‘Naked Gun’ Writers Weigh In On Their Most Viral Jokes

Going to see a big comedy in theaters is one of the most fun things you can do. Being surrounded by people laughing and having a great time only enhances the experience and brings out the jokes.

That's why I was so happy to see Naked Gun on its opening weekend, and be surrounded by people enjoying the goofy gags and having as much fun at the theater as I am.

And it was cool to see some of the writers of the movie, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, sit down with The Hollywood Reporter to go over some of the memorable jokes.

Let's dive into some of their best quotes.

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When it came to rebooting The Naked Gun, they had to decide what to do with O.J. Simpson's character right away.

With that, Mand said, "The O.J. thing was one of the first questions Kiva, Dan, and myself got when people heard we were doing Naked Gun: 'What are you going to do about Nordberg and O.J.?' It was one of the first joke areas we worked on in the movie, and we knew pretty quickly that we wanted it to be a fast reference [and] that we didn’t want to live in the idea of O.J. too long. Pretty quickly, we came into the idea of a Hall of Fathers because it also was attached to another question we got, which was like, “Is Liam playing Frank Drebin?” We had a lot of alts of different O.J. jokes in the first couple of weeks, but then settled into this area."

One of the fun things about watching was seeing the cameos from people in the original movie and other familiar faces.

Getting them was tricky but worth it, as Gregor explains.

"Weird Al, from the jump — there’s a couple things to us that feel like the fan-service demands that we have to give, in some way or another. It’s the same thing with having credit-sequence jokes and just some moment to hear that old wonderful theme song and see the police siren light. We did write at least a half dozen different places for him within the movie. There was one point where he was going to be the singer at Cane’s gala."

Mand continued, "Priscilla, we talked about just because she’s an icon, and she’s still with us. We didn’t want to force it in. Luckily, she was game to do it, and that was really exciting for us."

If you were unpacking their proudest jokes in the movie, Gregor said, "The joke that just has never gotten old, especially in the performance of it, is the ending where the Danny Huston-Liam Neeson fight happens. The whole movie is building up to them fighting each other, and the very first punch, he’s like, “You hurt my tummy.” That whole run never, never, never doesn’t make me laugh every single time I watch."

This movie was a blast to watch in theaters because it felt like they had really built a movie with as many jokes as possible and worked them into an interesting world that allowed them to add even more sight gags and a fun plot.

Were you a fan?

Let me know what you think in the comments.