Today in unmitigated gall: Professor Marlon Wayans rants against Scary Movie 5 for degrading the art of comedy
Is there anyone more qualified to wax highbrow and pretentious about the oft-overlooked art of comedy than one of the minds behind Scary Movie 2 and White Chicks? Marlon Wayans doesn’t seem to think so. In a fascinating interview with Hitfix, Wayans uses the similarly timed openings of his new opus A Haunted House (a wacky spoof of contemporary horror movies) and Scary Movie 5 (a wacky spoof of contemporary horror from a franchise he kickstarted but now has nothing to do with) as a forum to spray vitriol in Scary Movie 5’s direction while delineating the difference between an exquisite master class in painstaking craftsmanship like his film and a junky, cheap, scatological, pop-culture-crazed comedy like Scary Movie 5.
All it takes is the mere mention of Scary Movie 5 to prompt Wayans to bitchily boast that audiences will be so disgusted by Scary Movie 5 that if possible, they will immediately head over to see A Haunted House in a desperate attempt to cleanse themselves of Scary Movie 5’s stink and immerse themselves in a warm, pleasing bath of peerless comic genius. Wayans compares the cast of Scary Movie 5 to “an episode of Celebrity Rehab” and rails against the filmmakers for “doing it wrong.”
“I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing this since I was five. I’ve written five funny comedies like this.” Wayans continues huffily in what might be the most hypocritical, least merited self-righteous rant of all time before complaining that “celebrities aren’t funny” and that the filmmakers ruined the Wayans’ winning formula by casting celebrities instead of comedians. “There’s an art to comedy,” whines Wayans before bemoaning the absence of passion afflicting both the Zuckers and comedy as a whole and boasting that A Haunted House is unique because it comes from an “authentic place” and is a real “labor of love.”
If all this lofty talk of authenticity, craft, and art from a man promoting A Haunted House weren’t enough to induce intense cognitive dissonance, the interview then segues effortlessly from Wayans pleading for a return to soulfulness, passion, and authenticity in comedy to a discussion of the many times Wayans has displayed his bare ass onscreen.
So get excited folks! From Wayans’ rhetoric, it looks like A Haunted House could very well be the Dr. Strangelove of its generation.