
'It's Enrico Pallazzo': The inside Story of 'The Naked Gun' Baseball Game - grzm
http://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/news/naked-gun-baseball-game-scene-national-anthem-angels-mariners-dodgers-stadium-enrico-pallazzo/zztjoa4obui818oo9waqjyf34
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bigwheeler
It's the same old story- Boy finds girl, boy loses girl. Girl finds boy, boy
forgets girl. Boy remembers girl, girls dies in a tragic blimp accident over
the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Goodyear?

~~~
eyesee
No, the worst.

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user982
_> [T]he national anthem seemed fair game for spoofing in 1988. That’s a major
contrast to 2018, when the anthem has been elevated to a sacred, untouchable
level by a large segment of the American public.

> “I don’t know that we’d get away with that scene today,” Abrahams said. “We
> probably wouldn’t.”_

~~~
neurobashing
Along similar lines, I strongly believe that "Blazing Saddles" could not be
made today. It would send people into utter hysterics, and not the kind the
writers intended.

~~~
czbond
I agree with you. I saw it for the first time last year, and went "oh wow -
this is edgy by today's standards". I was surprised it was played on TV.

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akhilcacharya
>Not that the story should be the main appeal of a parody, just that there
must be a good story for the jokes to serve. Although “Airplane!” was a joke-
and gag-heavy enterprise, the film had an obvious story with three distinct
acts, along with a main character who had a clear arc. “Top Secret!”, though,
had major narrative and character issues.

It seems like modern style parodies seem to ignore this point entirely but it
is exactly why Airplane and Hot Shots and Naked Gun worked. I can’t think of a
single spoof that has worked so effectively since the 90s.

~~~
Intermernet
Tropic Thunder, but it's almost a meta spoof.

~~~
r_smart
I was going to say this. I just saw that movie for the first time about 6
months ago and it killed me. For some reason I had it in my mind it wasn't a
good movie, but it's one of my recent favorites now.

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ubernostrum
_This game features the Mariners and Angels, two real-life baseball teams. But
that was never the plan. The Zuckers and Abrahams, three Wisconsinites, hoped
for some hometown flair._

 _“We wanted the Brewers,” David Zucker said. “We applied to MLB and they said
you have to take the Mariners. … I think they were trying to help that
franchise. That was a weak franchise (at the time) and must’ve been weaker
than the Brewers.”_

I doubt it was in any way deliberate, but there's another angle here.

MLB was in a phase of expansion in the 1960s. Two teams were added in 1961 (in
the American League), two in 1962 (National League), and plans were in place
to add four more -- two in each league -- in two groups. The National League
would gain two new teams in 1969 (Montréal and San Diego), and the American
League would gain two new teams in 1971. The 1971 expansion would add the
Seattle Pilots and the Kansas City Royals, with the Royals being a replacement
for the former Kansas City Athletics, who relocated to Oakland after the 1967
season.

But Missouri Senator Stuart Symington didn't want Kansas City to go three full
seasons without a local team, so the AL expansion was moved up, and the Kansas
City Royals and Seattle Pilots began play in 1969 instead. Seattle was nowhere
near ready for such an accelerated schedule; they played in a decrepit and
poorly-converted minor-league stadium, and the team was disastrously bad and
had trouble with finances.

The Pilots' ownership filed for bankruptcy protection shortly before the 1970
season was scheduled to begin. The team ended up being bought by Bud Selig,
who immediately relocated them to Milwaukee, where they still play as the
Brewers.

Seattle eventually got a permanent MLB franchise in another round of expansion
in 1977, when the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays began play. But there
is still a feeling among baseball fans that the rush to push the 1971
expansion up two years, and the dealings in the offseason after 1969, resulted
in Milwaukee "stealing" Seattle's original major-league team.

So having Milwaukee get its baseball spotlight stolen by Seattle was arguably
poetic justice.

Bud Selig, incidentally, went on to become MLB Commissioner, and is a pretty
notorious character. His rise from minority owner of an eventually-relocated
franchise (the Milwaukee Braves, who moved to Atlanta), to outright owner of
the Brewers (née Pilots), to Commissioner, is just full of shady stuff.

~~~
masonic
... including forcing the Astros to switch leagues to the AL to balance him
moving his team from the AL to the NL.

~~~
ubernostrum
The league switches at least had some rational justification. Yanking the
Pilots out of Seattle was pure vanity. The owners' collusion in the 80s was
pure greed. The retaliation against Fay Vincent was pure vengeful pettiness.
And the "tie" in the All-Star Game, followed by making it "meaningful", was a
pure travesty.

Besides, everybody's focused now on the possibility of expanding to 32 teams
and redoing the entire league and divisional alignments anyway.

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retSava
How great this was is that this is still very, very funny despite me not
knowing jack crap about baseball (as a non-american).

The last time TNG was up on HN someone recommended Angie Tribeca and I have to
say, after a handful of episodes, it's the best replacement I've seen so far.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3597790/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3597790/)

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jl6
For me as a non-American, this scene is where most of my knowledge of baseball
comes from.

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zapita
> _It was their usual collaborative process: One idea would lead to another,
> then another, then another. One gag would piggyback onto something else.
> Everyone contributed, and all agreed to not take sole credit for anything._

I wish collaboration worked that way in software development!

~~~
jwfxpr
I think software development would work best if it focused on software, not
jokes.

~~~
Endy
I don't think there's much of a difference. If software devs were focused on
entertainment value of their output rather than some other nonsensical metric,
it might be a much better thing.

~~~
whoopdedo
So, like Apple in the 80's and 90's.

[https://www.macworld.com/article/2032517/software/hidden-
mes...](https://www.macworld.com/article/2032517/software/hidden-messages-an-
apple-easter-egg-hunt.html)

~~~
Endy
Basically.

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dingaling
> “She goes, ‘I don’t know the (bleepin’) song!’”

That should have been a clue to them that the English actress spoke for most
of the World. The whole baseball scene was funny but utterly alien and
confusing to me. What was parody and what was gameplay?

Imagine a comedy finale set in a cricket match. Over a billion people have
some familiarity with the rules but it probably still wouldn't be a good idea.

~~~
deadmetheny
>Imagine a comedy finale set in a cricket match. Over a billion people have
some familiarity with the rules but it probably still wouldn't be a good idea.

It'd be a great idea if it was being made in a country for people who have
familiarity with the rules. Not everything has to, or even should be, intended
for a global audience.

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hudibras
I'd be willing to bet that every single one of the millions of people who have
watched this movie in the last 30 years has laughed at "Hey, it's Enrico
Pallazzo!"

I will go to my grave insisting those are the four funniest words ever uttered
in a movie.

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duxup
Netflix, or Amazon, or someone. Please bring back Police Squad!

~~~
LeoPanthera
I can't imagine it being the same without Leslie Nielsen.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
So difficult for someone to follow that. You need someone with the gravitas of
a serious actor but with the tiniest of glints in their eye, willing to send
themselves up, has to have spot-on timing, and an ability to do slapstick.
Closest kind of match I can think of is someone like Steve Carrell, but he's
probably not straight enough. I think Nielsen fit that role more perfectly
than anyone else possibly could.

~~~
crunksht
Liam Neeson. Known for action/dramatic movies (much like Nielsen pre-airplane)
and plays a great straight man.

~~~
duxup
Oh man I was thinking of him too. Just playing it straight with Police Squad
lines.... hilarious.

~~~
mamcx
The straight/sane man is the funniest, to me, character in any kind of comedy.

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maxxxxx
That's one of the funniest movie scenes ever. The anthem is so painful.

~~~
wyldfire
Every time I hear our national anthem, I hear "...buncha bombs in the air..."
and chuckle a bit to myself.

> “I don’t know that we’d get away with that scene today,” Abrahams said. “We
> probably wouldn’t.”

Without a doubt! These days, this gag would appear to be political and would
be polarizing.

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RickJWagner
Love that movie.

