Before he was the world’s most infamous murder suspect, OJ Simpson did not have a reputation for killer performances. David Zucker, the director of the 1988 comedy classic The Naked Gun, only hired the Buffalo Bills great for the ironic potential. Which is to say he was a big celebrity who could be had for cheap.
Zucker’s hope was that Simpson would prove to be at least as serviceable as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had been in their previous film, Airplane!, which saw the basketball legend lean even further into his acerbic streak. But Simpson proved to be so much more as Detective Nordberg, a Wile E Coyote figure in a live-action cartoon. For those of us born well after Simpson won the 1968 Heisman trophy or became the first player in NFL history to top the 2,000-yard rushing mark in 1973, the ultimate highlight is him as Nordberg creeping on to a houseboat full of heroin pushers and suffering every manner of physical harm before landing face-first into a wedding cake and falling overboard. And just like Wile E, it didn’t matter how many times Nordberg launched down a flight of stairs or folded in half, he always managed to bounce back in time for a sequel film.
