When Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment arrived in UK cinemas on 29 March 1985, it carried the weight of a $149 million predecessor. Warner Bros expected a sure thing. What it got instead was a production mired in upheaval – a fired director, a missing star, a character name nobody could pronounce – that the miracle is the film exists at all, let alone that it earned $115 million globally and spawned five further sequels.
The story of how Police Academy 2 stumbled into existence is, in many respects, funnier than the film itself. It is a tale of improvisation in every sense: of actors discovering roles they were never meant to play, of a director who kept the wrong footage for the right reasons, and of a phone call to a Greek island that altered the course of an entire franchise.
The Honeymoon Phone Call That Changed Everything
Among the footage Jerry Paris inherited was a single day’s shooting featuring Tim Kazurinsky, the former Saturday Night Live cast member, as a meek shopkeeper named Carl Sweetchuck. Kazurinsky had been recruited by fellow SNL alumni Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield, who wrote the screenplay. He had agreed to the one-day commitment while on his honeymoon in Greece.
“I get married. I’m on honeymoon in Greece. Nobody knows where I am,” Kazurinsky recalled in a 2011 interview with MediaMikes. “But my sister found me. She called around to all of the touristy places and tracked me down. She told me that a couple of my pals from Saturday Night Live had written Police Academy 2 and they wanted me to be in it.”
His wife thought him mad for accepting a single day’s work. But loyalty to old friends prevailed. Kazurinsky flew back, shot his scenes, and returned to his honeymoon. Then the original director was fired. Jerry Paris reviewed the dailies and issued a verdict that would reshape the film: “I hate it all except the old guy in the shop.”
Kazurinsky was recalled to set. This time, he stayed for six weeks.
Jerry Paris: The Director Who Inherited Chaos
Producer Paul Maslansky budgeted $7.5 million for the sequel – a significant jump from the original’s $4.8 million – largely because filming relocated from Toronto to Los Angeles. “Shooting in Los Angeles is expensive,” Maslansky told the Chicago Tribune in January 1985. “It’s the merchants and the property owners who can really hit you.”
But the budget was the least of his problems. Within weeks of cameras rolling in October 1984, Maslansky was forced to dismiss the film’s original director. The identity of this dismissed filmmaker has never been officially confirmed – IMDB lists Jerry Paris alongside an uncredited James Signorelli as co-directors – but the upheaval left the production in disarray. “We lost some time because I had to change directors after a couple of weeks,” Maslansky acknowledged. “But Jerry Paris has done a great job of catching up.”
Paris, a veteran television director best known for The Dick Van Dyke Show and Happy Days, inherited a production in freefall – footage he had not shot, a cast he had not recruited, and a schedule already bleeding money. As the Los Angeles Times noted in his 1986 obituary, Paris had won an Emmy for his work on The Dick Van Dyke Show and directed nearly every episode of Happy Days. His television honours made him well qualified for fast-paced ensemble work, but nothing in his CV had prepared him for the specific brand of anarchy that was Police Academy 2.
The Birth of Zed and Sweetchuck
Paris’s decision to retain Kazurinsky coincided with another discovery: the comedic chemistry between Kazurinsky and Bobcat Goldthwait, cast as Zed, the volatile leader of a street gang called the Scullions. Goldthwait, a manic stand-up comedian with a distinctive high-pitched rasp, had been given what was intended as a minor antagonistic role. But Paris recognised something in the pairing.
“Jerry let Bobcat and I screw around and come up with bits,” Kazurinsky said. “Bobcat and I ended up improvising all kinds of stuff. Jerry loves us.”
The Sweetchuck-Zed dynamic – a timid shopkeeper perpetually terrorised by an unhinged gang leader – became the film’s unexpected centrepiece. At test screenings, children loved Bobcat and the old guy in the shop. The pair were immediately contracted for the sequel.
This improvisational alchemy reflected Kazurinsky’s roots at Chicago’s Second City, where he had honed his craft alongside future luminaries such as John Belushi and Bill Murray. Goldthwait brought a complementary energy – raw, unpredictable, and dangerously funny. Together, they transformed what had been conceived as a standard ensemble comedy into something altogether more anarchic.
The Name No One Could Pronounce
The production’s tribulations extended to matters as granular as character nomenclature. Kazurinsky’s character was originally scripted with the surname “Shevchuk,” a nod to a crew member from the first film.
The problem was Bubba Smith. The towering former NFL defensive end, who stood 6 feet 7 inches and played the gentle giant Moses Hightower, could not wrap his considerable frame around the syllables. After repeated attempts, the filmmakers capitulated. “Shevchuk” became “Sweetchuck” – a phonetic compromise that, ironically, proved far more memorable than the original.
It was a minor change, but symptomatic of a larger truth: the film was being rewritten in real time, its creative DNA mutating with each new obstacle.
Bubba Smith’s Windfall
Bubba Smith occupied a singular position in the cast. The first overall pick in the 1967 NFL draft, he had won Super Bowl V with the Baltimore Colts and earned two Pro Bowl selections. He had been part of the celebrated “Game of the Century” in 1966, a 10-10 draw between Michigan State and Notre Dame that remains one of the most watched college football games in history.
Yet Smith revealed that his role as Hightower in Police Academy 2 earned him more money than his entire eleven-year professional football career. The revelation was at once heartwarming and quietly devastating – a commentary on the economics of American sport in the 1970s and the comparative largesse of Hollywood sequels in the 1980s.
According to IMDB trivia, Smith had requested a two per cent stake in the film’s profits rather than a higher upfront salary. That gamble paid off handsomely when the sequel grossed $115 million worldwide. As the Orlando Sentinel reported in 1985, Smith “has a gift for making people laugh, and a percentage of the box office from the movie Police Academy and its sequel.”
The Road Not Taken: Bill Paxton and Zed
Before Goldthwait claimed the role of Zed, the part had been offered to Bill Paxton. The young Texas-born actor, who had already appeared in James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984), declined because he did not want to commit to a multi-picture deal.
The decision was prescient. In 1986, Paxton would appear as Private Hudson in Cameron’s Aliens, delivering a performance so iconic – “Game over, man! Game over!” – that it permanently eclipsed anything a Police Academy sequel might have offered. The irony is exquisite: had Paxton accepted Zed, there would have been no Private Hudson, and one of cinema’s most quotable characters might never have existed.
As IMDB confirms, Paxton was formally offered the role but turned it down because the contract required him to also appear in future sequels. He ended up doing Aliens instead. The decision illustrates the strange alchemy of Hollywood casting: what seems a small choice in one moment can reshape an entire career trajectory.
Critical Carnage and Commercial Triumph
The critics were merciless. Leonard Maltin awarded the film his dreaded “BOMB” rating. “There are Dragnet episodes that are funnier than this movie,” he wrote. Gene Siskel, appearing on At the Movies in a 1985 episode dedicated entirely to terrible sequels, noted the film had “two more laughs in it than the 1984 first film did” – meaning precisely two laughs. The Los Angeles Times issued an F-grade review.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds 28 per cent based on 18 reviews. Its Metacritic score stands at 39 out of 100.
None of this mattered at the box office. Opening on 1,613 screens, Police Academy 2 grossed $10,675,896 in its opening weekend – a record for March. It earned $55.6 million domestically and $115 million worldwide, making it the 11th highest-grossing film in the United States in 1985. The audience had spoken.
As Variety noted at the time, the film “features much of the original’s cast but none of its key behind-the-scenes creative talent, save producer Paul Maslansky.” The only actor to emerge with enhanced credit was series newcomer Art Metrano, as an ambitious lieutenant bent upon taking over the department. But the commercial success was undeniable: the film turned a $7.5 million investment into a $115 million globalgross.
The Legacy of Controlled Chaos
What makes Police Academy 2 enduringly fascinating is not the film itself but the process by which it was made. Jerry Paris, thrust into a production he had not initiated, made choices that prioritised instinct over blueprint. He kept the footage of a comedian he had not hired. He expanded a gang leader’s role based on improvised chemistry. He tolerated name changes dictated by phonetic incapacity. These were not the decisions of a master planner; they were the responses of a pragmatist under extreme pressure.
The result embedded itself in the popular imagination. The Zed-Sweetchuck partnership became a template for comedic duos in subsequent instalments. The franchise itself, sustained by this second outing’s commercial success, would continue for another two decades, producing seven films and a television series.
There is a broader lesson here. The best-laid plans of producers and studios are, in the end, subordinate to the unpredictable alchemy of human collaboration. Police Academy 2 was not made in spite of its chaos; it was made possible by it. The honeymoon phone call, the fired director, the unpronounceable surname – each disruption became an opportunity, each improvisation a brick in an unexpected edifice.
As Kazurinsky told his wife upon returning from that fateful single day of shooting: “That’s why you take the one day of work.”
Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment is available on streaming platforms. For more on the franchise’s cultural footprint, see our companion piece on the original Police Academy. For further reading on contemporary British cinema, explore our culture coverage.
