The cowriter/director says friends like Andy Samberg told him, &34;Do not let them cut it.&34; The Naked Gun director Akiva Schaffer threatened to quit to save

The co-writer/director says friends like Andy Samberg told him, "Do not let them cut it."

The Naked Gun director Akiva Schaffer threatened to quit to save 'polarizing' snowman montage

The co-writer/director says friends like Andy Samberg told him, "Do not let them cut it."

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a writer at covering all things pop culture – but TV is her one true love. She currently lives in Los Angeles but grew up in Chicago so please don't make fun of her accent when it slips out.

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Published on August 4, 2025 06:57PM EDT

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Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson in 'The Naked Gun'. Credit:

*The Naked Gun* co-writer/director Akiva Schaffer knew he struck gold with the wild snowman montage in his movie starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. But he had to put his entire job on the line to save it.

"It was polarizing in script reads," Schaffer said on Monday's episode of IndieWire's *Filmmaker Toolkit* podcast. "People I really respect like Andy Sandberg, when he read it for me, he was like, 'Snowman's the best. Do not let them cut it,' knowing it would be cuttable. It makes sense once you see the movie, but at one point I did have to threaten to quit."

The scene in question is an entire montage of Frank Drebin Jr. (Neeson) and Beth (Anderson) going on a romantic weekend getaway in a cabin. During their trip, the new couple uses a spell book to bring a snowman to life, and the snowman has a threesome with them before becoming homicidal.

Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson in 'The Naked Gun'.

Frank Masi/Paramount Pictures

Lonely Island alum Schaffer, who co-wrote the reboot with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, revealed he did cut down the entire snowman sequence to make it easily removable if he didn't get his way. In fact, there was an original draft of the script in which the snowman returned at the end of the movie that was never shot. But he's validated in knowing the people who wanted him to take the snowman montage out of the movie entirely have now admitted that they were wrong.

"After the first test screen, it was the No. 1 scene in the movie," Schaffer said. "The people that really fought me on it after ate a lot of crow without me asking. I tried to let them off the hook easy, and go, 'That's fine,' but they were like, 'No, dude, we were wrong.'"

Pamela Anderson in 'The Naked Gun'.

Paramount Pictures

The snowman montage was created as an homage to the original film's scene in which Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley's characters go on a date to see serious war drama *Platoon*, and laugh hysterically through the very dark movie.

"We got to the point in our script, we were like, 'Wow, this love story deserves a montage,'" Schaffer said. "The original *Naked Gun* has a very famous, very good montage set to 'I'm Into Something Good.' We knew it had to be different than that. And then also there's been 30 years of making fun of montages, whether it's *Team America* doing a montage or whatever, there's not a lot of room left in the montage. We were debating not doing a montage and had a few other ideas."

Schaffer revealed that inspiration struck him in the middle of the night for how he could level up the montage in his reboot. When he got up at four in the morning to use the bathroom one night, he thought up the entire snowman arc.

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"When I got back in bed, it had been percolating that day in the writers' room, and I just saw the entire thing and wrote it into bullet point notes, and then texted it to Dan and Doug," Schaffer said. "The next morning, I came into the writers' room and they were like, 'Yeah, done.'"

Anderson previously told ** that she "loved" the snowman montage immediately when she first read it in the script, despite others not feeling the same way.

"I remember Liam and other people saying, 'What is this?'" Anderson said. "But I was like, 'It makes perfect sense to me.' It feels like Akiva's signature. I know he fought really hard to keep that in because as things grow and then there's budgets and they figure out what they want to use, he was insistent that had to stay in. He's throwing himself on the sword for that one, so he knows something we don't."

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And as funny as the scene plays in the movie, Anderson revealed it was even more hilarious on set during filming.

"She was in bed with us, so the threesome with the snowman was quite interesting," Anderson told EW of the puppeteer. "There's very specific rules dealing with people in costumes — you're not supposed to directly talk to the puppeteer. And this was a full on, Hansen-level costume. Inside, there's a person with these night vision goggles, or whatever you want to call them, in there telling which way to turn. It's very, very complex. It's very robotic."

*The Naked Gun* is now playing in theaters.

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