief and unobtrusive and not like,

(47:12):
hey, remember that show we didthat 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 everythingnow 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 withthat explosion and those airbags that look like

(47:37):
but sticking out of the car.Yeah. I have a feeling that's another
one of those instances where the explosionwas a little bit bigger than they anticipated
because it's pretty massive. They alsodo 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 samewoman. Yeah, other Asian lady.

(48:00):
I totally yeah, I agree.You mentioned the Cuban line, you know,
no Dutch Irish on my mother's sideor whatever. That's one of my
favorite bits. That humor is missingthrough of this film. The straight act
humor is just not there. FrankRaban is not the straight man anymore,
No, which is a problem forthis character. No, he's getting more

(48:22):
into mister Magoo territory at times,and it's just like he wanders through the
world and things explode around him andit 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 completelyunnecessary. The joke is that it's a
teen driver. He doesn't need torespond to the joke. Well, it's

(48:44):
a thirty five year old teen driver, right with John Houseman as her Instructor's
definitely gently extend your arm, extendyour middle finger. I love that truck
driver's look on this face. Talkabout mugging, but it works for him

(49:06):
because he's not he's not the straightman. 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 bythis movie as it is still a favorite
comedy of mine, but it isseverely diminished due to the show in positive
and negative ways. I mean,to see the issues with a movie you

(49:28):
really like, I think is notnecessarily a bad thing to kind of make,
you know, I'm making amends withthere's problems with the movie, but
it does also detract for my abilityto enjoy this movie as well, which
is an unintended byproduct of watching PoliceSquad and then sitting down to watch this.
So I would suggest people not sitdown and watch Police Squad and then
run out and watch Naked Gun becauseyou're not going to enjoy the movie as

(49:52):
much. Maybe you'll like it more, maybe you won't like the show.
But I think the show. Ithink what's kind of crazy is watching the
movie and watching the show. Theshow did have more legs, It really
did. There was more to givewith the show. They just never got
to that point the movies. Thisis the peak which should not inspire joy.
And either one of you, neitherone of you seem to like this

(50:15):
a whole whole lot. It's justa different brand of comedy then Police Squad.
And when I walk into this andI'm expecting a top secret and airplane
a police squad from the files ofPolice Squad, right, and we veer
off into this other territory, andI'm just not a fan of that territory
that much. You know. Yeah, I mentioned the imitators come off where

(50:38):
they really are much more of atopical type of thing, where it's just
like, hey, this happened twoweeks ago, and we're going to put
in this movie. I'm starting toget a little bit of that flavor here,
not a lot, but a littlebit. I mean, I guess
the world leaders at the beginning alittle bit of that, you know,

(50:59):
is very much a specific time andplace there's a lot more movie references in
this one than we previously had inthe show. And yes, of course
an airplane, we get the twobig you know, Saturday Night Fever,
we get Jaws in there, andof course the whole thing is based off
of Zero Hour, but Zero Hour, you know, thirty years old at

(51:22):
that point or whatever it was,and it's just like, okay, I'm
not really you know, and ofcourse 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 inthe title, but it's not picking
up like one particular film and sayingwe're going to hit every single beat and

(51:42):
just do this like we did before. Instead, we're going to create this
whole crazy plot that really doesn't playinto 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 stuffall stuck together, but it works in
the way that it's stuck together,works in a Elvis Goes to Berlin type

(52:05):
of way that this one just doesn'tnecessarily hold together that well for me,
and I think as we go alonginto 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 SaddamHussein stuff, and it's just like
that was right in the news,you know, we were the Gulf War

(52:29):
was like right then, you know. So it's not like we're missing a
beat here with this stuff. Andthat for me is always the issue with
another show. You and I doDreams for Sale. We talked about the
New Twilight Zone and the New TwilightZone was too topical for its own good.
And yeah, topicality has a placein a moment. There are shows
that can work by being hyper topical, but these kinds of comedies don't work

(52:53):
that way. They need to bejust topical enough but also timeless enough that
I can watch it in twenty twentytwo and still get something out of it.
This movie does on second, third, fourth, however many times I've
seen it. Now, appraisal reappraisalhave weirdly a lot of topical humor that

(53:13):
doesn't land like the opening of themovie. If you watch this movie today,
you might not know who half thosepeople are. Yeah, which is
not a real problem, but itkind of is. Yeah, some of
the jokes won't really land. Didyou watch this with your daughter, Mark,
No, I had planned to yesterday, and we celebrated my mom's birthday

(53:36):
and had all this other shit goingon. She had a bunch of homework.
She wouldn't find it funny. Ihonestly don't think this would go over
as well as Airplane. I wouldbe 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'mnot a good indicator of what the quality

(53:57):
of this movie anymore. Like Andagain, like, you can say what
you want about it being twenty twentytwo and when this movie came out,
but we can't go back to nineteeneighty eight and watch this movie in a
vacuum. We have to watch thismovie now. And even if I want
to turn my brain off to allthe influences that have come since and the
things that have come out since thismovie came out, there are parts of
this movie that just don't work anymorefor me, and that's unfortunate. I'm

(54:21):
not sure that they ever worked forme 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, youdon'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 avery well put together movie from a storytelling
standpoint. I'll say this, Ithink, and I could be wrong.

(54:45):
I mean, I still plan onwatching because we actually really only watched Airplane
in the first two episodes of PoliceSquad together, and then the weekends that
I planned on watching these, shewas busy or I had to wait too
long to do it. I stillplan on watching most of this stuff with
her. But if I were tobet, I think the one that we
would go back to watch again inthe future would be Airplane and maybe some

(55:10):
of the Police Squad episodes, like, Hey, let's watch Airplane for a
kind of like me with the youngFrankenstein. That's one that I'll just watch.
If I catch it, I'll watchit. I'll sit with it no
matter where I catch it. WhenI catch it, I'll usually finish it
off. I sort of feel thatway about Airplane Now where that works for

(55:30):
me, if from any point inthe 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 dependon where it was in the movie.
Yeah, if we started at thatthird 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 thinkabout the second one. I like parts

(55:52):
of the second one a lot.Robert Goulay is a lot of fun in
the second one. It has alot of really interesting character actors, not
Anthony Zerba, but the other gentlemanwith an interesting face who has a mustache,
he gets a hose jammed in hismouth in the second one. Anthony
James. Yeah, Anthony James isin it. Richard Griffiths is in it,
who I'm a huge fan of.I think the romance stuff is handled

(56:15):
better because Robert Goulay plays the suitorto Priscilla Presley, so there's kind of
a there's none of that in thismovie. There's a little bit of it,
But I think in the next moviethey actually do something with it.
But I'm concerned now when we watchit because it's gonna be a lot of
mugging. Just never know, true, I don't know. But the movie

(56:37):
does open with George W. BushGeorge H. W. Bush, excuse
me. So it is similar tothis movie, kind of just all over
the place. There's a lot ofstuff in this movie I like. I
like the escalation of the escaping doctorgoing through the gas tank and then the
missile carrier and then into the fireworksfactory, the pillow gag, which is

(57:02):
a call back to police squad donea little differently like that. We got
our hop Scotch as he's walking throughthe city, Chris finally, finally,
yeah, finally the hop Scotch.Was so glad for that. The Peel
a Way suit. I always rememberthat fondly. One thing I don't get,
though, and I know they talkabout it in the commentary, but

(57:23):
that was when it was like wayout of sync and they were referencing the
red lips and all that, andwe hadn't even gotten to it. I
don't get the pistachio gag, otherthan I guess it's funny that they have
red lips and the door with allthe shells. Yeah, I mean the
vehicle shells, but sitting there,yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

(57:45):
While I was watching it, Iwas just like, why are their lips
red? And then finally, Ithink 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 stillpostachio is that way anymore, do
they? Right? Oddly enough,Robert Goulay was a pistachio spokesman for a
little while there, or at leasthe was in one of those Emerald Nuts

(58:07):
commercials. Oh oh my god,those are good commercials. They were.
I haven't thought of that was ina long time. Every day, when
you're not looking, Robert Couley sneaksinto your office and tries to steal your
Emerald nuts. They should have justsaid steal your nuts, but yeah,
what can you do? And thenthe third movie has Fred Ward in it,

(58:28):
so we've got Robert Gouley and FredWard 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 atcertain things and not great at others.

(58:52):
I think they're good at taking somebodyelse's framework and doing something funny with
it, but I'm not sure howgood they are at whole cloth creating something
original. Because this is what wegot. This is the plot line that
we get, which is this Eventhe plot line of the second movie makes
more sense in the plot of thismovie. The plot of the third movie
is complete nonsense. But the plotof the second movie makes more sense than

(59:15):
this one does. I mean?And we should not even be talking about
plot at all, right, Ishouldn't be asking the questions what is Ludwig
up to? And how does thequeen play into this? And how does
the heroin trade? And yeah,yeah, yeah, I shouldn't be worried
about that stuff at all. Ifigured I just missed that. Yeah,
I'm like, oh, I missedthe reason why you're handing us so many

(59:37):
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 thatwere 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 shouldhave just been him selling heroin and Frank

(01:00:00):
has to figure that out. Andyou know what, that alone may have
been enough clearing Nordberg's name. Imean, that's essentially an episode of the
show. So maybe they were like, well, we can't have it be
this small scale. Again, theydidn't say any of this, but I
would go out on a limb towager that they probably thought, well,
we can't have it be the smallscales conflict. If it's a motion picture,

(01:00:23):
we have to have this kind ofworld involved conflict of the Queen is
coming and she's going to get assassinatedto what end? Why? Who cares?
I mean, it gets us tothe stadium at the end with the
Enrico Palazzo stuff, so I'm gladthat it's in there. But the stuff
with Queen Elizabeth feels really forced intothe movie. It really does, even

(01:00:45):
if a lot of like the lastsurrounding setting that up are pretty good.
It is a James Bond movie slappedonto a police movie. Watching it both
these times and realizing not only isOja, not really in the movie very
much, but that he suffers abusebasically in every scene was I'm a nice

(01:01:07):
little good there. I was okaywith that. Him getting heated into the
oblivion at the end of the movieis 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 shoothim out of there coming out of the

(01:01:28):
seat, which I don't even mindbecause 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 likeRicardo mount to the bond, taking
the Priscilla Presley Poppet up the stairsand stuff, and I'm just like,
okay that it really makes no sense, but it's funny because it yeah,

(01:01:50):
and it doesn't need to be Itdoesn't need to be explained or no,
I ain't it out. That's thestuff that's funny to me. Why oh,
I don't you know? Because whydoes he get smashed into the ground
and then forced into the ground andthen he's literally part of the ground at
the end of right, Like whywho cares? Don't explain it? Make
me laugh. It's funny Chris,because I said, oh, you know

(01:02:10):
they still that in Austin Powers lateron right, and then as the marching
band went over him, I waslike, oh, that's a riff on
Animal House, not realizing that theband is playing Louie Louis as they're walking
over him until I watched it todayand I was like, oh, well,
yes, it is most definitely ariff on Animal House. Kevin Bacon's
character. Yeah, you're right,Kevin Bacon gets flattened in a movie where

(01:02:40):
that's like the only time something likethat happens in Animal House, right,
where somebody gets actually like flattened.Yeah, and that's fine. Yeah,
yeah, I was really okay withthat. I wonder what the Liam Neeson
movie it's groomed to be like watchingthis movie, are you gonna have to

(01:03:00):
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 aboutthose, but they're remaking Naked Gun or
making a movie in the vein ofthe original movie. What is that?
What do we think that is?Like? What does that look like?

(01:03:21):
In twenty twenty two? How doyou make people laugh with this kind of
character in twenty twenty two, isit absurd comedy? It's not. I
don't think it's literalism. I'm notsure anybody would find that funny. But
I just wonder, like, ifthis movie kind of doesn't work now in
twenty twenty two, and again varyingdegrees of it working when it came out,
what can they bring to this characterand this setup in twenty twenty two,

(01:03:45):
Like what is that? Yeah,if they were worried about an international
the international audience in nineteen eighty eightnot 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'tknow, they should just redo three of
the stories from the original show.That would be awesome, Just totally go

(01:04:10):
back to the original and people wouldbe 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 bea cop movie, like play it straight,
just play it straight, but injectthe comedy like they did with Airplane.
Make how ridiculous it is on thephase of it. What we're laughing

(01:04:30):
at, not Liam Neeson going overand 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'sall 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 GeorgeFloyd thing. I was just like,

(01:04:51):
oh no, we can't have copsbeing heroic right now. Yeah, I
don't blame you. That's the otherquestion that I have is like, is
a cop comedy like this They're notgoing 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 Idon't know. I don't know if Naked
Gun needs to come back. Let'sjust put it that way. It will

(01:05:14):
be interesting to see what they drawfrom 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 whatyou're telling me right now. So I
need to think about this for alittle bit as to how that even works.
I mean, we know Liam Neesoncould do comedy right, these kinds

(01:05:36):
of movies don't come out anymore,Like nobody is going into the theaters to
see Scary Movie seven, Like thattrain 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. Thatwas like the late two thousands,
early tens. That's not a thingnow. So like this will come out

(01:05:58):
on like a streaming platform like Peacaor something or Paramount Plus and you know
what that's that Like, I don'teven see it being an actual, like
in theater movie. I don't I'mjust 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 makingthose. Yeah, I mean that's or

(01:06:19):
like CSI or something again, likeor the Blacklist. Right, Like this
is so narrowly defined, like eitherthey narrowly defined it off of one thing,
or they're going to run into theproblem of all these other movies where
it's like I'm drawing from eight milliondifferent things and it doesn't really gel together
as one cohesive idea. I don'tknow it'll be interesting. Well, we

(01:06:42):
will talk more about the Naked Guntwenty two and a second, No,
no Gun two and a half,two and a half, two and a
half. Yeah, Okay, we'llbe talking about that one next week when
we come back on from the filesof Police Squad. Until then, Chris,
where can people hear more of us? Three people? You can hear

(01:07:04):
more of us three people over atweirding Way Media, a podcast network that
well, we're all a part ofMark Begley's Wake Up Heavy, Mike White's
The Projection Booth, and my TheCulture Cast, along with this show and
plenty of other shows over at Weirdingwaymediadot com. And you know what,
if you can find it there,should you really be listening to it?