[Editor’s note: The following interviews contain spoilers for “The Naked Gun.”]
It's a ubiquitous scene where one wants to talk about after seeing the new “Naked Gun” movie. Midway through the film, Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson fall in love and fall into an 80s-style montage, which follows the new couple's montage, and the couple's escape to the Winter Cabin.
In the isolated cabin, a spell book brings the snowman happily crafted by Frank and Beth to life. At first, the Snowman is part of the couple's stupid, intimate game, but ends up being the third round, leading to murderous rampage, and the love montage lowers something similar to a horror movie.
The Snowman is such a wall, rude and hysterical – a perfect combination of “naked gun” and lonely humorous style – and it's also the best example of co-author/director Akiva Schaffer putting his own unique stamp on the franchise.
When Schaffer was on the filmmaker Toolkit Podcast, he discussed Snowman’s scenes and his vigilance against the original work’s “fan novels.” “There is no offense to other reboots, redos and legacy sequels, but many of them are stuck with the job of refinishing the originals,” Schaffer said. “You look at them and feel happy, but it's like empty calories, and when it's done, you hardly remember you've seen it because my theory is at least that they're not really new movies. They're fan fiction for old movies.”
When he and his co-writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand reached the midpoint of their story, they were afraid of making the original work “digital painting” big.. “We got the point in the script, like, 'Wow, this love story deserves a montage,'” Schaffer said. “The original 'Naked Gun' has a very famous, very good montage that can 'I like it all'.”
The original love montage of 1988 is indeed a classic – Herman's Hermit 1964 hit single is smart, watching Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley That Body condom? The originals were done well, but others did well too.
“We know it has to be different from that,” Schaffer said. “Then there is still 30 years to make fun of montages, whether it's 'Team USA' to do montages, or anything else, there's not a lot of room for montages. We're debating not to do montages and have other ideas.”
Schaffer said he knew “Jack Frost” but had only seen the trailer for the 1998 Slayer Snowman movie. It's not a subtype (if you can even call it that) he's been consciously thinking about cheating, but one night when he gets up at four in the morning to use the bathroom, the snowman scene starts to play in his mind.
“When I got back to bed, it was infiltrating the writer's room that day, and I just saw the whole thing and wrote it into Bullet Point Notes and texted Dan and Doug,” Schaeffer said. “The next morning, I went into the writer's room and they were like, 'Yes. It did.' Honestly, it changed the teenagers only for production reasons, not the house, but never really changed.”
Akiva Schaffer, Liam Neeson and Paul Walter Hauser on the “Naked Gun” set © Paramount/Everett Collection
This is not to say that everyone involved with “naked gun” restarts the glory of first understanding the scene. “It's polarized in the script. The people I really respect, like when Andy Sandberg was reading for me, he was like, 'Snowman is the best. Don't let them cut it,' know that it's going to be cut.” “Once you watch a movie, it makes sense, but I do have to threaten to quit.”
Schaffer made it clear that he felt the movie he wanted to make was supported, but he cut the snowman along the snowman because of the opposition, so if it wasn't played, it could be removed from the movie without leaving a hole. For example, there are drafts of scripts where the Snowman reappears at the end of the movie (ability to rebuild himself from the fountain after the climax action scene) and has never been filmed.
“After the first test screen, it was the number one scene in the movie,” Schaffer said. “The people who really fought me after not asking about my crow. I tried to get them off the hook with ease and go, 'that's fine,' but they were like, 'No man, we were wrong.'”
The dramatic image release “Naked Gun” is now in the theater.
To listen to the full interview with Akiva Schaffer, subscribe to the Movie Producer Toolkit Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.