{"id":45190,"date":"2025-08-04T18:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T18:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/45190\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T18:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T18:34:10","slug":"the-naked-gun-snowman-scene-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/45190\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Naked Gun’ Snowman Scene Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Editor\u2019s note: The following interviews<\/a> contain spoilers for \u201cThe Naked Gun<\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a scene that comes out of nowhere, and the one people want to talk about after seeing the new \u201cNaked Gun<\/a>\u201d movie. At the mid-way point in the film<\/a>, Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) <\/a>and Beth (Pamela Anderson) have fallen in love, setting into motion an \u201880s-style montage following the new couple on a lover\u2019s getaway to a winter cabin. <\/p>\n

At the isolated cabin, a book of spells brings Frank and Beth\u2019s cheerfully-made snowman to life. At first, the snowman is part of the couple\u2019s silly, intimate games, but eventually becomes a third wheel, resulting in homicidal rage and the love montage descending into something more akin to a horror movie.<\/p>\n

\"'Ella<\/a> \"'Shelby<\/a> <\/p>\n

The snowman is so off-the-wall, brazen, and hysterical \u2014 the perfect mix of \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d and the Lonely Island<\/a> style of humor \u2014 and it is also the best example of how co-writer\/director Akiva Schaffer<\/a> put his own distinct stamp on the franchise. <\/p>\n

When Schaffer was on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast<\/a>, he discussed the snowman scene and how wary he was of doing \u201cfan fiction\u201d of the original. \u201cNo offense to other reboots and redos and legacy sequels out there, but a lot of them are so stuck on re-doing the stuff that the original did,\u2019\u201d said Schaffer. \u201cYou watch them and are delighted, but it\u2019s like empty calories, and when it\u2019s done, you barely remember that you saw it because, my theory at least, is they\u2019re not really a new movie. \u200aThey\u2019re fan fiction of the old movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

That fear of doing a \u201cpaint by numbers Mad Libs\u201d of the original was very much on Schaffer\u2019s mind when he and co-writers\u00a0Dan Gregor and Doug Mand<\/a>\u00a0reached the mid-point of their story. \u201cWe got to the point in our script, we were like, \u2018Wow, this love story deserves a montage,\u2019\u201d said Schaffer. \u201cThe original \u2018Naked Gun\u2019 has a very famous, very good montage set to \u2018I\u2019m Into Something Good.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The 1988 original love montage is truly a classic \u2014 the cheery Herman\u2019s Hermit 1964 hit is a smart fit, watching Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley laugh their way through a first date to see \u201cPlatoon\u201d is still funny, and who can forget that body condom? The original had done all of that so well, but so had others.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it had to be different than that,\u201d said Schaffer. \u201cAnd then also there\u2019s been 30 years of making fun of montages, whether it\u2019s \u2018Team America\u2019 doing 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

Schaffer said he was aware of \u201cJack Frost,\u201d but had only seen the trailer of the 1998 killer snowman movie. It wasn\u2019t a sub-genre (if you can even call it that) he\u2019d been consciously considering spoofing, but one night when he got up at four in the morning to use the bathroom, the snowman scene started to play out in his head.<\/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 said Schaeffer. \u201cThe next morning, I came into the writers\u2019 room and they were like, \u2018Yeah. Done.\u2019 It honestly only changed teeny bits for production reasons, a cabin instead of a house, but it never really changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AkivaAkiva Schaffer<\/a>, Liam Neeson, and Paul Walter Hauser on \u2018The Naked Gun\u2019 set\u00a9Paramount\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say everyone involved with \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d reboot initially understood the brilliance of the scene. \u201cIt was polarizing in script-reads. People I really respect, like Andy Sandberg<\/a>, 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,\u2019\u201d said Schaeffer. \u201cIt makes sense once you see the movie, but at one point I did have to threaten to quit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schaffer is clear that he felt supported in making the film he wanted to make, but due to the opposition, he pared down the snowman so that if it didn\u2019t play, it could be removed from the film without leaving a hole. For example, there were drafts of the script in which the snowman reappears at the end of the film \u2014 able to reconstitute itself from the fountain after the climactic action scene \u2014 that never got shot.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the first test screen, it was the number one scene in the movie,\u201d said Schaffer. \u201cThe people that 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.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

A Paramount Pictures release, \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d is now in theaters.<\/p>\n

To hear Akiva Schaffer\u2019s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast<\/a> on\u00a0Apple<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, or your favorite podcast platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Editor\u2019s note: The following interviews contain spoilers for \u201cThe Naked Gun.\u201d] It\u2019s a scene that comes out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[24675,49,48,75,1554,31810,2977,337,23993],"class_list":{"0":"post-45190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-akiva-schaffer","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-film","13":"tag-filmmaker-toolkit-podcast","14":"tag-interviews","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-the-naked-gun"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}