Wayans Brothers' Comedy Style A Hit In `Scary Movie'

Jet, August 14, 2000

Shawn and Marlon Wayans can find humor in just about anything, even a spine-tingling horror flick. Their mastery of the spoof motion picture genre as co-writers of Scary Movie, the top-grossing film in which they also star, proves it.

Already Scary Movie has earned a whopping $116.4 million in domestic ticket sales since its release, surpassing the $110 million mark in just 14 days. Not bad considering it only cost the brothers $19 million to make.

Centered around a parody of teen horror flicks like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and sprinkled with hilarious take-offs of other hit films like The Sixth Sense, The Matrix and The Blair Witch Project, the film has been making moviegoers scream with delight and howl with laughter.

Directed by big brother, actor-comedian Keenen Ivory Wayans, 42, Scary Movie recently became the most commercially successful film ever made by a Black director.

The Hollywood Reporter indicated that the comedy spoof has passed Stir Crazy to become the highest-grossing film in box-office history directed by a Black man. Stir Crazy, which featured Richard Pryor, was directed by movie legend Sidney Poitier and earned $101.3 million in 1980.

Scary Movie has been such a smash that NBC reportedly has decided to turn it into a TV show.

Marlon Wayans said that he and Shawn decided to write the flick while watching one of the movies they take a jab at.

"I think we [were] watching I Know What You Did Last Summer and we said, `I know what I'm gonna do next summer. I'm gonna make fun of all these damn movies I'm so tired of seeing,'" Marlon, 28, revealed to CBS News. "I watched Scream 'til I wanted to scream. I've seen I Know What You Did Last Summer so much that I wanted to become a murderer and kill anybody who ever made one of these movies."

The film features an interracial cast, which includes Carmen Electra, Shannon Elizabeth, Regina Hall, Dave Sheridan, Cheri Oteri, Anna Faris, Lochlyn Munro and Jon Abrahams.

At the urging of Keenen, Shawn and Marlon were advised to put in the right ingredient to make this type of flick work.

"When we first wrote it, we wrote it with a Black male lead," Marlon told the Chicago Tribune. "But Keenen told us--and he was right--it wasn't true to the genre. So we changed it up and made our heroine a White lead ... a little ditzy White girl."

But while it appears to be the Wayans brothers' world, with everyone running around and laughing in it, the fellas' parents, Howell and Elvira Wayans, were their sons' worst critics at the movie's premiere though Keenen made them do 20 rewrites before it was to his satisfaction.

"My dad's a Jehovah's Witness, so some of the humor was a little too much for him. So he had to leave halfway through and go pray for us," Marlon told CBS News in his usual joking manner. "My mom stayed 'til the end, but that's because she broke her foot. She had to. She tried to hobble out, but that didn't work. She actually said, `Baby, the movie's funny. It's not Momma's particular humor.'"

Shawn, 29, and Marlon first established themselves as actors and emerged from the shadows of their famed older siblings, Keenen and Damon, 39, when they starred in their own WB sitcom "The Wayans Bros." in 1995. The show was cancelled four years later.

In light of the show's ending, they managed to find humor in even that. During one part in the film, Shawn's character says, "Watching TV doesn't create psycho killers, canceling their TV shows does! The Wayans Bros. was a good show. They didn't even give us a final episode!"

The youngest of the famed Wayans clan also wrote and starred in their first movie in 1996, Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood, a spoof of urban dramas.

Prior to establishing themselves as talented actors and comedians with both efforts, Shawn and Marlon made their foray into entertainment under the guidance of their big brothers.

Shawn was the mellow, supercool dee jay SW 1 on "In Living Color," a popular sketch-comedy show created in the late '80s by Keenen that also featured brother Damon and sister Kim, who later went on to appear in the sitcom "In The House." Marlon, who graduated from the School of Performing Arts in New York and later attended Howard University, made his silver-screen feature debut in 1992's Mo Money with Damon, who wrote the film.

The Wayans name has become synonymous in comedy with all five of them garnering a certain amount of success in the demanding world of show business.

Keenen, who was the mastermind behind the comedy show "In Living Color," which spawned the careers of Jamie Foxx and Jim Carrey, told the New York Times that his family's tough childhood while growing up in a Manhattan housing project explains why comedy comes so easily for them.

"Comedy is pain. You can't be funny if you haven't experienced pain. You can be witty, but the real comic stars--Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, Sam Kinison--these guys were in deep pain and stand-up was a cathartic experience. Great stand-up comedy comes from the darkest places," he said.