Dan Gregor writes spoof the old way: a straight-faced story first, then as many jokes as it will hold. When the story is sturdy, as in The Naked Gun, it works; when it is not, as in Dolittle, the jokes bury it.
Fi1m perspective
There is a sign in the squad room of The Naked Gun (2025) that reads "Cold Cases". Nobody points at it and nobody mentions it, and we laughed out loud at it in a room full of strangers. That is Dan Gregor's kind of joke, and it is an old kind: the background misbehaving while the foreground keeps a straight face. He wrote the film with Doug Mand and Akiva Schaffer, who also directs, and between them they hold to the rule Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker set down, that nobody on screen may know they are in a comedy.
He came up through sketch, as a founder of the Hammerkatz group at New York University and at the Upright Citizens Brigade, and then spent four years on the staff of How I Met Your Mother (2010–2014). From there he moved to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015–2019), writing, producing and directing episodes of a series we rated highly for being funny, sad and rude about the right things. His first feature as director, Most Likely to Murder (2018), came out of that period. Then the screenplays, nearly all with Mand: Dolittle (2020), Magic Camp (2020), Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) and The Naked Gun.
Gregor has said that "the jokes are all takes on pre-existing genres, so we need to really feel the genre first." The Naked Gun shows what that means in practice. Liam Neeson never lets on that he is in a comedy, the plot is a police plot with a beginning, a middle and an end, and the gags are hung on it at a rate that leaves no time to judge the last one. Some are lines taken literally, some are large men falling over with conviction, and a love montage carries on long past the point where a sensible editor would have stopped it. They thin out in the last stretch, and we said so, but enough of them land.
Dolittle is the other case. The screenplay, shared with Mand and with Stephen Gaghan, who also directed, has a good premise in a doctor who talks to animals, and it cannot leave him alone for a minute. Every scene is interrupted by another quip, every animal has one more line, and the simple pleasure of spending time with the doctor is buried under complication. We scored it 32. The difference is not the number of jokes; it is whether the story underneath can carry them.
Gregor and Mand seem to do their best work when somebody else is holding the line: Schaffer on The Naked Gun, Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Hand them another spoof with a firm hand on it and we would sit down for it gladly. Hand them another talking-animal picture and we would wait for the reviews.
Biography
Dan Gregor is an American writer, producer, director and comedian. Born in Woodmere, New York, he studied at New York University, where he co-founded the comedy group Hammerkatz, and later performed with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.
Gregor wrote for the CBS series How I Met Your Mother (2011–2014) and served as a writer, producer and director on the CW series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015–2019). His film writing credits include Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) and The Naked Gun (2025), the latter co-written with Doug Mand. He made his feature directorial debut with Most Likely to Murder (2018). He is married to actress and writer Rachel Bloom.
