Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer

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Jason Friedberg (born October 13, 1971) and Aaron Seltzer (born January 12, 1974) are an American-Canadian film director and screenwriter team known for making parody movies that have received very unfavorable reviews, but have done well at the box office. They were part of the writing team for Scary Movie and Spy Hard, and have written/directed films such as Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck, and The Starving Games.

Biography

Interviews with the duo are rare, but in an exclusive 2014 interview with the publication Grantland, their background was discussed: Seltzer is part of a Canadian shoe salesmen family from Mississauga, Ontario, and Friedberg, who was born in Newark, NJ, was raised in Paterson, New Jersey and is the son of director Rick Friedberg. Seltzer and Friedberg met at the University of California, Santa Barbara and bonded over their love of film, especially comedy.[1] They did not attend film school, with Seltzer majoring in art history and Friedberg in history, but decided to try a career in the film industry after attending a class about Martin Scorsese in their last semester.[1]

While writing screenplays at night, both spent the day attending jobs to pay their tuition, selling homemade T-shirts, started their own food delivery service, and opening shoe shops in Los Angeles. When Rick Friedberg made the comic instruction video Bad Golf Made Easier with Leslie Nielsen, he showed his son's script for a spy film spoof to him. Nielsen approved, and this lead into 1996's Spy Hard. Seltzer and Friedberg then spent some years as screenwriters for hire, with Seltzer estimating the duo sold "upward of 40 scripts". The only finished project was an uncredited rewrite to the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Maximum Risk (1996), while an unproduced Liberace biopic (unrelated to Behind The Candelabra) introduced them to future collaborator and producer Peter Safran. In 1998, Safran managed to sell to Dimension Pictures a horror film spoof spec script of Seltzer and Friedberg named Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween, later reworked by four other writers under the title Scary Movie. The film was a sleeper hit in 2000, and brought much attention to Seltzer and Friedberg.

Tired of many unmade projects, as Regency Enterprises could not find a director for their romantic comedy spoof, Seltzer and Friedberg opted to direct Date Movie (2006) themselves.[1]

Filmography

Year Film Directors Producers Writers RT Approval
Rating		 Metacritic Budget Worldwide
Gross
1996 Spy Hard
YesY
 8% 25/100[2] $18 million $26,960,191
2000 Scary Movie
YesY
 54% 48/100[3] $19 million $278,019,771
2006 Date Movie
YesY
YesY
YesY
 7%[4] 11/100[5] $20 million $84,795,656[6]
2007 Epic Movie
YesY
YesY
 2%[7] 17/100[8] $20 million $86,865,564[9]
2008 Meet the Spartans
YesY
YesY
YesY
 2%[10] 9/100[11] $30 million $84,646,831[12]
Disaster Movie
YesY
YesY
YesY
 1%[13] 15/100[14] $20 million $34,816,824[15]
2010 Vampires Suck
YesY
YesY
YesY
 5%[16] 18/100[17] $20 million $80,547,866[18]
2013 The Starving Games[19]
YesY
YesY
 0%[20] $4.5 million $3,889,688[21]
2014 Best Night Ever[22]
YesY
YesY
 0%[23] $289,511[24]
2015 Superfast!
YesY
YesY
YesY
 $20 million $1,768,275[25]
2016 Who the F#@K Took My Daughter?[26]
YesY
YesY
 $20 million

Date Movie opened with $12.1 million and earned $48.9 million overall.[27] Disaster Movie opened with $5.8 million and earned $14.2 million total in the United States.[27] Vampires Suck, which opened on a Wednesday, earned an estimated $19.7 million in its first five days.[27]

Upcoming projects

Friedberg and Seltzer announced that they will release Who the F#@K Took My Daughter?, a parody of Taken.

Other

Year Film Notes Budget Worldwide Gross
1996 Maximum Risk Uncredited rewrite $25 million $51,639,438[28]
2001 Scary Movie 2 Based on characters created by $45 million $141,220,678
2003 Scary Movie 3 Based on characters created by; also wrote a draft[1] $48 million $220,673,217
2006 Scary Movie 4 Based on characters created by $45 million $178,262,620
2013 Scary Movie 5 Based on characters created by $20 million $78,378,744

Awards and nominations

Year Nominated work Award Category Result
2006 Date Movie Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Supporting Actress (Carmen Electra) Won
2007 Epic Movie Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Supporting Actress (Carmen Electra) Nominated
Worst Prequel or Sequel ("rip-off of every movie it rips off")
Worst Screenplay
2008 Disaster Movie Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Picture Nominated
Worst Supporting Actress (Carmen Electra & Kim Kardashian)
Worst Prequel or Sequel
Worst Director
Worst Screenplay
Meet the Spartans Worst Picture
Worst Prequel or Sequel
Worst Director
Worst Screenplay
2010 Vampires Suck Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Prequel or Sequel Nominated
Worst Director
Worst Screenplay

Recurring cast members

Actor Date Movie
 Epic Movie
 Meet the Spartans
 Disaster Movie
 Vampires Suck
 The Starving Games
 Best Night Ever
Diedrich Bader NoN NoN NoN
Carmen Electra NoN NoN NoN NoN
Adam Campbell NoN NoN
Matt Lanter NoN NoN
Tony Cox NoN NoN NoN
Ike Barinholtz NoN NoN NoN
Crista Flanagan NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN
Nicole Parker NoN NoN
Jennifer Coolidge NoN NoN
Fred Willard NoN NoN
Jim Piddock NoN NoN
Tad Hilgenbrink NoN NoN
Nick Steele NoN NoN NoN NoN NoN
Jareb Dauplaise NoN NoN
Martin Klebba NoN NoN
Scott Speedman NoN NoN

Criticism

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Yes, we all know that a lot of movies put aside the more artistic aspects of film making to solely make a profit; we're not naive. But, the films that these two directors make are so blatant at being nothing more than a juvenile finger pointing at an image or mention of a popular trend that, to me, they seem exploitive of a young culture raised to have an ever-decreasing attention span, thanks to the internet and channel surfing and, this may sound a little crazy, but, I think it shows a slight de-evolution in what people will accept as entertainment.

—Korey Coleman of Spill.com, 2010.[29]

The critical reception of Friedberg and Seltzer's films has been extremely negative.[30][31] Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans were rated the two worst films of 2008 by The Times.[32] Additionally, every film they have directed has made it into Rotten Tomatoes' "Worst of the Worst" for the 2000s, only one scoring a spot outside of the bottom 25.[33]

The duo are frequent recipients of the Golden Raspberry Awards, having received nominations for nearly every film they released. The first was a Worst Screenplay nomination for Epic Movie at the 2007 Razzies[34] and were nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay for both Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie at the 2008 Razzies,[35] as well as nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel at the 2011 Razzies for Vampires Suck. The pair appears more often than any other person on the fan-voted list of "The 50 Worst Movies Ever" in noted British film magazine Empire. Almost all of their films appear with a rank, and all are mentioned in the full review text.[36]

Critic Josh Levin of Slate commented that "Friedberg and Seltzer...are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline..."[37] Josh Rosenblatt of The Austin Chronicle said that "Writer/directors Friedberg and Seltzer are a scourge. They're a plague on our cinematic landscape, a national shame, a danger to our culture, a typhoon-sized natural disaster disguised as a filmmaking team, a Hollywood monster wreaking havoc on the minds of America's youth and setting civilization back thousands of years."[38] Korey Coleman of Spill.com has claimed that he is "bothered" by the duo's films, as he believes they are dumbing down the film industry and popular culture in general.[29]

Critic Nathan Rabin also gave their films an indignant condemnation, saying:

"Spoof movies, as practiced by the cultural blight that is Seltzer-Friedberg, aren't just troubling from an aesthetic viewpoint. They're horrifying from a moral standpoint as well. The parody of the Zucker brothers and Mel Brooks is defined by love, knowledge, and appreciation: The Zucker brothers and Mel Brooks love, know, and appreciate the source material they're spoofing enough to get all the details perfect. The comedy of Seltzer-Friedberg, in sharp contrast, is defined by contempt: contempt for the attention span, intelligence, maturity, and frame of reference for the audience, and an even more raging contempt for the source material they're spoofing. Friedberg and Seltzer aren't writers; they're comic terrorists who cavalierly destroy what others create for their own ugly self-interest. Their success is entirely dependent on making comedy a dumber, crasser, less dignified place.[39]

References

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  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Superfast! -- Box Office Mojo
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Vampires Suck Audio Review | Spill.com
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ The 100 Worst Movies of 2008 The Times Accessed 12-12-08
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  37. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  38. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  39. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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