Don’t call them Shirley! The creators of Airplane! reflect the film that changed movie comedy
When Airplane! – known in Australia as Flying High! – opened in cinemas in mid-1980, it proved to be a box office smash, critically acclaimed as one of the all-time funniest movies.
When Airplane! – known in Australia as Flying High! – opened in cinemas in mid-1980, audiences were not expecting to see a comedy without comedians that lampooned disaster movies. It proved to be a box office smash, critically acclaimed as one of the all-time funniest movies and influenced generations of comedians.
The plot was simple: after passengers and crew are stricken with food poisoning, their lives depend on finding somebody who can fly the plane, and did not have fish for dinner. The only person who can possibly do it is wartime pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays) who has PTSD and is in the middle of a break-up with air hostess Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty).
The film brought together four legendary actors not known for comedy who delivered ridiculous lines with a straight face and stole every scene: Leslie Nielsen as Dr Rumack; Peter Graves as Captain Clarence Oveur; Lloyd Bridges as tower supervisor Steve McCroskey; and Robert Stack as Captain Rex Kramer.
Who could forget when Dr Rumack confronted Dickinson as illness spread:
Rumack: You’d better tell the Captain we’ve got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.
Dickinson: A hospital? What is it?
Rumack: It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.
Or when Dr Rumack explains to Captain Oveur how serious it is:
Rumack: Captain, how soon can you land?
Oveur: I can’t tell.
Rumack: You can tell me. I’m a doctor.
Oveur: No. I mean I’m just not sure.
Rumack: Well, can’t you take a guess?
Oveur: Well, not for another two hours.
Rumack: You can’t take a guess for another two hours?
And when Dr Rumack tells Striker he is the only person who can save them:
Rumack: Can you fly this plane, and land it?
Striker: Surely you can’t be serious.
Rumack: I am serious ... and don’t call me Shirley.
The film was written, directed and produced by Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker. The three formed a comedy ensemble while studying at the University of Wisconsin. In 1972, they moved to Los Angeles to establish a live comedy venue, The Kentucky Fried Theatre. They co-wrote The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) but had not directed a movie before.
Airplane! has never lost its audience and is the subject of a new book, Surely You Can’t Be Serious (St Martin’s Press). It provides a behind-the-scenes oral history of the film by the cast, crew and executives. David Letterman, Bill Hader, Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Kimmel, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and others, reflect on the film’s enduring impact.
“Everybody remembers those airplane disaster movies and if they don’t the story is easy to follow,” David Zucker tells Review. “We also didn’t do any contemporary humour about whatever was happening in 1980. So, that’s why it still works for audiences today.”
When I ask Zucker and Abrahams how the trio directed the film, they talked over one another – a routine they have certainly used before – and cracked each other up. In reality, Abrahams would be on set while the Zucker brothers would watch on a nearby monitor and give notes.
“We grew up in the 1950s and 60s when everything on television was, literally and figuratively, black and white with characters that were not very textured – only good and bad guys,” Abrahams explains. “We didn’t take that stuff too seriously and we learned how to poke fun at it. That is the root of what led to Airplane!”
The film was rejected by studio after studio until greenlit by Michael Eisner at Paramount. He was having dinner with Susan Baerwald, a script reader, who told him it was the funniest thing she had read in years but United Artists had passed on it. Eisner immediately went to a payphone and told his vice president to option the movie by morning. A deal was done on the condition the three were guided by legendary Hollywood producer Howard W. Koch.
Airplane! was a frame-by-frame remake of the 1957 black and white film, Zero Hour. It hews so closely to the plot that they had to purchase the rights to it.
“We used to re-dub very serious b-movies with our own voices and have straight characters say silly things at The Kentucky Fried Theatre,” Zucker recalls. “We thought Zero Hour was so unintentionally funny, and the characters just so humourless, that it invited us to make fun of it.”
The four acting legends did not need to be funny; they just needed to say the lines. Graves (Mission: Impossible, 1967-73) thought the script was “trash” and threw it across the room after first reading it. Bridges (Sea Hunt, 1958-61), took a while to adjust to the humour. Stack (The Untouchables, 1959-63), enjoyed it and made jokes while filming, but did not think it would be a big success.
Nielsen was not the first choice to play Dr Rumack. Vincent Price, among others, declined the role. Nielsen was a typical straight man actor. But deep down he was a prankster and his comedy career skyrocketed after Airplane! On set, he concealed a fart machine in the palm of his hand to use at inappropriate moments. But even Nielsen did not realise just how amusing the film was at the time.
Their scepticism was rewarded with the best lines. Asked if the airport searchlights should be turned on, Kramer replies: “No, that’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do.” As tension rises, McCroskey says: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.” Then: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking.” And: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.” Finally: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.”
The most hilariously scandalous scene is when a young passenger, Joey, visits the cockpit.
Oveur: You ever been in a cockpit before?
Joey: No sir, I’ve never been up in a plane before.
Oveur: You ever seen a grown man naked?
Joey (Rossie Harris) insists co-pilot Roger Murdock is actually LA Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who denies it at first but later angrily admits he is. The writers wanted baseball star Pete Rose but he was unavailable. Abdul-Jabbar hoped it would soften his image and negotiated a US$35,000 ($53,000) fee so he could buy an Asian rug. “We were very much influenced by Mad Magazine,” Abrahams says.
“There was this one column ‘Scenes We’d Like to See’. Everything was done seriously until the end when they pulled the blanket out from under it and made their joke. We thought that would be a cool way to make a film.”
Other cameos included musical theatre star Ethel Merman and Barbara Billingsley – June Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver (1957-63) – who talks jive with two passengers (Al White and Norman Gibbs). “Oh, stewardess?,” she says. “I speak jive.” (The audience could follow with subtitles.) And Otto, the inflatable autopilot, who steals the plane after narrowly avoiding a crash landing.
The heart of the film is with Hays and Hagerty. They were not easy roles to cast. Letterman screen tested for Ted. So did Caitlyn (then Bruce) Jenner. The studio suggested Chevy Chase or Bill Murray, and later, absurdly, Barry Manilow. Shelley Long and Sigourney Weaver read for Elaine. Long was surprised not to get the part.
“It was very tough to find Striker,” Zucker recalls. “When Bob came in and read, we knew we had found our Striker. We read a lot of actresses for the role of Elaine … and then this tall blonde model came in and when she read, we all laughed and we thought she was ideal.”
It pays off if you keep an eye on what is happening in the background and closely follow the dialogue. (Another lesson from Mad Magazine.) A passenger says: “I haven’t felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan film.”
A nun reads “Boys’ Life” magazine; a boy reads “Nuns’ Life”. When a well-dressed boy asks a sophisticated girl if she “might like some coffee” she responds positively and invites him to sit down with his tray. “Cream?” he asks. “No, thank you, I take it black, like my men.”
It begs the question: could Airplane! be made today? “Of course, Airplane! could be made today,” Zucker responds, “just without the jokes.”
He adds: “We still have screenings and they’re packed, with the same laughs today as 40 years ago. It’s just that getting this kind of material through a studio executive boardroom would probably be impossible.”
Airplane! was made for US$3.5 million and earned US$83 million. It has been named by the American Film Institute as one of the funniest movies ever made and added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.
The trio, known as ZAZ, went on to make other iconic comedies – together or individually – such as the underappreciated TV series Police Squad! (1982) and films Top Secret! (1984), the Naked Gun series (1988-94), Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993), and the Scary Movie franchise (2000-13). Airplane! started it all.
“The studio had it put in our contract that they could fire us after two weeks if they were not happy,” Zucker says. “It’s kind of outrageous that we were ever paid to have done this. But it was so much fun.”
Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker is published by St Martin’s Press in Australia on March 26. Airplane! is streaming on Paramount+
