Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer

Jason Friedberg (born October 13, 1971) and Aaron Seltzer (born January 12, 1974) are American and Canadian filmmakers. They have primarily worked on parody films, which they began writing and directing during the mid-2000s. Friedberg and Seltzer's first five films between 2006 and 2010 received wide theatrical releases to mostly commercial success, but universally negative reviews; their films Epic Movie (2007), Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie (both 2008) are considered among the worst ever made. Except for Vampires Suck (2010), their next films during the 2010s drew less attention due to receiving limited theatrical releases. Biography Interviews with the duo are rare, but in an exclusive 2014 interview with the publication Grantland, their background was discussed: Seltzer is part of a Canadian shoe salesmen family from Mississauga, Ontario, and Friedberg, who was born in Newark, New Jersey, was raised in Paterson, New Jersey and is the son of director Rick Friedberg. Seltzer and Friedberg met at the University of California, Santa Barbara and bonded over their love of film, especially comedy. Both are Jewish. They did not attend film school, with Seltzer majoring in art history and Friedberg in history, but decided to try a career in the film industry after attending a class about Martin Scorsese in their last semester. Spy Hard, Scary Movie and screenwriting While writing screenplays at night, both spent the day attending jobs to pay their tuition, selling homemade T-shirts, starting their own food delivery service, and opening shoe shops in Los Angeles. When Rick Friedberg made the comic instruction video Bad Golf Made Easier with Leslie Nielsen, he showed his son's script for a spy film spoof to him. Nielsen approved, and this led to 1996's Spy Hard. Friedberg and Seltzer then spent some years as screenwriters for hire, with Seltzer estimating the duo sold "upward of 40 scripts". The only finished project was an uncredited rewrite to the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Maximum Risk (1996), while an unproduced Liberace biopic (unrelated to Steven Soderbergh's TV movie Behind The Candelabra) introduced them to future collaborator and producer Peter Safran. In 1998, Safran managed to sell to Miramax's Dimension Films division a horror film spoof spec script of Friedberg and Seltzer's named Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween.