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To mention or not to mention... #NakedGun #OJSimpson #comedymovies #movies

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00:00Apparently, the new Naked Gun creators wrestled with how to handle the elephant in the room, O.J. Simpson, in the new movie.
00:06Akiva Schaefer, Lonely Island comedian and director of the Naked Gun reboot, told The Hollywood Reporter that
00:12what are you going to do about O.J. was the first question everyone asked him about bringing Leslie Nielsen's comedy franchise back to life.
00:19How would he handle the original's Nordberg, the perpetually maimed partner of Lieutenant Frank Drebin,
00:24now that O.J. Simpson had done an all-time heel turn in the real world?
00:28Schaefer didn't want to use the new Naked Gun to glorify Simpson, but ignoring the character felt like a miss as well.
00:34He and his writing team solved the problem by writing a scene with a police squad hall of fame.
00:38Sons of the fallen cops weep in front of their portraits, except for Nordberg Jr., who simply stares at his dad's picture.
00:45Actor Moses Jones turns to the camera and shakes his head no.
00:48With a grunt, O.J. and Nordberg are dismissed from the rest of the movie.
00:52Schaefer said,
00:52To be honest, we never wrote another O.J. joke. We just went, yep, that takes care of that.
00:56I didn't know that the joke would kill as hard as it did at our first test screening.
01:00If I had known that, then maybe I would have written other jokes.
01:03Or maybe not.
01:03I mean, how do you be respectful of the character while not glorifying the actor?
01:07It's not something I really took glee in, he said.
01:10We just had to acknowledge it in a way that we thought was not dancing on anybody's misfortunes.
01:14Schaefer admits that if Seth MacFarlane or the movie studio had come to him earlier
01:18and asked what he thought about rebooting the comedy franchise, he'd have dismissed the idea.
01:22I would have been like, of course not. The first Naked Gun is so good and there's no room to make
01:27it better. You can only do different. But the idea of stony-faced Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr.
01:32gave Schaefer pause. His real-time reaction to the casting, which came well before Schaefer was
01:37brought on as a director, was, ooh, that's a good idea. He also says that Pamela Anderson brought
01:42the same qualities to the table as Priscilla Presley, the love interest in the original run of the
01:47Naked Gun films. As for the Nordberg character, Schaefer and the film's creators decided it was best
01:51not to have him say anything at all.
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