Scary
Movie 2
You
Ain't Gonna Outwork Us
Interview with Shawn and Marlon Wayans
interview by Cynthia
Fuchs, 13 July 2001
Marlon and Shawn Wayans meet me in the lobby of theFour Seasons Hotel in DC. They have their bags packed:right after we talk, they're off to the airport tohead back to Detroit, where they have work to do inthe morning. They're tired, that's clear enough, butthey are serious troopers. As we walk from the lobbyto a sort of loungey area, past the bar and more thana few tree-size plants, they smile a bit, and when wesit on a couple of big, fat, expensively fabrickedsofas, they look close to ecstatic: sitting down, it'sall good.
The New York-born Marlon and Shawn are the twoyoungest of ten children, now aged twenty-nine and thirty,respectively. The family has always been close, andwhen oldest brother Dwayne died last summer, ofrespiratory failure, they all came together even moretightly. Much of their recent family history has beenvisible to the rest of us, as they've put theirconsiderable energies into their work. Marlon andShawn both got their TV start on In Living Color,first airing in 1990. From 1995-99, Shawn and Marlonhad their own show, The Wayans Bros. on the WB,wrote and starred in Don't Be a Menace to SouthCentral While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood in1996, and became superstars when Scary Movie hitlast year. In between the Scary Movie s, Marlon madea strong impression in Requiem for a Dream and lessof one in Dungeons and Dragons. Both brothers arelooking forward to the release of Roaches, an animatedcomedy they wrote together.
While they're both devoted fathers to young children,Shawn and Marlon agree that they are "workaholics."Upon the surprise success of Scary Movie (made forrelative peanuts, the film earned $157 milliondomestic), they were immediately pressed to make asequel. And not just any sequel, but one that tops andso proves the lucrative genius (as opposed to theflukeness) of the first film. The Wayans are all veryaware of this pressure, but also assert that they'renot in it to make still more money forMiramax/Dimension and themselves (though that would benice), but to please their fans. They have a clearsense of what they're doing with the spoofs with whichtheir names have become associated. Shawn puts it thisway: "Scary Movie is about pop culture, Menace isabout urban culture, and I'm Gonna Get You Sucka isabout urban throwback."
Cynthia Fuchs:How hard was it to come up with thesequel to Scary Movie so quickly?
Shawn Wayans:We had no idea the first one was goingto be that big. We thought kids would dig it, thatthey would embrace it, but not only children embracedit, so did adults. So it became a thing of its own.Any time something does that well, you gotta followup.
Marlon Wayans:We knew we had something funny, in thefirst one.
SW: It was the same kind of gut feeling I had when Isaw In Living Color for the first time, I knew itwas something that no one had done before. And I felt,either I'm crazy, or this is something special.
CF: Do you have fun making these films?
SW: We had a ball. And this time, we had less thanhalf the time that we did for the first film. Becausethe first time, there was no real release date, theydidn't know when they wanted to put it out exactly,and we had time to develop the script before we evengave it to Miramax. We were working on it for like twoyears. For Scary Movie 2, we had a due date and hadto work fast. And though there's a lot of pressure, asartists, we just block it out. So really, the pressurecomes from us. That's how the first movie happened.There was no outside pressure: we wanted to hit theaudience hard. We still have that same burn, to getthat same kind of laughs. So whether the studio wantsus to or not, we're going to do it. The money is justa byproduct of coming out with good stuff. Our wholething is building that rapport with the audience.
CF: How did you decide what movies to satirize in thesecond film?
SW: In the first one we did the slasher films, and forthis, we decided to take on the supernatural. Wewatched everything from The Exorcist to What LiesBeneathto The Haunting and then every other littlehorror film in between.
MW: We did so much research.
SW: The Legend of Hill House.
MW: Poltergeist. If there's a haunted-house film, wewatched it.
SW: We watched 'em all, and we chose that set of filmsbecause we thought it would be the natural progressionof the horror genre, that we hadn't touched on yet.
MW: When you're doing a sequel, you have to do a newgenre, to have a well of new jokes. Otherwise, you'rejust repeating yourself.
CF: There seemed an obvious built-in audience for thefirst film, because the kids who know your work havemostly seen those films. Did you think that olderfilms might not be so familiar to younger viewers
MW: You're right. We had to set up a lot more of theclichés, because the first film could just assume theaudience knew them. But now, the beauty of this[second] movie is that even if you haven't seen thosemovies, it's just plain funny.
SW: The other one was more timely, this one is juststraight-up funny. And we pay homage to the people whocame before, doing satires, like Mel Brooks; we'rejust carrying the torch.
CF: Do you feel pressured to deliver this kind of filmnow?
SW: The studios want this from us, but it's not all wedo. So the next couple of movies we have planned, wewant to do just a regular, funny comedy. We don't wantto be known as the guys who have just one move to thebasket. Plus, that's all choices. There's more thanone studio in town -- there's seven studios in town!They might want that one thing from you, but they haveto give something to you. It's a give and take. Andwe're happy to prove ourselves in any genre. Bottomline is for us to be consistent, be happy, andcontinue to be funny.
CF: When you guys are writing, how do you know whensomething's funny?
MW: Everyone laughs in unison.
SW: And we're all really tough critics.
CF: How do you think about comedy as a way to getinside the mainstream?
MW: Comedy is underrated, in terms of what messagesyou can get out three, or what statements you canmake. I think that everyone has their own medicine,and comedy is ours. We come from a place where it'sbetter to laugh at something than cry. Don't Be aMenace had a lot of social statements, but we madethem with jokes. We like the expectation for comedy,because you can really go to the wall with it to showhow silly or absurd something is.
SW: Yeah, without shoving it down people's throats.It's easier to digest it in the form of a joke.
MW: It's how you say things. No disrespect to dramabecause I've done them both and love them both, but Ithink drama is easier than comedy, because there areformulas to jokes. There are different equations youmust use to tell different jokes and each set-up givesyou a different outcome. There's a lot more thoughtput into comedy than drama. You say what's on yourmind. Drama's about being, comedy's about thinking,performing...
SW: ... plotting, setting up, timing.
MW: There's a lot more to worry about, even inperformance. I think that's why we tend to go towardthe challenge of comedy.
CF: I'd guess it's really hard to do comedy on TV,with all the restrictions.
SW: That's right. They'll say, "That's funny, but, youcan't do that on TV."
MW: We were gagged for so many years on TV, but it wasgreat because we found ways to say what we wanted tosay what we wanted to say, without seeming to say it.In embracing TV, you grow as an artist. You come toknow, when you can't get away with something, how doyou get away with something? That's the mindset thatyou have to have. That was the beauty of Seinfeld.
CF: Do you feel like the people you're addressing aredifferent between films and TV?
SW: I think a lot of it is the same crowd. The peoplewho watched us on TV followed us into films, and thatwas our core fan-base, and it grew from there.
MW: Yeah, it actually expanded in movies. On TV, wewere on smaller networks. But the fan-base -- theytold a friend and then they told a friend, and by thetime Scary Movie came out, it was like, they allwanted to go see this movie. Plus, added to the peoplewe had are the new kids coming up. And there's so muchgoing on, what's happening is, there's no moreseparation between the cultures or races. It's allbecome one culture: youth. Black kids are listening torock and white kids are listening to hiphop.
CF: Do you guys watch a lot of movies and TV, asidefrom particular research for a satire?
MW: We study it. We watch a lot. Lately I've beenwriting, so I haven't had as much time as I used to,but I try to see as much as I can.
SW: We definitely have our finger on the pulse. Youhave to keep up. We decide what to watch by what'sfunny.
MW: Sometimes it's a surprise, like The WeakestLink. I turned that on and said, I like this meangirl.
SW: If you keep up with pop culture, everybody knowsthe joke. So, then we think, "Okay, how can we getthat in there?"
MW: We try to make it all just funny, so that even ifa person doesn't know the reference, they're laughing.So we try to make jokes that are more situation thanreference. But we also write characters, that is thekey. In Scary Movie, that gave us another dimension:character dynamic comedy is the best comedy. All thevoices of the characters are strong.
CF: Obviously, you all like working together.
SW: We love it. We make a family environment, it'sfun, everybody knows what needs to be done, Keenenoversees the whole thing: we respect him, he respectsus.
MW: While he's manning the ship, we keep thingsmoving. We all have our functions. And they're my bestfriends.
SW: I think it has to do with how we were raised, tolook out for one another. Keenen got us early on. He'salways been like a brother-father figure to us, fromteaching us about women, to teaching us about thebusiness, acting, writing, everything.
CF: What is the process for structuring something likethis?
MW: Keenen is really good at that. He puts it alltogether. He's the director, and he needs to have a...
SW: ... a clear vision. And we all write, but thescript is a blueprint. We can lose whole scenes whenwe're shooting.
CF: You knew early that this was what you wanted todo?
SW: I knew when I was six. I just knew it; I didn'tcare about nothing else. If I didn't make it in thisworld, I would probably be homeless. I gave myselfthat little to fall back on.
MW: I knew when I was four. I never pictured myselfdoing anything else, maybe a lawyer. We went toschool only to make people laugh.
CF: Do you feel confident about what you do?
MW: We're confident in our abilities and our workethic.
SW: We know that even if we can't do it now, if wework hard enough, eventually, we'll get it done.
MW: There might be people more talented, but you ain'tgonna outwork us, unless you like working twenty-hourdays. That's our god-given talent. We inherited thatfrom our father, a workhorse. He did a little bit ofeverything. He taught us to be men first, to providefor our family, to never quit. And applied all that tosomething that we love, fortunately. People are sohappy to see you, just because you put a smile ontheir face when they were in a bad mood or had theworst day of their life. People come up to you andthank you for that. We're like, "We're no heroes." Youknow who's heroes? Doctors, teachers...
SW: ... firemen...
MW: ... your parents, those are the heroes. Every nowand then, we make you all laugh, that's good, I'mglad. It's the ecology of life: we all have ourpurpose.
CF: Is there a cost to being who you are?
SW: You lose your privacy, and sometimes, people don'tsee you as human. You could lose someone in yourfamily and run into a fan, and if you don't come withthe right energy to someone who's meeting you for thefirst time, you're an a**hole. It's a weird thing. Theproblem is that people don't step back and analyze,what if they were in that situation?
MW: It's a hard trade-off. Your personal values areout there all the time. That's why celebrities stayinside so much. They're looking for a little downtime.
SW: But at the same time, you have to talk to people.We did a lot of press for the last film and now forthis one. We don't rest on our laurels.
Click here to read Cynthia Fuchs' review.