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.”
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.”
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.”
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