Surely You Can't Be Serious: Airplane!
The outrageous comedy parody of disaster movies, “Airplane!,” opened in theaters July 2, 1980? Surely that wasn’t really 45 years ago next Wednesday!
It was 45 years ago next Wednesday. And don’t call me Shirley.
A Trio Of Childhood Friends
Brothers David and Jerry Zucker and their neighbor, Jim Abrahams, grew up in Shorewood, Wisconsin. During their college years at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, they launched a comedy troupe they called the Kentucky Fried Theater.
From top: David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker.
The trio moved to Hollywood in the mid-1970s and operated a theater there for several years, featuring sketch comedy. In hopes of finding new things to poke fun of, they’d videotape late night television.
One night, they found they had recorded a 1957 black-
and-white airplane-in-distress film called “Zero Hour!” They began working on a script that would satirize the film, interrupting it, from time to time, with parody TV commercials. They called their project “The Late Show.” Their script paralleled “Zero Hour!” so closely that the trio bought the rights to that film for just $2,500.
They consulted with another up-and-coming comedy writer and director, John Landis, who suggested they make their first film project more like their stage show. Their redirected efforts — which Landis directed for them — were released in 1977 as “The Kentucky Fried Movie.”
The movie grossed $7.1 million, which attracted interest from Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who, at the time, were with Paramount Pictures. Paramount bought the script for “Airplane!” but insisted the film be shot in color and with a modern plane, instead of black-and-white and with a vintage propeller-driven plane. Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker would comply ... but in the completed film, they used prop engine effects with footage of a Boeing 707.
The big battle for ZAZ — as they became known as — was against Paramount’s wish to hire big-name comedians for their movie. The trio was aiming for a different sort of absurdist comedy: They wanted actors to play it straight and let the script, the situations and even background action create the humor. Paramount eventually gave in to their wishes.
The next battle for ZAZ was with the movie directors’ guild. All three teamed up to direct “Airplane!” but the guild wouldn’t permit a film credit with all three names. At one point, Abrahams had his name legally changed to “Abrahams and Zuckers” before the guild caved and allowed the triple credit.
“Airplane!” was filmed in just 34 days for just $3.5 million. It opened in seven theaters in Toronto and two in Buffalo, New York, on June 27, 1980, and then nationwide in both countries on July 2. Within five days, it had earned back nearly double its budget.
The trio would go on to work on a number of other films before going their separate ways in the mid-1990s.
Zaz On Big Screens and Small
No-Nonsense Actors Cast In A Movie Full of Nonsense
A young David Letterman had auditioned for the role of a TV news anchor in “The Kentucky Fried Movie.” ZAZ liked him a lot and wanted to cast him as the pilot who saves the day, Ted Striker. Paramount wanted Fred Willard, Bill Murray, Robert Wuhl or Chevy Chase in the role. The actor who was hired, Robert Hays, was an actual licensed airplane pilot.
The female lead, Elaine, was named after Jim Abrahams’ poodle ... which had a flatulence problem. Sigourney Weaver and Shelley Long were considered for the role. Julie Hagerty won the role after a screen test that showed she could keep her onscreen innocence even when performing sexually suggestive acts.
Vincent Price turned down the role of Dr. Rumack and later said it was the biggest regret of his career. Leslie Nielsen got the part and was directed to play the role straight. In fact, Nielsen had a wicked sense of humor: He loved surprising the cast and crew with a small, hand-held flatulence machine. “Airplane!” led to a new career for Nielsen in wacky comedies.
At first, Peter Graves also turned down the role of the airline captain, saying the script was “disgusting.” Family and friends talked him into changing his mind. The role of the co-captain was written for Pete Rose, but baseball season was still going on during filming. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar thought it would be a fun way to poke fun at his image.
ZAZ was alarmed to hear Robert Stack recite his lines flatly and in a monotone. They showed him a tape of comedian John Byner spoofing Stack before he got it. Lloyd Bridges also had trouble getting a grip on his character. Stack told him the visual humor of the film was so fast and so wacky that no one would care. “Lloyd,” he said, “we are the joke.”
ZAZ had difficulty understanding some of the dialogue in the 1975 film “Shaft.” They decided to parody that in “Airplane!” with an older white lady who could translate “Jive” for a flight attendant. They approached a 1950s TV mom, Harriet Nelson, to play the part and hired Barbara Billingsley from “Leave It to Beaver” when Nelson declined.
ZAZ wrote a scene with a singing nun as a parody of a scene in the 1970 film “Airport,” but Universal Pictures threatened to sue if they hired Helen Reddy to play the part of the nun who sings to a sick little girl. Instead, the role went to Maureen McGovern, who had sung in both the 1972 film “The Poseidon Adventure” and “The Towering Inferno” two years later.
Despite how spontaneous the humor in “Airplane!” seems, very little of the dialogue and gags were improvised on set, Abrahams said. Even the comedy bits by Kentucky Fried Theater veteran Stephen Stucker, who played the mischievous airport tower staffer Johnny, were conceived by Stucker and added to the script.
