• thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 days ago

    it also spawned the whole genre and although Leslie Nielsen made lots of movies before this, his legacy is this as well as the other parody movies

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      16 hours ago

      It definitely remade Leslie Nielsen’s career. He (along with Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges) were known as very serious drama actors, and the thing is, they play their roles as such. Although they may be absurd, they deliver their lines perfectly seriously.

      Leslie Nielson in particular was so hysterical his career shifted into comedy, starring in Police Squad! and The Naked Gun, and then a string of movies mostly not made by the ZAZ that used him wrong, frankly. Where they have him being silly and making funny faces…he was excellent at delivering an absurd line as if it was perfectly serious.

        • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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          11 hours ago

          There’s that perfect moment where he and Peter Graves share a moment. “How long until you can land this plane.” “I don’t know.” “Well can’t you guess?” “Well, not for another two hours.” “…You can’t take a guess for another two hours?” The fun of it is they got serious acting talent to deliver this dumb midwest humor dialog.

      • ripcord@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Robert Stack apparently kept trying to play it like a comedy, and it took them a while to convince him to play it completely straight.

        • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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          10 hours ago

          It really worked that Johnny played by Stephen Stucker was the only character who seemed to know what genre of film he was in. You get one character who gets to be wacky.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      21 hours ago

      Yeah they cast a lot of guys like Peter Graves and Robert Stack that normally appeared in the over-serious thriller type movies. So Leslie Nielsen was just one of that group of actors they cast to have guys deliver silly lines in that stern serious tone that they did in actual serious movies.

      But of course Leslie Nielsen was amazing at it, and didn’t need to do those over-serious movies anymore. And don’t call me Shirley!