"Well, you've made some hilarious movies, Airplane, Naked Gun, and what I'm curious about is like when you're writing those movies and you're thinking about how do I make a good spoof movie? How do I m..."

"I mean, all any surprise, if it's funny, works. If you just do a surprise, uh, you know, that's not necessarily funny. But if uh if you start with the surprise of two 11year-olds or 9year-olds talking..."

"uh Peter Graves doing these very hilarious lines in airplane but if if Bill Murray had been doing it or Jim Carrey it it wouldn't have been as funny right and this is nothing to say against these guys..."

"acknowledge it and the other person in the shot, you know, doing the take. But if Lesie said something or or uh George Kennedy say said something funny and you had to cut to the reaction, it's just li..."

"start them up again. And this is why when I see stand-up comedians sometimes I say, why are they waiting till the last laugh has gone? They should get on with it. They should get on with it while the ..."

"to go any longer than that. Yeah. A lot of other comedies, they start as comedies and then they they turn into a story that has some more depth. I'm like, "No, I came here to see a comedy." Yours, I'm..."

"laugh. Anyways, oh tell me more about that. Okay. Well, merely clever. A lot of people stop at it's just clever. If we had audiences saying that in a preview for Naked Gun, uh, Top Secret, Airplane, t..."

"just I become a really real stickler about that. And I I learned by making mistakes and you know when we did Top Secret we didn't realize uh how important that was to build a character in the first ac..."

"meets Priscilla and you know and then it became boy boy meets girl gets girl loses girl gets girls. What's funny is that a lot of these are ultimately just love stories. And is that they should be Yea..."

"take it. Right. So as you're writing the script, do you think, oh, I'm going to start with the story, the characters, the comedy, or is it just I'm going to mix them all together and I need to make su..."

"casting soon. But there we used a movie called Detour. H and Detour was a 1945 noir movie which was great for two acts and then suddenly it ends. You know sometimes a movie ends and say what what happ..."

"there's no improvising, you know. And one movie I did called An American Carol. It was uh I wrote it with a old friend of mine, Lewis Freriedman from my high school and he's a brilliantly funny. And w..."

"joke writer ever. You know he's What makes a good joke writer? Uh I don't know. Pat just always had that that ability to not only write jokes, but he could write Frank Dreban. He wrote Leslie Nielsen...."

"from Zero Hour. It was from another airliner in trouble movie from the 50s called Crash Landing. And someone said surely you can't be serious. And one of us I you know we can't it's the most famous li..."

"laugh. Is there such thing as too many jokes? No. There is too many jokes if you don't have a story to to hang it on. So if you don't have a good story in the third act, the jokes start start to get t..."

"successful. How'd you go about getting better at your craft? Was it just we're going to make stuff and see if people laugh or was it more deliberate than that? Uh well getting better at our craft you ..."

"mistakes in life. Yeah. I want to get back to the rules. I want to get back to the rules. Yes. Unrelated background. Unrelated. Well, we made a mistake in airplane. Uh, which the joke turned out to be..."

"one of the one of the early movies uh which uh Jerry and Jim and I became aware of was Harold and Ma. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it was Ruth Gordon had a romance with Bud Court and u..."

"says to Leslie, "Uh, Frank, everyone should have a friend like you." So, that's definitely related. She said something that actually helped the joke. But we're telling the audience ostensibly, you sho..."

"That was for Airplane. Okay. Got it. So they when we I think before we before they allowed us to direct they were they they just you know they were they were scared and I I don't blame them and and We..."

"would they think that that was in in any way offensive? But some people are so pissy and uh with their heads so far up their asses that they can't they don't understand humor. And I wrote an article a..."

"scripts and you're just pulling from here, pulling it from here, and you're just stuffing everything into the script. You're trying to see all these different inspirations and that that's kind of how ..."

"that together. Yeah, we've I don't know why because it's the it's just the opposite of what you expect, you know, we just, you know, a lot of stuff we do is irreverent, you know, like and we kind of l..."

"that mean? Well, the blocking is how how you set up a master. So, uh, you just set up a a master in a rehearsal and the actors will say their lines and, you know, follow the slug lines in the script t..."

"depends on pace. Uh, and if you if you if you miss on a joke, the audience loses trust. So, we just have to make sure every joke lands. So, I told Lesie once, I will never make you do anything that is..."

"jokes in the movie. And in in Naked Gun, we put in OJ going over the, you know, we gave away the ending and it doesn't matter. Nobody re either nobody remembers the trailer or it's still funny. If you..."

"it's tough for Pauline Kale to say that's art. But actually Woody Allen actually saw Airplane for the first time with Pauline Kale and she hated it. And evidently Woody kept saying, "No, no, this is t..."

"are no rules. So you know I did a a movie called An American Carol. I don't know if you ever heard of it but I've heard of it. I haven't seen it. Okay. But um it's actually very funny. I saw it a few ..."

"slapstick in it. So and I was surprised when I saw it and it was and it was really out there. David Ellen Greer was in it playing a slave, you know. Anyways, it's When do celebrity pop celebrity cameo..."

"that's what Hollywood is doing and so you know the studios are down to I don't know each four or five movies a year if that. I don't know I I don't I what's the thinking behind that? What's the ration..."

"people somehow still like me. So, a a lot of people say, "What happened to you?" you know. So, but uh I I just have my own way going about things and it's not I don't want to do either what I've done ..."

"I think that, uh, Mel Brooks does a lot, but when Mel Brooks does it, I think it works. And don't forget the 15th rule is there are no rules. I don't recall Woody Allen ever breaking the frame. His he..."

"we've also we've done it also in in Naked Gun. There's a great there's a what I think was a great joke when uh we start out with a stupid pun uh when Lesie says to the waiter, "Give me the strongest t..."

"later, 40 years later when we we we showed Top Secret at uh at Sketchfest in San Francisco, full house, 800 800 people in the audience and they it worked exactly as it worked when it when Top Secret w..."

"uh uh that's trivia. And so we we don't it's it's tough to do, you know, if you do things that are contemporary references. Uh I mean, we should be and I don't want to tell anybody else what to do, bu..."

"they made up their own uh straight thing to make fun of. You can always make a funny name, but it but I'm not looking down on them. They obviously worked and then they made a whole movie title out of ..."

"this framework. What's the discipline mean? Like the consistency of joke quality or what? It's just it's that, you know, we approach it as as a science. I mean, it's it's weird that it's both, you kno..."

"Naked Gun. In Naked Gun, Lesie and George Kennedy are doing a steak out and while they're waiting endless hours, they're eating pistachio nuts and they're talking and then as they talk, we see their t..."

"going, you know, if you do a joke. And if you trap yourself into showing up at an event, you know, dressed up in a funny costume, then can you live with it? You know, that's kind of what goes in that...."

"opposite of technical pizzazz. You know, we just those are really easy gags. Or, you know, a slapstick gag like uh Lesie driving up and hitting the the the a post on a dock and the guy fishing from th..."

"It's really important rule, I think. Why is it so helpful when you're writing comedies to do it in groups? Uh, I know in comedy, well, you get that instant reaction because it's just, you know, comedy..."