Craig D. Lindsey
Welcome to Harvey’s Hellhole, a monthly column devoted to spotlighting the movies that were poorly marketed, mishandled, reshaped, neglected or just straight-up destroyed by Harvey Weinstein during his reign as one of the most powerful studio chiefs in Hollywood. A new Scary Movie is on the way, so let’s talk about the time Harvey and them fucked over some funny Black people.
Continuing their shameless tradition of releasing knockoffs of their own box-office successes, the brothers Weinstein were ready to make fun of their highly profitable Scream franchise.
Even though the movie that started the whole thing was also a hella meta parody of slasher flicks, Miramax knew that scripts for Airplane!-style spoofs would begin circulating around Hollywood. So, why not be the first to capitalize on it? Besides, by this time, the franchise was already three movies deep and beginning to get stale.
Miramax bought two ridiculously titled scripts: Scream If I Know What You Did Last Halloween, written by future spoof auteurs Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (Date Movie, Meet the Spartans); and Last Summer I Screamed Because Halloween Fell on Friday the 13th, co-written by brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans, of the Wayans family/comedy dynasty. Since the Wayans bros previously served up satirical success for the Weinstein bros when they co-wrote and starred in the 1996 hood movie takedown Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (another ludicrous mouthful), the studio greenlit the Wayans script, handing over Friedberg and Seltzer’s draft for ideas. (Friedberg and Seltzer eventually received co-screenwriting credit, which irked Shawn and Marlon, who said nothing they wrote ended up in the film.)
The long-ass title was eventually replaced with the simple Scary Movie – which was also the original title for Scream – with big bro Keenen Ivory Wayans (who mocked/celebrated the Blaxploitation era with his 1988 directorial debut I’m Gonna Git You Sucka) as director. After churning out pop-culture parodies and button/envelope-pushing comedy on their pro-Black sketch show In Living Color, the Wayans trio (along with co-writers Phil Beauman and Buddy Johnson) set their sights on doing a bloody burlesque that would be the stupid yin to Scream’s smart yang.
If Scream was the thinking man’s slasher spoof, Scary was the slasher spoof for people who can’t get enough dick jokes. Released in 2000 and distributed via Miramax’s genre-friendly Dimension Films (just like all the Scream films), Scary has the siblings going unapologetically lowbrow with their foul-mouthed, funhouse-mirror version of Scream, where the gags are more gross than the kills. Don’t forget this was also the era when gross-out comedies (four words: “Is that…hair gel?”) were all the rage.
They bombard the flick with crude, crass, gleefully R-rated comedy. The first scene recreates Scream’s cold(blooded)-open, with former Baywatch eye candy Carmen Electra playing a flatulent version of Drew Barrymore’s soon-to-be-gutted teen, running away from the Ghostface Killer in her bra and panties (just in time for a slo-mo shot of her running through sprinklers). Even before the killer gets to slashing, he stabs out one of her breast implants before she gets hit by a car whose driver – her dad – was getting a blowjob.
Their script fused the storylines of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer (both written by Miramax’s resident horror wunderkind Kevin Williamson) making the Ghostface Killer go after the teens who accidentally off a fisherman one rowdy, randy night. The Wayans boys make themselves part of this friend group, with Shawn as sexually ambiguous jock Ray and Marlon as stoner comic relief Shorty. A brunette Anna Faris steps into the Neve Campbell/Jennifer Love Hewitt role as airheaded Final Girl Cindy Campbell, with Regina Hall as her around-the-way bestie Brenda and American Pie’s Shannon Elizabeth as a busty pal named Buffy.
Although its mind stays planted in the gutter, the Wayans continue in the self-referential vein of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker crew, sending up memorable scenes from other popular films. Being the timely piss-takers that they’ve been since their Color days, they also give nods to such just-released hits as The Matrix, The Sixth Scene, and The Usual Suspects. Thanks to their knack for making people of every shade laugh, the $19 million Scary was a runaway success, grossing $278 million worldwide and becoming the ninth highest-grossing movie in the U.S. that year.
Of course, the Weinsteins immediately wanted a sequel, prompting the brothers to corral more writers (including nephew Craig) for Scary Movie 2, released a year later. Faris, Hall, and the Wayans boys returned, even though all their characters died in the first one, with comedians Chris Elliott and David Cross showing up as comically handicapped characters.
Working with a $45 million budget, the Wayans team went supernatural this time, kicking things off with a prologue lampooning The Exorcist, with a young Natasha Lyonne as the possessed girl and James Woods (stepping in for an ailing Marlon Brando — I shit you not!) as the devil-battling priest. The rest of the film is a slapdash, visibly rushed affair, getting material from turn-of-the-decade ghost stories What Lies Beneath, Hollow Man, and the modern-day remakes of The Haunting and House on Haunted Hill, among other films. These forgotten blockbusters may have been ripe for parody at the time, amassing both box-office bank and mixed reviews. But they now make Scary 2 the most dated-looking of the bunch. (Hell, even Tori Spelling is in the cast.) It still made $145 million.
Despite giving Miramax back-to-back slam dunks, the Weinsteins lowballed the brothers when they asked for a raise in order to do a third installment. As they shifted their attention to another project — a little comedy called White Chicks — Miramax continued the franchise without them. “We didn’t even know,” Marlon told Variety. “We got an announcement on New Year’s Eve that they were doing Scary Movie 3. The franchise was stripped from us. And we were just asking for our fair share.”
Only Faris (now sporting her natural-blonde hair color) and Hall came back to assume their roles for the 2003 and 2006 Scary sequels. The Weinsteins went to David Zucker, of the ZAZ team, to helm those volumes, with future The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin (who co-wrote the 1998 Marlon Wayans vehicle Senseless, also distributed by Miramax) and longtime collaborators Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft writing up the PG-13-rated jokes.
Along with toning down the raunch and amping up the zaniness (and random celebrity cameos), the Zucker Scary installments were more pale-skinned than the Wayans films, with studly White boys Charlie Sheen, Simon Rex, and Craig Bierko getting prominent roles. (Anthony Anderson and Kevin Hart were added to fill the Wayans-sized hole, playing an ambiguously gay pair of homies.) Even without the Wayans’ involvement, both films made $220.7 million and $178.3 million, respectively.
Just like when the Weinsteins brought the band back together for a fourth Scream installment in 2011, they got Zucker and Proft to pen a fifth Scary in 2013, with Spike Lee’s cousin Malcolm D. Lee (Undercover Brother, The Best Man) directing. Even though no one from the original cast appears, the $20 million film still made $78 million. A few months earlier, Marlon Wayans returned to the horror-takeoff game, co-writing and starring in the found-footage parody A Haunted House, distributed by Open Road Films. With the $2.5 million House grossing a cool $60 mil, a sequel predictably showed up the following year.
Now that the Scream franchise is in reboot/legacyquel mode and Shawn and Marlon (along with Faris, Hall, and other castmates from the first two movies) are back with a Weinstein-free Scary (with Haunted director Michael Tiddes stepping in for Keenan), it’s gonna be interesting seeing how their anything-goes brand of comedy plays with the Gen Z/Gen Alpha babies. As Netflix’s recent Kevin Hart roast/debacle has shown us, problematic, relentlessly offensive humor elicits more groans than guffaws these days.
However, considering that horror movies still continue to slay at the box office (especially those made by YouTubers), I have a feeling we may get more Black comedy — in every sense of the word — from the Wayans crew in the near future. Then again, the franchise is currently owned by Paramount Skydance. So, they might have to go through this bullshit all over again.
The whole “Scary Movie” series is available on Paramount+. But those who are still boycotting can watch the first three on Pluto TV.
