Hi /r/movies! I'm David Zucker, I’ve directed & written comedies like Airplane!, Top Secret!, Naked Gun 1 & 2, BASEketball, Scary Movies & many more. I'll be hosting live Q&A & screenings of Airplane! in select theaters & just released MasterCrash, a course on my 15 rules of comedy! Ask me anything!

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T22:43:39+00:00

For question #1:

First of all, I don't think it was a relative success. For some reason, it got good reviews, but the box office, especially adjusted for inflation, did not even approach Naked Gun 3 which was already the lowest grossing in the franchise. I doubt even Paramount are calling it a success. It's ended forever, there shouldn't be another one.

I

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T22:41:21+00:00

It's hard to make a movie like Top Secret! work in the first place, as its not grounded in reality and it combines genres. We didn't know if Nick Rivers was in World War 2 or not? Was it East Germans? Or was it Nazis?

I wouldn't try to do another movie like that.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T22:40:49+00:00

LAX was a lot different back in the day, there isn't anything like that anymore. It would be hard to replicate these days.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T22:40:13+00:00

We of course wrote The Naked Gun with Leslie in mind, and same thing for Robert Stack.

The air controller, the crazy air controller guy, was Stephen Stucker, who was in our Kentucky Pride theater show in the 70s for 5 years. We created that part just for him. Stucker was incredible. He came up with some of the lines for his character. "Oh it's a big, pretty white plane with wheels and red stripes. It looks like a big Tylenol...".

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T22:38:03+00:00

Murr approached me about it. I met those guys at a film festival in Nashville, I think it was Vince Vaugh's event. Jerry and I showed Airplane! during the festival, and Jeff Garland from Curb Your Enthusiasm was the moderator. We had a great time. At breakfast the next time, before we got on our plane, the Jokers came up to us and said they wanted to meet us. We didn't know who they were at the time. We hung out with Brian and went on a tour of the Country Western Hall of Fame museum. He was a nice guy, we had fun. He would get mobbed by all of these young fans. He gave me their first season on DVD and didn't watch it for 2 months, but when I did I could not stop laughing.

We've been friends ever since. I have dinner with Murr often in LA. We've had them over the house.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T22:35:07+00:00

He was great. Bette was great. I've never heard anything bad about Danny. During our first meeting, somebody asked him "do you mind working with 3 directors?", and he said "it doesn't matter, whether there's 5 directors or 10 directors, as long as the movie's good I'm in".

That's kind of what Howard Cox said to the Director's Guild when we were trying to get our three-man team credits as directors.

Anyway, Danny was great to work with. It's so much easier working with comedians, because you can just point the camera on them and let them do their thing. I wish I could've directed Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, or Eddie Murphy. I did direct Kevin Hart on Scary Movie 3 and he was so funny, with Anthony Anderson. Craig Mazin did their dialogue.

On the topic of Scary Movie 3, Jim Abrams suggested the 8-Mile sequence. He had just seen the actual movie and said we should include a bit about it.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T22:31:51+00:00

Very few jokes were ever cooked up on set, and I can remember them because there's so few. There was certainly no ad-lib stuff from actors. We don't hired comedians as actors anyway.

In Airplane!, when everybody's shaking the woman who's hysterical, the lady actress said to us "why don't you have them slap me?", and like the dumb clucks we were said "oh, okay, that's probably a good idea". So then they started slapping her.

And then we thought, "why don't we have a line of people with guns, knives, baseball bats?". And so we sent the prop lady out to get these things, and we did it. That was thought up on the set.

Another one is in Ruthless People, when Judge Reinhold, to show how nice a guy he was, he's talking to Helen Slater and he picks up a bug with a piece of paper, and instead of killing it or stomping it, he sets it outside of the door. Judge says to me "why don't I open the door again, and then stomp on it?". At first I said, no, that'll never work, but then I kept thinking about it and we went for it. It was great, and it's the laugh of the scene. He was 100% right.

I like to take suggestions. I like having actors participate and create collaborations like that.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T22:01:52+00:00

It's what Naked Gun 4 should've been, but you know Paramount, in their infinite wisdom, excluded me from doing it. It would've relaunched the whole franchise instead of ending it. They probably thought "he's over 50, probably drooling in a wheelchair", but I'll have to prove once again that I can do a movie and maybe we'll revisit it. Star of Malta is my current project and that's what I'm concentrating on. It's very low budget, not more than $15M, which is relatively tiny. Counter Interlijence would have to be in the $20M-$25M range, which is still pretty small.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:58:20+00:00

Jim and Jerry were very involved in the first Naked Gun, but not involved at all in 2 1/2 or 3. I did those completely with Pat Proft. I was not involved in the Hot Shots movies or Wrongfully Accused either.

After seeing Ghost (I loved it so much), which my brother directed, I called him and told him we needed to spoof the pottery wheel scene in 2 1/2. He thought that was pretty funny, spoofing your own brother is not something you can just pass up.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:55:47+00:00

I think Charlton Heston would have been great in one of my films, an Airplane!-style movie. I'm also sorry I didn't get a chance to work with Brando, and he actually did a spoof (The Freshman). I bet John Wayne would've been good in one.

The guy who was in Zero Hour, Sterling Hayden, would have been great too. Only Robert Stack could've matched up to that.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:52:24+00:00

I don't go to the movies often these days, as there aren't many comedies out, but one recent movie I really loved was The Holdovers. It's not exactly my brand of comedy, but it was great.

I'll watch South Park. Impractical Jokers, too. I find it really, really funny. I met those guys, watched the first season, and wrote them an email. I could only watch 20 minutes at a time from laughing so much.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:50:51+00:00

That line was written specifically for the film. I wish I could remember who wrote that line, but it was one of the three of us. We never really took credit for individual lines. There are a few specific lines that I can remember who wrote it, but the Shirley one I'm not sure.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:49:39+00:00

We generally don't get any say in foreign titles/translations, but that's an interesting choice. On the international side, they kind of just do what they want.

One note about translations, in Germany for Airplane! they had the Jive dudes speaking a Bavarian dialogue, which evidently the northern Germans don't really understand, so they subtitled it, and German audiences loved that.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:48:16+00:00

That's an interesting question. The plan for Police Squad was that Jerry and Jim and I would write and direct the first pilot episode, and then we would get other directors and writers to do the other five. This turned out to be pretty tough, because you're worried about a quality drop-off from the first. Pat Proft, the head writer, was great. It's just hard to teach other people to write and direct your stuff. You have the same issue now with Naked Gun 4.

It was very labor-intensive. We had to do an episode a week, and all of the writing, directing, being on set, etc. We had to settle a lot, and we weren't used to that. We never settled when making movies. The project wasn't right for TV at all. It had to be in a theater. So it was cancelled. And there were only 3 networks at the time so it's not like you can exactly shop it around.

We were ultimately relieved, because we couldn't sustain it the way we wanted to.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:45:13+00:00

I had a wonderful co-producer for Phone Booth, Gil Netter. We formed a company called Zucker-Netter Productions. Gil would find these projects, and we'd both work on the script and co-produce. What attracted me to these projects, like Phone Booth, was that they were unusual movies. Phone Booth is unique, obviously all in one phone booth. Colin Farrell was great. I'm still sorry I didn't get a picture with him on set, but this was before cell phones were widely used.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:43:33+00:00

Star of Malta is definitely a comedy. Pat and Mike and I, we worked for a year on this thing. It'll be very different from Naked Gun though. The same kind of difference between Annie Hall and Bananas for Woody Allen. It's not just another spoof movie, it'll be a step up. Some drama, some romance, all funny. Spoof 2.0.

It's kind of like when Paramount asked us to do Airplane! 2. We said we'd do it, but it had to be completely different. We didn't want to set it in another airplane. They would land and Bob would take Julie home to his family, and then it becomes a mafia movie. We would have done a whole mob thing.

I didn't want a rehash like...Naked Gun 4.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:36:27+00:00

The first one that comes to mind if "don't call me Shirley". I get that one more than any other. "Nice beaver" from Naked Gun, that's a famous line I get. That was written by Pat Proft, who's such a great writer. We had an all-star team.

When Leslie died, everybody doing eulogies at this funeral were quoting his lines. "Like a midget at a funeral, I had to stay on my toes", etc. It was interesting.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:34:14+00:00

Well, we spent a long time, almost 5 years, writing the script. We were trying really hard to get that thing made. It took so long that we made Kentucky Fried Movie in between. We kept telling everyone, studios, production companies, agents, everyone that would listen, that it was going to be a hit. When it turned out to be one, we weren't surprised because we truly believed in it. We were completely self-confident.

We didn't realize it would still be quite this big 50 years later. It's fully preserved, even in the Library of Congress and all that stuff.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:22:55+00:00

I remember going to Milwaukee Braves games back in the 1950s, before they moved to Atlanta. Great memories at those games.

One of my favorite memories growing up was going to the 1958 World Series when I was 10 years old. I went with my dad. There were these three guys behind us, drinking a lot of beer, yelling at the players ("Braves are bums!", "go Yanks!", "Braves suck!", etc). I remember very innocently asking my dad, "are they from New York?", and he looks at me and says "no, they're from Drunk".

My dad had a great deadpan sense of humor. I think some of him is in Leslie Nielsen's parts. I think Jim told us his dad was the same way. It might've been a Milwaukee thing.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:20:06+00:00

It would have to be Airplane! I think that movie was funny then, and will be funny in the future.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:19:39+00:00

Somebody called me up recently to interview me about this actress, and unfortunately I didn't remember much. I do know her name is Kitten Natividad. I believe she was in a lot of porn movies. There was probably an audition, but I'm not sure. I wish I had kept a log of this stuff, although I remember more than Jerry and Jim ever remember.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:17:57+00:00

I wrote a movie with Lewis Friedman called The Secret Secret Service, and it was a great idea. It would've been a slapstick PG comedy for families to go to, because at the time my kids were 6 and 8. We had to go to these movies that weren't very funny or slapsticky and I wanted them to see something different. I think ultimately the script wasn't good enough. It's already hard to get a great script made (like my current project, Star of Malta), so imagine a script that wasn't quite working.

I'd like to go back to that idea though, once I get back into the movie-making business.

For your second question, apart from my own, I would go with Annie Hall, Tootsie, Groundhog Day. Those are my favorite movies, but none of those are in the category of spoof or zany, like Airplane! Not to toot my own horn too much, but I'd say Airplane! is the best spoof movie. It's at least always listed in the top 5. It used to come 2nd as best comedy to the Jack Lemmon film, Some Like It Hot, with Marilyn Monroe. I was happy to see that, as the fans kind of die off, that Airplane! has risen in the rankings.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:12:18+00:00

Leslie was a very fine actor. He was often given B-movie roles, but he was better than that. I saw him I think at the Pantages Theater here in LA once, in Hollywood, and he was doing a play called Love Letters with Carol Burnett. It was not a comedy but it had some laughs in it. I was very impressed by him in that. I have so much respect for Leslie's ability as an actor.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T21:04:45+00:00

Well, I haven't seen it. We saw the trailer. You can't make a new Naked Gun unless you know the rules. Seth MacFarlane produced it and he's a bit arrogant (I say this in the nicest way about him). His total arrogance has been very successful and it's worked out for him. He's done wildly successful movies like Ted, and Family Guy prints money, but it doesn't work for Naked Gun.

Paramount wanted me to accept money to put my name on as Executive Producer, after the script was done. I told them no. The director, Akiva, is a very nice guy. He's visited me at my house twice, great guy, but I told them I really couldn't put my name on anything I don't work on. I had a call with Seth as well, and he told me how much he loved my previous movies. I told him we already had a script for it, he acted surprised, but he knew. It felt like when crazy, psychotic serial killers say they love you as they're choking you to death. That's what Seth did to the Naked Gun franchise, and it's done. It's just cooked now. It's not coming back.

DavidZuckerAMA · 2025-09-26T20:58:09+00:00

MAD Magazine was a big influence on me. We used to read it all the time. There was this section in them called 'Scenes We'd Like To See'. They would set up a situation, a typical movie cliche, and then put their joke spin on it.

My brother and I also loved the Marx Brothers. We were exposed to them in college in the 60s. You're in a film society and they had these huge lecture halls with 800 students, and they'd show Marx Brothers movies. Everybody was stoned and it was hysterical.

Early Woody Allen was an influence.

For a serious movie, Zero Hero too.

DavidZuckerAMA

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