Why the Director of the New ‘Naked Gun’ Felt Compelled to Include O.J. Jokes
The Naked Gun is hardly the first beloved ‘80s comedy to get the Hollywood reboot treatment, there was also Vacation, Coming 2 America and several new additions to the Ghostbusters franchise. And while those movies likely had their fair share of challenges to deal with, it’s not like Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy or Dan Aykroyd ever went on trial for first-degree murder.
The original Naked Gun trilogy, on the other hand, famously featured football star, accused murderer and one-time prank show host O.J. Simpson as Frank Drebin’s best friend and partner, Officer Nordberg.
In retrospect, it’s pretty weird that Simpson, who was ultimately acquitted of all murder charges, has a prominent role in one of the funniest movies of all-time. But rather than avoiding the issue, the new Naked Gun movie immediately let us know that O.J. jokes were on the table.
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The reboot’s first teaser trailer included a scene in which Frank Jr. and his fellow cops are all mourning their dead fathers in Police Squad’s “Hall of Legends.” A young cop who may or may not be Nordberg’s son, kneels next to a framed photo of Simpson, but instead of weeping, he looks directly into the camera and knowingly shakes his head.
According to director Akiva Schaffer, the movie needed to address Simpson’s controversial role in the series. Why? Because his friends constantly asked him about it.
The Lonely Island member recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the upcoming movie, noting that he initially believed that touching the Naked Gun franchise was “a very bad idea,” since the best movie reboots have swapped genres à la 21 Jump Street “where it was kind of a cheesy TV show drama and now you make it a comedy."
When he finally began working on The Naked Gun, people kept bringing up the accused murderer elephant in the room. “The first time I would tell any friend, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of writing this thing,’ they go, ‘What are you going to do about O.J.?’” Schaffer revealed. “So we had to answer the O.J. question.”
This obviously wasn’t a problem for the makers of the original series, who narrowly avoided any potential blowback from Simpson’s casting. He was arrested on June 17, 1994, following the infamous white Bronco chase, just three months after The Naked Gun 33⅓ was released. But the year after O.J.’s murder trial concluded, Leslie Nielsen had to face numerous questions about his work with Simpson while promoting the Naked Gun-esque parody Spy Hard in ‘96.
Incidentally, original Naked Gun director David Zucker’s rejected pitch for a fourth movie would have likely leaned even harder into the O.J.-based humor, seeing as how one of his proposed titles was Naked Gun 4: Nordberg Did It.
