The Hollywood Reporter recently profiled “ALF” creator Paul Fusco, who hasn’t worked on anything since the 2006 video short “ALF: The Funny Radio Network Starring ALF,” and he’s as delusional and crazy town banana pants as he is casually racist. (That sentence could have used at least one more “ALF.”)
“When I used to write an episode and couldn’t come up with a line for ALF, I needed something really funny, I would actually ask ALF,” Fusco explains during a wide-ranging conversation with The Hollywood Reporter. “I would actually put the character on, and the character would just tell me what the line was.”
Spoken like a true former-cokehead. “When I couldn’t think of a joke about cat sandwiches or the planet Melmac, I’d ask the sarcastic furry anteater whose ass was lowered down my hand for one, and he’d always think of something good. He once had a great bit about this gay black guy…”
Fusco has worked for years to re-launch the brand — with varying levels of success — and he’s spent months fine-tuning his latest effort: In a few weeks, Fusco will be pitching an ALF film to a major studio. Should it get the greenlight, it will cap one of the more circuitous pop culture stories of the past 30 years.
“ALF could be more outspoken now than ever, because the world is a whole different place than the ’80s. And I think the character still stands up and certainly has more to say now than ever,” he says. “I think we would approach it in a fresh way. I don’t think we would duplicate the TV show, but I think we would maybe put it in a storyline where we would explain how ALF got here and put him with a new family and let the character speak for himself.”
I think I speak for everyone when I say: I’d rather watch Pogs: The Major Motion Picture.