Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer

Jason Friedberg (born October 13, 1971) and Aaron Seltzer (born January 12, 1974) are American and Canadian filmmakers. They have primarily worked on parody films, which they began writing and directing during the mid-2000s. Friedberg and Seltzer's first five films between 2006 and 2010 received wide theatrical releases to mostly commercial success, but universally negative reviews; their films Epic Movie (2007), Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie (both 2008) are considered among the worst ever made. Except for Vampires Suck (2010), their next films during the 2010s drew less attention due to receiving limited theatrical releases.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
BornJason Friedberg
(1971-10-13) October 13, 1971
Newark, New Jersey, U.S.
Aaron Seltzer
(1974-01-12) January 12, 1974
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Alma materUniversity of California, Santa Barbara
Occupation(s)Directors, screenwriters
Years active1996–2015

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, New Jersey, 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. Both are Jewish.[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]

Spy Hard, Scary Movie and screenwriting

While writing screenplays at night, both spent the day attending jobs to pay their tuition, selling homemade T-shirts, starting 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 led to 1996's Spy Hard.

Friedberg and Seltzer 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 Steven Soderbergh's TV movie Behind The Candelabra) introduced them to future collaborator and producer Peter Safran. In 1998, Safran managed to sell to Miramax's Dimension Films division a horror film spoof spec script of Friedberg and Seltzer's named Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween. Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans, with Buddy Johnson and Phil Beauman, developed a similar project and, thanks to a WGA decision, all six writers were credited on what became Scary Movie, despite Friedberg and Seltzer not actually working on the final script.[2] The film was a sleeper hit in 2000, bringing much attention to Friedberg and Seltzer.

Directing

Tired of unmade projects as screenwriters, and with Regency Enterprises unable to find a director for their romantic comedy spoof, Seltzer and Friedberg opted to direct Date Movie (2006) themselves.[1] Date Movie opened with $12.1 million and earned $48.9 million overall.[3] Moving forward, they would direct their own scripts, leading to a long tract of parody films, spoofing major blockbusters. Disaster Movie opened with $5.8 million and earned $14.2 million total in the United States.[3] Vampires Suck, which opened on a Wednesday, earned an estimated $19.7 million in its first five days.[3]

Announced projects

On May 15, 2014, Friedberg and Seltzer announced their intention to release Who the F#@K Took My Daughter?, a parody of Taken.[4] On February 8, 2017, it was reported they were developing a parody of Star Wars titled Star Worlds Episode XXXIVE=MC2: The Force Awakens The Last Jedi Who Went Rogue,[5] whose filming was scheduled for late 2017.[6] However as of 2023 it never started filming and they have been inactive since then.

Filmography
Year Film Directors Writers Producers Rotten Tomatoes Approval
Rating		 Metacritic Score Budget Worldwide
Gross
1996 Spy Hard No Yes No 8%[7] 25/100[8] $18 million $26,960,191
2000 Scary Movie No Yes No 51%[9] 48/100[10] $19 million $278,019,771
2006 Date Movie Yes [lower-alpha 1] Yes Yes [lower-alpha 2] 7%[11] 11/100[12] $20 million $84,795,656[13]
2007 Epic Movie Yes Yes Executive 2%[14] 17/100[15] $86,865,564[16]
2008 Meet the Spartans Yes Yes Yes 2%[17] 9/100[18] $30 million $84,646,831[19]
Disaster Movie Yes Yes Yes 1%[20] 15/100[21] $20 million $34,816,824[22]
2010 Vampires Suck Yes Yes Yes 4%[23] 18/100[24] $80,547,866[25]
2013 The Starving Games[26] Yes Yes No 0%[27] $4.5 million $3,889,688[28]
2014 Best Night Ever[29] Yes Yes Yes 0%[30] 17/100[31] $289,511[32]
2015 Superfast! Yes Yes Yes $20 million $2,075,731[33]

Other
Year Film Notes Budget Worldwide Gross
1996 Maximum Risk Uncredited rewrite $25 million $51,639,438[34]
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

Recurring cast members

Crista Flanagan and Nick Steele were the duo's most frequent collaborators, appearing in five of their films, followed by Carmen Electra (4 films) and Tony Cox, Ike Barinholtz, and Diedrich Bader (3 films each).

Actor Date Movie Epic Movie Meet the Spartans Disaster Movie Vampires Suck The Starving Games Best Night Ever Superfast!
Nick Steele ☒N ☒N ☒N ☒N ☒N
Carmen Electra ☒N ☒N ☒N ☒N
Tony Cox ☒N ☒N ☒N
Adam Campbell ☒N ☒N
Jennifer Coolidge ☒N ☒N
Fred Willard ☒N ☒N
Crista Flanagan ☒N ☒N ☒N ☒N ☒N
Jareb Dauplaise ☒N ☒N
Jim Piddock ☒N ☒N
Tad Hilgenbrink ☒N ☒N
Ike Barinholtz ☒N ☒N ☒N
Diedrich Bader ☒N ☒N ☒N
John Di Domenico ☒N ☒N
Nicole Parker ☒N ☒N
Matt Lanter ☒N ☒N
Amin Joseph ☒N ☒N
Nick Gomez ☒N ☒N

Awards and nominations

Golden Raspberry Awards
Year Nominated work Category Result
2008 Epic Movie Worst Prequel or Sequel ("rip-off of every movie it rips off") Nominated
Worst Screenplay
2009 Disaster Movie Worst Picture
Worst Prequel or Sequel
Worst Director
Worst Screenplay
Meet the Spartans Worst Picture
Worst Prequel or Sequel
Worst Director
Worst Screenplay
2011 Vampires Suck Worst Picture
Worst Prequel or Sequel
Worst Director
Worst Screenplay

Criticism

The critical reception of Friedberg and Seltzer's directorial efforts have been overwhelmingly negative.[35][36] Common criticisms of their work include being heavily reliant on pop culture references, passing trends, product placement, scatological gags, gratuitous nudity, casual violence and offensive stereotypes for their humor, as well as mistaking plagiarism for parody. Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans were rated the two worst films of 2008 by The Times.[37] 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.[38] 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.[39]

Flavorwire collectively lists the duo's entire filmography at #9 in its list of the 50 worst films of all time, saying:

"You may as well lump them all together, because they all bleed together in cinematic hell: the 'parody' efforts of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, which include Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans, Vampires Suck. They're sad, limp affairs that have all but single-handedly reduced the 'spoof movie' from parody to mere quotation: From Napoleon Dynamite to Borat to the 'Leave Britney alone!' guy, no payoff delights these comic geniuses more than cutting away to the flavor of the month, presumably causing the audience to roar with laughter, smack themselves on the forehead, and exclaim, 'Hot damn, how the hell'd the Kardashians end up in thar? Hyuck, hyuck!' Their most recent efforts, the Hunger Games parody The Starving Games and the Hangover riff Best Night Ever, both sunk without a trace, meaning the jig might finally be up for these two rip-off artists."[40]

The two are frequent nominees of the Golden Raspberry Awards. The first was a Worst Screenplay nomination for Epic Movie at the 2007 Razzies[41] and the following year the pair were nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay for both Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie.[42] At the 2011 Razzies, Vampires Suck was nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel.

Critic Josh Levin of Slate stated:

"Isn't it massive consumer fraud to charge $10.50 for a barely hour-long movie? Perhaps, but it would've been unforgivable to make Meet the Spartans any longer than an hour. This was the worst movie I've ever seen, so bad that I hesitate to label it a 'movie' and thus reflect shame upon the entire medium of film. Friedberg and Seltzer do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, The Zucker brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it. They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline under the weight of too many pop culture references."[43]

Josh Rosenblatt of The Austin Chronicle said that "There's no nice way to say this, so I'll just say it: 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."[44] Austin critic and animator Korey Coleman, of Spill.com and Double Toasted, 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, and saying: "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".[45]

Critic Nathan Rabin also gave their work an indignant condemnation, calling them "comedy antichrists"[46] and saying about their films:

"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."[47]

Notes
  1. Jason Friedberg was the only credited
  2. Aaron Seltzer was the only credited

References
  1. Patches, Matt (January 31, 2014). "Surely They Can't Be Serious? – The unlikely rise of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, Hollywood's majorly hated, hugely successful kings of the modern-day spoof". Grantland.com. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  2. 3/3/2016 – You Done Quit That Good Job!! by Thepoplifepodcast on Soundcloud
  3. Stewart, Andrew (August 22, 2010). "'Expendables' tops crowded B.O". Variety.
  4. Tartaglione, Nancy (May 15, 2014). "Cannes: Spoof Specialists Take On 'Taken' With 'Who The F#@k Took My Daughter?'". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved February 8, 2017.
  5. Chitwood, Adam (February 8, 2017). "'Star Wars' Spoof in the Works from 'Epic Movie' and 'Meet the Spartans' Filmmakers". Retrieved February 8, 2017.
  6. McNary, Dave (February 8, 2017). "'Star Wars' Spoof 'Star Worlds' in the Works From 'Scary Movie' Duo". Variety. Retrieved February 8, 2017.
  7. "Spy Hard (1996)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. July 3, 2005. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  8. "Spy Hard Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  9. "Scary Movie (2000)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. July 7, 2000. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  10. "Scary Movie Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  11. "Date Movie (2006)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. February 17, 2006. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  12. "Date Movie Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  13. "Date Movie on Box Office Mojo". Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  14. "Epic Movie (2007)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. January 26, 2007. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  15. "Epic Movie Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  16. "Epic Movie on Box Office Mojo". Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  17. "Meet the Spartans (2008)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. January 25, 2008. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  18. "Meet the Spartans Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  19. "Meet the Spartans on Box Office Mojo". Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  20. "Disaster Movie (2008)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. August 29, 2008. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  21. "Disaster Movie Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  22. "Disaster Movie on Box Office Mojo". Retrieved October 13, 2010.
  23. "Vampires Suck (2010)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. August 18, 2010. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  24. "Vampires Suck Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  25. "Vampires Suck". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved October 13, 2010.
  26. "Hunger Games Gets the Scary Movie Treatment". May 10, 2012.
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  28. "The Starving Games (2013) – International Box Office Results – Box Office Mojo". Retrieved September 24, 2014.
  29. "Best Night Ever (2014)". IMDb.com. Retrieved February 20, 2014.
  30. "Best Night Ever (2014)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. January 31, 2014. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  31. "Best Night Ever Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  32. "Best Night Ever (2014) – International Box Office Results – Box Office Mojo". Retrieved September 24, 2014.
  33. Superfast! – Box Office Mojo
  34. "Maximum Risk". The Numbers. Retrieved February 6, 2015.
  35. Catsoulis, Jeannette (January 26, 2008). "Doing Battle on the Field of Parody". The New York Times. Retrieved May 5, 2010.
  36. Scott, A. O. (January 27, 2007). "Bravely Setting Out to Mock Others". The New York Times. Retrieved May 5, 2010.
  37. The 100 Worst Movies of 2008 The Times Retrieved December 12, 2008
  38. "Worst of the Worst 2009 – Fear Dot Com". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on February 10, 2010. Retrieved August 9, 2010.
  39. Helen O'Hara; Alastair Plumb; Phil De Semlyen (January 29, 2010). "The 50 Worst Movies Ever". Empire Magazine. Retrieved February 1, 2010.
  40. "The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made". Flavorwire. September 17, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2019.
  41. John Wilson (January 21, 2008). "Razzies – 2007 Nominees for Worst Screenplay". Razzie Awards. Archived from the original on January 26, 2009. Retrieved January 22, 2009.
  42. John Wilson (January 21, 2009). "RAZZIES.COM 2008 Nominations". Razzie Awards. Retrieved January 22, 2009.
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  44. "Film Listings". AustinChronicle.com. September 5, 2008. Retrieved August 9, 2010.
  45. Vampires Suck Audio Review | Spill.com Archived July 28, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  46. Rabin, Nathan (March 28, 2008). "Superhero Movie". Film. Retrieved February 26, 2019.
  47. Rabin, Nathan (January 29, 2013). "The surreally incompetent Not Another Not Another Movie is beneath contempt · Dispatches From Direct To DVD Purgatory · The A.V. Club". Avclub.com. Retrieved February 20, 2014.
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