“The first Naked Gun is a perfect movie, and Leslie Nielsen is irreplaceable,” director Akiva Schaffer acknowledges. “He is his own thing, and anybody trying to do him is going to fail, even if they’re the funniest person on Earth.”
Best known as one-third of the SNL Digital Short-pioneering comedy troupe the Lonely Island and the director of films Hot Rod and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Schaffer is accustomed to high-density joke formats. The Naked Gun, however, requires a PhD course in the Economics of Laughter.
Created by the filmmaking trio of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker (or ZAZ), the Naked Gun franchise consists of the TV series Police Squad! and three accompanying films—all of which operate as bullet-paced spoofs of the crime genre, fit-to-bursting with sight gags, puns, and bizarre non-sequiturs. At the center of all the madness is always the sturdy presence of Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin. How could any Naked Gun project work without someone like that? After all, it’s not like there are many other dramatic actors out there looking to make the jump to comedy in their golden years. And even then, it’s not like any of those actors’ initials are “L.N.” with a surname that actually sounds vaguely similar to “Nielsen,” unless…
“Liam Neeson was the guy who opened up my mind to the world of what the movie could be,” Schaffer says. “Liam does things that no one else can do as well. I don’t want to say ‘a particular set of skills,’ but it’s true. He’s got his own particular set of skills that apply to this.”
Neeson, an Oscar-nominated dramatic actor and star of the Taken action franchise, has a Nielsen-like ability to play things straight, lending his intimidating Irish-tinged growl to both serious and comedic roles in recent years. The experience made him the perfect, if unlikely, choice for this Naked Gun’s lead, right down to that spooky phonetic coincidence of his name.
“On our very first draft script, I made a cover page where I just stole the old poster for The Naked Gun and crudely taped Liam’s face over Leslie’s face, and then just crossed off the names in a way that made it visually very clear how similar [their names are],” Schaffer says. “I just thought, ‘Oh, I’ll take advantage of that.’”
