The "Spoof" is in the Pudding
I've really grown tired of the Seltzer/Friedberg duos films (Epic Movie, Date Movie, Meet the Spartans, etc.) and since they have a new one coming out I thought what better time to try my hand at it. After all, it can't be THAT hard to write a spoof movie, especially when those guys don't even write spoof movies.
Craig Mazin (writer of Scary Movie 3 and 4 and Superhero Movie) wrote a nice article on his blog The Artful Writer about how the recent spate of "spoof" movies, including his own films, aren't truly spoofs. He believes they should be named "comic film re-enactment" since so many of the jokes are simply plugging in jokes from other comedic films. More specifically, Mazin writes:
...much of what they do is reference a film without actually parodying the film. For example, in Date Movie, Allison Hannigan’s character has a nightmare in which she discovers she’s about to marry Napoleon Dynamite. The Friedberg & Seltzer version of Napoleon Dynamite says the exact same things that the actual Napoleon Dynamite character said, and nothing more. Similarly, at the end of Epic Movie, a Borat look-alike shows up to say, “Is nice!”, but that’s it.
I agree with that and am going to try to make my spoof movie more of a textbook "spoof" however I am going to take the path that Friedberg/Seltzer and Mazin himself have beaten down and spoof a whole slew of films as opposed to focusing on one movie or one genre.
Now, I haven't really broken down how these movies go but, honestly, there really isn't a set direction to take. Half of these films don't even bother telling an actual story, focusing more on a "plot" that allows their characters to move around as much as possible so they get into the most hijinks.
So here we go. Should be fun. Hopefully it'll also be funny.
