By Fred Topel | Images property of Paramount Pictures
Dance Flick
Dance movies provided a wealth of material to spoof in Dance Flick, but the Wayans Brothers had to come up with some real dancing to lead up to the jokes. Marlon Wayans recalled how they brainstormed funny dance offs for the film.
Marlon Wayans on Dance Flick
“That was a communal effort,” he said. “We all just would throw pitches at the wall, go what about this, what about this, what about this? You come up with different dance moves and you know you’ve got your opening dance battle and your end dance battle. We just kind of machine gunned it.”
Having worked with Channing Tatum on G.I. Joe, Wayans vouched for Tatum’s approval of the Step Up spoofs. “You know what’s funny about this is we filmed this as I was filming G.I. Joe, so Channing has a great sense of humor. He would come into my trailer and watch the dailies of us doing Dance Flick. He just would be cracking up and he’d be like, ‘Oh, y’all are foolin’!’ Then one day he came to my trailer and I was watching his scene and he was like, ‘Hey dog, is that me?’ Like yeah. He was like, ‘Aw, sh*t, that’s hilarious.’ And that’s when I was like, ‘I love this guy.’ So he has a great sense of humor about it.”
With such a raucous family, sometimes the production meetings can lose control. “It’s like having 10 bad kids in a classroom and they just so happen to be the principals. On this movie, little D-Rock, Damien, this was his ship. He’s the captain and during production meetings, he holds court. Our producing partner, Rick Alvarez, works in tandem. And we’ve let that young man do his job to make a movie.”
No matter the competition, Wayans stands by Dance Flick. However, he won’t be checking numbers on opening weekend. “You know, you watch the box office but I did my job. I made the movie, I promoted the movie and you leave it to the studio to market the movie. I did my job, all of us did our job which is make the best movie we possibly could, make sure audiences are laughing. The rest, that’s between God and the studio so I’m going to Vegas.”
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