Airplane!: Encyclopedia - Airplane!

Airplane!

Airplane! is an American comedy film, first released on July 2, 1980, produced and directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, and starring Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It is the second of a number of movies produced and directed by the trio (the first being The Kentucky Fried Movie). In some foreign releases (including Australia), Airplane! was entitled Flying High as in those countries airplanes are called aeroplanes. The movie is meant to be a spoof of several movies, including Airport 1975.

The film is regularly shown on television, with many devotees repeatedly rewatching the film, in the process catching other gags that they did not notice earlier due to the sheer number of often overlapping sight, sound, and dialogue gags.

Airplane II: The Sequel, first released on December 10, 1982, attempted to tackle the science fiction film genre. Although most of the cast reunited for the sequel, the two films have no writers in common.

Several actors were cast in order to spoof their established images: Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack and Lloyd Bridges had played many adventurous, no-nonsense tough-guys, including Stack as the captain in one of the earliest airline "disaster" films, The High and the Mighty. Nielsen had played "more cops, doctors, and attorneys than you could shake a nightstick/stethoscope/law book at." [1]

Airplane! - Plot synopsis

The plot of Airplane! is a well-travelled one. The story of an in-flight medical emergency, caused by food poisoning, started as the CBC TV movie Flight into Danger, then became the 1957 Paramount Pictures movie Zero Hour! Thus Airplane! is the fourth remake of the Arthur Hailey novel Runway Zero-Eight. Also, there are several influences from the disaster movie Airport 1975.

Airplane! is very close to Zero Hour!, following it virtually scene for scene, and lifting its major characters and most of its story line. The directors acknowledge all of this in their DVD commentary. Indeed, many of the best known lines are repeated verbatim, for example, "Can you face some unpleasant facts?" and "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking," which becomes a running gag. As the plot escalates, so does the potency of the drug ("I guess I picked the wrong week to quit sniffin' glue.") Even the odd sports cameo remains intact. In Zero Hour!, the cameo is by Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch. In Airplane!, it is basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Airplane! also has elements based on films in the Airport series, specifically Airport '75, which was also based on novels written by Arthur Hailey. The elements that the film lifted from Airport '75 included the guitar song (a flight attendant played by Lorna Patterson in Airplane! and a nun played by Helen Reddy in Airport '75) and the sick little girl that the guitar song is played for (played by Linda Blair in Airport '75 and Jill Whelan in Airplane!). In this case, the well-meaning guitar player keeps banging into the girl's life-critical IV and unplugging it.

When the pilots of a commercial airliner get sick, an ex-fighter pilot, Ted Striker (Robert Hays) must conquer his fear of flying and fly the plane to its destination. Striker's ex-girlfriend (Julie Hagerty) is a flight attendant. Nielsen portrays a doctor on board. His catchphrase in the film became famous worldwide. In response to the question from Ted Striker, "Surely you can't be serious?" Nielsen's character responds: "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley". ...and don't call me Shirley has entered the language as an all-purpose, nonplussed response. He gives a similar response to Ted later in the movie. Ted says, "Surely there must be something you can do." Nielsen's character responds, "I'm doing everything I can. And stop calling me Shirley." Nielsen's career would forever be changed due to this film; his deadpan, serious brand of comedy not only altered the subtext of his earlier, serious roles, but he'd become almost exclusively typecast in gag comedies, including the Naked Gun films by the Airplane! directors Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. Stephen Stucker became known for the scene-stealing flamboyantly gay character Johnny Hinshaw, inspiring many catch-phrases like "And Leon's getting laaaaaarger!", "The tower, the tower, Rapunzel!" and describing the airplane as "Oh, it's a big pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the windows, wheels, and it looks like a big Tylenol!" (Knowing of Stucker's eventual suffering and death from AIDS tend to damper the enjoyment of his outrageous characterization).

Lloyd Bridges portrays the chief air traffic controller, and Robert Stack plays Hays' former commander, who is brought in to aid him in landing the airplane. Bridges' role was a direct spoof on his San Francisco International Airport television role of Jim Conrad. Howard Jarvis, the author of California's property tax initiative Proposition 13, plays a man who patiently waits in the back of Striker's cab throughout the movie. As the directors point out, Jarvis was well-known at that time and is a mystery man to the modern audience.

Some critics have claimed that the movie's most "important" achievement was in bringing to an end the Airport series of movies, which could no longer be taken seriously.

Airplane! - Gag-based comedies

Airplane! is one of the most famous and acclaimed examples of a genre of similar gag-based comedies that defy logic, reason, and the "fourth wall" to produce laughter in any way possible, with comic references to other famous 'straight' disaster films such as Airport.

When this type of comedy works, it is exceptional (the animated cartoons of Tex Avery were a great influence), though it can be difficult for filmmakers to achieve success when working on a movie that often denies characterization and even plot development. Other successful movies of this type include Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles; Marx Brothers films in which Groucho would sometimes address the audience directly; likewise with many a Bugs Bunny cartoon; and the "Road movies" of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. More recent movies of this sort include Hot Shots!, The Naked Gun trilogy, the Austin Powers series, and the Scary Movie series. (A number of other films in this genre were less successful, including Loaded Weapon, The Big Bus, Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, and Spy Hard.)

Airplane! - Gags in this motion picture

Note: The special "Don't call me Shirley!" edition of this film was released to DVD on December 13, 2005, and some of the following insights are either taken from or confirmed by the three directors' commentary on the DVD.

• When Robert Stack is driving to the airport to talk Striker down, the movie spoofs rear-projection behind an automobile mockup, with a road scene that speeds up even as it curves repeatedly, then switches to Indians chasing the car along a forest trail. Stack's character also runs down -- or more accurately upends over his car -- a bicyclist, who immediately arises from the pavement and angrily pumps his fist, yelling "asshole!". The cyclist is actually one of the directors, each of whom (along with their wives and some other relatives) have brief cameos in the film as extras.
• When Rex Kramer (Robert Stack) arrives at the airport, he dramatically whips off his sunglasses and he's wearing a slightly smaller pair of sunglasses underneath.
• At the front entrance to the airport, a pair of voices - one male, one female (the actual LAX announcers, in fact) - announce not to stop in the red zone, and not to park in the white zone. They are assumed to be recordings, until the man gets mixed up as to which zone is which and they begin arguing. In a later scene at the entrance, they are discussing her pregnancy and his advice of the best place to get an abortion. Yet, not one person on the ground pays any mind to this personal conversation. (It is likely the voices were dubbed in later. The directors revealed that many of the background "extras" were actual passengers, as they of course could not get permission to close down the LAX airport).
• When Ted gets his ticket for the flight, he's asked, "Smoking or non-smoking?"; he answers intently, "smoking, please," and is handed a ticket that appears to be smoldering, and it is still giving off smoke when he is outside ready to climb aboard the aircraft and when he sits down in his seat and begins to tell his excruciatingly tedious life story to a fellow passenger.
• The last person to board is warned by a train conductor that it's time to get aboard, and as the plane "chugs" out of the terminal apron, the door of the plane is still open as his girlfriend runs along beside the plane, banging into metal columns that resemble the kind used in train sheds. Oveur also starts the plane moving by moving a control similar to a train being put into motion. However, the airplane's engines resemble jets, while starting up like old prop-jobs and the plane sounding in flight like a bomber. (The directors wanted to use a propellor plane, to get a "1950s look", and settled for a prop-plane sound effect).
• When the crew pulls the fainted Roger Murdock out of his seat, he can be seen wearing basketball shorts, despite his denials earlier in the film, and also a pair of protective goggles, clearly poking (!) fun at Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's history of eye injuries.
• When the plane is losing altitude, Elaine yells, "The mountains, Ted, the mountains!" He says, "What mountains? We're over Iowa." So, in the same scared voice, she yells, "The cornfields, Ted, the cornfields!"
• As Leslie Nielsen rattles off a list of the food poisoning's gradual effects, one of the poison's victims, Captain Oveur, begins experiencing the effects as they are verbally listed.
• The "automatic pilot" is nothing more than an inflatable doll, aptly named "Otto", that inflates in the co-pilot's seat when activated. If it loses inflation during use, its control of the airplane slackens, but unfortunately, the manual inflation nozzle is in a... compromising location. After she has had to inflate it, both Elaine and Otto are seen smoking cigarettes in an apparent post-coital situation.
• A man dressed like a service station attendant lifts the plane's hood to check the dipstick, but falls off the ladder while trying to leap onto the hood to get it shut. Another attendant continues the service station gag by handing a credit card slip to Oveur to sign.
• Two pieces of luggage being pulled with leashes start growling and snapping at each other, resisting the efforts to keep pulling them along (Airplane II The Sequel - which all three directors claim they have never seen).
• In a wartime flashback (including grainy stock footage of World War II dogfights), Ted gives all kinds of classified information to Elaine, where and when they're going to be bombing, but when Elaine asks Ted when he'll be back, he says, "I can't tell you that. It's classified."
• Barbara Billingsley, the archetypal suburban mother on Leave It to Beaver, has an especially funny appearance when she offers to translate for a pair of hip African American passengers whose jive talking is incomprehensible to stewardesses: "Stewardess? I speak jive." (The directors had fantasized about using the entire "Beaver" crew, whom they had idolized, but only Billingsley was available).
• A female passenger is putting on red lipstick when the plane hits turbulence and she gets a long lipstick streak across her cheek. Later the plane hits more turbulence and the same passenger is seen still applying makeup. Now she has green eyeshadow smudged on her face as well.
• After interviewing Johnny and getting no useful information, one grizzled-looking reporter tells a group of his fellow journalists, "Okay boys, let's get some pictures." The reporters respond by grabbing framed pictures off the wall.
• Ethel Merman has a memorable cameo as a shell-shocked fighter pilot who thinks he's Ethel Merman (her final film appearance, and singing a bar of "Everything's Coming Up Roses").
• When the two black men are speaking in their "jive", the screen is subtitled in very white middle class English, translating expressions like "She-it!" as "Golly!"
• Elaine, while serving with Ted in the Peace Corps in an isolated village in Africa or the East Indies, attempts to sell the natives "Supperware", a movie version of Tupperware.
• Ted develops a "drinking problem." (He brings the glass to his forehead instead of his mouth.)
• In a flashback sequence that shows how Ted and Elaine first met (which spoofs Saturday Night Fever), a fist fight erupts between two girl scouts over a disputed poker hand.
• Ted is flying the plane. Elaine is operating the radio and relaying the messages between him and Kramer. Ted says, "It's a damn good thing he doesn't know how much I hate his guts." Elaine says to Kramer, "It's a damn good thing you don't know how much he hates your guts."
• When a stewardess says, "Assume crash positions", the passengers sprawl out everywhere like they were just thrown out of their seats by a crash.
• At the beginning of the movie, Ted tells the passenger in his taxi (played by tax-reformer Howard Jarvis) that he'll be right back and goes to find Elaine. The passenger waits for him. At the end of the closing credits, the passenger is still in the taxi waiting for Ted and he says, "Well, I'll give him another twenty minutes, but that's it!"
• Whenever someone asks "What is it?" meaning "What's wrong?", another character interprets this as "Describe the object". For example "We must get this man to a hospital!" "A hospital? What is it?" "It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now". (This type of gag would be reiterated in the "Naked Gun" pictures).
• Passengers pay no attention to Elaine when she tells them about everything that's wrong with the plane but panic when she announces that they just ran out of coffee.

Airplane! - Response

• Airplane! was a major hit: The budget was about US$3.5 Million, and the film earned over US$80 Million at the box office, and another US$40 Million in rentals. The directors were initially apprehensive due to mediocre response at pre-screenings, but the film made back its entire budget in its first weekend of release.
• Leslie Nielsen saw a major boost to his career, and since Airplane! has specialized in playing clueless deadpan bumblers. Lloyd Bridges and Robert Stack saw similar shifts in their public image, though to lesser degrees.
• In 2000, the American Film Institute listed Airplane! as #10 on its list of the 100 funniest American films. In the same year, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 2nd greatest comedy film of all time.
• At a critical point in the film, the passengers are watching a movie. The attendant advises everyone to remain calm and not to worry. The passengers continue to watch the in-flight movie, and we see a fiery crash of an airplane. In reality, most airlines would never show a movie that hints at any sort of mid-air problem with an aircraft. At that point, in the DVD commentary, the directors reported that the only actual airline to buy the rights to their film for in-flight showing was Aeromexico.

Airplane! - Trivia

• Airplane! was filmed in only 34 days, mostly during the month of August 1979.

• The three co-directors' commentary on the DVD released on December 13, 2005, is interesting for at least two reasons. One is that they do not provide very much scene-by-scene analysis, they mostly tell general stories about the making of the movie. The other is that the commentary speaks in the present tense about Robert Stack, who had died in May of 2003, two and a half years earlier.

• One interesting area of discussion was the varying degrees of effort required to get some of the seasoned professional players to do this spoof in the way the directors wanted.
  • Lloyd Bridges and Peter Graves required more coaching, as they were not totally comfortable with doing satire.
  • Robert Stack played his role differently in early rehearsals than what the directors had in mind. They had to play for him a tape of impressionist John Byner "doing" Robert Stack. As they said in the commentary, Stack was doing an impression of John Byner doing an impression of Stack.
  • Leslie Nielsen "got it" quickly. Nielsen is known for having a wry, deadpan and sometimes bawdy sense of humor in real life.

• See Zero Hour! for further information on the source of the script.

Airplane! - External link

• Airplane! at the Internet Movie Database

Airplane! - See Also

• Airplane II: The Sequel

Categories: 1980 films | Comedy films | Paramount films

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Airplane!", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki