WTF Happened to Airplane?

surely the making of one of the funniest movies ever made can't be that serious and it really isn't okay 1980s airplane was a tough cell and there were minor clashes between the directors in Paramount and lawsuits from a rival Studio threaten the casting of numerous stars but there was also perfect against type casting clever workarounds to silly DGA regulations and a complete reinvention of the spoof movie all of which made airplane one of the greatest comedies ever oh and there were fart machines too and so let's park the taxi avoid the fish and check in on our drinking problem as we find out what the happened to this movie Airplane has its origins in the Kentucky Fried Theater which the trio of David Zucker Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker collectively known as zaz founded in 1971 one act the fellas grew fond of was dubbing over serious movies with their own dialogue a sort of Proto Mystery Science Theater they too loved spoofing commercial and so would record them on VHS throughout the day and night it was here that they accidentally stumbled upon a movie called zero hour from 1957 but the plot was so absurd a former pilot has to man a plane after the real Pilots get sick with food poisoning that they thought they could just remake it all together they even named their lead character Ted Striker just like Dana Andrew's character in the movie although they would modify the spelling and so the script then titled The Late Show could be written completed in 1975 2 years before the group's debut feature the Kentucky Fried Movie hit theaters the script blatantly ripped from zero hour which must have been easy to do since they practically kept the movie on Loop while writing this is seen immediately as the eventual title airplane even steals the exclamation it was also once clunkily titled Kentucky Fried theaters airplane flying high they even took dialogue straight from zero hour because it was so ridiculous zaz was also a concern that they were going to be sued so they secured the rights for a mere $2500 although interestingly enough part of the movie was owned by airplane's eventual Studio Paramount but it wasn't just Zero Hour that zaz pulled from it was Disaster Movie Airport from 1970 and its sequels there is a link between those two as well as Arthur Haley wrote the airport novel and coote zero hour the latter being adapted from his own TV play Flight into danger here un un veral actually did threaten to sue because airplane was too similar to their airport series they didn't even want it to be called airplane although they would eventually relent on that one unlike most spoofs however airplane didn't require any knowledge of its genre to appreciate the story characters and jokes in fact most of us had probably never even heard of zero hour until we found out it influenced airplane but zaz had trouble actually selling the script and at the urging of John Landis moved onto Kentucky Fried Movie which Landis directed this would give them some of the experience they needed and made them want to have more control of their screen plays going back to airplane zaz got interest from avco Embassy and AIP at various points but it eventually made its way to Paramount and then President Michael Eisner Who first got win through Susan barwald who loved it and enlisted Jeffrey caten BG then working as president of production for the studio to sit down with zaz and recruit them despite still being relatively fresh on the scene zaz had some conditions that they were going to sell they had to direct which surprisingly paramel agreed to saying they could direct under the condition that if their work was bad they would be fired after 2 weeks still zaz would have to relinquish their insistence that it be shot in black and white and on a propeller plane to further match zero hour sounds of propellers are still H throughout the movie however find out what the two sick people had for dinner with the studio lined up casting on airplane could begin another demand zaz had was that the movie be populated by non comedy actors some of whom we now can't imagine comedy movies without flying Skyhigh in the lead was Robert Hayes as Ted Striker who beat out one of the oddest groups of potentials ever compiled David Letterman screen tested but admitted along with zaz that he couldn't act the team would later show his audition on late night when they were guests Paramount's top choices mean while were Chevy Chase or Bill Murray while everybody from Fred Willard to Bruce now Caitlyn Jenner and whoa Barry Manalo all circled the role Willard apparently didn't get it but later admitted it was a mistake while Jenner read for the part and Manalo would continue writing the songs that make the whole world sing while Hayes did have fun making the movie he would say that simultaneously shooting airplane and ABC sitcom Angie took a toll Julie Haggerty then doing far off br Broadway would land Elaine Dickinson edging out Shelly Long and Sigourney Weaver who objected to the sit on your face and Wiggle line Leslie neelen then known for his dramas would play Dr RAC beating out Dom deloise and Jack web better known as Joe Friday on dragut others considered were horror icons Christopher Lee and Vincent Price instead Lee did Spielberg's 1941 and price did some voice workk there too was Peter gra as Captain Clarence over Graves didn't particularly like the script even calling it a disgusting piece of garbage and saying his character came across as a pedophile still he wound up laughing the hardest at the premiere the role of Steve mccrosky was offered to George Kennedy star of the airport movies but Universal talks him out of it instead Lloyd Bridges won out after some convincing from Robert stack stack who was also known for his dramas an Oscar nominated turn in written on the Wind himself would play Captain Rex Kramer to nail his performance he actually looked at comedian John Bayer's impressions of him and ended up quote doing an impression of John biner doing an impression of stack and you thought there was nothing complex about airplane the rest of the Supporting Cast also has their own individual backstories so let's take a look Kentucky Fried theater Alum Steven Stucker played flamboyant error traffic controller Johnny even writing his own lines kareim Abdul Jabar played co-pilot Roger Murdoch and himself as we know but it took some extra coin getting his salary up so he could purchase a new oriental rug Believe It or Not non Hall of Famer Pete Rose was the original choice for the role through Abdul Jabar zaz even worked in another na to Zero Hour as that movie cast Pro Football Hall of Famer Elroy Crazy Legs hirs as a co-pilot Helen ready was originally cast as sister Angelina due to her role as sister Ruth in airport 1975 but Universal threw yet another fit and and so the role went to Moren McGovern stage Legend Ethel Merman turns up as a delusional Lieutenant looking like she's still in the 1960s Good Times Jimmy Walker one of the few comedians in the cast has a terrific Cameo as windshield wiper man here's someone you may not recognize unless you were heavy into politics in the 1970s Howard Jarvis played the man waiting inside of a taxi cab for the entire movie The Joke itself is good but made so much better and smarter when you know that Jarvis was a phys conservative politician with the ultimate joke being that he would be content paying who knows how much by sitting inside of a cab with the meter running here's one more obscure Cameo the intercom couple who keeps bickering about red zones white zones and abortions were the actual people who provided the voices at LAX where some of the movie was shot oh and we can't forget Otto who plays himself of course during filming every cast member was told to play it completely straight As is often the case with the best comedies as the directors told them pretend you don't know you're in a comedy filming on airplane began on June 20th 1979 with a budget of $3.5 million originally pegged at 7.5 and right away it was a set of loopholes language barriers and yes farts until finally the poor bastard has prod used Leslie NE who again was not known for comedy at the time brought a small device on set that would mimic fart noises breaking people in the middle of takes at first people thought he had a serious issue while other times he blamed it on Julie Haggerty he even sold a few of the devices which hay said he played like a maestro but zaz had bigger issues than flatulence DGA regulations said that a movie couldn't have three directors build on the credits and when zaz tried to develop the collective pseudonym of Abraham and zookers they were shut down and so zaz developed a plan Abrahams would be deemed the director that is working directly with the actors while the zookers hid behind behind closed doors as such the three had to secretly discuss notes in private fortunately that silly little rule of the dga's was cleared by the guild thus all three names appear on the credits and while Zero Hour was on standby so the team could match the composition and lighting that doesn't mean they hit every note right away zaz had to nudge the actors in the right direction Whenever there were spaces in the script to fill while they had no idea how to write jive talk this was improvised by Al White and Norm Gibbs who further taught to speak to Barbara Billingsley best known as June Cleaver aka the least Jive woman on the planet but not everyone was quite on the same page Ross Harris who played the young Joey admitted he was oblivious to the adult content Peter Graves was throwing out while Graves himself had reservations and thought he was being misled later being misled by zaz who explained that all of his perverse questions about Turkish prisons and naked men would be explained later on they were not bridges too had trouble adapting to the style asking at one point what the hell's going on here of course he'd grow fond of the spoof genre later co-starring in the Hot Shots movies and Mafia for Jim Abrahams on the music front for the flashback sequence involving a Saturday Night Fever parody zaz acquired the rights to the BG Staying Alive the reason it sounds like a goofy cover is because it has been sped up another one who appreciated the style was Elmer Bernstein who nailed the desired be movie score that stands unique to his iconic works from The Magnificent Seven The Ten Commandments and so many more but if you thought eating the fish was the biggest poison imagine this at an advanced screening of airplanes some rails were played out of order after some rearranging and trimming the movie down to sub 90 minutes from nearly 2 hours the comedy was ready for theaters debuting in Toronto and buffalo on June 27th 1980 before going wide on July 2nd just a few weeks after the Blues Brothers and a few before catty Shack with such a small budget airplane easily made back its money in less than 1 week going on to gross 83.5 million during its run and becoming one of the highest grossing movies of 1980 Awards wise it would earn a Baff the nod for its screenplay losing to being there and even win the wga for best adapted screenplay it too would be nominated for the best musical or comedy Golden Globe losing to Cole Miner's Daughter like so so many upon release today we consider airplane one of the funniest movies of all time the American Film Institute would rank it as the 10th funniest ever Behind The Graduate and ahead of the producers that list number one is Some Like It Hot although the team thinks airplane will one day be considered the best ever once all the Some Like It Hot fans die that is the AFI 2 would rank The Exchange surely there must be something you can do I doing everything I can just stop calling me sure as one of the greatest movie quotes ever actually one of the few comedies represented the writer Guild of America would name it the fourth funniest screenplay ever behind just Groundhog Day Some Like It Hot and Annie Hall in 2010 airplane would be added to the National film registry the same year as All the President's Men The Exorcist and more while airplane wasn't the first parody comedy it launched the most prolific decade for them in the history of movies for good or bad on the hardly debatable bad side it spawned a 1982 sequel the appropriately titled airplane 2 the sequel and while it had a wealth of the original Stars zaz sat it out instead shifting Focus to Siri police squad which soon became adapted into the Naked Gun and despite all of the spoofs that came after it and all of the directors it influenced including the Fairly brothers who admit they wouldn't exist without the zookers there is no greater spoof or perhaps purely insane comedy than airplane even even zaz couldn't top it although top secret and the Naked Gun give it a worthwhile go in the end it looks like we picked the wrong week to stop producing what the happened to this [Music] movie [Music] oh

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Id: wKmg1B1L-70

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2024