Since its release, the film’s reputation has grown substantially. It ranked sixth on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies.[11] In a 2007 survey by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, it was judged the second-greatest comedy of all time, behind Monty Python's Life of Brian.[12] In 2008, it was selected by Empire magazine as one of 'The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time', and in 2012 was voted #1 on The 50 Funniest Comedies Ever poll.[13] In 2010, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[14][15][16]
Plot
Ex-fighter pilot Ted Striker is a traumatized war veteran turned taxi driver. Because of his pathological fear of flying and subsequent "drinking problem"—he splashes beverages anywhere but into his mouth—Ted has been unable to hold a responsible job. His wartime girlfriend, Elaine Dickinson, now a flight attendant, breaks off her relationship with him before boarding her rostered flight from Los Angeles to Chicago. Ted abandons his taxi and buys a ticket on the same flight to try to win her back. Once on board, however, Elaine continues to reject him, causing Ted to accidentally drive several other passengers to suicide as he sadly reminisces.
After the in-flight meal is served, the entire flight crew and several passengers fall ill. Passenger Dr. Rumack discovers that the fish served during meal service has caused food poisoning. With the flight crew incapacitated, Elaine contacts the Chicago control tower for help and is instructed by tower supervisor Steve McCroskey to activate the plane's autopilot, a large inflatable dummy pilot dubbed "Otto", which will get them to Chicago but cannot land the plane. Elaine and Rumack convince Ted to take the controls. When Steve learns Ted is piloting, he contacts Ted's former commanding officer, Rex Kramer—now serving as a commercial pilot—to help talk Ted through the landing procedure. Ted becomes uneasy when Kramer starts giving orders and he briefly breaks down amid more wartime flashbacks. Elaine and Rumack both bolster Ted's confidence and he manages to once again take the controls.
As the plane nears Chicago, the weather worsens, complicating the landing. With Elaine's help as co-pilot and Rex's guidance from the tower, Ted is able to land the plane safely, despite the landing gear shearing off, and the passengers suffer only minor injuries. Rescue vehicles arrive to help unload the plane. Impressed by Ted's courage, Elaine embraces and kisses him, rekindling their relationship. "Otto" restarts the plane and takes off as a female companion inflates beside him.
Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker (collectively known as Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, or ZAZ) wrote Airplane! while they were performing with the Kentucky Fried Theatre, a theatre group they had founded in 1971. To obtain material for comedy routines, they routinely recorded late night television and reviewed the tapes later primarily to pull the commercials, a process Abrahams compared to "seining for fish".[17] During one such taping process, they unintentionally recorded the 1957 film Zero Hour!, and while scanning the commercials, found it to be a "perfectly classically structured film" according to Jerry Zucker.[7][17] Abrahams later described Zero Hour! as "the serious version of Airplane!" It was the first film script they wrote, completed around 1975,[17] and was originally called The Late Show. The script originally stayed close to the dialog and plot of Zero Hour!, as ZAZ thought they did not have a sufficient understanding of film at the time to structure a proper script.[17] ZAZ's script borrowed so much from Zero Hour! that they believed they needed to negotiate the rights to create the remake of the film and ensure they remain within the allowance for parody within copyright law. They were able to obtain the rights from Warner Bros. and Paramount for about $2,500 at the time.[17] The original script contained spoofs of television commercials but people who proofread it advised them to shorten the commercials, and they eventually removed them. When their script was finished, they were unable to sell it.[18]
While failing to sell their script, the trio met director John Landis, who encouraged them to write a film based on their theatre sketches. They managed to put The Kentucky Fried Movie into production in the late 1970s. David Zucker said "it was the first time we had ever been on a movie set. We learned a lot. We learned that if you really wanted a movie to come out the way you wanted it to, you had to direct. So on the next movie, Airplane!, we insisted on directing".[18]
Eventually the Airplane! script found its way to Paramount through Michael Eisner. Eisner learned of the script via Susan Baerwald, another scriptwriter with United Artists, and had Jeffrey Katzenberg track down and meet with ZAZ to discuss details.[17]Avco Embassy Pictures also expressed interest in producing the film, but ZAZ decided to go with Paramount.[17]
Paramount insisted the film be shot in color rather than black-and-white as ZAZ wanted, and to be set aboard a jet airliner rather than propeller plane to better identify with modern filmgoers. In exchange, Paramount acquiesced to ZAZ's desire to cast serious actors for the film rather than comedy performers.[19] Principal photography began on June 20, 1979, and wrapped on August 31, with the bulk of filming having been done in August. Jerry Zucker stood beside the camera during shooting, while David Zucker and Jim Abrahams watched the video feed to see how the film would look; they conferred after each take.[20]
Casting
David Zucker explained that "the trick was to cast actors like Robert Stack, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, and Lloyd Bridges. These were people who, up to that time, had never done comedy. We thought they were much funnier than the comedians of that time were".[18]
David Zucker felt Stack was the most important actor to be cast, since he was the "linchpin" of the film's plot.[18][17] Stack initially played his role in a way that was different from what the directors had in mind. They showed him a tape of impressionist John Byner impersonating Robert Stack. According to the producers, Stack was "doing an impression of John Byner doing an impression of Stack".[7] Stack was not initially interested in the part, but ZAZ persuaded him. Bridges' children advised him to take the part.[18] Graves rejected the script at first, considering it tasteless. During filming, ZAZ had explained to Graves that his lines spoken to a young boy, like "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?", would "be explained later in a part that you aren't in".[19] On the DVD commentary, Abrahams said: "I don't understand. What did he think was tasteless about pedophilia?"[21]
For the role of Dr. Rumack, ZAZ initially suggested Dom DeLuise, Christopher Lee (who had appeared in Airport '77), Vincent Price, and Jack Webb, all of whom turned it down, before they considered Nielsen,[19][22] who was "just a fish in water" in his role, according to Jerry Zucker.[17] Nielsen's career to this point had consisted mostly of serious leading roles but he wanted to work in comedy and was looking for a film to help in the transition. He was considered a "closet comedian" on set, pranking his fellow actors between shots, but immediately adopted his somber, serious persona when performing as Rumack.[19] During filming, Nielsen used a device that made farting noises to keep the cast off-balance. Hays said that Nielsen "played that thing like a maestro".[21][23] Christopher Lee would later acknowledge that turning down the role (to star in the film 1941) was a huge mistake.[24]
For the "red zone/white zone" send-up of curbside terminal announcements in which public address announcers "Betty" and "Vernon" argue over the red and white zones, ZAZ went through the usual process of auditioning professional voice actors, but failed to find ones who could provide the desired authenticity. Instead, the filmmakers ultimately sought out and hired the real-life married couple who had recorded the announcement tapes which were then being used at Los Angeles International Airport.[28] ZAZ lifted some of their dialog directly from the 1968 novel Airport, written by Arthur Hailey who had also written Zero Hour!'s script. The lifted lines included ones about an unwanted pregnancy; David Zucker said the couple "got a kick out of it".[19] Baseball player Pete Rose was originally considered for the role of Roger Murdock.[17][29]
ZAZ got businessman and Republican politician Howard Jarvis to make a cameo appearance. Jarvis, who was well known in California at the time for getting his tax policy Proposition 13 passed in 1978, plays the patient passenger who gets into Ted Striker's cab at the start of the film. He then spends the entire movie sitting in an empty cab with the meter running. He also has the final line, which he says after the end credits: he looks at his watch and says "Well, I'll give him another twenty minutes, but that's it!", the joke being that Jarvis was wasting money while being known for his stance on fiscal responsibility and limited spending.[30][31]
Music
The film's score was composed by Elmer Bernstein, who had provided soundtracks for classic films like The Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Escape. ZAZ told Bernstein they did not want an epic score like his past works but "a B-Movie level score, overdone and corny".[19] According to ZAZ, Bernstein completely understood what they were trying to do, had laughed throughout a previous cut of the film, and wrote a "fantastic score".[17]
In 1980, an LP soundtrack for the film was released by Regency Records which includes dialog and songs from the film. Narrated by Shadoe Stevens, it features only one score track, the "Love Theme from Airplane!" composed by Bernstein. The soundtrack was altered for the European Flying High release, with several featured tracks swapped for pieces original to the LP.
In April 2009, La-La Land Records announced it would release the first official soundtrack album for Airplane!, containing Bernstein's complete score.[32] The soundtrack was released digitally on February 19, 2013, by Paramount Music.[33]
Release
Prior to the film's release, the directors were apprehensive following a mediocre audience response at a pre-screening, but the film earned its entire budget of about $3.5 million in its first five days of wide release.
Airplane! opened on June 27, 1980, in seven theatres in Toronto, grossing $83,058 in its opening weekend.[1][34] It also opened in two theaters in Buffalo, grossing $14,000 in its first week.[35] The film then expanded on Wednesday, July 2 to 705 theaters in the United States and Canada, grossing $6,052,514 in its first five days of wide release, finishing second for the weekend with a gross of $4,540,000.[36] Overall, it grossed $83 million at the US and Canadian box office and returned $40 million in rentals,[10] making it the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1980.[37] Worldwide, the film earned $130 million in its initial release,[38] and by 2002 it had made $171 million.[4]
Reception
"Airplane! emerged in 1980 as a sharply perceptive parody of the big-budget disaster films that dominated Hollywood during the 1970s [and] introduced a much-needed deflating assessment of the tendency of theatrical film producers to push successful formulaic movie conventions beyond the point of logic".
Airplane! received universal acclaim from critics and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1980.[39][40][41][42]Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 97% based on 69 reviews, compiled retrospectively, with an average rating of 8.45/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Though unabashedly juvenile and silly, Airplane! is nevertheless an uproarious spoof comedy full of quotable lines and slapstick gags that endure to this day".[43] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[44]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote "Airplane! is sophomoric, obvious, predictable, corny, and quite often very funny. And the reason it's funny is frequently because it's sophomoric, predictable, corny, etc."[45]Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote "Airplane! is more than a pleasant surprise... As a remedy for the bloated self-importance of too many other current efforts, it's just what the doctor ordered".[46]
In 2008, Airplane! was selected by Empire magazine as one of 'The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time'.[47] It was also placed on a similar list—'The Best 1000 Movies Ever Made'—by The New York Times.[48] In November 2015, the film was ranked fourth in the Writers Guild of America's list of '101 Funniest Screenplays'.[49]
MaximOnline.com named the airplane crash in Airplane! as number four on its list of "Most Horrific Movie Plane Crashes". Leslie Nielsen's response to Hays' "Surely you can't be serious" line—"I am serious. And don't call me Shirley"—was 79th on AFI's list of the best 100 movie quotes. In 2000, the American Film Institute listed Airplane! as number ten on its list of the 100 funniest American films. In the same year, Total Film readers voted it the second-greatest comedy film of all time. It was also second in the British 50 Greatest Comedy Films poll on Channel 4, beaten by Monty Python's Life of Brian. Entertainment Weekly voted the film the "funniest movie on video" in their list of the 100 funniest movies on video.[50]
A number of actors were cast to spoof their established images: prior to their roles in Airplane!, Nielsen, Stack, and Bridges were known for portraying adventurous, no-nonsense tough-guy characters. Stack's role as the captain who loses his nerve in one of the earliest airline "disaster" films, The High and the Mighty (1954), is spoofed in Airplane!, as is Lloyd Bridges' 1970–1971 television role as airport manager Jim Conrad in San Francisco International Airport. Peter Graves was in the made-for-television film SST: Death Flight, in which an SST was unable to land owing to an emergency.[51]
Nielsen enjoyed a major career boost subsequent to Airplane!'s release. The film marked a significant change in his film persona towards deadpan comedy, notably in the three Naked Gun films: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988); The Naked Gun 21⁄2: The Smell of Fear (1991); and Naked Gun 331⁄3: The Final Insult (1994). The films were based on the six-episode television series Police Squad! which starred Nielsen and was created and produced by Zucker–Abrahams–Zucker. This also led to his casting, many years later, in Mel Brooks' Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Brooks had wanted to make the film for a long time, but put it off because, as he said: "I just could not find the right Dracula". According to Brooks, he did not see Airplane! until years after its release. When he did, he knew Nielsen would be right for the part. When it was suggested that his role in Airplane! was against type, Nielsen protested that he had "always been cast against type before", and that comedy was what he always really wanted to do.[52]
Influence
Peter Farrelly said of the film: "I was in Rhode Island the first time I saw Airplane! Seeing it for the first time was like going to a great rock concert, like seeing Led Zeppelin or the Talking Heads. We didn't realize until later that what we'd seen was a very specific kind of comedy that we now call the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker school".[21] Farrelly, along with his writing partner Bennett Yellin, sent a comedy script to David Zucker, who in return gave them their first Hollywood writing job. Farrelly said: "I'll tell you right now, if the Zuckers didn't exist, there would be no Farrelly brothers".[21]
During the Qantas Flight 72 incident over the Indian Ocean west of Australia in 2008, the captain recited some of Lloyd Bridges' lines to relieve tension while trying to land the plane. This was commented in the Air Disasters episode "Free Fall".
The MythBusters TV show episode "Airplane Hour" reenacted the climax of the film to see if an inexperienced pilot could land a plane with only a call from Air Traffic Control. The Mythbusters had to use a simulation to test the myth but concluded that the scene was plausible. They did, however, mention that most planes today have an autopilot to land the plane safely.
In the 2012 film Ted, main character John Bennett tells the story of how he met Lori Collins. The flashback is a close recreation of the scene where Ted Striker met Elaine Dickinson in the disco.[55]
In early 2014, Delta Air Lines began using a new on-board safety film with many 1980s references, featuring an ending with a cameo of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reprising his role as co-pilot Roger Murdock.[56]
In 2014, Travel Wisconsin began airing an ad with Robert Hays and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reprising their roles from the film. Kareem makes the comment "Why did I ever leave this place?" referring to his time playing for the Milwaukee Bucks.[57][58][59] Hays also reprises his role as an airline pilot in Sharknado 2: The Second One.
The first episode of the eighth season of the TV series The Goldbergs re-enacts certain scenes.
Related works
Sequel
Airplane II: The Sequel, first released on December 10, 1982, attempted to tackle the science fiction film genre, though there was still emphasis on the general theme of disaster films. Although most of the cast reunited for the sequel, the writers and directors of Airplane! chose not to be involved. In the DVD commentary for Airplane! David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker claim to have never seen nor to have any desire to see Airplane II.
Leslie William Nielsen was a Canadian actor and comedian. With a career spanning 60 years, he appeared in more than 100 films and 150 television programs, portraying more than 220 characters.
A parody film or spoof film is a subgenre of comedy film that lampoons other film genres or films as pastiches, works created by imitation of the style of many different films reassembled together. Although the subgenre is often overlooked by critics, parody films are commonly profitable at the box office. Parody is related to satire, except that "parody is more often a representation of appreciation, while a satire is more often...pointing ...out the major flaws of an object through ridicule." J.M. Maher notes that the "difference is not always clear" and points out that "some films employ both techniques". Parody is found in a range of art and culture, including literature, music, theater, television, animation, and gaming.
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! is a 1988 American crime comedy film directed by David Zucker, and produced and released by Paramount Pictures. The film stars Leslie Nielsen as the bumbling police lieutenant Frank Drebin, who sets out to uncover a criminal plot involving people being mind controlled to assassinate targets. Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalbán, George Kennedy, and O. J. Simpson also star in supporting roles.
Police Squad! is an American crime comedy television series that was broadcast on the ABC network in 1982. It was created by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker, starring Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin. A spoof of police procedurals and many other television shows and movies, the series features Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker's usual sight gags, wordplay, and non sequiturs. It resembles the Lee Marvin police show M Squad and the late 1960s series Felony Squad. It was canceled after six episodes, and yielded The Naked Gun film series from 1988 to 1994.
David Samuel Zucker is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Associated mostly with parody comedies, Zucker is recognized for collaborating with Jim Abrahams and his brother Jerry as part of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, with whom he wrote and directed the 1980 film Airplane! and created The Naked Gun franchise. As a solo filmmaker, Zucker has also directed Scary Movie 3 (2003) and Scary Movie 4 (2006).
Jerry Gordon Zucker is an American film producer, director, and writer known for his role in directing comedy spoof films such as Airplane! and Top Secret!, and the Best Picture-nominated supernatural drama film Ghost. He and his older brother, David Zucker, collaborated on several films.
The Kentucky Fried Movie is a 1977 American independent anthology sketch black comedy film, produced by Kim Jorgensen, Larry Kostroff, and Robert K. Weiss, and directed by John Landis. Among the numerous star cameos are George Lazenby, Bill Bixby, Henry Gibson, Barry Dennen, Donald Sutherland, Tony Dow, Stephen Bishop, and the voice of Shadoe Stevens. According to writer David Zucker on the DVD commentary track, David Letterman auditioned for the role of the newscaster, but was not selected. The film also features many former members of The Groundlings and The Second City. The "feature presentation" portion of the film stars Evan C. Kim and hapkido grand master Bong Soo Han. The Kentucky Fried Movie marked the first film appearances of a number of actors who later became famous, and launched the careers of the Zucker brothers, Abrahams and Landis.
The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear is a 1991 American crime comedy film. It is the sequel to the 1988 film The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! and the second installment in the Naked Gun film series. The film stars Leslie Nielsen as the comically bumbling Police Lt. Frank Drebin of Police Squad!. Priscilla Presley plays the role of Jane, with O. J. Simpson as Nordberg and George Kennedy as police captain Ed Hocken. The film also features Robert Goulet as the villainous Quentin Hapsburg and Richard Griffiths as renewable fuel advocate Dr. Albert S. Meinheimer. Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mel Tormé and members of the Chicago Bears have cameo roles.
Top Secret! is a 1984 action comedy film written and directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker (ZAZ) and Martyn Burke. It stars Val Kilmer and Lucy Gutteridge alongside a supporting cast featuring Omar Sharif, Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, and Jeremy Kemp. The film parodies various film styles such as musicals starring Elvis Presley, spy films of the Cold War era and World War II films. The original music score was composed by Maurice Jarre.
James Steven Abrahams was an American film director and writer, best known as a member of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker.
Robert Blakely Hays is an American actor, known for a variety of television and film roles since the 1970s. He came to prominence around 1980, co-starring in the two-season domestic sitcom Angie, and playing the central role of pilot Ted Striker in the hit spoof film Airplane! and its sequel. Other film roles include the lead role in the comedy Take This Job and Shove It (1981), and Bob Seaver, one of the main human characters in Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993). On television, he starred in the science fiction series Starman (1986–1987) and the short-lived workplace sitcom FM (1989–1990), played the voice of Tony Stark on Iron Man (1994), and had a guest role as Bud Hyde on That '70s Show (2000).
Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker was an American comedy filmmaking trio consisting of Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker who specialised in writing slapstick comedy films during the 1980s. Members of the team have often collaborated with writer Pat Proft.
Airplane II: The Sequel is a 1982 American parody film written and directed by Ken Finkleman in his directorial debut and starring Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Lloyd Bridges, Chad Everett, William Shatner, Rip Torn, and Sonny Bono. A sequel to the 1980 film Airplane!, it was released on December 10, 1982.
Pat Proft is an American comedy writer, actor, and director. Born in Minnesota in 1947, Proft began his career at Dudley Riggs' Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis in the mid-1960s. He went on to perform as a one-man comedy act in the late 1960s. In 1972, Proft began working at The Comedy Store in Hollywood which led to work in television and film writing for the Smothers Brothers and Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker.
Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult is a 1994 American crime comedy film directed by Peter Segal and written by Pat Proft, David Zucker and Robert LoCash. The film is the third and final installment in the Naked Gun film series, which was based on the television series Police Squad!. The Final Insult is the only film in the series that is not directed by David Zucker, with him serving as producer and co-writer instead. Police Squad! co-creators Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker returned as executive producers.
Stephen Stucker was an American actor, known for portrayals of bizarre characters, notably the manic control-room worker Johnny in the early 1980s Airplane! movies and the stenographer in the courtroom sequence of 1977's The Kentucky Fried Movie.
The Naked Gun media franchise consists of several American crime spoof-comedies, based on an original story written by the comedy filmmaking trio Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker. The installments include one television series and three theatrical films. The plot centers on a police detective with a lot of heart, despite being less than intelligent. Leslie Nielsen stars in each installment in the protagonist role of Detective Sergeant Franklin "Frank" Drebin, with a fourth film starring Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. scheduled for release in 2025. The franchise was met with mostly positive critical reception, and the films were a financial box office success.
Franklin "Frank" Drebin is a fictional character in the Police Squad! television series and The Naked Gun movies played by Leslie Nielsen.
Lee Bryant is an American actress. She is most known for a small role in the 1980 comedy film Airplane!. She also appeared as Sam Waterston's wife in the 1977 conspiracy thriller Capricorn One, and as Jennifer Westfeldt's mother in the romantic comedy Friends with Kids (2011).
The Naked Gun is an upcoming American action comedy film directed by Akiva Schaffer, who co-wrote the screenplay with Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, Mark Hentemann, and Alec Sulkin based on an original story written by Seth MacFarlane, who produced alongside Erica Huggins. Serving as the fourth film, and fifth overall installment in The Naked Gun franchise, the film stars Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr, alongside Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, Liza Koshy, Cody Rhodes, CCH Pounder, and Busta Rhymes.
References
Informational notes
↑ At the time of production, Caitlyn was still presenting as male and known as Bruce Jenner.
Citations
1 2 Ginsberg, Steven (July 2, 1980). "'Empire' Major Exception To B.O. Slump, Hits $65-Mil In Five Wks". Variety. p.3.
1 2 3 4 5 Emery, Robert J. (2002). "The films of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker". The Directors: Take One. Allworth Communications, Inc. pp.337–342. ISBN978-1-58115-218-0.
↑ Brod, Doug (October 16, 1992). "The Kings of Comedy". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on September 4, 2015. Retrieved July 22, 2009.
↑ "Kareem". The Official Site of the Milwaukee Bucks. Archived from the original on February 6, 2016. Retrieved January 30, 2016.
↑ "Kareem: The return of the King". The Official Site of the Milwaukee Bucks. National Basketball Association. November 21, 2007. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved January 29, 2016.
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