Pat Proft

• 1. Introduction

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  Pat Proft's name does not appear in the title of a single one of Hollywood's most beloved comedy franchises, yet his fingerprints are on nearly all of them. Born in Minnesota in 1947, Proft spent decades writing jokes that made audiences laugh without knowing who to thank. He co-wrote The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! and its two sequels. He wrote Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux. He contributed to Police Academy, Bachelor Party, and the first three Scary Movie installments. What shaped a kid from Minnesota into one of Hollywood's most prolific parody writers? And why, despite a career spanning half a century, does his name remain so unfamiliar to the people who quote his lines? The answers begin not in Los Angeles but in a Minneapolis dinner theater, where a young man who admitted he could not sing or dance took the stage anyway.

• 2. A Minnesota Education

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  Columbia Heights High School is where Proft first discovered that comedy could be a craft, not just a personality quirk. His English teacher, Stuart J. Anderson, recognized something in the young Proft and actively encouraged him to develop his talent. That early encouragement sent Proft toward the stage at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre, where he performed in musicals despite his own candid admission that he "can't sing or dance." The discomfort of performing material that did not suit him may have sharpened his instinct for what did. Before moving to Hollywood, Proft honed his timing at Dudley Riggs' Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis, a comedy institution that launched careers throughout the mid-1960s. He then worked as a one-man comedy act through the late 1960s, building the live performance confidence that would later carry him into writers' rooms.

• 3. The Comedy Store Years

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  In 1972, Proft arrived in Hollywood and began performing at The Comedy Store, the Sunset Strip club that served as a proving ground for a generation of American comedians. It was there that Jerry and David Zucker first saw his work. The Zuckers were impressed enough to invite him to join them at Kentucky Fried Theater, the live comedy troupe that would eventually become the creative engine behind Airplane! When that film was released in 1980, Proft received a special thanks credit, a quiet acknowledgment of his ties to the group even as the main writing credit went elsewhere. The Comedy Store also connected Proft to the broader television landscape of the early 1970s. He became a regular on The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour, which ran from June through September of 1973, one of several variety show gigs that filled out his early career.

• 4. Television Before the Films

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  Mel Brooks developed When Things Were Rotten as a television satire of the Robin Hood legend, and Proft worked on it as a screenwriter. The show aired between September and December of 1975. Critics responded warmly, but the audience did not follow, and the series was cancelled that same year due to low ratings. Proft's television work during this period ranged widely. In 1975 he appeared as a regular on Joey & Dad, a variety show featuring Joey Heatherton and her father. The following year he was writing for Van Dyke and Company, a variety program that earned a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 1977. By the late 1970s his television credits included writing for the Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978 and Police Squad! in 1982, the latter being the direct precursor to the Naked Gun films he would help write two years later.

• 5. Parody as a Career

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  Police Academy in 1984 began Proft's run of film writing credits that would define his professional identity. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, released in 1988, brought the Police Squad! television format to cinemas with Proft as one of its co-writers. He returned for The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear in 1991 and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult in 1994. In between those sequels, he co-wrote Hot Shots! in 1991 and Hot Shots! Part Deux in 1993, both parodies of action film conventions. His 1997 film Mr. Magoo, written with Tom Sherohman and based on the UPA cartoon series from the 1950s and 1960s, drew a pointed critique from Variety, which wrote that both writers "have labored mightily to cobble together a plot capable of stretching to feature length the one-joke premise of the six-minute cartoons." The review captured a tension Proft navigated throughout his career: the challenge of sustaining a comic premise beyond its natural length.

• 6. Directing and Unrealized Projects

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  Wrongfully Accused, released in 1998, stands as the only film Proft both wrote and directed. It parodies the thriller genre established by The Fugitive from 1993. The same year it was released, Proft announced two additional projects he hoped to direct: a parody of the Dirty Harry series about an American officer sent to England to extradite a criminal, and a script titled Titanic, Too: It Missed the Iceberg, which had actors Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, and David Hasselhoff in early talks for starring roles, with a release originally targeted for early 1999. CNN film analyst Martin Grove assessed that the Titanic parody was unlikely to be produced, citing the poor reception of both Wrongfully Accused and another recent parody, Plump Fiction. His judgment proved accurate. In 2013, Proft described a new script with David Zucker called Counter Intelligence as "a Naked Gun take on the Mission Impossible and Bourne film series." Zucker mentioned in 2017 that they were working on a fourth Naked Gun film together, though no project between the two has been produced since Scary Movie 5 in 2013.

• 7. Still Writing

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  In 2021, Proft was developing a script for David Zucker titled The Star of Malta, described as a parody of film noir and heist films. The project continues the creative partnership that began when the Zuckers spotted him at The Comedy Store nearly five decades earlier. Proft is married to actress and singer Karen Philipp. His career as a performer never disappeared entirely; his acting credits include a role as Skipper in Tunnel Vision in 1976 and a small part in Bachelor Party in 1984. The Star of Malta would be his first new project with Zucker since Scary Movie 5, a gap of nearly a decade in a collaboration that has otherwise defined both men's careers.