Tagline: Bury the grudge, Burn the village, See the saw.
What do you get when you mix fearless comedic genius with the latest box-office blockbusters? You guessed it. On April 14th, the Scary Movie gang is back with the most hilarious and irreverent instalment yet! Scary Movie 4 is set to invade a theatre near you with outrageous send-ups of “War of the Worlds,” “The Grudge,” “The Village,” “Saw” and “Saw II,” “Million Dollar Baby” and much more. Legendary comedy director David Zucker and producer Bob Weiss reunite to take aim at some of the best fright films, the latest box office hits, music, current events, pop culture, and your favorite celebrities.
Anna Faris and Regina Hall return to Scary Movie 4 as the loveable, dim-witted Cindy Campbell and her self-serving, sex-crazed pal, Brenda, joined this time around by Craig Bierko (“Cinderella Man”), as the cute-but-utterly clueless Tom Ryan. Together, they battle to save the world from a ruthless alien invasion.
And, in true Scary Movie tradition, the outrageous celebrity cameos are non-stop. Those featured include: Carmen Electra, Shaquille O’Neal, Dr. Phil, Bill Pullman, Chris Elliott, Molly Shannon, Anthony Anderson, Kevin Hart, Michael Madsen, rappers Chingy, Lil’ Jon, Fabolous and Young Bloodz, Leslie Nielsen returning as our fearless Commander in Chief, plus many more surprises. In Scary Movie 4 nothing – and we mean NOTHING – is off limits!
About the Production
What could possibly be more irreverent, funnier and, well, scarier than Scary Movie 3? Scary Movie 4, of course! It’s about to ignite, insult and induce uncontrollable laughter in audiences everywhere! Writer / director David Zucker and writers Craig Mazin (who also serves as a producer) and Jim Abrahams have re-teamed to push the limits of comedy in this latest instalment of the wildly successful franchise. No block-buster movie or pop culture icon is safe from their zany humor: “War of the Worlds,” “The Grudge,” “The Village,” “Saw,” “Saw II,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “Brokeback Mountain” and more are all mercilessly spoofed with hilarious results.
This time around, the ever-naïve Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), seeking a career in home healthcare, finds work with a creepy old lady (Cloris Leachman) in an even creepier old house haunted by a ghostly presence. Throw in a good-looking guy next door and the threat of aliens intent on global domination and Cindy’s instantly up to the top of her extremely blond head in danger. Our fearless heroine catapults into action once again struggling to decipher ominous messages from the beyond, looking for love in some very weird places and trying to save the world from mass destruction. As she struggles to discover life-saving answers, Cindy encounters horrific plane crashes, bodacious blind girls, village idiots, dishevelled rappers, kinky contraptions, psycho survivalists, alien sphincters and even Oprah! It’s a relentless movie theatre invasion of non-stop, fall-on-the-floor-laughing jokes.
The Director, The Producer, and The Writers
While the Scary Movie franchise began with the inspired comedy of the Wayans brothers, its appeal expanded to an even larger audience when writer and director David Zucker signed on for Scary Movie 3. “Airplane!” alumnus Leslie Nielsen best describes Zucker’s practically patented brand of humor as “credible insanity.” Zucker brings a depth and breadth of jokes to the screen that virtually guarantees a laugh-a-second experience for moviegoers of all ages.
For the self-described “oldest living working comedy director,” the decision to come back to direct and co-write Scary Movie 4 was based on having another good time. David Zucker says “Scary Movie 3 was a big success and it was a lot of fun, and so we wanted to work with the same team, to work with Bob Weiss again, and (writer/producer) Craig Mazin, and the actors too — Anna Faris and Regina Hall.”
For Bob Weiss, it was the “size of the success of Scary Movie 3” that confirmed the decision to do a sequel. “We were confident in it as a good and funny movie. But to have it be the movie that had the largest October opening in movie history was beyond our expectations. Of course, when you have a movie that big, there’s bound to be a sequel.
With big success come even bigger audience expectations. The long-time comedic team of Weiss – with whom Zucker worked on “Kentucky Fried Movie” in 1977 – and relatively new addition, Craig Mazin, were inspired to review their number one rule of movie-making. “When it came time to do Scary Movie 4, the first principal really was to work harder,” summarizes Weiss. “A lot of times with sequels in Hollywood, people phone it in a little bit and don’t work as hard, and we have the opposite philosophy. We work harder. We work harder on the material, we work harder on the production, we work harder to make it more appealing perhaps even to a bigger audience.”
Weiss, Zucker and the team took up the challenge and began by committing to an extremely fast turn around between the release of the real movies and the ones being spoofed. Weiss explains, “These are movies that our audience really should have just seen.”
They also diversified their repertoire of spoof material. “In Scary Movie 3, we expanded on the horror theme,” says Zucker, “but in FOUR we even go beyond that.” “[Including] science fiction” Weiss elaborates, “and being able to parody the media, or politics, or other things that are ever present in the minds of the audience.”
Zucker also called up an old friend. After a twenty-five year break, he reunited with writer Jim Abrahams. Of Abrahams, Zucker says, “He made some wonderful contributions, and everybody loved having him around, including Craig Mazin, who had never really worked with Jim before.” While Jim added some great laughs, Zucker is quick to point out that “Craig wrote probably ninety percent of what’s in the movie, and everybody else fills it in between. But you know, I write more than his ninety percent. So together that’s a hundred and eighty percent. So just put me even with Mazin. Everybody else, I guess, has that last twenty percent.”
Crazy math aside, for his part, all writer Craig Mazin cared about was getting a joke right, even if it meant writing the script in the middle of shooting a scene: “David and I, the nice thing is we act as a check and balance on each other. We riff off of each other and we come up with something really great right there in the moment. And then, why not put it in?”
That kind of fearless, working-without-a-net writing and directing is a part of the reason so many actors walk over other movie scripts to work with David Zucker. Leslie Nielsen calls Zucker “incredibly astute and funny.” Bill Pullman muses that Zucker is “beautifully un-ego-oriented – he’s in charge, and yet he allows a lot of input.” Regina Hall loves that, “David’s jokes are set up to have a clever reveal. It’s not just about the punch-line.”
The other great draw for actors is that while David Zucker may be the ultimate professional, he’s also the ultimate fan. Probably no one laughs as hard as the director himself when things are going right on the set. Anna Faris chuckles, “He can be very childlike sometimes when he is giggling. One of the days, I had to wear a fake eye. It was very weird and creepy and he couldn’t stop laughing. We could barely get the take because I thought he was going to pee his pants, he was laughing so hard.” Michael Madsen agrees: “We were laughing so hard one afternoon that his gum flew out of his mouth. That was a great moment.”
The Cast
When it came time to cast the movie, Weiss and Zucker knew exactly what they were looking for. Weiss summarizes: “I think in casting you have to strike an interesting balance between bringing in people that are new and fresh, and returning favorites from the previous instalments.
At the top of the list was Anna Faris, who couldn’t wait to reprise her role for the fourth time as Cindy Campbell. Although, unlike the eternally innocent Cindy, Faris admits she knew what she was in for this time. “It is like running a marathon in a sense. You really have to be able to roll with the punches and be game for whatever. They’d say, `Oh, do you mind just jumping off this small balcony?’ And I’d say `Oh, okay.’ I’m such a pushover,” she giggles.
Directing Anna for the second time, David Zucker was hugely appreciative of Anna’s willingness to do whatever it took to make a scene funny and of her enormous talent, saying “It may not be easy for her, but she makes it look very easy when she’s on screen because she just has an instinct for this kind of comedy. She doesn’t try to joke it up and she knows how to play it straight. That’s why she’s so good at it.” Bob Weiss adds appreciatively, “Working with her is like you starting up a fine automobile. She knows her character, her instincts are great, and she really elevates the material.”
Anna’s tremendous experience with the Scary Movie franchise was also a great feeling for her. “I feel a bit like a senior in high school. I think I have a little bit more ownership over the character.” While Anna continues to grow as a person and an actor, she marvels at the unchanging character she has come to love and know so well. “Sweet Cindy, she’s completely one-dimensional. Cindy Campbell is very earnest, very sincere, has a heart of gold, no sense of humor really. She’s a really straight person…she’s a little clueless. She’s not the smartest woman… (Yet) once again the fate of the world has been placed in her hands. And so I have to go out and save it.”
Anna is thrilled to be back working with Regina Hall, another four time Scary Movie alumnus. Real life friends, Anna considers their hugely successful and ongoing comedic chemistry to be along the lines of Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, “I just feel really fortunate that she’s been brought back because we both work really well together.”
Anna observes, “You could not find characters more opposite than Brenda and Cindy. I mean Brenda’s sort of street smart, a little bit selfish, a little bit mean, a little bit sassy. And for whatever reason, she’s best friends with Cindy Campbell who’s completely innocent, kind of dumb, and naïve, and as white as you can be. And they’re best friends. It’s a great match and I think that the two of us have a lot of fun playing with the ideas of this very strange friendship.
On Regina, David Zucker concurs, “she’s a really good actress and very funny.” Describing Regina and the character of Brenda as “an audience favorite,” Zucker feels that Brenda’s promiscuous character, the polar opposite to Cindy’s squeaky-clean persona, gives him and his writing team a chance to play with “the kind of jokes that we didn’t do in `The Naked Gun’ or `Airplane!’”
Anna Faris’ leading man in Scary Movie 4 is Craig Bierko, an actor whom Bob Weiss describes as “a wonderful, wonderful surprise.” He goes on to say, “None of us had worked with him before, but from the auditions, really, we knew we had somebody special. And he is terrific in the movie.” Bierko loved getting the call to be a part of this project, especially because of the chance to work with David Zucker. “I’m a big David Zucker fan. The first time I saw “Airplane!” I thought `At least I’m not the only completely insane person because…that’s what it’s like inside my head! I laughed so hard I thought my brain was going to shoot through my forehead like an avocado pit.”
Zucker clearly appreciates the way Bierko’s brain works, saying simply “he gets it… I just had to walk toward him and he knew what I was thinking.” For Bierko, the experience of working with Zucker was a dream-come true. “When you finally hear him laugh, that’s all that matters. He may have seen it three hundred times, and you may shoot it the correct way three hundred more times. He’ll laugh if it’s funny. It just makes him laugh. And I trust his sense of humor. It’s served him very well.”
As Cindy’s boyfriend, Bierko plays the Tom Cruise character from “War of the Worlds.” Regarding the similarities between Cruise and himself, Bierko deadpans, “the one thing that we have in common that is undeniable is that both of our entire bodies are covered with skin. It kind of ends there.” On his character, Tom Ryan, Bierko shrugs, “he’s really dumber than a screen door. He could have a conversation with a screen door and lose. He has all the heroic instincts of a movie hero. But he just doesn’t really have the intelligence to back it up.”
Molly Shannon, who plays Tom Ryan’s long-suffering, acerbic-tongued ex-wife, was also enticed to act in Scary Movie 4 by the prospect of reuniting with Zucker, with whom she worked on “My Boss’s Daughter.” Declares Shannon, “It’s all about the joke, working to find the joke, and protecting that joke.” She also appreciates the sophisticated way in which Zucker spoofs a film, “You’re not doing an exact impression of them or anything, and you’re just kind of doing an idea of the memory of what that scene might be.”
Shannon and Bierko play parents to Beau Mirchoff and Conchita Campbell, who are playing the kids from “War of the Worlds.” Says Zucker, “I think they’re every bit as good.” Weiss agrees, “They are terrific. And we put them in a variety of physical situations, and different comic situations and they both were great and really responded to the call.”
Conchita Campbell couldn’t have been happier to oblige, saying, “When I heard I got this role I was just so excited. I was like `my first feature film, yay!!’” Conchita loved working with Craig Bierko. In regards to him playing her father in the movie, she says: “He thinks he’s the greatest dad in the world, but he’s really not. He thinks he cares about them (his kids) so much and doesn’t know that he doesn’t even recognize his own children!”
Beau Mirchoff admits that he has a tough time keeping it together in his scenes with Bierko, “I messed it up, laughed a couple of times when it was something pretty funny and I couldn’t keep a straight face. But for the most part, you just do your job, right?” Mirchoff put his all into doing his job, especially because of the tremendous amount of respect he has for Zucker: “He’s awesome…I trusted the guy. So when he was talking to me, I really listened to him. He knows what he’s doing.”
Appreciation for Zucker, also enticed Bill Pullman to sign on for some tongue-in-cheek scenes from “The Village.” Zucker, who cast Pullman in his first movie, “Ruthless People,” recalls “he was one of the funniest people in “Ruthless,” so it was great to have him back.” Zucker was also delighted with the inside joke of having Pullman, who starred in the “The Grudge,” appear in a spoof of that movie. For his part, Pullman says spoofing a film he was in is a “bizarre dream-like thing for me where I was morphing between the two.” Pullman also appreciates the irreverence and the “cartoonish” quality of the franchise, meaning that “people can bash into walls, they can be powdered, smeared, drowned, and doused with dust and whatever and you love it!”
Playing the blind girl from “The Village,” Carmen Electra is also a big fan of the Scary Movie “very out there” humor and “roller-coaster ride“ of surprises for audiences. “I was so excited to receive a call that they wanted me to be in Scary Movie 4 because I was in the first one … and it was really fun. I love to make people laugh and do silly stuff and shocking things that people aren’t really expecting from a girl like me.”
For “Saturday Night Live” alumnus, Chris Elliott, saying yes to the call to do Scary Movie 4 was a no-brainer: “I’ve been a fan of David Zucker’s from way back. `Airplane!’ sort of changed my whole perception of comedy, and I’ve never been in one of his movies and so I jumped at the shot.” Playing the village idiot from “The Village,” Chris totally went for it with the physical humor in his scenes but played it straight when it came to his lines. Impressed with the great jokes in the script, he shrugged, “When they’re funny on the page, you don’t have to do much to it.”
Reprising his role as George from Scary Movie 3, Simon Rex laughs saying that it took him “about two seconds to get back into character because all I had to do was look around at David Zucker, and Anna Faris, and it all came back to me’.” Rex is “happy to be brought back…working with David Zucker, I couldn’t wait to come to work and just hang out on set.”
For Shaquille O’Neal, playing himself in Scary Movie 4 was all about being “a clown” and having a good laugh. “People don’t understand that laughing is one of the biggest relievers of stress. You start to smile, you start to laugh, and then you forget about your problems.” O’Neal was also tickled to be doing a scene with Dr. Phil. “This is his first movie and I think he did a fabulous job,” Shaq says admiringly.
Dr. Phil bounces the compliments right back at O’Neal. “Shaq is so much fun, and he so gets into it that it really makes it easy.” The compliments keep flowing from Dr. Phil for David Zucker as well, “I mean of all the directors I’ve worked with, oh wait a minute, he’s the only one! So far, he’s just been a blast!”
Dr. Phil’s esteemed colleague, Oprah Winfrey, doesn’t personally appear in the movie, but her doppelganger, actress Debra Wilson, does. Four and a half hours of makeup, padding and prosthetics was all it took to transform Wilson into the Queen of Daytime Television. While Wilson had played Oprah before on “Mad TV,” she said spoofing Oprah in a movie was a first. “It’s a privilege because I feel like it’s trend-setting to get Oprah in a movie on the large screen. To skewer her…I can’t wait to barbeque her. I’m going to have her with a side of roasted potatoes!”
When offered a part in Scary Movie 4, James Earl Jones’ wife loved the role the writers created for him and said to him, “Ooooh, you gotta do it!” There was no need to twist his arm, as Jones is a self-described “huge fan” of both the franchise and of David Zucker, with whom he worked on “Naked Gun.” Jones’ character is, mysteriously, named James Earl Jones and he will only say, cryptically, that his character speaks “about values and love.”
Playing the creepy basement guy from “War of the Worlds,” Michael Madsen was especially delighted to be cast in the part. After seeing the real “War of the Worlds,” his teenage son said, “Dad, you should have had that part.” Now he does. Madsen is also thrilled to have had the chance to work with Zucker, saying, “One thing I like about David is that he’s very collaborative…and we make up a lot of stuff on the spur of the moment, and a lot of stuff I did wasn’t even in the script.”
Leslie Nielsen is no stranger to Zucker’s directorial style, “the extraordinary attention he pays to the comedic detail, that’s what makes it good. The more credibility you bring to it, the more credible the humor is.” Describing Nielsen as “an old friend,” Bob Weiss was delighted that Nielsen was back for Scary Movie 4, again playing the President of the United States. “It gives the story that big feel and that national feel that important things are happening. So we were thrilled to be able to have Leslie Neilson back again, and there’s really no one like him.” Nielsen felt his humor fits like a glove with Zucker’s, explaining, “I’ve always said things that are absolutely outrageous with a straight face…treating them with all the gravity in the world.” Zucker loved it, saying, “He was there at the very beginning for “Airplane!” and…you see Leslie as the straightest of the straight. He just doesn’t let on that he’s even in a comedy.”
Saddled with trying to keep a straight face while Nielsen did his Presidential-thing was comedian/actor Alonso Bodden, who plays the President’s Aide. Bodden concedes, “The thing about Leslie Nielsen is he’s just so funny. He’s just associated with funny so you know anything he’s gonna do is gonna be funny.” Bodden was such a fan that he said yes to the job without knowing anything about what he was going to do. “The script was top secret until I actually got there, so I had no idea what the scene was, or what I’d be saying…or anything!”
Fellow comedian, David Attell, had a different strategy for his role as “Knife man” in his “War of the Worlds” scene with Craig Bierko and Fabolous. “I’m not an actor. In fact, my game plan is to show up on time and not get fired. That’s my acting style.” Attell had a great time and found himself continuously marvelling at how the screenwriters managed to be so topical: “You always feel like you’re right on it… and I don’t know how they do it since it’s a movie and it comes out way later – they must have some psychics working on the film!”
As with Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4 has a roster of rappers on board. Spoofing a variety of “War of the Worlds” scenes, the music stars-come-actors were stoked about being a part of what many consider to be a classic and growing comedy tradition. Fabolous is happy that his fans get to “see a different side of me, and see me make people laugh.” Lil’ Jon, playing the guy with “the last working car in New York,” simply saying it’s “amazing” to be in a Scary Movie picture. Young BloodZ, playing whacked-out refugees in their movie-acting debut concur, “We were very excited to get the call.” D-Ray, playing the mechanic, says, “It’s cool” to be cast because the franchise is “just entertaining.” He goes on to say, “I like to see good writing and to see people get a chance to act the fool. You don’t get to do that as adults, and I think Scary Movie allows adults to act the fool, because that’s what I’m gonna do.” Patrice O’Neil, who plays a curious guy at the epicentre, loves how this franchise puts horror movies in perspective and points to his girlfriend who can now watch the “real” movies and find them hilarious. He says “She can watch it with these little parodies in mind.”
Chris Williams, who plays another “War of the Worlds” character, appreciates being a part of a film that attracts such a plugged-in audience. “The Scary Movie fans have already seen all of the other movies also. They’re movie-going people, teenagers and young adults who see everything, and it’s all encapsulated into every year, or every other year when a new Scary Movie comes out. They can appreciate it.” Appropriately, Anna Faris sums it up best: “True fans know what they’re going to get into when they see a Scary Movie. It’s a good time, not to be taken too seriously, not for people who are easily offended, and it’s just a lot of laughs.”
Behind the Scenes
When it came to creating the look of Scary Movie 4, David Zucker was very clear about what he wanted: “let the script do the work.” Bob Weiss elaborates, “One of the keys to doing this kind of parody is to stimulate an archetype in the audience’s mind or a specific movie in the audience’s mind…They have an expectation of where that scene might go, based on the original movie…and then we pull the rug out from underneath them…And to do that you need a great, great production team. And we were very lucky with our designer, Holger Gross, and with Tom Ackerman, our Cinematographer.”
Production Designer, Holger Gross (“Stargate: The Movie”, “The Chronicles of Riddick,” “The Negotiator,”) spent a lot of time studying the movies being spoofed asking, “What is the essence of that particular scene? What is the mood? What is the atmosphere and so on?” Gross admits, “It’s very different for me working this way, not actually doing my own concept that I set at the beginning.” Zucker recognizes what he was asking of Gross and his team, saying, “Their biggest challenge was to get everything done on time. Often, we were writing stuff in the morning and they had to have the set built in the afternoon. Holger has just done some amazing work.”
Zucker has equal praise for the rest of the team, including costume designer, Carol Ramsey: “(She) is really at the top of the field. We have a short-hand, she knows how to design so it doesn’t intrude.” Carol explains, “Costume design is not about making great little outfits. It’s about developing the character that is defined by the script. David Zucker has really specific ideas. His team, they have very specific ideas, and their aesthetic is they want it to be very normal. They never want to do a costume gag, unless it’s like motivated by the script.”
Director of Photography, Tom Ackerman, underscores that “it’s a Scary Movie comedy; Which means that in order to set the scene, we have to, in essence, shoot it not like a comedy. We want to create an image that is sometimes scary, that is sometimes otherworldly, that is often action-packed and dramatic in a way that comedies sometimes are not. So the more on-the-nose the imagery is, the better the jokes work.”
Stunt Co-ordinator, Jacob Rupp, worked hard to design some “on-the-nose” sequences from the “War of the Worlds” epicentre scene. “We probably hired a hundred and twenty stunt people,” Rupp said. He also trained Anna Faris for many of her stunts and was impressed with how well she did, saying, “She keeps saying she’s not a very athletic person but she always pulls it off. Every time I had to work with her on stunt stuff. She’s always come through. She actually surprised herself and me.”
For Special Effects Co-ordinator, Alison Ramsey, the goal was to create a specific feeling for viewers: ”we’re parodying so that the audience immediately, and subconsciously, sort of puts themselves back in that story mode (of the original movie being spoofed). So, we almost have the same amount of work to do as the original, but with a much smaller budget, in a very short time frame, and also, we have all these additional gags on top of the original material.”
Tom Ackerman perhaps sums it up best in describing how, in spite of the many movies, and therefore styles, that were being emulated, the whole production team was ultimately working toward a seamless product: “At the end of the day, our movie had to be one movie. In essence, it’s visually the same thing that David, Craig, and Bob and the writers did with the structure of the film itself…Likewise, we wanted to make sure that, on the visual end, that this was one movie.”
Challenging? Absolutely! But for behind-the-scenes people like Carol Ramsey, going to work on the set of Scary Movie 4 with David Zucker and Bob Weiss was usually a blast: “they are some of the funniest people I’ve every met in my life!”
These production notes provided by The Weinstein Company.
Scary Movie 4
Starring: Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Carmen Electra, Leslie Nielsen, Simon Rex, Shaquille O’Neal, Dr. Phillip C. McGraw
Directed by: David Zucker
Screenplay: Craig Mazin
Release Date: April 14th, 2006
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude, sexual humor, comic violence, language.
Studio: The Weinstein Company
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $90,710,620 (50.9%)
Foreign: $87,552,000 (49.1%)
Total: $178,262,620 (Worldwide)