MOVIES : They’ve Got to Be Kidding : Oh, no, another ‘Naked Gun’ movie from the Zucker boys; obviously directing ‘Ghost’ didn’t change brother Jerry that much

For Jerry Zucker, the most-savored accolade for his directorial efforts in “Ghost” did not come from the huge box-office returns, peer approval or the avalanche of offers.

It came in a late-night phone call from his brother, David.

“It was the night of “Ghost’s” opening,” recalls Jerry, 41, catching a few moments between meetings and helping his daughter, Katie, set up her train at the Zucker brothers’ Brentwood offices.

“David calls up to tell me how much he liked the film. He said, ‘Jerry, the pottery scene is classic. We’ve got to spoof it in the next “Naked Gun” movie.’ ”

Such are the instincts one must possess in the Zucker Universe; a place where the Queen of England is straddled on a banquet table, airline pilots proposition young boys, the First Lady is whacked with a lobster claw, cows walk through fields in rubber boots and, in “Naked Gun 2 1/2,” the dangerously inept Lt. Frank Drebbin and ingenue Jane Spencer turn a pottery shaping session into a mud-wrestling main event.

“It’s the highest compliment he could have paid me,” says Jerry, “even though I’ll never be able to watch that scene in ‘Ghost’ again.”

It was 11 years ago that the Zucker Brothers crashed into moviegoers’ consciousness with the pun-laden, disaster film spoof, “Airplane.” Employing such rock-jawed television heroes as Peter Graves, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Leslie Nielsen, they spurned conventional film comedy in favor of their theater of the unexpected. No sight gag was too obvious and no pun too painful. Cheap shots were revered, nonsense prevailed. The Zucker boys carry on the scatological traditions of the Marx Brothers and Mel Brooks. Brooks considers this brand of satire “breaking through comedy’s fourth wall into the realm of idiot revelations.” Of course, to the Zuckers, the idea is not so highfalutin. It’s more like: So you think it’ll get a laugh if her purse is full of sardines? Great, let’s get some sardines in here.

“We used to have these 15 rules of comedy,” says Jerry, known as the more cerebral of the pair, “though for the life of me I can’t recall too many of them. But an important rule is that we don’t have a funny guy in a funny costume saying a funny line. We have a completely normal guy in a normal situation doing something extremely silly.”

“The whole point for us is to surprise the audience, to play around with their expectations,” agrees David, 43, the director and co-writer of “Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear.” “Of course, that’s just a fancy way of saying ‘We’ll do anything for a laugh.’ ”

This is a claim not to be taken lightly. After all, Jerry’s the kid who went on “The Tonight Show” in the early ‘70s and mimed a frying egg; David’s the guy who coached Priscilla Presley in her film spitting debut. “Actually, after all these years, we’ve realized that No. 15 is the most important rule,” Jerry says. “There are no rules.”

Shorewood, Wis., is not the kind of place where you get a hold of the local high school yearbook, scan through it and say, “Oh, yeah, she had a recurring role on ‘Dynasty’ and he’s now the story editor on ‘American Gladiators.’ ”

Jerry, in fact, attributes much of his and his brother’s success to the normality of their upbringing. “Nobody we knew in our neighborhood had anything in development at the studios. The guy at the service station just worked on cars and the woman at the beauty salon just fixed hair.”

Nonetheless, the young Zuckers went into show biz with their father’s 8-mm camera and a recurring cast of obliging relatives. “Whenever a holiday would roll around, Jerry and I would be called upon to record the occasion,” David recalls. “But we’d always put an extra twist on it, like ‘Mission Impossible Thanksgiving.’ ”

Yet, while the brothers perfected their film parody technique by shooting basement versions of their favorite films and TV series, their comic sensibilities are pure Mad magazine. “The movie parodies in Mad really pointed the way for us,” says David, whose bright-eyed Midwestern countenance belies his delight in humiliating cultural icons. “ ‘Scenes We’d Like to See’ and the movie parodies were our favorite. Even the stuff in the margins of Mad magazine influenced what’s happening on the periphery of our films.”

“In Milwaukee, making fun of Hollywood provided a balancing out,” Jerry says. “At the same time, we always had a great deal of affection for the shows we were laughing at. You have to love a show like ‘M Squad’ to spend so much time figuring out how to satirize it.”

Surprisingly, the boys’ exposure to such kings of comedy as Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers did not come until they were both enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Their leap into multimedia came the weekend David saw Ken Shapiro’s “Groove Tube” in Chicago. He drove back to Madison the same night, pulled Jerry out of bed and declared that he’d seen their future.

Teaming with a family friend, Jim Abrahams, they borrowed video equipment and repaired to the Zucker basement for several months to experiment. “At one point, we just looked at each other and said, ‘Great, now let’s get actors, some costumes and put on a show,’ ” remembers Jerry on the founding of Kentucky Fried Theatre.

“It finally got to the point where we decided to go for national exposure,” David explains. “There was this improv group called Ace Trucking Company who appeared on Johnny Carson’s show and I knew we were better than them. We thought if we got on Johnny we’d have it made.”

“Yeah,” Jerry says. “I thought after being on the ‘Tonight Show’ I could die having lived a useful life. I would return to teaching in Madison and people would point me out on the street and say, ‘That’s Jerry Zucker. He was on Carson.’ ”

Like the Joads and Beverly Hillbillies before them, Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker packed it all into the U-Haul and headed West to Pico Boulevard, where they set up Kentucky Fried Theatre. They opened in the fall of 1972 and played to full houses for the next four years. And they made it on Carson.

“Except we were terrible,” Jerry admits.

Fearing they might some day turn 40 while still performing on Pico, they called up a local l’enfant terrible named John Landis and persuaded him to let them pick his brains about the movie business. “We were really fresh off the Milwaukee boat,” David says. “We’d ask him, ‘what’s the first thing you do? A script? What’s that look like?’ ”

Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker’s first film script was “Airplane.” With Landis attached to direct and Robert Weiss as producer, the team began the proverbial hunt for funds. “It was terrible,” David recalls. “There was this real estate guy who kept promising money. Once he had us all to his house in Bel-Air. He was just blowing air. Landis has his foot crossed on his knee and he is writing ‘this guy is a schmuck’ on the bottom of his shoe and showing it to all of us. Then the guy asks, ‘What are you writing there? This guy’s a schmuck?’ I thought Bob (Weiss) was going to have a heart attack.”

With “Airplane” not taking off, the team turned its attention to a movie version of “Kentucky Fried Theatre.” With Landis, they made a $28,000, 10-minute reel and in short order secured financing for the whole works. The show was a success and Paramount stepped in to sign a deal on “Airplane,” even agreeing to let the three writers direct their script.

“It was crazy on that set,” says “Airplane’s” executive producer, Howard W. Koch. “And not just because of the material. The DGA has a rule: One movie, one director. So Jerry was picked to work with actors on the plane while David and Jim had to hide behind a curtained area and watch on a monitor. After every take Jerry would have to run back there to see if they were giving a thumbs up through the curtain.”

To this day, Jerry’s technique is to be out among the actors while David prefers to watch the action unfold over the monitors . . . prompting George Kennedy to joke, “David Zucker is the finest . . . director I have ever worked with . . . I look forward to meeting him someday.”

Yet, the most daunting obstacle surmounted by ZAZ was persuading actors like Stack and Graves to act in their comedy. “Actually, (“Dragnet’s”) Jack Webb was the only actor we approached who begged off,” Koch remembers. “I knew these guys would want to do it,” David says. “After all, they’re actors. We knew the chance to be completely outlandish would appeal to them.”

Paramount decreed a sequel, but the Zuckers and Abrahams declined. “As far as we were concerned, after you tell the basic airline disaster story, there isn’t much left. But I guess Paramount thought it couldn’t be too tough, so they brought in Ken Finkleman,” David says. “Airplane” grossed $83 million; “Airplane II” grossed $24 million. “I am sure he did the best he could.”

Feeling their parodic powers at a peak, the team decided to put their Carson humiliation behind them and bring “Police Squad!” to the small screen. Like Mel Brooks who, a generation before, had marvelously lampooned “The Man from Uncle” with “Get Smart,” the ZAZ team took on all cop shows everywhere for all time. Starring Leslie Neilsen (whom they’d found to be a kindred soul during “Airplane”), the show lasted six episodes, thus assuring itself of a cult status which makes it one of the most popular segments on CTV’s “Comedy Central.” CBS will also show the episodes in July.

“Top Secret” (1984) however, proved to be the team’s undoing. Though many of the individual bits in the film remain the Zuckers’ and Abrahams’ best work, the combined parody of World War II and Elvis films did not entice moviegoers.

Though discouraged, the trio’s spirits were picked up a bit when Mel Brooks invited them out to lunch. “He gave us this talking to about how no one else was making films like ‘Top Secret,’ ” David says. “It was a passing of the mantle speech about how we shouldn’t give up.”

Remembers Brooks: “The Zucker Brothers? You mean Moe and Arnie who ran the diner in the Bronx? It was Greek food. Don’t ask me why.”

Disney’s Jeffrey Katzenberg then approached ZAZ and gave them a chance to redeem themselves by directing “Ruthless People” from a screenplay by Dale Launer. By their own admission, they became crazed about the structure, tying up loose plot lines, establishing motivations for characters. . . .

Motivations for characters? The Zucker Brothers?

“Don’t worry,” Jerry assures, “it’s not like we were growing up or anything.”

“Naked Gun” proved that. Directed solo by David, who wanted to be known throughout the industry as the first man to make a motion picture of a television flop, the 1988 comedy introduced the latent comic talents of George Kennedy, 0. J. Simpson and Priscilla Presley. “When I went in to meet with them, I kept telling them I thought they had the wrong actress,” she says, “but they wouldn’t believe me.”

Though the trio all contributed scenes to the first “Naked Gun,” they were now writing separately. “There was no falling out,” David says. “After 16 years you simply feel that it is too cumbersome to schlep two others guys around with you all the time.”

Jim Abrahams formed the Abrahams Entertainment Group--consisting of himself. “Hot Shots,” his “Top Gun” parody, is due out in July. The brothers formed Zucker Brothers Productions and retained the offices they share on San Vicente Boulevard with the fictitious Dr. Millard E. Flausner, D.D.S. The periodontal charts in the waiting area are gone, but the “Thank you for not pitching us your idea” sign fills the vacuum.

“I don’t think we’ll ever completely go our separate ways,” Jerry says. “We all contribute in one way or another to each other’s films, whether it is giving notes on scripts or allowing your brother to parody the love scene in your first dramatic movie.”

It was while promoting “Naked Gun” as executive producer that Jerry was given the script to “Ghost” by a friend at Paramount. “It sat on my nightstand forever. Finally, my wife read and liked it so much she literally forced me to sit down and read it.”

Jerry sat down and gave it a perusal. “I knew immediately it was a project I wanted to do,” he says. “It was not like I said to myself one day, ‘OK, now I’m going to be a serious director.’ I wasn’t looking for scripts according to genres or the actors attached to them. I was just looking for a good movie. Also, the spiritual aspect of the story appealed to me personally. It is not a subject with which many movies deal and it excited me to take that on.”

The 10 or so projects the boys have in development will be made without the paternal pat on the back from Paramount. After almost 15 years at the studio (interrupted by a brief foray to Disney for “Ruthless People”), negotiations for a new contract with the studio broke down two weeks ago, so the Zuckers are leaving, although both parties describe the situation as amicable.

Among the current Zucker Brothers Productions are “Toddlers,” a comedy about two men posing as infants in a land of giants that Jerry is currently developing with Howard W. Koch, and “Lame Ducks” starring John Turturro. The latter, in which the boys acted as executive producers, is their ode to the Marx Brothers. From a screenplay by Pat Proft and directed by Dennis Dugan, “Lame Ducks” concerns the misadventures of a shady, Groucho-type lawyer (Turturro), a Harpo innocent (Bob Nelson) and a fast-talking Chico character (Mel Smith), who pool their dubious talents to found a ballet company for a wealthy dowager.

With his brother, Jim Abrahams and Gil Netter acting as executive producers, David co-wrote the current “Naked Gun” saga with longtime collaborator Pat Proft and directs.

According to David, the environmental theme in “2 1/2” gave him the opportunity to pursue some political issues close to his heart. “Robert Goulet is a great villain in this one. He’s the head of an energy cartel whose guy in the White House is John Sununu. Actually, even though Sununu comes off like an overweight Darth Vader, George Bush ends up looking pretty good.”

Would this have anything to do with the rather cruel uses to which he puts the First Lady?

“I hear he’s a little sensitive about Barbara,” David says. “I hope he’s in a good mood when he sees this ‘Naked Gun.’ ”