David Arquette Shares Update on His ‘Bozo the Clown’ Projects (Exclusive)

David Arquette and Larry Harmon as bozo — Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures; Everett Collection

What To Know

David Arquette purchased the rights to Bozo and has been working on related projects for over 15 years.
Arquette is developing several Bozo-themed projects, including a new TV show.
He hopes to revive Bozo the Clown for a new generation.

Actor David Arquette, star of the Scream franchise, loves clowns. So much so that he has gone to clown school and bought the rights to Chicago’s beloved Bozo the Clown. ReMIND recently caught up with the star, who is the youngest member of the famous Arquette family (his siblings are Rosanna, Richmond, Patricia and the late Alexis), at Flashback Weekend in Chicago to talk about how he became a lover of clowns.

He explained that his dad (Lewis Arquette) was a clown who would dress up for his parties. “My father was a clown. He dressed up as a clown, Butter the Clown, for all my birthday parties and stuff,” he said. “He’d dress up, and then Butter would leave, and my dad would show up, and I’d say, ‘Dad, you just missed Butter the Clown.’ And I think he did that because I fell in love with clowns when I lived in Evanston, Illinois.”

It wasn’t just any clown David loved; it was Bozo the Clown. “I fell in love with Bozo. I watched Bob Bell’s Bozo, and it was just the greatest,” he gushes. “Me and my friend, Orwell, he’d be Cookie, and I’d be Bozo. We’d play around and just act like we’re those clowns.”

ReMIND Staff

What’s next for the beloved clown?

David has been involved with trying to franchise Bozo for over 15 years and explained to us that after he purchased the rights, he became friends with former Bozo entertainer Larry Harmon, and the two tried to develop some stuff. Arquette put Larry in touch with a writer who helped develop Larry’s memoir, The Man Behind the Nose, but Larry sadly passed away before they could pursue anything more.

He has now cleared the rights with Larry’s daughter and has many projects in the works. “I’ve got the rights now, and we hope to bring it back for another TV show. I’d love to film some of the episodes [in Chicago].” He continues, “We’ve got an amazing film script about a sort of mock origin story. We’re developing a documentary at the moment, and also just released an album.”

The album, titled Let Your Clown Out, was developed so people could do just that, in David’s words: find the clown inside them. He also mentioned the album was done in a variety of genres. “We did a ton of different genres of music so we could submit to all these different categories for Grammys.” You can find the album on Bandcamp.

As for the famous show coming back, we asked if he ever wanted to be on it as a kid. Joking about the “grand prize game” from the series, which brought up a contestant from the audience to try to throw a ball into a bucket, with the prizes getting better and bigger as they aimed for the bucket, ultimately hoping to win a brand new Schwinn bike. This was every kid’s dream, but not David’s; he said he wanted to be the clown: “I always wanted to be the clown as much as I wanted those toys.”

We can’t wait to see what he comes out with next! Meanwhile, you can find him in the latest installment of the Scream franchise, Scream 7, which is on streaming now on Paramount+.