Screwed (2000)

The story of how Screwed got made is funnier than anything in the finished film. Norm MacDonald was waiting in someone's office, killing time by reading a script left on a table. He missed a stage direction on the first page that identified the lead character as an older Black man. He read the whole thing, loved it, and signed on. That is Norm MacDonald in a sentence. He committed completely, to the wrong thing, with total sincerity.

The result is a Christmas comedy released in May 2000 that earned 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, grossed around $6 million against its $10 million budget, and has since accumulated something rarer than a hit: genuine affection from the people who were there.

What Screwed Is Actually About

Willard Fillmore (MacDonald) is a butler-chauffeur who has spent his career in the service of Miss Crock (Elaine Stritch), an elderly pie mogul who works him like a mule and pays him accordingly. The movie opens at Christmas, which in Crock's household means Willard gets a cheap, insulting gift while she showers love on her dog, Muffin. That's the spark.

With his friend Rusty (Dave Chappelle), Willard decides to kidnap Muffin and demand a $1 million ransom. The plan goes wrong immediately. Muffin escapes, leaving Willard's blood at the scene. Miss Crock misreads the scrawled ransom note and concludes it's Willard who has been kidnapped. Willard and Rusty decide to run with this, film a fake ransom video, and pump the demand up to $5 million. A creepy morgue attendant named Grover Cleaver (Danny DeVito) gets involved. A corpse needs to be dressed as Willard. Things continue to deteriorate in the specific, grinding way that things in bad plans always do.

The structure is a classic screwball escalation, the kind where every solution creates two new problems. On paper, it should work. In practice, the screenplay by writer-directors Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski never quite figures out what register it wants to inhabit.

The Directors Who Should Have Known Better

Alexander and Karaszewski spent the 1990s writing some of the sharpest, most audacious biopics in American cinema. Ed Wood (1994), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), and Man on the Moon (1999) are all portraits of misfits, failures, and outlaws treated with genuine complexity. They understood how to find the human truth in a ridiculous life. Screwed was their directorial debut, and the switch from complex real-life subjects to a broad slapstick caper revealed limits in their range that the screenplays never hinted at.

The film was developed under multiple working titles, including Pittsburgh, Ballbusted, and Foolproof, which tells you something about the tonal drift during production. None of those titles suggest a coherent vision for what the movie was trying to be.

The supporting cast is, on paper, extraordinary. Elaine Stritch as the bitter old battleaxe boss. Sherman Hemsley as a corrupt detective. Sarah Silverman in a small role. Danny DeVito as a coroner of questionable stability. These are not people who phone it in. The problem is the material keeps them from connecting with each other. Everyone is performing in their own key.

Norm MacDonald Doing Norm MacDonald Things

If you have seen Norm MacDonald do stand-up, you know his fundamental technique: he commits to the wrong answer. He tells a joke past the point where it's funny, then past the point where it's awkward, into some other zone where it becomes funny again on entirely different terms. He knows the audience is uncomfortable and he leans into it.

That quality is present in his performance here. Willard is not a smart man, and MacDonald doesn't try to make him charming or clever. He's just doggedly wrong, persistently optimistic in the face of cascading failure. It's a legitimate comedic approach. The movie, unfortunately, keeps undercutting him with mugging supporting characters and slapstick gags that belong in a different film entirely.

Dave Chappelle is better used. He brings an edge and a timing to Rusty that the script doesn't entirely earn, and the two of them have real chemistry in their scenes together. Chappelle's talent for making you like a character who is doing something stupid was already fully formed in 2000.

The Real Story Underneath the Movie

When Netflix released Norm MacDonald's posthumous special Nothing Special in May 2022, Chappelle appeared to pay tribute and told the story of filming Screwed. His father had died shortly before production began, and he had done everything he could to get out of the commitment. He couldn't. He showed up on set "inconsolable."

He said Norm MacDonald was the only person who could make him laugh during that time. MacDonald, apparently, was not trying. He was just being himself. Chappelle called him "one of the funniest and most important people" he ever worked with. This is the most interesting thing about Screwed: it was the container in which that happened.

MacDonald died in September 2021 after a private nine-year battle with cancer. He had kept his diagnosis secret from nearly everyone, including his closest collaborators. The generosity he showed Chappelle on that set was consistent with how people who knew him describe him. He was not performing kindness. He was just that way.

Is It Worth Watching?

Probably not for most people. The 10% on Rotten Tomatoes is not wrong exactly. The screenplay needed another pass, the direction is uncertain, and the plot mechanics creak in ways that aren't endearing. It's a $10 million movie that feels like it cost $4 million, and not in the charming low-budget way.

But if you are a Norm MacDonald fan, it's essential. Not because it's good, but because it's him, uncut, doing what he does. There are moments when his energy breaks through the screenplay's failures and you see the specific thing that made him irreplaceable. Those moments are worth sitting through the rest.

There's also the historical footnote that Bollywood agreed. The 2009 film De Dana Dan lifted the core plot so directly that Alexander and Karaszewski screened it at a public event and called it a must-see. When your film's most enthusiastic endorsement is an unauthorized Indian remake, you have ended up in an unusual place.