‘Naked Gun’ Turns 35: Team on Adapting Failed TV Series, Leslie Nielsen’s Magic

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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mo...ft-1235766023/

What inspired the series Police Squad!, and how did the movie materialize several years after the show’s cancellation?

David Zucker: We loved this 1950s black-and-white television series called M Squad, which stars Lee Marvin, and it’s the exact same thing as Police Squad! Our first idea was actually to do a movie based on M Squad, but we couldn’t figure out a plot. Instead, Paramount’s Michael Eisner — who was the only one who had seen any potential in Airplane! — said, “I can get you six episodes on the air if you do it as a half-hour TV show.” That’s what we decided to do, but we immediately thought better of it and said, “What are we doing? We don’t want to do a TV show.” So we came back to Eisner the next day and said, “We don’t want to do this,” and Eisner said, “No, I’ve already pitched it to ABC — they’re going to do it.” And we believed him.

Pat Proft: I was a story editor on Police Squad!, and I wrote an episode of it. The show [only lasted] six episodes, and I get a call about three weeks after that saying, “We’re going to do a movie version of this, and we want you to join us.” So that’s how we began writing films together.

Zucker: ABC couldn’t cancel it fast enough. It was canceled after four episodes. So then we did Top Secret! in 1984, and then Ruthless People in ’86. We really wanted to go back to doing what we most enjoyed, which was the Airplane!-style spoof. I thought we should do a movie of Police Squad! We just needed to reformulate it so that there was a love interest, and then by that time, we realized that you needed a character arc. We went in and pitched the idea for a movie to Frank Mancuso at Paramount. Easiest pitch we ever had.

What was the writing process like for the film?

Zucker: Jerry, Jim, Pat Proft and I wrote the first draft of the first script, and I wrote the 20 subsequent drafts on the set. Pat and I would rewrite every day on the set.

Proft: We just made each other laugh all day long. When “nice beaver” came up, we laughed for a day and a half. That was one of the stupidest things we ever came up with.