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.”
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