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Scriptnotes Podcast

694 - Reviving the Spoof Movie

Scriptnotes Podcast

John August

Screenwriter, Tv & Film, Writing, John, Screenwriting, August, Craig, Screenplay, Mazin

4.82.7K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

John welcomes back Dan Gregor and Doug Mand (Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers, Pretty Smart) to ask, how do you revive a dead genre? Using their upcoming movie The Naked Gun, they look at why the spoof genre fell apart, the challenges of introducing it to a new generation, and why turning genre tropes into jokes will always resonate with an audience.

We also look at other genres they don’t make anymore, follow up on Dogma 25, and answer listener questions on complicated rewrites and whether or not to hire a publicist.

In our bonus segment for premium members, John, Doug and Dan look at the movies that Gen Z hasn’t seen (and whether they even need to).

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You can download the episode here.

 

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey, this is John. A standard warning for people who are in the car with their kids. There's some swearing in this episode.

0:08.8

Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and you're listening to Episode 694 of Scriptance. It's a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

0:17.0

Today on the show, we welcome back to the writers of a new movie in a genre that has almost disappeared to talk about why and how they wrote a new movie in this world.

0:25.9

That genre is spoof.

0:27.0

The movie is The New Naked Gun, and the writers are Dan Greger and Doug Banned.

0:30.7

Welcome back, fellas.

0:31.6

Hi, guys.

0:32.4

Hi, nice for having us.

0:33.3

I want to talk about the spoof genre, but also other genres that used to be common that have

0:38.2

basically now disappeared. We'll also answer listener questions on publicists and complications

0:42.9

and over complications. And in our bonus segment for premium members, I want to talk about

0:47.3

movies that Gen Z hasn't seen. Because the spoof genre is a thing that they are just not familiar

0:52.8

with, and it has to be a factor as we think about what movies we're doing.

0:55.8

Yeah, going forward.

0:57.1

But first, Drew, we have some follow-up.

0:59.0

We do.

0:59.6

So back in episode 690, we talked about the new Dogma 25 manifesto.

1:04.0

I'm not sure if you guys are worried about this.

1:05.0

Listen to that.

1:05.7

Yeah. So Andrew in Boston wrote in, he said a hilarious aspect of the Dogma 95 movement that people might not remember is that the majority of the movies broke the manifesto rules in one way or another. For example, the idiots and Julian Donkey Boy both used background music. Oh my god, the sacrales of background music. That's not authentic to it. No. What am I even watching? It changes everything I think about Julian Donkey Boy. It's moving out of my top 10 list in New York Times.

1:29.1

Fully mainstream sellouts.

1:31.1

Complete sellouts.

...

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