Who are Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg?

*Originally published on 9/3/10



Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg are not exactly household names, however, you are undoubtedly familiar with their work. They worked on 1996's Spy Hard and worked with the Wayans to write the first Scary Movie. This allowed them to launch their own brand of parody films.

The first was Date Movie. It was a send up of romantic comedies that starred Allyson Hannigan. Given Allyson Hannigan's track record, and the fact that romantic comedies certainly have a lot of tropes to parody, moviegoers gave this film the benefit of the doubt, only to be met with a horrifying, unfunny, and uncomfortable movie viewing experience.

The movie made bank at the box office, so the team was reunited for the follow up, Epic Movie. While Date Movie featured "parodies" ie references to franchises outside the genre, a majority of the film does play into the genre it's title suggests. With Epic Movie, Friedberg and Seltzer decided to abandon the concept and just "make fun" of anything that popped into their heads. Looking at the list, you realize that few (if any) of the movies are epics. Maybe the Narnia series, but beyond that, it's just a mish mash of pop culture gags that have no rhyme or reason. Granted, I haven't seen this film in its entirety (same goes for the remaining films, and I have no desire to see them), but I have seen one video review that told me all I needed to know.

Now, the general populace isn't dense. The first film bombed, so why would they go see the second? This should mark the end of their career. Fool me once and all that. Alas, no, Epic Movie pulled in almost $90 million, a fine return on the $20 million dollar budget.

Epic Movie was followed up by Meet the Spartans, a parody of 300. You'd think that this would work to the writers' favor, that having one particular film to mock would give them some focus and keep the padding down to a minimum. However, if you look at the character sheet on the film's wikipedia page, you'll see that characters such as Lindsay Lohan, George W. Bush, Dane Cook, and Donald Trump all make appearances. The film is set in ancient Greece that doesn't make sense!!!! Oy. Again, this movie made money. Actually, it made about the same as the other two...is it the same people going to see each film?

This was followed up with Disaster Movie, supposedly a riff on, ya know, disaster movies. Did you know that Indiana Jones, Iron Man, Enchanted, and Sex and the City were disaster movies? I didn't either.

With this film, whatever shine the earlier movies had wore off and the movie pulled in a measly $30 million. It still made a return on the studio's investment, but it was hardly the profit margin they were dealing with before.

Their most recent release is Vampires Suck, a parody of the popular Twilight series. Much like the other films, it has been critically panned, but is performing decently at the box office, coming in at number 2 behind The Expendables on the week of its release.

These films bug me. As a writer, I find it offensive that these guys are still working while other more talented writers are stuck still trying to break into the business. It's offensive in and of itself, even putting aside the crude toilet humor that populate the films.

The fact that these movies continued to make money both bothered and perplexed me. All of the movies have a rating in the single digits on Rotten Tomatoes. At least Uwe Boll had an excuse (utilizing a tax loophole to get paid regardless of the film's performance), and from what I hear, he is improving so you can't fault him for that. These guys have nothing like that to back up their low quality.

The first instinct would be to blame American audiences for having low standards, but looking at the numbers, I found that they do better on the international market. I'm not sure if this is due to the much larger populace out there than here, or if somehow the duo have pulled a Hasselhoff and garnered appeal in some foreign country, but whatever the case, they seem to have a fan base.

This is surprising as almost everything you read, even online, will indicate an almost universal hatred for the pair's work.

I can't tell you what the appeal is, but they seem to have it. Many hope that it wears off, but if the box office is any indicator, there is still quite a bit of demand for this particular brand of comedy.