In 1986 Howard Zuker and Neil Cohen directed their first and only film, CHIEF ZABU, a low budget, audacious socio-political comedy about New York real estate operators who scheme to take over a Polynesian country while its leader is in New York seeking admission to the UN. Featuring a cast of legendary character actors - Allen Garfield (The Conversation), Zack Norman (Romancing the Stone), Allan Arbus (Putney Swope), Marianna Hill (The Godfather: Part 2), Manu Tupuo (Hawaii), Ed Lauter (The Longest Yard), Shirley Stoler (Seven Beauties), plus the harp-playing "Miss California," Lucianne Buchanan - and set in Manhattan, The Hudson Valley, Beverly Hills, Las Vegas and the fictional island nation of Tiburaku, CHIEF ZABU was shot almost entirely on a college campus, in 15 days, for under $200,000 (with the cast, crew, and student interns all living together in the dorms). After a series of snafus that paralleled the film's madcap plot, and despite featured coverage of its production in LIFE MAGAZINE, CHIEF ZABU was never completed, distributed, nor publicly shown. Now, 30 years later, inspired by the rise of Donald Trump, the first-time directors (now with the aggregate age of 141 years) have finally finished their film about a realtor with a dream of political influence: the never-before-seen CHIEF ZABU.
Chief Zabu
An outrageous social comedy about a New York realtor who dreams of having political influence by taking over a new Polynesian nation.
