{"id":120489,"date":"2025-08-05T09:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T09:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/120489\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T09:15:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T09:15:10","slug":"naked-gun-director-threatened-to-quit-to-save-snowman-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/120489\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Naked Gun’ director ‘threatened to quit’ to save snowman scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warning: spoilers below for \u201cThe Naked Gun.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leslie Nielsen would be proud.<\/p>\n

Director\u00a0Akiva Schaffer, 47, has revealed that he \u201cthreatened to quit\u201d the \u201cNaked Gun\u201d reboot<\/a> to save a scene that the movie\u2019s other writers wanted to cut.<\/p>\n

Akiva Schaffer speaks onstage during the \u201cChip \u2018N Dale: Rescue Rangers\u201d premiere at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California, on May 18, 2022. Getty Images for Disney<\/p>\n

Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson in the newly released \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d reboot. \u00a9Paramount\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was polarizing in script reads,\u201d Schaffer said on Monday\u2019s episode of IndieWire\u2019s\u00a0\u201cFilmmaker Toolkit\u201d<\/a>\u00a0podcast. \u201cPeople I really respect, like\u00a0Andy Sandberg, when he read it for me, he was like, \u2018Snowman\u2019s the best. Do not let them cut it,\u2019 knowing it would be cuttable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes sense once you see the movie, but at one point I did have to threaten to quit,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The \u201cpolarizing\u201d montage in question comes when Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) and Beth (Pamela Anderson)<\/a> share a short romantic getaway in a snowy cabin.<\/p>\n

Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. and Pamela Anderson as Beth in \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d (2025). \u00a9Paramount\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

After using a magical spell book to bring a snowman to life, the pair engage in a threesome with the snowman until he suddenly turns violent. <\/p>\n

Schaffer, who co-wrote the reboot with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, admitted that he did cut down part of the montage just in case it was completely removed from the film.<\/p>\n

The Lonely Island alum was ultimately proven right when the sequence became \u201cthe No. 1 scene\u201d in the entire movie.<\/p>\n

Paul Walter Hauser, Akiva Schaffer and Liam Neeson on the set of \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d (2025). AP<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the first test screen, it was the No. 1 scene in the movie,\u201d Schaffer said. \u201cThe people who really fought me on it after ate a lot of crow without me asking. I tried to let them off the hook easy, and go, \u2018That\u2019s fine,\u2019 but they were like, \u2018No, dude, we were wrong.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere during the podcast, Schaffer revealed that they only included the snowman montage as a throwback to the original 1988 \u201cNaked Gun\u201d<\/a> starring Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin and Priscilla Presley as Jane Spencer.<\/p>\n

In the original, Nielsen and Presley\u2019s characters appear in an absurd scene that shows them running hand-in-hand on the beach and laughing during a showing of the dark war drama \u201cPlatoon\u201d while Herman\u2019s Hermits play in the background.<\/p>\n

Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. in the new \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d reboot. AP<\/p>\n

Pamela Anderson as Beth in the new \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d reboot. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got to the point in our script, we were like, \u2018Wow, this love story deserves a montage,’\u201d Schaffer explained. \u201cThe original\u00a0\u2018Naked Gun\u2019\u00a0has a very famous, very good montage set to \u2018I\u2019m Into Something Good.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it had to be different than that,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd then also, there\u2019s been 30 years of making fun of montages, whether it\u2019s\u00a0\u2018Team America\u2019\u00a0doing a montage or whatever, there\u2019s not a lot of room left in the montage. We were debating not doing a montage and had a few other ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until the \u201cHot Rod\u201d director got up to use the bathroom late one night that the snowman idea popped into his head.<\/p>\n

A poster for \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d featuring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. Copious Management\/Paramount<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got back in bed, it had been percolating that day in the writers\u2019 room, and I just saw the entire thing and wrote it into bullet point notes, and then texted it to Dan and Doug,\u201d he shared. \u201cThe next morning, I came into the writers\u2019 room and they were like, \u2018Yeah, done.’\u201d<\/p>\n

But Schaffer was not the only one to \u201clove\u201d the \u201cpolarizing\u201d montage, because Pamela Anderson has also spoken about how much she enjoyed shooting that particular scene with her rumored new beau, Liam Neeson.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI remember Liam and other people saying, \u2018What is this?’\u201d the \u201cBaywatch\u201d alum, 58, told Entertainment Weekly<\/a>. \u201cBut I was like, \u2018It makes perfect sense to me.\u2019 It feels like Akiva\u2019s signature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akiva Schaffer, Erica Huggins and Seth MacFarlane attend a \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d special screening at Paramount Pictures Studios on July 14, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. Getty Images for Paramount Pictures<\/p>\n

\u201cI know he fought really hard to keep that in because as things grow and then there\u2019s budgets and they figure out what they want to use, he was insistent that had to stay in,\u201d she added. \u201cHe\u2019s throwing himself on the sword for that one, so he knows something we don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson joked that it was even more fun filming the snowman montage than watching it.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was in bed with us, so the threesome with the snowman was quite interesting,\u201d Anderson said of the snowman\u2019s puppeteer. \u201cThere are very specific rules dealing with people in costumes \u2014 you\u2019re not supposed to directly talk to the puppeteer. And this was a full-on, Hansen-level costume.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInside, there\u2019s a person with these night vision goggles, or whatever you want to call them, in there telling which way to turn,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s very, very complex. It\u2019s very robotic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warning: spoilers below for \u201cThe Naked Gun.\u201d Leslie Nielsen would be proud. Director\u00a0Akiva Schaffer, 47, has revealed that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":120490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[568,185,171,18841,49475,53,65822,5158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-120489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-actors","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-leslie-nielsen","12":"tag-liam-neeson","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-pamela-anderson","15":"tag-podcasts","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114975403167136800","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}