Payton Russell

A conversation with screenwriter and showrunner, Doug Mand.

---

One of my favorite jokes in The Naked Gun (2025) revival was the claw-machine gag at the crime scene. In my Burbank AMC, after applauding Nicole Kidman as she graced the IMAX screen, the film began—starting with Liam Neeson popping out of a little girl’s costume wearing only his tighty-whities. Nine minutes in, the audience burst into helpless giggles as the unexpected giant claw picked up–then, of course, dropped–the crashed car.

We all can remember the claw. Even if your parents didn’t have the cash for a day at Dave & Busters, chances are you still begged your mom for the $1.25 it cost to play at Chuy’s (and, chances are, you dropped the toy and begged her all over again). For The Naked Gun audience, these laughs weren’t just about absurdity; we were experiencing a collective sigh of relief – for the nostalgic childhood game and the familiar police procedural trope of investigators using absurd tools at crime scenes.

For co-writer Doug Mand, shooting this scene was a “pinch me” moment. When he arrived on set and saw how the design department had turned his self-proclaimed “very stupid” idea into something real and usable – he was dumbfounded. The scene was shot practically, meaning the claw could actually aim, lift, and bear the weight of the four-door vehicle.

Before breaking into TV, Doug was a writer and performer at New York’s UCB, discovering there his knack for smart, outside-the-box jokes. It was at NYU, while performing in the sketch group, Hammerkatz, where he met his writing partner, Dan Gregor. They’ve been writing together on most things since – beyond The Naked Gun, the pair penned the screenplay for Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers and are credited writers on Dolittle and Magic Camp. They also wrote on How I Met Your Mother, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and The Comedians. 

Separately, Doug created the multi-cam sitcom, Pretty Smart, with writer Jack Dolgen. All these experiences, now topped off with The Naked Gun, have cemented Doug into comedy history.

Since its June premiere, several industry professionals have called The Naked Gun a “return to great theatrical comedy.”Guests of this blog have cited its absurdist, risk-taking jokes–including the chili dog interrogation scene, turkey baster gag, and the snowman horror movie–as a major inspiration for their own comedy projects. On the Scriptnotes podcast, John August lauded the duo for reviving what he decisively calls a “dead genre.”

During this thirty-minute interview, Doug took a five-minute detour to praise old spoof films, including the original The Naked Gun (1988), emphasizing their impact on his career and craft. Throughout this Austin Film Festival chat, he demonstrates a real reverence for the comedy writers that came before him, and this humility shows in everything he does – from The Naked Gun to Pretty Smart. 

Below, we discuss utilizing tropes, research, and editing to craft the right tone for each film. Keep reading for more.

---

Working in Entertainment

Payton Russell (PR): After your success at UCB, how did you and Dan get your first staffing job on How I Met Your Mother?

Doug Mand (DM): Staffing was always really hard—it’s even harder now—but it was hard then, too. Dan and I had sold a couple of shows to networks before that, and we moved to LA and sold a show to IFC about our experiences dating in New York. We had representation, and we got called in to meet on How I Met Your Mother. They were looking for writers from New York with dating stories, so this pilot we had written made sense for the show. 

The amount of things that had to go right for us to get that job was pretty wild – an assistant had to read the script, then they sent it up the ladder, and we had to meet once with producers, then a second time with the showrunners. We got hired, and we were there for the last four seasons. Even then, it felt monumental, and I still don’t think I realized how fortuitous it was. 

PR: Since you joined in season six, how did you prepare to go into that room, knowing there were five seasons of story behind you?

DM: I didn’t really watch How I Met Your Mother much before then. My writing partner had, so for the interview, I watched ten episodes. Then, when we got hired, my girlfriend at the time—now my wife—was visiting, and we went to a hotel, and I watched every episode of the show for one weekend straight. Watched every single thing. As you’re watching, your brain is going, “Oh, maybe there’s gonna be something with that,” jotting ideas down, but also marking off where the characters are on their journey, and what’s already happened. I wanted to be as prepared as I could, so I watched every single episode. That’s how I prepared.

PR: You’ve worked on several sitcoms and also created your own. How have you seen the TV industry change in its response to comedy over time?

DM: I think TV has tightened up, in general. They’re making fewer things. Comedy has been a casualty of the shrinking industry. For a while, there was a push for multi-cams because they can be done at a lower price and can therefore go on to become very profitable. So, the impetus to create a multi-cam, which would become Pretty Smart, came from that industry push. But big multi-cams and sitcoms need time to find audiences – How I Met Your Mother was almost canceled for the first three seasons of the show; it wasn’t a runaway hit. We talk about it now as if it was, but it wasn’t. 

So, who knows? If How I Met Your Mother came out today, would it have been given a chance to find its voice and audience? I think there are fewer risks being taken to buy comedies. And in movies, far fewer comedies are being made. Almost none for theaters. You have to almost hide your comedy within other genres.

Pretty Smart

PR: I’ve heard other showrunners talk about how, when you pitch, you need to bring something personal that connects you to the show. With Pretty Smart, how did you and your co-creator, Jack Dolgen, bring that connection in to pitch these two lead women?

DM: We didn’t lead with “this is our lives.” But as we talked about characters, we had anecdotes for people we knew – there was some personalization. Anecdotes are sometimes helpful, but I don’t think it makes or breaks something. Pretty Smart was just a very clean idea.

PR: With this show, each character is so specific. How were these characters formed, and were there more characters originally that got condensed?

DM: We were looking for archetypes. It started with having our two leads, our sisters, be opposites—or at least seemingly opposite on the surface. Then, it was finding comedic games and angles. We wanted a comedic point of view for everyone. So, we had a self-involved influencer type, a holistic healer/fake guru, etc.—these were different, very heightened archetypes of people we met in LA. It’s really about making each other laugh and loving each character.

The Naked Gun

PR: I admittedly haven’t seen the original, but I loved the revival. How do you approach writing a sequel or revival—making it different enough but still honoring the original?

DM: The originals are incredibly important to me and Dan. You should see them— they’re wonderful. The first The Naked Gun is incredible – the creators wrote the DNA for that genre. We tried to honor their tone and also make it our own. It doesn’t need to be remade and shouldn’t be in many ways, but we felt there was an opportunity because it had been over 20 years since the last one. 

It was a tall order. We didn’t want to mess it up. It was me, Dan, and Akiva Schaffer, who directed. We all wrote it together. We went back and rewatched and dissected the originals—figuring out why we love them and their DNA. 

Liam Neeson made the movie possible – Leslie Nielsen was a unicorn, and no one will ever be him. But, Liam wasn’t trying to be Leslie – he’s his own thing. That gave us the greenlight to live in their sandbox but become something else because of Liam and 20 more years of new tropes.

PR: There are so many good jokes in the movie, and there’s such a variety, too – physical gags, wordplay, character jokes. I was curious, in crafting the tone, was there any thought about where to place jokes to make the tone cohesive throughout?

DM: I think it’s a feel thing. The goal for The Naked Gun specifically was to have a fire hydrant of jokes. It was about making sure we were honoring The Naked Gun and Airplane by making sure there were always physical gags in the background. Then, it was a lot of very dumb wordplay jokes and puns. It was about finding every single crevice and place where a joke could be, and then pulling back when you need to. 

The key with these movies is knowing when not to have a joke – when the movie needs more forward momentum and story. It became a rhythm and feel thing. 

We were constantly editing it. We had so many jokes, and so many alt jokes. On the day, every joke you see probably had three or four alternatives. Then, it was about getting as many as we could on the day, then in editing, trying it out and seeing what felt right. Akiva, our director, is a wonderful editor. I think we’re pretty good at it, as well. It’s about finding that rhythm—both when the movie doesn’t want another joke, and also when we have extra time to go there.

PR: In the structure of stories in general, do you find there are certain sections—like the Fun and Games section—where there are more jokes, or alternatively, where it’s better to maybe pull back and have forward momentum?

DM: It’s about the tone of your piece, and what you’re trying to get across. Do your jokes serve a purpose pushing the plot forward? Are they defining a character, especially in a pilot when we’re just meeting characters? Everything out of your character’s mouth in a pilot tells the audience who this character is. 

As a show goes on through multiple seasons, there’s more freedom. I don’t think there’s one place that deserves more jokes. Obviously, the Fun and Games section is a place where you might have more fun and games, but it still should push the story forward.

PR: When you guys were outlining, did you outline it in terms of the mystery and story first, without jokes?

DM: We spent two weeks on just the plot and outline and tried to stay away from comedy. The secret of a good spoof movie is that the plot is propulsive and makes sense, but you don’t think about it. The moment you’re thinking something doesn’t make sense, you haven’t done your job. The plot of the original The Naked Gun is The Manchurian Candidate – cool plot with silly stuff over it. 

PR: Right now, the moment coming to mind for me is when Frank is talking to a picture of his father, and then we pull back and all of the cops are talking to their own fathers. It’s an important thematic moment for Frank to state his want. Was that scene part of the outline, or a joke?

DM: That was early on. It was our way of answering questions we were getting immediately about the movie—how was it going to deal with the original Frank Drebin? How was it going to deal with OJ Simpson, who was in the original movie? We had to answer those questions for viewers. OJ’s not going to be in our movie, but we know he was in the original, so we had to have that joke. 

Then the meta monologue—”I want to be just like you, but totally different”—that monologue was us telling the audience what we’re doing with the movie. We’re letting the audience know that Frank is affected by the ghost of his father. He wants to live up to him. It works on a meta comedic level as well as a dramatic movie beat.

Work Now and Beyond

PR: Are you working on anything right now you’re excited about?

DM: We’re out with a couple ideas. Dan and I wrote a pilot we’re trying to attach actors to. There’s also a movie we wrote on spec that we’re trying to attach talent to, but, other than that, just developing and writing. 

This is a business that moves incredibly slow and then suddenly moves fast, but nothing ever dies. Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, the movie we wrote, was dead for seven years. Nothing happened. People liked it, but it wasn’t getting made. Seven years later, Akiva liked it, and suddenly we’re meeting about the movie again. For writers—ideas are never dead. Keep writing. Keep making new things and working on the old things.