Cultural controversy is no longer just a reputational risk or buzz generator: it has become a financial instrument that speculators can game in real time, says Yakov Bart.
An American Eagle’s denim campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney set off a PR firestorm this week. Meme stock traders added to the buzz. AP Photo by Anthony Behar/Sipa USA
A series of controversial ads, from American Eagle’s denim campaign featuring Hollywood starlet Sydney Sweeney, to Dunkin’s “Golden Hour Refresher,” set off a PR firestorm this week, as social media users accused the brands of racism.
The American Eagle ad, in particular, in which Sweeney not-so-subtletly alludes to her good looks through the wordplay of “genes” and “jeans,” touched off a debate about whether the apparel company’s genetics theme reinforces ideas linked to white supremacy.
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” she says. “My jeans are blue.”
Then the tagline: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
Yakov Bart, professor of marketing and Joseph G. Riesman Research Professor at Northeastern, says campaigns like these court controversy at their own expense — not least because investors can weaponize the backlash to the companies’ detriment.
“From a short-term brand awareness perspective, the campaign clearly did a great job as evidenced by millions of organic impressions generated by the ensuing backlash,” Bart says.
“But that awareness also comes with a price: a narrative about race and privilege across multiple public platforms that the company has yet to comment on may have negative consequences for the brand in the long term,” he says.
One immediate effect was a deluge of commentary on the situation, which divided users between those who saw the ads as promoting eugenics — and others who dismissed the critics and criticism as “woke” nonsense.
“These days, a blond, blue-eyed white woman being held up as the exemplar of ‘great genes’ is a concept that maybe shouldn’t have made it past the copywriters room,” wrote Jenny G. Zhang for Slate.
“You wait your whole life for an advert with a weird fixation on genetics to come out and then, what do you know, two come along at once,” wrote Arwa Mahdawi for The Guardian.
Bart notes that what makes the Sweeney flashpoint different from the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad or Gillette’s “toxic masculinity,” #MeToo campaign, is that so-called meme stock traders have taken advantage of the situation, boosting trading volume by some 89% despite a 2.25% drop in shares.
Indeed, polarizing ad moments have become new trading catalysts, Bart says, highlighting the growing risks facing marketers at a time when branding and political speech are increasingly hard to separate. The day the campaign dropped, American Eagle’s shares jumped up 4% before dipping amid the uproar.
But, Bart observes, a “highly motivated crowd” was incentivized “to keep the outrage — and therefore volatility — going beyond the usual weeklong news cycle.”
“In other words, cultural controversy is no longer just a reputational risk or buzz generator: it has become a financial instrument that speculators can game in real time,” Bart says.
“Brands venturing into edgy creative territory must therefore manage not only consumer sentiment, but also an investor layer that can amplify, extend and even monetize the backlash long after most shoppers have moved on,” he says.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, meme stock traders have seized on opportunities to make a quick buck off viral headlines and sudden surges in public sentiment — often with little regard for a company’s fundamentals.
In 2021, after a handful of Wall Street hedge funds tried to “short” GameStop stock, a small community on the social media platform Reddit rallied to save the failing company by trading the stock higher and higher, sending its stock price north of $1,700 at one point before it all came crashing down.
Experts say meme traders — who take aim at powerful Wall Street financiers, oftentimes to disrupt organized economic activity — are here to stay.
American Eagle’s total sales were down 5% between February and April of this year compared to a year earlier, ABC News reports.
Experts explain what makes the subject of “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” one of the most legendary artists of his generation, despite only releasing one studio album before his premature death.
With his debut studio album “Grace,” Jeff Buckley was one of the most promising artists of the 90s before he died at the age of 30. Merri Cyr. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
Even if you’ve never heard Jeff Buckley’s music, you’ve heard Jeff Buckley.
Despite only releasing one studio album, “Grace,” prior to tragically drowning at the age of 30 in 1997, Buckley remains one of the most legendary — and subtly influential — artists of his generation.
His soaring falsetto and genre-bending songwriting that could drift from soul to jazz to folk to grunge and back again made him a word of mouth sensation in the early ’90s. His music was a shock to the system for his contemporaries and has continued to influence artists well after his death.
Radiohead, Muse, Coldplay, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Lana del Rey and Adele have all cited him as influences.
With a new documentary, “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley,” arriving from Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg, musicians and music experts alike say it’s worth reflecting on Buckley’s life and legacy. How did an artist with such a slight body of work leave such a deep impact?
The most obvious place to start is with his voice. Even now, “nobody sounds like Jeff Buckley,” says Melissa Ferrick, a singer songwriter and touring artist with decades of experience who serves as a professor of the practice at Northeastern University.
His voice was heavily melodic and almost operatic at times, with a four-active range that could stretch in seemingly any direction, Ferrick says. He drew inspiration from the singer songwriters of the 1970s, including his estranged father, Tim Buckley, as much as he did from jazz and eastern music styles. However, the element of Buckley’s voice that Ferrick still hears today, including in some of her songwriting students, is his falsetto.
Jeff Buckley’s voice, artistry and authenticity make him an artist that music lovers and fellow musicians alike have flocked to despite his limited catalog, say Northeastern’s Melissa Ferrick, professor of the practice, and Andrew Mall, associate professor of music. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University and Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
At the time, it was a stark contrast to the low, growling vocals of grunge, but it also perfectly exemplified what set Buckley apart from his peers: raw emotional power filtered through incredible technical proficiency.
“I don’t think we hear men sing with such vulnerability and in falsetto that much in popular music,” Ferrick says. “From the recordings … what I notice is that he just throws his voice with absolute abandon and hits it. It’s not sought out. It’s not pre-meditated what he goes for. It’s in the moment, and he’s fearless going for those notes.”
“Grace,” the only studio album Buckley completed while he was alive, remains a showcase for not only his voice but his songwriting. The rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” that appears on “Grace” is what Buckley is most remembered for. However, the rest of his 1994 album charts an often bewildering course across genres and styles that all leads back to one place: Jeff Buckley.
All of those qualities were on display during Buckley’s live shows, which are another reason why his legacy still persists several decades later, says Andrew Mall, an associate professor of music at Northeastern. Given there is more of Buckley’s live music out in the world than studio recordings, it has helped him become a musician’s musician in some ways.
“He’s not a particularly virtuosic guitarist — he’s not a heavy metal shredder — but the way that he can weave his instrumental work along with his vocal work and then lead a band through these extended versions [of song] and hop through different styles over the course of a single evening, that always struck me as pretty incredible and something I was not hearing at the time and I still think is relatively unique,” Mall says.
Ferrick was able to see all of this firsthand at Sin-é when she appeared on the same bill as Buckley while promoting her first album, “Massive Blur,” in 1993.
At the time, Ferrick had heard very little about this artist who had been generating a ton of buzz with his residency at Sin-é. After performing a short set in front of a surprisingly packed room, she decided to stay for a bit and listen to the artist who was at the center of all this attention.
“I stayed after my little set and listened to him for a while because I was like, ‘Who the heck is this guy?’” Ferrick says. “You could have heard a pin drop, and this was someone playing by themselves. As someone who does play solo, it’s hard to hold a room in that kind of silence for that long.”
Buckley’s death — an accidental drowning while swimming in a river — inherently adds a tragic lens to his legacy. Listening to his music is not just bearing witness to an incredible artist but all the potential he was never able to realize, Ferrick says.
Despite his early death, contemporary artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Hozier continue to carry the flame Buckley lit. Mall hopes Berg’s documentary helps the broader public appreciate him for more than just “Hallelujah” and see the ways his work has subtly impacted generations of artists. More than that, Ferrick says, Buckley is a reminder of what every artist should strive for: true authenticity.
“He was an extraordinarily authentic human being and musician and performer, and that’s really rare,” Ferrick says. “When someone is really themselves, I think it’s really magnetic because a lot of people have a hard time being themselves.”
Grammy award-winning pop star Justin Timberlake, 44, recently took to Instagram to share his diagnosis of Lyme disease, a bacterial infection that he said was, “relentlessly debilitating, both mentally and physically.” His statement comes on the heels of criticism from fans who felt he was under-performing during his recent world tour.
“When I first got the diagnosis I was shocked for sure,” the post stated. “But, at least I could understand why I would be onstage and in a massive amount of nerve pain or, just feeling crazy fatigue or sickness.”
Lyme disease is an infectious disease caused by borrelia burgdorferi, a bacterial species that can spread to people and animals from the bite of a deer tick — also called a black-legged tick — carrying the bacteria, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Experts say ticks that carry the bacteria live throughout most of the United States, although the incidence of Lyme disease is far less prevalent in California than it is in the American Northeast, Midwest and mid-Atlantic states. (The disease is named after the town of Lyme, Connecticut, where an outbreak was first identified in the 1970s.)
In California, western black-legged ticks are carriers of Lyme disease and are commonly found in northern coastal counties and in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Between 2013 and 2019, there were 904 new cases of Lyme disease in the state. During that time period, the average rates of Lyme disease were highest in Santa Cruz (4 cases per 100,000 people), Humboldt (about 3 cases per 100,000 people) and Sonoma Counties (about 2 cases per 100,000 people).
Lyme disease often goes undiagnosed “due to the breadth and migratory nature of its symptoms—ranging from headaches and fatigue to joint pain, body aches, balance issues, memory loss, myocarditis, anxiety, insomnia, and depression,” the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a nonprofit that studies the disease, stated in a post on X.
Most people completely recover from the disease when treated with a two- to four-week course of antibiotics. Others have prolonged symptoms of fatigue, body, aches or difficulty thinking, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
How a tick-infected bite leds to Lyme disease
When a bacteria-infected tick bites a person, or animal, the bacteria is released from the mouth of the tick and into the bloodstream, where it can then spread throughout the body, according to Bay Area Lyme Foundation.
If a tick becomes attached to your skin, the CDC recommends you remove it as soon as possible. Consult your health care provider if you show any symptoms of the disease.
Symptoms of lyme disease
Your body’s reaction to the infection varies from person to person and symptoms show up in stages. Some people with Lyme disease don’t have symptoms in the early stages of the infection, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Common symptoms of Lyme disease are fever, rash, facial paralysis, an irregular heartbeat, and arthritis. These symptoms can happen in stages.
During the first stage, which occurs 3 to 30 days after a tick bite, a person can develop a circular rash around the site of the bite. The rash can become clear in the center, and resemble a target or bull’s-eye.
During this first stage, infected people can experience a fever, headache, extreme tiredness, joint stiffness, muscle aches and pains or swollen lymph nodes.
In the second stage, which occurs three to 10 weeks after a bite, symptoms can escalate. They include:
Rashes on other parts of the body
Neck pain or stiffness
Muscle weakness on one or both sides of the face
Immune-system activity in heart tissue that causes irregular heartbeats
Pain that starts from the back and hips and spreads to the legs
Pain, numbness or weakness in the hands or feet
Painful swelling in tissues of the eye or eyelid
Immune-system activity in the eye nerves that causes pain or vision loss
Symptoms in the third stage of the disease, which begins two to 12 months after a tick bite, include arthritis in large joints, particularly the knees. Pain, swelling or stiffness may last for a long time or can come and go.
People with prolonged symptoms of Lyme disease, called Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, usually get better over time without additional antibiotics, but it can take many months to feel completely well, according to the CDC.
The cause of pro-longed symptoms is currently unknown.
Be aware of a tick’s home, how to protect yourself
Ticks are commonly found in outdoor areas with grass, shrubs, rocks, logs and fallen leaves.
You don’t have to avoid these areas, but should instead wear protective clothing to prevent a tick from latching onto your skin.
Before you go on your outdoor activity, plan to wear long-sleeve shirts and pants. With your protective clothes on, apply insect repellent to garments and exposed skin, according to the state public health department.
During your hike, check yourself and any pets for ticks that might be crawling on you. If you do see a tick, remove it right away.
When you return home from your excursion, inspect your clothes, body and scalp for any ticks. Toss the tick-free clothes in the laundry and take a shower.
If you found a tick on your clothes put clothing items in a hot dryer for 10 minutes, that will kill the insect.
The California Department of Public Health recommends you continue to check your body for any sign of ticks for three days after being outside in areas where ticks reside.
Mark your calendars, because moviegoers will get to hear: “May the Force be with you” in theaters once again.
Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, which kicked off the legendary trilogy and franchise, is heading back to theaters just in time for its 50th anniversary. Lucasfilm owner Disney has confirmed a theatrical release is set for April 30, 2027.
A New Hope originally hit theaters on May 25, 1977 and starred Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Harrison Ford as Han Solo and the late Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia. And the film saw the introduction to one of the most iconic villains of all time, Darth Vader (physically played by David Prowse, with James Earl Jones providing the voice).
Created by George Lucas, the franchise expanded into the early 2000s with prequel films starring Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor. The sequels began with 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, featuring Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver and many other spinoffs and TV series.
Last year at Cannes, Lucas spoke about how his original ideas for Star Wars “sort of got lost” after the 2012 Disney deal. Notably, 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story struggled at the box office.
“I was the one who really knew what Star Wars was … who actually knew this world, because there’s a lot to it. The Force, for example, nobody understood the Force,” Lucas said. “When they started other ones after I sold the company, a lot of the ideas that were in [the original] sort of got lost. But that’s the way it is. You give it up, you give it up.”
However, a highly anticipated upcoming project in the franchise is Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling. That film is also set to hit theaters in 2027, on May 28 of that year.
The exes and Fleetwood Mac members announced they’re reissuing “Buckingham Nicks” for the first time, which is the only album they created as a duo.
A billboard sign advertises the cover art from the 1973 album “Buckingham Nicks” by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham which is being reissued in September. AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
“You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you.”
Any Fleetwood Mac fan recognizes this lyric from “Silver Springs,” a song Stevie Nicks wrote about her breakup with bandmate Lindsey Buckingham. It also appears to actually be the case for Buckingham.
Over 50 years after they first started making music, music’s most notable exes are still releasing albums. In coordinated Instagram posts, the longtime collaborators announced that they’re reissuing “Buckingham Nicks,” the only album the two recorded as a duo under that name.
“Buckingham Nicks” was released in 1973 to minimal fanfare; the couple’s label, Polydor Records, dropped it within months of their release. The following year, the couple joined Fleetwood Mac, making them the notable figures they are today.
But while you can easily find copies of or stream all of the duo’s other work — both in Fleetwood Mac and as solo artists — “Buckingham Nicks” was never reissued.
Why reissue “Buckingham Nicks” now, after decades that were filled with breakups, makeups, reunion tours, and lawsuits for the pair? Andrew Mall, an associate professor of music at Northeastern University, thinks it could be a sign that things are thawing between the two exes.
Northeastern music professor Andrew Mall said Nicks and Buckingham may have finally come to an agreement about reissuing the album. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
“They (probably) own the copyrights jointly for pretty much most of the songs that were written,” Mall said. “If the label wants to go back and reissue it, especially if they want to remaster the material or produce more marketing material, they have to go back to the artist.”
That’s especially true in the digital age, Mall said, because recording contracts written in the 1970s didn’t account for streaming or digital downloads. But negotiating to allow for a reissue isn’t always easy.
“A band or a group where the primary members are at odds with each other, sometimes it’s really, really difficult to get them on the same page,” he said. “You’d have their attorneys or lawyers or management kind of negotiate on their behalf, but if there’s like a lot of animosity, which is what we understand is true between Stevie and Lindsey … there might have been like no appetite for that.”
Buckingham and Nicks met in high school in California in the 1960s and quickly became a couple and musical collaborators. In 1974, they joined Fleetwood Mac together. They split as a couple several years later, leading to the 1977 release of “Rumors,” an album about the romantic entanglements and breakups of the band, including Buckingham and Nicks. It remains one of the best-selling albums of all time.
The pair went on to release more albums with Fleetwood Mac as well as on their own as solo artists, feuding all the while. Buckingham refused to go on tour with the band after releasing “Tango in the Night” in 1987 and left the band for 10 years.
When Fleetwood Mac reunited in 1997 to record their live album, “The Dance,” they included a performance of “Silver Springs,” which was cut from “Rumours.” The video of this performance, with the two exes “shooting daggers at each other” as they sang, has since found a new life on the Internet over the last few years.
Even though Buckingham got kicked out/left the band (depending on who you ask) for good in 2018 and subsequently sued his former bandmates, interest in the former couple remains high thanks to the new audience they’ve found over time.
Mall said this continued interest could also be why the album is being reissued now instead of during the 1990s, which is when a lot of record labels remastered and reissued albums in hopes of getting people to switch from vinyls and cassettes to CDs.
“If we look back at the statistics for the recording industry, that is the height of revenue earned from selling music to consumers,” Mall said. “That’s when ‘Buckingham Nicks’ should have been reissued. There was a big Fleetwood Mac box set at the time, and it seems incredibly likely for (record labels) to realize, ‘Oh, actually also there’s this album that didn’t do so great, but we should dig it out.’”
This trend of reissuing, especially music from the 1960s and ’70s, has continued as doing so often brings in a lot of revenue.
But again, it could’ve been the feud between Buckingham and Nicks that kept “Buckingham Nicks” on the shelf. Instead, the 10-track album remained a rare find for record collectors, with vinyl copies selling online for hundreds of dollars.
It’s this same animosity though that has made it possible for it to be reissued. Even though it’s been nearly 50 years since “Rumors” catapulted Fleetwood Mac to fame, the fandom lives on as new generations discover their music and become intrigued by the band’s dynamics. Their songs have reached audiences through TikTok, TV shows and even inspired Taylor Jenkins Reid’s popular novel, “Daisy Jones and the Six.”
“They still, both individually and as a duo, command a lot of attention,” Mall said. “This seems like it should have been a no-brainer 30 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago. But you know, for it to finally come together now, I think it ‘s really great because it gives fans and people who are maybe only casual listeners alike an opportunity to hear the genesis of this really, really, really famous duo.”
Freakier Friday Chad Michael Murray shared hilarious anecdote involving son
Freakier Friday Chad Michael Murray’s son seems to have learnt the skill of impressing ladies.
The One Tree Hill star shared during his appearance on Good America July 29 how his 10-year-old son name-drops his father’s name to get on with ladies.
“I’m someone who, what a blessing to be able to make someone happy with something as simple as a photograph or an autograph,” Lindsay Lohan’s costar shared on the show. “So, I take pictures with people in public all the time.”
Consequently, his son has understood that primarily his fans who come to meet him for an autograph or a selfie are young women. “He knows the demographic that’s coming.”
And his son, whose name has not been disclosed by the actor parents yet, utilized this knowledge on their family vacation.
“I wasn’t there, and he sees these girls, younger girls in bikinis,” Chad narrated the anecdote from their family trip to Puerto Rico. “And he walks over and he goes, ‘My dad’s Chad Michael Murray. I thought you might wanna get a photo.'”
As much as he got stunned by his child’s action, Sophia Bush’s ex is sure his son would still come up with a way to talk to these women no matter if he had famous parents or not.
The reason he knew this was because at an event at the University of Florida while 43-year-old took a photo with a group of girls and left, his son stayed behind as ‘he is so confident when he speaks to women’.
Prince Harry shares Archie and Lilibet with wife Meghan Markle
Prince Harry still dreams of seeing his children back in his homeland one day, at least for their education.
According to the New York Post, Harry, 40, is “quite keen” on Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4, receiving at least part of their schooling in the UK, despite them being raised in California in their mother Meghan Markle’s home country.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex moved there after stepping down from royal duties in 2020, when Archie was just two years old. Lilibet, meanwhile, has never been to the U.K.
Grant Harrold, former royal butler to King Charles, told the outlet in an interview published August 1st, “It’s very likely and it’s completely possible because if they have their younger education in America, I’m sure their father will be quite keen to have a bit of a British education.”
But there’s a major catch: the Sussexes must first mend ties with the rest of the Royal Family.
“Time will tell,” Harrold added. “But I’d like to think that they would get a bit of education here because royals normally do some gap year somewhere.”
He pointed to King Charles’ own time in Australia, suggesting a UK stint for Archie or Lilibet “could be part of that.”
Still, it’s not looking likely, especially after Harry lost his bid for taxpayer-funded police protection earlier this year.
“I can’t see a world where I would be bringing my wife and kids back to the U.K. at this point,” he told the BBC in May, calling the situation “quite sad.”
But a lot has changed since then, especially after Harry and Charles’ team met in London for a ”peace summit” last month.
King Charles’s nephew Peter Phillips has announced his engagement to NHS nurse Harriet Sperling.
A photo showing Ms Sperling showing off her engagement ring as she embraces the son of the Princess Royal, Princess Anne, has been released to mark the occasion.
A statement released on behalf of the couple said: “Both families were informed jointly of the announcement and were delighted with the wonderful news of their engagement.”
A date for the wedding has not been set.
Their statement said: “Mr Peter Phillips, the son of HRH The Princess Royal and Captain Mark Phillips, and Ms Harriet Sperling, daughter of the late Mr Rupert Sanders and Mrs Mary Sanders of Gloucestershire, have today confirmed their official engagement.”
The King, Queen and the Prince and Princess of Wales have also been informed of the announcement.
Speculation around Mr Phillips and Ms Sperling’s relationship began more than a year ago when they were spotted together at social events.
Most recently Mr Phillips and Ms Sperling attended Royal Ascot in June as guests of the King and Queen.
The couple took part in the traditional carriage procession the Royal Family make onto the racecourse to signal the start of the day.
Last month they were also present at Prince William’s charity fundraising polo matches and in the Royal Box at Wimbledon.
Ms Sperling has a daughter and previously wrote in Christian magazine Woman Alive about life as a single parent. She is reported to be a distant relation of the Duke of Gloucester through her late father.
Mr Phillips has two daughters, Savannah and Isla Phillips, from his first marriage to Autumn Phillips. They had married at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle in 2008 and divorced in 2021.
He is 19th in the line of succession to the British throne.
But Princess Anne rejected royal titles for her son and his sister Zara, and they are not “working royals”.
Writer-director Akiva Schaffer initially thought a reboot of The Naked Gun was blasphemous until he realized the full potential of having Liam Neeson step into the shoes of Leslie Nielsen.
In 2021, producer Seth MacFarlane was tasked with reinventing ZAZ’s (Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker) beloved spoof comedy franchise after three decades and a few failed revivals along the way. The Family Guy creator’s first order of business was to attach Neeson, whom he’d worked with on A Million Ways to Die in the West and Ted 2.
From there, MacFarlane’s president at Fuzzy Door Productions, Erica Huggins, handled the director search, which quickly led her to Schaffer, due to the warm reception he’d just received for Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022). Of course, she was also a fan of his 2016 cult hit, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, as well as his longtime comedy trio, The Lonely Island, consisting of childhood friends Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone.
Schaffer’s commitment didn’t come automatically. He insisted on a page-one rewrite of a script that a couple Family Guy writers had written. Even MacFarlane himself has referred to that iteration as too much of a “cover band version” of 1988’s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! Schaffer also wanted his Rescue Rangers writers, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, to help him pen a new take, one that didn’t overly play the hits of the original Naked Gun trilogy, such as the cherished opening credits featuring composer Ira Newborn’s Naked Gun and Police Squad! theme. The compromise was to place it in the closing credits.
“I love the siren opening in the first three Naked Gun movies just like everyone else loves it, but that doesn’t mean I need to see it again. And I did get a lot of pushback on that, I’ll be honest,” Schaffer tells The Hollywood Reporter. “That opening was spoofing M Squad, and I’m not [spoofing] a Lee Marvin 1950s TV show anymore. I was like, ‘Our opening credits should feel like Terminator 2.’ We’re [spoofing] now, but anything from 1990 till now was also open season.”
When Schaffer informed his friends that he was tackling a new Naked Gun, the first question everyone asked involved the manner in which he would handle O.J. Simpson’s Naked Gun character, Nordberg. Thus, during the first week of writing, Schaffer and co. wrote the “Hall of Legends” scene that was prominently featured in the film’s first teaser. Neeson’s Frank Drebin Jr. and Paul Walter Hauser’s Ed Hocken Jr. pay tribute to framed photos of Nielsen’s Drebin Sr. and George Kennedy’s Hocken Sr., before cutting wide to reveal a total of ten cops giving tearful salutes to their late parents.
Then the camera transitions to a framed portrait of Simpson’s Nordberg, prompting Moses Jones’ Nordberg Jr. to break the fourth wall, shake his head and not deliver his own sentimental moment. The joke took the internet by storm, and anytime the teaser or trailer played at movie theaters, the moment always set off a big reaction. But to his credit, Schaffer never strummed that chord again due to the controversy that continues to swirl around a figure as notorious as the late Simpson.
“To be honest, we never wrote another O.J. joke. We just went, ‘Yep, that takes care of that,’” Schaffer says. “I didn’t know that the joke would kill as hard as it did at our first test screening. If I had known that, then maybe I would’ve written other jokes. But you want to be respectful of everything that revolves around him, so it’s not something I really took glee in. We just had to acknowledge it in a way we thought was not dancing on anybody’s misfortunes.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Schaffer also discusses how Neeson and Pamela Anderson ended up being paired together in the now critically acclaimed reboot, as well as the currently fragile state of the studio comedy.
***
A fourth Naked Gun installment has gone through quite the development journey the last 16 years. Once you joined in the fall of 2022 for this iteration, what was the key to finally getting it up and running?
Well, Liam had already been attached for quite some time. I remember reading about it at some point and being a little jealous. I was like, “Ooh, that’s a good idea.” So when I got the incoming call, the Liam part of it definitely piqued my interest. But if it was just, “Hey, what’s your take on a new Naked Gun?” I would’ve been like, “Of course not. The first Naked Gun is so good, and there’s no room to make it better. You can only do different.” But the Liam part was like, “Ooh, I see my version of it at least,” which is now what’s in theaters.
Director Akiva Schaffer, Liam Neeson and Paul Walter Hauser on the set of The Naked Gun (2025).
Paramount Pictures
But despite Liam’s involvement, the project still hadn’t moved forward, so how did you get the ball rolling?
They had an existing script, but I don’t think they were trying to make that version of it. I read that script, and no offense to it, but it was not the version I would want to make. So the meeting was more of a meeting where I went, “Hey, if this is going to be me, I’m super excited, but I would start from scratch. This is my version of the movie …” I then laid out, not the story or anything, but the styles of jokes and how I would want it to feel, look and sound.
Once they bought into that and thought it was a good idea, then I was like, “Oh, I need writers to do it with me. I don’t think anyone can write this kind of movie alone.” I’d just had a really good experience with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand on Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. So I asked the studio first if it would be cool, and when they said yes, I went to them and said, “I have a motivated studio that says we have Liam Neeson wanting to do a NakedGun. We just don’t have a movie. It’s so rare that we don’t have to talk them into anything. They want to do it, but what they don’t have is a director and a script. If we treat this seriously, I think we could get it made. I’m going to be a third of your writing team, though.”
So we joined forces, and we treated it like a green-lit movie or a TV show. We went into my office Monday through Friday and worked on it as if we were filming it no matter what. That’s how you keep momentum going on a movie like this. If we had just done development, we’d still be writing it, but we just treated it like we had to make it.
This would’ve been long before your tenure, but is it true that there was once a version where Andy Samberg was supposed to play Frank Drebin’s 30-something son?
If there was, it was news to him. He saw the same press you’re referring to and he went, “What!?”
The precarious state of the theatrical comedy has been widely discussed the last few years, and your marketing had some fun with it as well. IndieWire went as far to say that The Naked Gun, in terms of its genre, is this summer’s most important movie. Have you tried to ignore this notion that the next five years of the studio comedy might be determined by your movie?
Yes, and I liked reading that article. It’s a fun article to write, and it’s a fun thing to talk about. But journalists like you who do this for a living and have a bird’s-eye view of the industry are better equipped to talk about the real ebbs and flows and why comedy is at such a place, theatrically, and what the hopes are.
Overall, I almost equate it to one of those fake stories, like, “Can female-led movies be box office smashes?” I’m sure they told that story around the release of 9 to 5 [in 1980], and then they were like, “I guess women-led movies can make money.” [Note: 9 to 5 grossed over $100 million against $10 million, which was largely unheard of in 1980.] And when Bridesmaids became the best comedy of the last 20 years, they were like, “Whoa!” Then there’s Girls Trip and Barbie.
It’s the same story over and over. If it’s a fantastic movie, then any movie can be a [box-office hit]. So I really hope The Naked Gun works, but if it works, I don’t necessarily know what it changes.
Pamela Anderson’s Beth Davenport and Liam Neeson’s Frank Drebin Jr. in The Naked Gun.
Paramount Pictures
Whoever had the idea to pair Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson must be patting themself on the back right now.
(Schaffer smiles.)
They’re truly great together in the film. I know Liam was the top choice from day one, but how did Pam enter the mix months before The Last Showgirl’s release?
We wrote the entire script not knowing who anybody else would be besides Liam. And when it came time for casting, the question of Beth, our femme fatale, was a really difficult one. Spoof is not an easy skill. You could be an Oscar-winning actor, and you could be terrible at spoof. You can also be an Oscar-nominated actor like Liam Neeson and be wonderful at it. I’m just saying that it’s not the norm. You’re not judging by the same metrics. The actor has to be able to play something so stupid in a way where it seems like they don’t know they’re telling a joke.
[Naked Gun creators] The Zuckers have said it better, and I always end up paraphrasing and saying it wrong, but you don’t play it straight. You don’t play it stiff. You play it real. If your character is happy, you’re smiling. If your character is sad, you’re sad. You’re not playing it overly serious; you’re just playing the scenes. You don’t know that what you’re saying are jokes or are supposed to be funny. But that’s really hard to do. Most actors will telegraph the joke a bit and know they’re being funny.
But Pam has the thing that Priscilla Presley had. She can say the UCLA joke with a little twinkle in her eye, and you really believe the character is playing at the height of her intelligence. The character has no clue that what she’s saying is not the right thing to say. So we just got lucky that she wanted to do it and was so right for it. At certain points, Beth was almost a bunch of other people until we realized Pam was there and could do it.
According to the internet, Pam said no to Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994). Did you ever ask her if this was true?
I only learned that in the last couple of weeks, and I’ve seen some interviews of her being asked that. She was like, “I think that’s blown out [of proportion]. It just came across my desk at some point, and I couldn’t do it for various reasons. I don’t know that they were offering it to me.” Now I’m paraphrasing her interview that I saw, but I don’t think it was exact.
She was in Scary Movie 3, which was honestly a hit against her in my mind. I wanted everybody to be such a surprise, but I love that she’s the encapsulation of this movie in terms of her life. She seems like somebody that would’ve been in one of the ‘90s movies, and that’s so nice because it gives authenticity to the vibe. She’s also in this amazing second act of her career that is totally new and completely different. It’s just like what Liam’s Frank Jr. says [to Frank Sr.’s picture] in the beginning of the movie: “I want to be just like you, but at the same time, be completely different and original.” She embodies that trajectory.
Liam Neeson’s Frank Drebin Jr. and Kevin Durand’s Sig Gustafson in Akiva Schaffer’s The Naked Gun.
Paramount Pictures
There’s a couple of Mission: Impossible jokes, such as the little girl disguise that Liam’s character wears at the start. You’ve also got three layers of what Mission filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie calls “mousetraps.” They’re staged environments that are meant to force a confession.
I wish I had known what to call them.
You’ve even got former Mission composer Lorne Balfe scoring the film like it’s a Mission movie in certain places. There’s also some Dark Knight-sounding score in the opening bank robbery …
And Jerry Goldsmith vibes throughout.
Overall, did Paramount encourage this type of franchise synergy?
No, but they didn’t discourage it. I am such a huge fan of all the Mission: Impossible movies, but specifically Fallout, which has that hospital mousetrap. Fallout is just one of the best globetrotting spy thrillers or action-spy films. It might be the best one of all time — that and Casino Royale, if you even consider them the same genre. It seems like they are. So I would say those are the two best ever made, and [our spoofs] were definitely made with love.
But those mousetraps are hilarious because if you suspend disbelief for one second, the IMF is essentially those three guys [Ethan, Benji, Luther] and whoever else is along for the ride. They are usually operating rogue and under some sort of pressure. And somehow, they can still build a completely functioning hospital set with lighting and hinged walls for dramatic reveals. There are so many cinematic choices that are so perfect for [The Naked Gun], and being my favorite movie, [spoofing it] was just perfect on every level.
The Naked Gun‘s ‘Hall of Legends” Scene
Paramount Pictures
The O.J. Simpson/Nordberg joke that was featured in the first teaser really struck a chord, and while you could’ve gone back to that well many times, did you and your co-writers decide that one showstopping joke was enough?
We didn’t get pushback or anything. On the edgy jokes, people would go, “Ooh, I don’t know.” And I’d be like, “Don’t worry. The movie is going to be 85 minutes. A fourth of the script is getting cut. Anything that doesn’t work is going to be cut.” So that’s the way I made everyone relax all the time. [Writer’s Note: The 85-minute runtime was meant to mirror the first two Naked Gun movies’ 85-minute runtimes. The third film is 82 minutes.]
When I first told friends, “Hey, I’m actually about to write a NakedGun,” they’d go, “What are you going to do about O.J?” So, right away, I was like, “Oh, right. That’s the elephant in the room that has to be addressed.” The Hall of Legends scene that was in the teaser then answers everything. Is Frank going to be Frank Sr.? Is he going to be replacing Leslie Nielsen and trying to be Leslie Nielsen? No, he’s going to be Frank Jr., and it’s Liam. He’s going to lean into what he’s known for. How’s it going to look? What’s the music going to be like? It’s all right there, and it was all stuff that was written in the first week as we were asking ourselves those questions.
To be honest, we never wrote another O.J. joke. We just went, “Yep, that takes care of that.” That’s all it ever was. I didn’t know that the joke would kill as hard as it did at our first test screening, and I was like, “Oh, it’s really good. This audience loves it.” If I had known that, then maybe I would’ve written other jokes. I don’t know. But it already felt like it was pushing. You want to be respectful of everything that revolves around him, so it’s not something I really took glee in. We just had to acknowledge it in a way we thought was not dancing on anybody’s misfortunes.
Legacy sequels often go for low-hanging fruit, and I respect that you never referenced Enrico Pallazzo or created another “nothing to see here” gag. In general, what was your philosophy regarding callbacks and references to the original trilogy?
As a viewer, I just don’t get a lot out of [legacy sequels]. There’s a lot of great sequels out there, not legacy sequels, like 22 Jump Street. Theydid a great job, and it doesn’t repeat anything from 21 Jump Street except for the same characters going on a new adventure. That’s the same of Lethal Weapon 2 or Beverly Hills Cop II or Die Hard with a Vengeance. It’s a whole new movie starring John McClane. He’s the same cop and it’s still Die Hard, but it’s just a great action movie.
The trap that a lot of legacy sequels fall into is they’re trying to do a Mad Libs of the original movie. “We did that big fight scene, so what’s our big fight scene this time?” And then you end up not really even remembering that you watched it. It’s like it doesn’t really exist. It feels like fan fiction because it’s the same movie again with different people or the same people. I don’t want to shit on them because I enjoy them and watch them as much as everybody else, but I can’t tell you what happened in any of them. I’m racking my brain for one that did it right. Do you have one?
Creed would be one. There’s some familiar story points from the Rocky films, and Stallone has a major role, but it’s still well done.
Creed is the perfect example. Ryan Coogler is a genius, and he made his own movie. So, in a similar way, I’m trying to Creed this movie.
I love the siren opening in the first three Naked Gun movies just like everyone else loves it, but that doesn’t mean I need to see it again. If I want to see it, I have three movies to watch. Ours would just be another one with different places. [Ira Newborn’s] theme is my favorite music, but then it would just be that music again. You have three other movies to hear that music. I still do it at the end of the movie because I would feel like I hadn’t quite seen Naked Gun if I didn’t get to hear that music and see that siren, but that wasn’t the version I was interested in making. And I did get a lot of pushback on that, I’ll be honest. I was like, “No, my opening credits are spoofing a genre.”
That opening [that originated on Police Squad!] was spoofing M Squad, and I’m not doing a Lee Marvin 1950s TV show anymore. I have noir elements like DoubleIndemnity and In a Lonely Place and L.A. Confidential in there. It’s all part of the DNA that makes NakedGun, Naked Gun. But I was like, “Our opening credits should feel like Terminator 2.” We’re [spoofing] now, but anything from 1990 till now was also open season. That first movie was in 1988, so I figured that anything after that is for us to do now.
[The following question/answer contains a spoiler.] Priscilla Presley returns to the franchise in a cameo. Was her appearance always a foregone conclusion?
It was always something we wanted. But because we weren’t shooting in L.A. and I didn’t know where to put it, it was not something we accomplished until we came back to L.A. and did some shooting here. So I’m very happy she did it. It’s huge for us.
Well, I hope to see you in a couple years for your version of The Naked Gun 2½. (Note: Schaffer was sporting a Naked Gun 2½ hat throughout this interview.)
Naked Gun 2½ 2?
Naked Gun 2½ x 2?
Is that the title?
Maybe. I’m knocking on wood either way.
(Scaffer also knocks on wood.) Yeah, I hope people will show up, but I’m very happy that the reception has been positive. I’m feeling relieved.
*** The Naked Gun is now playing in movie theaters.
Sabrina Carpenter has loosened her leash on the Man’s Best Friend tracklist, with the pop star finally unveiling all of the 12 song titles on her upcoming seventh studio album.
In a Friday (Aug. 1) Instagram post, Carpenter shared a photo of the tracklist handwritten on a piece of paper stained with red liquid. The announcement comes after the singer spent the past couple of weeks sharing individual song names one by one on social media with help from fans. In each of the fans’ posts, they posed next to a golden retriever puppy sitting on a director’s chair embroidered with one of the 12 titles; in her new post, Carpenter did the same, revealing the final track to be called “Tears.”
“thank you to all my beautiful perfect fans that helped me reveal the tracklist for Man’s Best Friend,” she wrote in her caption. “can’t believe the album will be in your ears in exactly 4 weeks.”
The tracklist news comes more than a month after Carpenter first announced Man’s Best Friend, which will arrive Aug. 29 via Island Records. So far, fans have heard only one song from the LP: “Manchild,” which dropped in June and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In addition to “Manchild” and “Tears,” Man’s Best Friend will feature songs called “My Man on Willpower,” “Sugar Talking,” “We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night,” “Nobody’s Son,” “Never Getting Laid,” “When Did You Get Hot?,” “Go Go Juice,” “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry,” “House Tour” and “Goodbye.”
