Writing
The show was set to mock cop procedurals the same way Airplane! mocked disaster movies. Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker wrote the pilot episode, in which most straight lines were directly copied from an M Squad episode. Pat Proft, who had worked with the ZAZ on Airplane! and The Kentucky Fried Movie, wrote the third episode. Robert Wuhl was invited to join the writing staff after he had auditioned for the lead role in Airplane!. He would co-write the show's second and sixth episodes with Tino Insana. Both episodes contained cultural references to old movies such as On the Waterfront and The French Connection. In the audio commentary Wuhl recorded for the DVD release, he mentioned that it was a nice opportunity, but that he did not really feel a connection with the show, especially because of its short run.
Read more about this topic: Police Squad!
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“I write to you out of turn, and believe I must adopt the rule of only writing when I am written to, in hopes that may provoke more frequent letters.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“It seems to me that since I’ve had children, I’ve grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.”
—Anne Tyler (20th century)
“... in writing you cannot possibly be interesting if what you say is not true, if it is what I call “a true lie,” i.e., a truth which gives the wrong impression. For no matter how subtly you lie in writing, people know it and don’t believe you, and the whole secret of being interesting is to be believed.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)