Airplane!

Name	Airplane!
Caption	theatrical poster
Director	Jim Abrahams David Zucker Jerry Zucker
Producer	Jon Davison Howard W. Koch
Writer	Jim Abrahams David Zucker Jerry Zucker
Starring	Robert Hays Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Julie Hagerty Leslie Nielsen Peter Graves Lloyd Bridges Robert Stack Frank Ashmore Lorna Patterson Stephen Stucker
Music	Elmer Bernstein
Cinematography	Joseph F. Biroc
Editing	Patrick Kennedy
Distributor	Paramount Pictures
Released
Runtime	87 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$3,500,000 (est.)
Gross	$83,453,539
Followed by

Airplane! (titled Flying High! in Australia, New Zealand and Japan) is a 1980 American satirical comedy film directed and written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker and released by Paramount Pictures. It stars Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty and features Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Lorna Patterson. The film is a spoof of the disaster film genre, and a close parody of the 1957 Paramount film Zero Hour!. The film is well-noted for its use of absurdist and surrealist comedy.

Airplane! was a huge financial success, grossing over US$83 million in North America alone, against a budget of just $3.5 million.

In the years since its release, Airplane!'s reputation has grown substantially beyond its modest comic intentions. The film was voted the 10th-funniest American comedy on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs list in 2000, and ranked 6th on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies. In a major 2007 survey by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, it was judged the second greatest comedy film of all time.

In 2008, Airplane! was selected by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time and in 2010, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Plot

Ex-fighter pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays) became traumatized during "the war", leading to his fear of flying and his "drinking problem" (actually just a tendency to spill his drinks). Recovering his courage, Striker attempts to regain the love of his life from the war, Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty), now a stewardess. In order to win her love, Striker overcomes his fear and buys a ticket on a flight she is serving on, from Los Angeles to Chicago. However, during the flight, Elaine rebuffs his attempts.

After dinner is served, many of the passengers fall ill, and fellow passenger Dr. Barry Rumack (Leslie Nielsen) quickly realizes that the fish dinner gave some passengers food poisoning. The stewards discover that the pilot crew, including pilot Clarence Oveur (Peter Graves) and co-pilot Roger Murdock (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), have all come down with food poisoning, leaving no one aboard to fly the plane. Elaine contacts the Chicago control tower for help, and is instructed by tower supervisor Steve McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges) to activate the plane's autopilot, a large inflatable doll named "Otto", which will get them to Chicago but will not be able to land the plane. Elaine realizes that Striker, being the only pilot on board who has not succumbed to food poisoning, is their only chance, and he is convinced to fly the plane, though he still feels his trauma will prevent him from safely landing it.

McCroskey knows that he must get someone else to help talk the plane down and calls Rex Kramer (Robert Stack). Striker and Kramer served together in the war and must overcome their negative history. As the plane nears Chicago, Striker becomes increasingly stressed and can only land the plane after a pep talk from Dr. Rumack. With Kramer's endless stream of advice, Striker is able to overcome his fears and safely land the plane with only minor injuries to some passengers, and damage to the landing gear. Striker's courage rekindles Elaine's love for him, and the two share a kiss while Otto takes off in the evacuated plane after inflating a female companion.

Cast

Robert Hays as Ted Striker

Julie Hagerty as Elaine Dickinson

Leslie Nielsen as Dr. Barry Rumack

Peter Graves as Captain Clarence Oveur

Lloyd Bridges as Steve McCroskey

Robert Stack as Captain Rex Kramer

Lorna Patterson as Randy, the blonde stewardess

Stephen Stucker as Air Traffic Controller Johnny Henshaw-Jacobs

Frank Ashmore as Victor Basta

Jonathan Banks as Gunderson

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as Roger Murdock/himself

Craig Berenson as Paul Carey

Barbara Billingsley as Jive Lady

Lee Bryant as Mrs. Hammen

Nicholas Pryor as Mr. Jim Hammen

Joyce Bulifant as Mrs. Davis

Marcy Goldman as Mrs. Geline

Barbara Stuart as Mrs. Kramer

Ross Harris as Joey Hammen

James Hong as a Japanese General

Norman Alexander Gibbs as First Jive Dude

Al White as Second Jive Dude

David Leisure as First Krishna

Jill Whelan as Lisa Davis

Ethel Merman as Lt. Herwitz

Otto as himself

Production

Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker (collectively known as ZAZ) wrote Airplane! while they were performing with the Kentucky Fried Theatre, a successful small theatre they had founded in 1971. The ZAZ came to the idea of spoofing airplane films when they accidentally taped the 1957 film Zero Hour!, while they were looking for commercials to spoof.

The trio knew director John Landis, who encouraged them to write a film based on their theatre sketches. They managed to put the film, called The Kentucky Fried Movie, in production in the late 1970s, and entered a movie set for the first time; David Zucker explains: " 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." mostly during August 1979. The plane used throughout the film was a TWA Boeing 707 model; the plane taking off with "The End" credit is not a 707 (which has four engines), but a Boeing 727 tri-jet. The ambient noise of the plane is not that of a jet but a propeller driven plane (possibly piston engines); it was taken from the soundtrack of Zero Hour!, making it the longest running gag in the film.

During filming, Leslie Nielsen used a fart toy to keep the cast off-balance. Hays said that "He played that thing like a maestro."

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." David Zucker felt Stack was the most important actor to be cast, since he was the "linchpin" to the film's plot.

Release

Prior to its release, the directors had been apprehensive due to a mediocre response at one of the pre-screenings. However, the film made back its entire budget of about $3.5 million in its first weekend of release. Overall, it earned more than $83 million at the box office and another $40 million in rentals,

Reception

Airplane! received universal acclaim from critics and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1980. The film maintains a 98% "Certified Fresh" rating at the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 48 reviews. 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". 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". In 2008, Airplane! was selected by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. It was also placed on a similar list by The New York Times, a list of The Best 1000 Movies Ever Made. In 2010, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.

and Leslie Nielsen in the cockpit. The autopilot "Otto" on the left is typical of the film's sense of humor, as is Nielsen repeatedly popping in to the cockpit at inopportune moments with good luck wishes.]] MaximOnline.com named the airplane crash in Airplane! number four on its list of "Most Horrific Movie Plane Crashes." Leslie Nielsen's line (in response to 'surely you can't be serious'), "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, readers of Total Film voted it the second greatest comedy film of all time. It also came second in the British 50 Greatest Comedy Films poll on Channel 4, beaten by Monty Python's The Life of Brian. Entertainment Weekly voted the film the "Funniest movie on video" in their list of the 100 funniest movies on video.

Several actors were cast to spoof their established images: Nielsen, Stack, and Bridges were known for 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-TV-movie , in which an SST was unable to land due to an emergency.

Nielsen saw a major boost to his career after the release of Airplane!, and the film marked a significant change in his film persona towards a new specialty in deadpan comedy, notably in the three Naked Gun films based on the six-episode television series Police Squad!. This also led to his casting, many years later, in Mel Brooks' . Brooks had wanted to make that film for a long time, but put it off because, as he said, "I just could not find the right Dracula." Brooks claimed to have never seen 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. Stack and Bridges saw similar shifts in their public image, though to lesser extents.

Several members of the cast in minor roles went on to better known parts. Gregory Itzin, who appears as one of the religious zealots, played President Charles Logan in the Fox series 24. David Leisure, who played one of the Hare Krishna, went on to fame as Joe Isuzu before appearing as Charlie Dietz in the sitcom Empty Nest. Michael Warren, who is seen as one of the patients in the hospital during Ted's flashback (and had also been a teammate of Abdul-Jabbar at UCLA), would go on to play Bobby Hill on Hill Street Blues. Jill Whelan, who played the little sick girl Lisa Davis, went on to star as Vicki Stubing (Daughter of Captain Merrill Stubing played by Gavin MacLeod) in The Love Boat. Lisa Davis' mother is played by Joyce Bulifant, who portrayed Gavin MacLeod's wife Marie Slaughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Influences

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."

See also

Flight into Danger

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.

References

External links

The New York Times retrospective article

Retrospective article at The Guardian

Airplane! Script at Simply Scripts

Category:1980 films Category:1980s comedy films Category:American comedy films Category:Aviation films Category:American disaster films Category:Films set on an airplane Category:Films set in Los Angeles, California Category:Films shot in Metrocolor Category:Paramount films Category:American parody films Category:Slapstick films Category:Satirical films Category:Films directed by Jim Abrahams Category:Films directed by David Zucker Category:Films directed by Jerry Zucker Category:Films which are set within one day Category:United States National Film Registry films