Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! Courtesy of Paramount

Every broad comedy needs scatological jokes, but they can become stale. Here you have Aunt Lucille ripping a few during the romance scene and Dragonfly taking a leak from the ceiling. How do you keep your fart jokes fresh?
It's hard. You have to start from a place [where it's understood] just farting isn't enough. And then you need to ask yourself, "What is the comic glue that holds this all together that makes it a concept?" There's a term we use: the student driver. [That's] from Naked Gun, when Leslie Nielsen gets into a car and demands that the driver follow that car. It's the classic scene from thousands of movies. In this case she happens to be a student driver. So now he's got a student driver and that is the concept that makes that car chase funny. In the case here, rather than just having an old lady farting, what we thought was, "Let's have these two kids finally expressing love for each other and she's in the background." And I guess the movie by extension is sort of farting on the whole concept of these two people with their over-earnest declarations of love. And of course it also ties into that social thing. You can't acknowledge when it happens. If you're talking to somebody and a third person farts, you're just not supposed to notice it and you're supposed to just keep talking.

Especially if it's an elderly person.
That's correct. And it keeps happening and they have to just do their best to soldier on. And that's what's funny. Not the farting — the farting is irrelevant. It's the fact that they have to soldier on that's so funny. And so I'm happy to have found a new spin on an old gag.

Your lead, Drake Bell from [TV shows on] Nickelodeon, is popular in the 9 to 12 age group. The film is youthful but not exactly for young kids. Who are you hoping to attract? The audiences that saw the Scary Movies as well as regular comic-book fanboys?
I think we make these movies for anyone of any age or gender that enjoys laughing at this kind of silly comedy. Occasionally it gets somewhat racy, but in a PG-13 sort of way. Nothing as racy as, say, in Airplane!, which is PG-13 but features nudity. [Superhero Movie is] for anybody that enjoys broad comedy, silly comedy, and superhero films. And there's nothing about this that I don't think would preclude a 6-year-old from coming or a 10-year-old from coming. I know I'm not supposed to say that because it's PG-13, but parents, bring your children, bring your 10-year-old, I think he'll be fine.

How much of a pleasure is it to work Leslie Nielsen? Do we see shades of Frank Drebin [from the TV show "Police Squad!" and Naked Gun movies] or something else?
No. Leslie plays Uncle Albert, who's sort of the Cliff Robertson character from Spider-Man. In the Scary Movies he was the President of the United States. He always plays who he plays, and yet he's always Leslie — to some extent that's who he's playing. And he's family and we love Leslie and I like to think he's somewhat fond of us. He is a spoof institution. Also from a writing point of view, it's a joy to write for him because his character can get away with almost anything. I can't have Drake Bell climb into a coffin with somebody that isn't the right corpse and then attempt to stay in there with her. With Leslie, you can do that. You can do almost anything with Leslie. People forgive him instantly because it's him.