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Obviously the gamble paid off, but were there moments where you thought, “We’ve made a terrible mistake”? You guys were all young men of, what, 30 years old, directing these cinematic icons. But for some reason, David and Jim and I were hysterical every time we saw that joke play. And then there’s a big explosion out there.
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Here’s one thing that apparently was not funny - but we always thought it was when we wrote it, when we filmed it, when we saw the dailies: Lloyd Bridges taking a puff of his cigarette and tossing it out the window and then putting his fingers over his ears. Were there any bits that just never worked?
Airplane movies movie#
But when the movie plays, they always get a laugh. So there are a lot of little things like that.
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One of our favorites was when Leslie asks Lorna Patterson, “How are you holding up?” And she says, “I’m okay.” She starts crying, and she says, “I’m frightened, and I’m 26, and I’m not married.” And then the other woman comes in and says, “I’m frightened, but at least I have a husband.” Something about that always made David and Jim and I laugh a lot. What are some your personal favorite jokes from Airplane!? I always thought, “Don’t call me Shirley” was a great line, but I had no idea it would become the emblematic line of the movie. But it’s been fun to see which jokes stick. There are things like that, that I think I always found kind of funny or cool, but I think people just don’t notice. But then instead of turning around and the reflection walking backwards, which would be real if it was a reflection, Stack walks forward, right through the mirror. We see his reflection in the mirror, and his wife looking at him, at the real him, not the reflection. At the very end of the scene, Stack leaves, and his wife is there, and he walks through the mirror. There are gags like in the scene you just mentioned at Robert Stack’s home. Are there any you wish had been noticed a little bit more? (For instance, I happen to love just the scene when Robert Stack is leaving his house as the courier gets attacked by the dog, and there’s the mirror gag.) There are so many quotable jokes from Airplane! that everyone still just knows in the mainstream. Before she gets to, “I remember how I used to sit on your face and wriggle,” there’s a whole thing about, “Yes, I remember those days, but you couldn’t keep a job.” You know?ĭo you think the spoof movie still exists?Īnd we told our actors to pretend that they did not know they were in a comedy … Leslie is the most perfect example of how we envisioned that sense of humor and what our sense of ZAZ brand of humor is. If you look closely at Airplane! you see that we keep coming back to actors seriously worried about the plane crashing.Īnd we keep coming back to the love story. When you go back to it, you have to take it seriously. I mean, it’s the best possible setting for a comedy, because there’s always the danger. You could teach a structure course using Zero Hour! Things keep changing, and there’s danger. One of the reasons Airplane! worked is because it’s a great story, which we can’t take credit for, because it was based on Zero Hour!, and the exact same story.
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Why do you think Airplane! worked as a complete film? A sketch is shorter, and it requires less commitment from an audience, but 87 minutes of this could potentially get tiring. As the film celebrates its 40-year legacy, and returns to cinemas for a limited run with TCM Big Screen Classics and Fathom Events through Sept 9, co-writer and director Jerry Zucker (also behind Ghost, which celebrates its 30 th anniversary this year…but more on that soon) joined Den of Geek for a look back at his favorite jokes, the reasons Airplane! flew so high, and why its journey is far from over, Oveur.