Wayans Brothers Bring Home a Little Man

After huge hits like the Scary Movie franchise and White Chicks, Marlon and Shawn Wayons are back to make audiences laugh again with Little Man, the tale of a vertically challenged gangster forced to pretend to be a baby to hide and actually gets adopted. A majority of the film features Marlon Wayans' head digitally placed on to the body of a baby. It's a little unsettling, but also a pretty impressive special effect, one that Shawn Wayans spoke about with MTV, "It's not like we set out to change technology. We just wrote a concept, and then tried to find technology to execute our vision."

The Wayans Brothers don't often get enough credit in critical circles or in the press, but they've put together a string of comedy hits in the new millennium that prove just how popular they are with the masses and were recently hailed as the most powerful family in Hollywood by Entertainment Weekly. The streak started for Shawn, Marlon, and Keenan Ivory Wayans in 2000 when Scary Movie made an amazing $156 million at the box office and went on to spawn three sequels - with another one already scheduled for 2008. The Wayans would star again in Scary Movie 2, which didn't too quite as well as the original, but certainly made a profit, and then went on to star in 2004's White Chicks, a critical disaster that nonetheless went on to make $70 million. Which brings us to Little Man. So, where do they get all the crazy ideas? Shawn told the AP, "Keenen came up with this crazy idea. We're all crazy. We all come up with crazy (stuff)." Marlon added, "Somebody will play the middle, someone will be the voice of reason and say, "You know what, I think we should try it. Let's shoot it and if it doesn't work, then we can put it on a DVD.""

Even if Little Man and their next comedy make millions, Shawn, Marlon, and Keenan Ivory Wayans won't be satisfied with just film. They're planning to take over your television (again - remember, they started on the landmark In Living Color, along with numerous guest appearances on everything from Benson to MacGyver) and your book shelf. Marlon Wayans has just finished writing a comic book called Super Bad James Dynamite, the Wayans have produced a few joke books (Know You're Having a Ghetto Christmas, 101 Ways to Know You're a Golddigger), and they're working on three animated after-school specials for Nickelodeon. Marlon Wayans even worked with Damon Wayans on a drama about the dark side of comedy called Behind the Smile. As Marlon Wayans told Premiere, "We're just branding the company right now. We're taking Wayans Bros. And putting it in all the media where there's a [comedy] void."

Marlon and Shawn Wayans clearly know what's funny. So, what inspires them to make movies like Little Man and White Chicks? Marlon Wayans told the AP, "Being a class clown helps, too, because you've got that audience in school. Every day you're being silly with them and they're laughing and they can't wait for you to come to school because you make their day. We're just doing what we've been doing since we were all kids. Every one of us has been a class clown. So we have an audience in our head."

Shawn, Marlon, and director/brother Keenan Ivory Wayans have often done anything for a laugh and, apparently, the same holds true on-set as well as on-screen. Marlon Wayans told MTV, "What I do when we're in a scene is I try to make him laugh - like if I get silly, Shawn will literally break character. Me and Keenen call [Shawn] Harvey Korman, because Shawn will be in this scene and I'll do something crazy, and he'll just go and start laughing, but that's the cute part about it."

See if the laughs translate to the big screen when Little Man opens on July 14th.

[Additional Sources: Premiere, AP, MTV]