10 min readThe following story contains minor spoilers for Scary Movie (2026).
WHEN YOU THINK of stunts or action choreography, your brain may skip comedy entirely. Sure, there’s a through line from Buster Keaton to Jackie Chan, from the Jackass boys to John Wick, but you might not realize just how much stunt work actually goes into making you laugh. Take this year’s Scary Movie, a reboot of the long-running horror spoof series, for example. The film is a mile-a-minute joke machine, and with a pace like that, your brain has virtually no chance of registering the sheer amount of stunt doubles, practical effects, and craft that go into every single one. From the smallest sight gag to an extended fight scene, director Michael Tiddes, along with stunt coordinator Steve Ritzi and his crew, meticulously planned each moment.
Approaching Scary Movie as a horror film first, with jokes layered onto each scare, Tiddes wanted the film to evoke the favorite bits of horror hounds’ favorite movies. Shorty (Marlon Wayans) sinking into the chair à la Get Out? All practical. The extended fight scene between Cindy (Anna Faris) and an endless parade of Ghostfaces? A fight scene choreographed down to the smallest punch. Pratfalls, wacky deaths, and sight gags galore, Scary Movie is filled with the kind of stuff typically reserved for action. Comedy never gets its due when it comes to the level of preparation and care that goes into each frame, all designed to elicit the hardest of laughs.
To help break down the stunts that went into the gags, Tiddes sat down with Men’s Health. He may be known for comedies, having worked with the Wayans brothers many times through the years, but Tiddes is no stranger to health and fitness. As we start, he’s wiping away sweat from his brow, having just put time in at the gym.
MEN’S HEALTH: What’s your comedown like? What do you do to decompress after a workout or a heavy day on set?
MICHAEL TIDDES: I usually lie on the ground. I'm getting up there in age. [Laughs] No, no, I usually shower. I work out early in the morning, and I'm then off to go to work. I work out before set every day. It's my early morning wake-up. It clears my mind. When I get to set, there are always problems to take care of. So it's always great to have a clear mind and those endorphins kicking, so I can handle all those problems with a big smile and not be grumpy in the morning.
MH: It’s funny—When I asked Bob Odenkirk this same question recently, he said he never decompresses and asked for tips. That kind of leads right into what we’re here to talk about, though, because he also compared the art of crafting a fight scene or stunt to that of doing sketch comedy. There’s a buildup, tension, and then the punchline or payoff.
MT: Oh yeah, absolutely. I agree. It's all about teasing that tension. Jab, jab, jab, and then a big punch. You want to lead the audience down a path where they think they know where they're going, and right when they're sure, you surprise them. I think horror is similar because it's all building tension to a scare. Action is similar. You want your scenes and your bigger set pieces to crescendo to a peak, and really make an impact when you hit them with that big punch.
MH: There are far more stunt doubles involved in Scary Movie than people would probably expect. What goes into crafting the stunts and action for a movie as filled with jokes as this one?
MT: Yeah, there are quite a few stunt doubles. We work with a lot of stunt guys. I have a great stunt coordinator who I worked with a few times out in Georgia, Steve Ritzi. He's got a fantastic team. They'll start working out these types of choreography for the fights. Then I start to look at it, come in, give my notes, and tell them where I'd like different moments to play, or how I'd want the camera to react. I'm always trying to make those camera moves dynamic and the action dynamic. Once we really know what we're doing and we've got the choreography down to where I'm happy with it, then we fold in the actress or the actor, and they get into it. We start running it with them, and they rehearse through a couple of days' worth of training, walking them through the choreography, making sure they know that they're going to be safe and how we're going to pull this off.
Then you get on set, and you just let everybody rock out, man. You let your stunt double do what they do. They're fantastic. You let your actor or actress get in there. In this case [during a John Wick-style fight scene that comes late in the film], Anna was amazing. She had never even held a gun before. So this was a complete fish-out-of-water moment for her, but she picked up on it really quickly. She's just so collaborative and fantastic. She was just in there doing it. No matter what it is, she wants it to be great. She's out there sweating and putting her efforts in and trying as hard as she can.
MH: What went into the movie’s cold open sequence, starring Teyana Taylor? Because that turns into a very fun Warriors riff with a ton of action.
MT: It did have a Warriors feel. I love that reference, man. That's an old school movie. I love that movie. I grew up on that movie.
I wanted the beginning of the movie to have a lot of scope. I wanted it to feel cinematic. I wanted it to feel big. I wanted it to feel like the biggest Scary Movie ever. You sit down, and you’re like, "Whoa, Teyana Taylor." We're teasing this idea of where we’re going to take the audience, but then suddenly Teyana turns around and one-ups Ghostface by calling her crew.
Then it was just this assembly of thugs that we wanted to be as cool as it was funny. I think it's hilarious that guys are climbing out of garbage trucks and smashing out of the back of trucks, a helicopter flies over, and a rope comes down, and one of her thugs comes in. Even our Ghostface—Our stunt guy, Noah, was fantastic. He's also the same stunt guy who was in Scream 7. He and the team worked on this choreography, and we made a lot of dynamic camera moves. We had something very specific we wanted to do, and we pulled it off in a great way. Just a big old school beat down.
MH: Did any of the actors want to take their own pratfalls? Did you have to talk anyone out of anything?
MT: Oh, dude, yes. I tried to talk a specific one out of it. It wasn't a huge stunt, but it was Shaquille O'Neal. Marlon stabs him at the end of the movie, and I'm like, "The guy's got to go down and hit the ground." We had a stunt double for him, and he's like, "No, no, no, I got it, Mikey. I got it." I'm like, "Shaq, don't. I’ve got a stunt double here for you. I don't want you to get hurt." He's like, "I've been falling on hardwood floors for 20 years, man. I'm good." I really tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't let me.
MH: There’s a whole sequence that brings the next generation of viewers into things, where Shorty is streaming with Kai Cenat. But there are certainly some stunts involved with that sequence as well—were they really hitting each other?
MT: They were taking the hits, man. They were doing it. I mean, I know they do it on their live Twitch streams, so I wasn't about to let them off the hook here on the big feature film. They were wearing helmets, but they were smacking the heck out of each other with those pool noodles. It was definitely more than one take, too—they were getting their heads knocked around. I think Tylenol was passed out at the end of the scene for sure.
MH: When you’re creating these big set pieces and choreographing fights or jokes or something in between, what was the hardest day on set? I always find it’s never the one people might think.
MT: The Substance scene was a challenge. We were working very quickly, but in a very small space. It had a lot going on, from Ghostface coming in the background, there was dancing, there was music, and we're doing all these jokes. We have the gag of The Stuff [a reference to the titular substance in The Substance], and Cheri Oteri's got to fall out of the chair. Then we go into full Substance, where we're doing aerial shots, and now we have to have her back split open, and that became a complete practical makeup effect. We had to build the entire set off the ground so we could cut a hole in the floor, and have a puppet inside working that moment where the Epstein Files come out, and the elbow's coming out.
A lot of people have put up shot-for-shot comparisons to the original. I wanted to evoke the original visuals from the movies, so those hardcore horror fans would understand the jokes even more, because they felt like they were watching the original again, or at least subliminally felt that. Then we had this big visual effect moment where Cheri goes to the mirror to reveal that it's actually Tiffany from White Chicks, which was a very complex visual effects shot to pull off. If you notice, she walks up to the mirror, wipes, then steps back, but the camera is the point of view of that character. Then that character dies and falls away, and we're still looking right into the mirror, and we see Ghostface, but we never see the camera. It’s a very technically challenging shot to pull off. That day was tough.
It was also really hard because my daughter ended up in the ICU the day before. We suddenly found out that she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and it was really rough. She almost went into a diabetic coma, ended up in the ICU, and then I had to go to work while she was there fighting. So, my mind was all over the place. That was extremely challenging emotionally, and, on that day, just as a director in general. She pulled through, and she's doing great. She's a T1D badass. I think I'm going to call her a “Diabaddy.” I love her—she's rocking and rolling.
MH: I’d imagine the budget on this has to be the biggest one, right? How much does that factor into how big you’re going to go with the stunts and gags?
MT: It’s funny—This is actually much less than Scary Movie 3, 4, and 5. We also shot with less time. I think we had 35 days on this movie. This is why the Wayans love me, and it's part of my secret sauce. I started my career by making stuff for free, making it for a hundred bucks. That came down to me going and borrowing a camera, shooting it, editing it myself, doing my own visual effects, coloring it, and sound designing it. I just did everything. I was a complete guerrilla filmmaker coming up. That allowed me to really understand how to pull things off with nothing. Then, as you get a budget and you get money—and this movie did have a decent budget—you look at the script, and it's always the challenge of “How am I going to do this with the amount of money I have and the time I have?”
To be quite honest with you, it's about communicating my vision, and the 10,000 hours that I've done. Some of these things I've done before. When we're in those pre-production meetings, and we're talking about how we're going to pull them off and someone's pitching it one way, I'm like, "No, we're not doing it that way. I've done it like that twice. It never works. This is how we're going to do it." Failure is the road to success.
You always hear the cliché thing where young filmmakers ask, "How do I direct movies?" You just have to make them. You've got to go out there and fall flat on your face. The question is, are you going to get up and keep going, and are you going to learn from those mistakes and build off of them? The minute I get a script like this, it's imperative that I figure out a way to pull all these gags off, because I remember Scary Movie having big gags. It was something I was fighting for. I need to have [Cameron Scott Roberts’s character, Jack, a spoof of Jack Quaid’s Scream character and Jack O’Connell’s Sinners character, among others] not just get hit by this mallet and fall on the porch—I wanted him to fly off the porch and into the barbed wire. I don’t want five Ghostfaces fighting Cindy. I want 25 or 30. It needs to be full John Wick. We need to be able to pull these things off. Even Marlon getting sucked into the chair like in Get Out, that's actually a practical effect we figured out.
MH: I was going to ask about the practicality of that moment. That’s wild.
MT: I remember literally sitting there with my physical effects supervisor and drawing a picture of a chair and going, "Could we just do it like this?" Put his knees on a skateboard and have fake legs, and then just suck him right back. He's like, "I think that'll work." I'm very big into the idea of pulling things off practically. Immediately when I got the script, I was managing those big moments, because I felt like Scary Movie needed to have those big set pieces, those big, huge physical moments, and we were going to find a way to do it with the budget we had.
Brandon Streussnig is a freelance film journalist in New York City with bylines in Vulture, GQ, Inverse, Fangoria and more. He is the creator of the annual Vulture Stunt Awards celebrating the best in cinematic stunt work.
