Carmen Electra is also a big fan of the SCARY MOVIE

When it came time to cast the movie, Weiss and Zucker knew exactly what they were looking for. Weiss summarizes: “I think in casting you have to strike an interesting balance between bringing in people that are new and fresh, and returning favorites from the previous instalments.

At the top of the list was Anna Faris, who couldn’t wait to reprise her role for the fourth time as Cindy Campbell. Although, unlike the eternally innocent Cindy, Faris admits she knew what she was in for this time. “It is like running a marathon in a sense. You really have to be able to roll with the punches and be game for whatever. They’d say, ‘Oh, do you mind just jumping off this small balcony?’ And I’d say ‘Oh, okay.’ I’m such a pushover,” she giggles. Directing Anna for the second time, David Zucker was hugely appreciative of Anna’s willingness to do whatever it took to make a scene funny and of her enormous talent, saying “It may not be easy for her, but she makes it look very easy when she’s on screen because she just has an instinct for this kind of comedy. She doesn’t try to joke it up and she knows how to play it straight. That’s why she’s so good at it.” Bob Weiss adds appreciatively, “Working with her is like you starting up a fine automobile. She knows her character, her instincts are great, and she really elevates the material.”

Anna’s tremendous experience with the SCARY MOVIE franchise was also a great feeling for her. “I feel a bit like a senior in high school. I think I have a little bit more ownership over the character.” While Anna continues to grow as a person and an actor, she marvels at the unchanging character she has come to love and know so well. “Sweet Cindy, she’s completely one-dimensional. Cindy Campbell is very earnest, very sincere, has a heart of gold, no sense of humor really. She’s a really straight person…she’s a little clueless. She’s not the smartest woman…(Yet) once again the fate of the world has been placed in her hands. And so I have to go out and save it.”

Anna is thrilled to be back working with Regina Hall, another four time SCARY MOVIE alumnus. Real life friends, Anna considers their hugely successful and ongoing comedic chemistry to be along the lines of Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, “I just feel really fortunate that she’s been brought back because we both work really well together.” Regina Hall concurs, “I probably have more fun working with her than anyone else. It’s just so effortless. (Even) during the first SCARY MOVIE, we had the same kind of chemistry where it just worked.”

Anna observes, “You could not find characters more opposite than Brenda and Cindy. I mean Brenda’s sort of street smart, a little bit selfish, a little bit mean, a little bit sassy. And for whatever reason, she’s best friends with Cindy Campbell who’s completely innocent, kind of dumb, and naïve, and as white as you can be. And they’re best friends. It’s a great match and I think that the two of us have a lot of fun playing with the ideas of this very strange friendship.”

On Regina, David Zucker concurs, “she’s a really good actress and very funny.” Describing Regina and the character of Brenda as “an audience favorite,” Zucker feels that Brenda’s promiscuous character, the polar opposite to Cindy’s squeaky-clean persona, gives him and his writing team a chance to play with “the kind of jokes that we didn’t do in ‘The Naked Gun’ or ‘Airplane!’”

Anna Faris’ leading man in SCARY MOVIE 4 is Craig Bierko, an actor whom Bob Weiss describes as “a wonderful, wonderful surprise.” He goes on to say, “None of us had worked with him before, but from the auditions, really, we knew we had somebody special. And he is terrific in the movie.” Bierko loved getting the call to be a part of this project, especially because of the chance to work with David Zucker. “I’m a big David Zucker fan. The first time I saw “Airplane!” I thought ‘At least I’m not the only completely insane person because…that’s what it’s like inside my head! I laughed so hard I thought my brain was going to shoot through my forehead like an avocado pit.”

Zucker clearly appreciates the way Bierko’s brain works, saying simply “he gets it… I just had to walk toward him and he knew what I was thinking.” For Bierko, the experience of working with Zucker was a dream-come true. “When you finally hear him laugh, that’s all that matters. He may have seen it three hundred times, and you may shoot it the correct way three hundred more times. He’ll laugh if it’s funny. It just makes him laugh. And I trust his sense of humor. It’s served him very well.”

As Cindy’s boyfriend, Bierko plays the Tom Cruise character from “War of the Worlds.” Regarding the similarities between Cruise and himself, Bierko deadpans, “the one thing that we have in common that is undeniable is that both of our entire bodies are covered with skin. It kind of ends there.” On his character, Tom Ryan, Bierko shrugs, “he’s really dumber than a screen door. He could have a conversation with a screen door and lose. He has all the heroic instincts of a movie hero. But he just doesn’t really have the intelligence to back it up.”

Molly Shannon, who plays Tom Ryan’s long-suffering, acerbic-tongued ex-wife, was also enticed to act in SCARY MOVIE 4 by the prospect of reuniting with Zucker, with whom she worked on “My Boss’s Daughter.” Declares Shannon, “It’s all about the joke, working to find the joke, and protecting that joke.” She also appreciates the sophisticated way in which Zucker spoofs a film, “You’re not doing an exact impression of them or anything, and you’re just kind of doing an idea of the memory of what that scene might be.”

Shannon and Bierko play parents to Beau Mirchoff and Conchita Campbell, who are playing the kids from “War of the Worlds.” Says Zucker, “I think they’re every bit as good.” Weiss agrees, “They are terrific. And we put them in a variety of physical situations, and different comic situations and they both were great and really responded to the call.”

Conchita Campbell couldn’t have been happier to oblige, saying, “When I heard I got this role I was just so excited. I was like ‘my first feature film, yay!!’” Conchita loved working with Craig Bierko. In regards to him playing her father in the movie, she says: “He thinks he’s the greatest dad in the world, but he’s really not. He thinks he cares about them (his kids) so much and doesn’t know that he doesn’t even recognize his own children!”

Beau Mirchoff admits that he has a tough time keeping it together in his scenes with Bierko, “I messed it up, laughed a couple of times when it was something pretty funny and I couldn’t keep a straight face. But for the most part, you just do your job, right?” Mirchoff put his all into doing his job, especially because of the tremendous amount of respect he has for Zucker: “He’s awesome…I trusted the guy. So when he was talking to me, I really listened to him. He knows what he’s doing.”

Appreciation for Zucker, also enticed Bill Pullman to sign on for some tongue-in-cheek scenes from “The Village.” Zucker, who cast Pullman in his first movie, “Ruthless People,” recalls “he was one of the funniest people in “Ruthless,” so it was great to have him back.” Zucker was also delighted with the inside joke of having Pullman, who starred in the “The Grudge,” appear in a spoof of that movie. For his part, Pullman says spoofing a film he was in is a “bizarre dream-like thing for me where I was morphing between the two.” Pullman also appreciates the irreverence and the “cartoonish” quality of the franchise, meaning that “people can bash into walls, they can be powdered, smeared, drowned, and doused with dust and whatever and you love it!”

Playing the blind girl from “The Village,” Carmen Electra is also a big fan of the SCARY MOVIE “very out there” humor and “roller-coaster ride“ of surprises for audiences. “I was so excited to receive a call that they wanted me to be in SCARY MOVIE 4 because I was in the first one …and it was really fun. I love to make people laugh and do silly stuff and shocking things that people aren’t really expecting from a girl like me.”