Life Is But A Scream For Wayans
Even though Scary Movie lost the No. 1 spot at the box office this weekend to X-Men, it's still raking in a lot of money -- $89 million so far.
Scary Movie is a real family affair, with Keenen Ivory Wayans directing and brothers Shawn and Marlon writing and starring.
Marlon plays Shorty Meeks, the ultimate party animal who manages to bond with the masked murderer from the Scream films over certain illegal substances.
"I think we was watching I Know What You Did Last Summer," Marlon recalls, "and we said, 'I know what I'm gonna do next summer. I'm gonna make fun of all these damn movies I'm so tired of seeing.'"
He continues, "I watched Scream till I wanted to scream. I've seen I Know What You Did Last Summer so much that I wanted to become the murderer and kill anybody that ever made one of those movies."
After Marlon and brother Shawn wrote a script for Scary Movie, they turned it over to Keenen for approval. Marlon says he and Shawn did nearly 20 rewrites before their big brother was satisfied.
But even he was not Marlon and Shawn's toughest critic. That role belonged to their parents.
Explains Marlon, "My dad's a Jehovah's Witness, so some of the humor was a little bit too much for him. So he had to leave halfway through and go pray for us… My mom stayed till the end but that's because she broke her foot. She had to. She tried to hobble out but that didn't work. She actually said, 'Baby, the movie's funny. It's not Momma's particular humor.'"
Marlon is the youngest of 10 siblings, but his parents joke that that could soon change. He says, "They're like, 'Three of the boys just did a movie that made $42 million. Let's make three more!'"
And the irony is that Marlon's father was a condom salesman. "He didn't use his product too much," observes his son.
Growing up, Marlon watched plenty of scary movies with his brothers, and he says his favorite flick was Nightmare on Elm Street, followed closely by The Exorcist.
And what about Jason and the Halloween movies?
"The hockey mask kinda scared me a little bit," Marlon recalls. "But, you know, I grew up in the projects. Brother with a ski mask and a gun, I'm scared of that. A guy with a Halloween mask, I'm gonna throw some candy at him."