25 years and still laughing

'Airplane!' maintains its cruising altitude with a non-stop zany attitude

By DUANE DUDEK
Journal Sentinel film critic

Posted: June 11, 2005

Duane Dudek E-MAIL

What a long, strange flight it's been. Twenty five years after takeoff, the disaster film parody "Airplane!" still soars.

The American Film Institute has enshrined it as one of the top 10 comedies of all time. Stuff magazine listed one of its many one-liners - "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" - as among the funniest movie lines ever. And Sports Illustrated has ranked the appearance by basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as one of the best film cameos by an athlete.

Though such accolades hint at how firmly a part of the cultural firmament the 1980 film has become, they are also relatively minor and arbitrary.

More satisfying recognition comes this week when Jewish Family Services, a non-profit social services group working in the Milwaukee area for more than 135 years, presents a 25th anniversary benefit celebration of the film. A reception and dinner will be held Wednesday at the Pfister Hotel and a red carpet screening will be held Thursday at the Pabst Theater. The event is in honor of the volunteer service and philanthropy of Louise Abrahams Yaffe and her son Jim Abrahams, who wrote and directed "Airplane!" with fellow Shorewood High School and University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates David and Jerry Zucker.

The filmmakers will present a talk-back after the screening.

You cannot analyze comedy. You can describe memorable scenes and quote lines of dialogue. But because you cannot rationalize the blissfully ridiculous, attempts to explain the film's appeal, while heartfelt, are an exercise in stating the obvious.

Just ask the experts.

"I don't know the first time I saw it, but the last time was about three weeks ago on TV," said Milwaukee Brewers baseball announcer and humorist Bob Uecker, who pronounced it timeless. "That movie's going to live forever."

Like Uecker, Milwaukee stand-up comedian Will Durst sees it on TV while on the road "with maybe 40 minutes of commercials in it, and I still suffer through it." Durst originally saw "Airplane!" when it was first released while on a date with the woman he later married, and both were smitten . . . with the film. "It made goofy funny again," Durst said.

Film critic Leonard Maltin, who was a friend of one of the film's producers and who saw it the day it opened, said it remains as funny now as then.

"They just overpower you with gags," said Maltin. "It's a laugh out loud movie. And it never stops."

A classic is something that endures. And for various reasons "Airplane!," 25 years after its July 2, 1980, debut, has become what Akiva Goldsman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of "A Beautiful Mind," called a "seminal film comedy." Goldsman also wrote "Cinderella Man" and produced "Mr. & Mrs. Smith."

"It's sort of stunning to me that it has endured this long and has become so popular," said Abrahams.

"Airplane!" stars Robert Hays as a fighter pilot who was traumatized "in the war" and who must land an airliner after the crew becomes disabled, with help from his flight attendant girlfriend, played by Julie Hagerty. It is a spoof of the 1957 movie "Zero Hour" and parodied the disaster movies of the era, like "Airport," based on Arthur Hailey's novel. Coincidentally or not, Hailey also wrote "Zero Hour."

But that synopsis barely describes the avalanche of dramatic and cultural stereotypes that "Airplane!" incorporated, spoofed and deflated.

"The timing was genius," said Durst.

"The running gags ran. They didn't trot past you. They didn't saunter past. You had to catch them."

And lines like "Don't call me Shirley" and "We have clearance, Clarence" still have a "Who's on First?" loopiness.

Serious actors

Perhaps the most canny decision made by the filmmakers was to put actors like Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Leslie Nielsen in roles that parodied the serious characters they had been playing all their lives.

Jerry Zucker said the film would not have worked if comic actors had been used instead.

"You could have cast funny people and done it with everybody winking, goofing off and silly," he said. "But the whole point was (the) serious style. We wanted people to be oblivious to the comedy. The actors understood "in varying degrees." Stack "got that we were using his image" and Nielsen was like "a fish in water." But Bridges kept trying to "shtick it up." When Bridges questioned a line of a dialogue, Stack told him, " 'There's a spear going through the wall behind you, and there's a watermelon falling behind me. No one's paying any attention to us,' "said Jerry Zucker.

The filmmakers "turned audience expectations around with their casting," said Maltin, and as a result "changed these guys' (the actors') careers."

"You get the sense that they're having a laugh at their own expense, and that's part of the endearing quality of the humor," agreed Abrahams.

He said the film's "self-effacing" comedy reflects a Midwestern sensibility. "If you grew up in Milwaukee back then, you had to have a sense of humor about yourself." The trio shared more than a sense of humor growing up.

"Our families were always close," said David Zucker. Their fathers were business partners, their mothers worked on charitable causes together, and their sisters were best friends and college roommates.

"And frequently they were guests at our house," said David Zucker. "And what would happen is that . . . . Jerry, Jim and I would end up in the basement rec room playing pingpong, talking and joking."

"We kind of bonded over those times," he said.

Although they are of different ages - Abrahams is 61, David Zucker is 57, and Jerry Zucker is 55 - they are cultural peers and grew up "in that era when both literally and figuratively TV was black and white," said Abrahams.

"Airplane!" was "the culmination of our whole history of talking back to the TV all those years and making fun of it as we watched," said David Zucker.

"But in terms of satire and comedy," said Jerry Zucker, "our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine." "Especially," said Abrahams, "a section called 'Scenes We'd Like to See.' "

"My greatest thrill," said Jerry Zucker, "was the day Mad magazine spoofed 'Ghost,' " which he directed and which received an Oscar nomination as best picture. "I knew I had really arrived."

An epiphany

David had graduated from UW, and Jim and Jerry were still in school, when one day David fortuitously drove to Chicago and saw a video comedy sketch group called The Groove Tube perform in a loft in Old Town.

"There was a gigantic waterbed, a video monitor on one end and a Coke machine at the other end. And they played 60-minute shows of scatological sketches on black and white video," David Zucker said.

"And I had my epiphany. This is something we could do."

So they started Kentucky Fried Theater in Madison, with Abrahams' roommate Dick Chudnow - who left the group and later founded ComedySportz. Kentucky Fried Theater combined video satires of TV commercials and a stage show.

After a year, they went to Los Angeles, rented a warehouse, put in 140 seats and did the show for another five years. At the end of that period they invited John Landis, who just had directed a film called "Schlock," to help them turn it into a movie.

Using their own savings they created a 10-minute preview, which convinced the United Artists theater chain to give them $600,000. The completed film "Kentucky Fried Movie" became a cult hit.

Around this time they started writing "Airplane!" but balked when United Artists wanted to turn it into a "Kentucky Fried Movie" sequel. The project was without a home until adopted by then-Paramount-executives Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who reluctantly agreed to let the trio direct.

A high point came, said Abrahams, when he was alone in his efficiency apartment in the middle of the night watching a tape-delayed broadcast of the NBA finals, when a preview of "Airplane!" came on.

"I flipped," he said. "It was the most amazing film moment I can think of, actually."

While their collaboration disbanded after "Ruthless People" in 1986, they remain close and each remains professionally active. Jerry Zucker directed "Ghost," produced "My Best Friend's Wedding" and is in pre-production on a movie called "Friends with Benefits"; David Zucker directed "Scary Movie 3" and is working on a sequel, produced "Phone Booth" and is producing a movie based on The Onion humor magazine; and Abrahams directed the "Hot Shots" films, co-wrote and produced "The Naked Gun" movies with the Zuckers and is working as a script doctor.

In 1997, Abrahams directed a TV movie inspired by his experiences while seeking treatment for his son's epilepsy. During this period Abrahams discovered an alternative treatment called the ketogenic diet.

Abrahams has spent the last decade championing the diet and founded the Charlie Foundation to Cure Pediatric Epilepsy (www.charliefoundation.org) with his wife, Nancy.

It is not a stretch to imagine that whatever lesson Abrahams' son learns from his father's example can traced directly to lessons imparted by Abrahams' mother, whose work is also being honored by Jewish Family Services.

Besides appearing in "Airplane!" with Charlotte Zucker, Louise Abrahams Yaffe has held countless leadership positions on social service agencies and continues to focus on senior citizen advocacy.

"She's a pretty tenacious gal," said Abrahams. "She's always been dedicated to causes, and she certainly set a prominent example in our lives."

But whatever you do, don't call her Shirley.

Event details

Archive 'Baby Mama'  (4/25/2008) Old building reverts to type for film role   (4/23/2008) 'Under the Same Moon'  (4/18/2008) '4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days'  (4/11/2008) 'CJ7'  (4/11/2008) 'Smart People'   (4/11/2008) Appreciation: Heston left a dual legacy  (4/7/2008) 'Leatherheads'  (4/4/2008) 'Snow Angels'  (4/4/2008) 'Married Life'  (3/28/2008) 'Stop-Loss'  (3/28/2008) 'The Counterfeiters'  (3/21/2008) Newman defies convention   (3/15/2008) 'The Band's Visit'  (3/14/2008) 'Enemies' crew bringing snow   (3/13/2008) '10,000 B.C.'  (3/7/2008) 'Steal a Pencil for Me'  (3/7/2008) 'Semi-Pro'  (2/29/2008) 'U2 3D'  (2/22/2008) 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly'  (2/15/2008)

From the June 12, 2005 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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