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Marlon Wayans lent his comedic perspective to his family’s latest genre spoof, Dance Flick. Parodying movies like Step Up, You Got Served, Hairspray and more, Wayans served as co-writer and appears in a cameo. His big on screen work comes later this summer as Ripcord in G.I. Joe, so Wayans talked comedy, family and action in this interview.
Crave Online: Of all the spoofs you could have done, why dance movies?
Marlon Wayans: There’s several things you can do at one time but we just decided this one was the one that we were just kind of, personally, tired of so we were just like let’s do this.
Crave Online: Did you plan this family dynasty?
Marlon Wayans: I think we just had such an affinity for Keenan that if Keenan would’ve turned out to be an engineer like he had planned, we’d probably have a family full of engineers.
Crave Online: How did you decide when to include old school dance flicks?
Marlon Wayans: I think it was like the wedding day for us, a little bit of old, a little bit of new, little bit of red, little bit of blue. I’ve never been married so I hope it’s close enough. I think you have to have some old because those are the classic movies and you always want to pull from there. We had a Dirty Dancing scene in there, just a little bit too dirty. Too dirty.
Crave Online: Will it be on the DVD?
Marlon Wayans: Hopefully, the red label. It was so bad someone threw up and I think that’s when we were like, “Yeah, we might have crossed the line a little bit.”
Crave Online: How will this go over in Europe?
Marlon Wayans: I just filmed G.I. Joe in Prague. They like physical and they like good characters and I think what we do is we add some pretty spicy characters in there, so even if you never saw the dance movies, I think there’s still a lot to laugh at.
Crave Online: Do you ever worry the racial humor goes too far?
Marlon Wayans: No, I don't think we went too far. Pretty much, people know us and know what we do. We’ve been doing it since In Living Color. We’ve always been and we do it with kids gloves. We’re not just bashing. We come with some jokes and hopefully just make it really funny and it’s based and comes from characters, not just, “Hey, let’s do a gay person just to make fun of them. Let’s make fun of black people.” I am black and I have sensitivities but I think we approach it with kids gloves. One of the greatest compliments that we’ve been able to get was, it’s like when we did Men on Film, a lot of the gay community would write in it’s their favorite characters. For the most part, it’s our approach. Some people might be able to tell the same joke and it’d be offensive. For some reason, oddly enough, we’re able to tell the joke and people kind of like it.
Crave Online: What was your favorite dance flick to spoof?
Marlon Wayans: I think Save the Last Dance lent itself. It was actually a good movie for the time. I’m not just saying this because Dance Flick is an MTV film and so was that oddly enough, but it actually was a good movie. It was a good one and lent itself to a really good storyline that everybody kind of bit off and it was the common denominator for each one of these movies so we kind of used that one the most.
Crave Online: How do you decide which celebrities to skewer? How do you get away with questioning Tom Cruise’s sexuality in a Paramount film?
Marlon Wayans: He’s no longer at Paramount. If this was United Artists, we definitely couldn’t get away with it. Plus the audience will tell you. We only do it if it’s appropriate. It kind of fit within the confines of the song. Everybody does kind of question that. No, we’re not saying that he or anybody else is. We’re just throwing the question out there because everybody’s familiar with it, so we just thought it would be funny.
Crave Online: Did any celebrity joke go too far?
Marlon Wayans: There’s this one scene that was a little crazy, Dirty Dancing. It wasn’t when he got the girl pregnant when he humped her. I think when he humped the dog. Oh, it was the baby. That was too far.
Crave Online: What would be the spoof of the Wayans family?
Marlon Wayans: Actually, you know who did one that was really funny? Mad Magazine did one that was hilarious. This was back in the In Living Color days and it was so hilarious. Keenan, we all, me and Keenan, Damon and Shawn laughed extremely hard at it. It was really funny. They had [Damon] looking all weasely. They called Keenan something like Klignon Ivory Wayans or Klingon Ivory Wayans. It was really funny, man.
Crave Online: What song had a profound effect on you the first time you heard it?
Marlon Wayans: What’s that song from Fame about burning like a million stars? It was the song that they sang at the end of my graduation at Performing Arts High School. It’s at the end of Fame. It’s the one Kim used to sing all the time. I celebrate, look back, burn with the fire of ten million stars, and in time, yes in time, we’ll all be stars. That was my high school graduation song. It really gave us all chills because we worked so hard during our tenure at school and it was just kind of a setup and I knew for me and my boy Omar Epps who we’re still best friends. To this day, he’s doing it along with my brothers, that’s a song that fuels me.
