Airplane!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Airplane! | |
|---|---|
 Airplane theatrical poster |
|
| Directed by | Jim Abrahams David Zucker Jerry Zucker |
| Produced by | Jon Davison Howard W. Koch |
| Written by | Jim Abrahams David Zucker Jerry Zucker |
| Starring | Robert Hays Julie Hagerty Leslie Nielsen Robert Stack Lloyd Bridges Peter Graves Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Lorna Patterson |
| Music by | Elmer Bernstein |
| Cinematography | Joseph F. Biroc |
| Editing by | Patrick Kennedy |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 27, 1980 |
| Running time | 88 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3,500,000 (estimated) |
| Followed by | Airplane II: The Sequel |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Airplane! is an American comedy film, first released on June 27, 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, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lorna Patterson. It is the first film the trio wrote and directed together (the group previously wrote The Kentucky Fried Movie, directed by John Landis). In some releases (including Australia), Airplane! was entitled Flying High: the reason most often quoted for this is that "in those countries 'airplane' is not used to refer to a powered flying machine, the correct word in countries of the Commonwealth of Nations being 'aeroplane'."
Airplane! is a spoof of the disaster movie genre. It has a serious storyline at its core, but the entire movie is thoroughly engulfed in humor. The movie is meant to be a spoof of several films, including Airport, but especially its sequel, Airport 1975, as well as commercials of the era. However, most of Airplane's storyline is based on the 1957 movie Zero Hour!, which it follows almost scene for scene and line for line (the producers had bought the rights to Zero Hour! after seeing it by chance on television). The writers had only to tweak the heavy-handed dialogue slightly and add visual gags to make it into a comedy. Many fans of Airplane! repeatedly re-watch the film, in the process catching 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 or directors 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.
Airplane! was voted as the 10th-funniest American comedy in AFI's "100 Years... 100 Laughs" list. The film is number 6 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".
Contents |
[edit] Plot synopsis
When the pilots of a commercial airliner get sick, Ted Striker (Robert Hays), an ex-fighter pilot, 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.
The plot of Airplane! is a well-traveled 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 emergency escalates, so does the potency of the drug ("I guess I picked the wrong week to quit drinking/amphetamines/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 1975, which was also based on novels written by Arthur Hailey. The elements that the film lifted from Airport 1975 included the guitar song (a flight attendant played by Lorna Patterson in Airplane! and a nun played by Helen Reddy in Airport 1975) and the sick little girl that the guitar song is played for (played by Linda Blair in Airport 1975 and Jill Whelan in Airplane!). In this case, the well-meaning guitar player keeps banging into the girl's life-critical intravenous drip and unplugging it.
[edit] Cast
- Robert Hays as Ted Striker
- Julie Hagerty as Elaine Dickinson
- Leslie Nielsen as Dr. Rumack
- Robert Stack as Captain Rex Kramer
- Lloyd Bridges as Steve McCroskey
- Peter Graves as Captain Clarence Oveur
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as Roger Murdock
- Lorna Patterson as Randy
- Stephen Stucker as Johnny Henshaw
- Otto as himself
[edit] Cameos
- All three directors have cameos in the film. David and Jerry Zucker appear as two ground crew members who accidentally direct a plane into a terminal. Jim Abrahams is one of the many religious zealot characters scattered throughout the film.
- Charlotte Zucker — mother of two of the directors — is the woman attempting to apply makeup in the plane as it violently shifts.
- Ethel Merman makes a cameo as a soldier who is convinced he's Ethel Merman. It was her last film appearance.
- Barbara Billingsley makes a brief appearance as the woman who speaks jive.
[edit] Other Roles
Several members of the cast in minor roles went on to better known roles.
- Gregory Itzin played "Religious Zealot #1" later played President Charles Logan in the FOX series 24,
- David Leisure played "First Krishna", and went on to fame as Joe Isuzu before appearing as Charlie Dietz in the sitcom Empty Nest).
[edit] Production
- Airplane! was filmed in 34 days, mostly during August 1979.
- Robert Stack initially played his role differently than what the directors had in mind. They played for him a tape of impressionist John Byner "doing" Robert Stack. According to the producers, Stack was "doing an impression of John Byner doing an impression of Stack."
[edit] 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, most notably in the six-episode TV series Police Squad! and its film followups, the three Naked Gun movies. 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 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. 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.
The line "I am serious... and don't call me Shirley," was 79th on AFI's list of the best 100 movie quotes. The popularity of Otto, the inflatable pilot, is such that he has his own page on the Internet Movie Database, even though he hasn't appeared in any other films.[1]
[edit] Trivia
- "Rex Kramer" is also the name of a character in an early ZAZ movie, The Kentucky Fried Movie.
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's name is misspelled as "Kareem Abdul-Jabaar" during the final credits of both the movie shown at theaters and the version made for home video release.
- Although Stephen Stucker appears in both this movie and Airplane II: The Sequel, ostensibly playing the same character, he is credited simply as "Johnny" in the first one, and "Jacobs" in the sequel.
- David Letterman screen-tested for the Ted Striker role that eventually went to Robert Hays.
- The in-flight movie (of a crashing airliner, no less) is a clip from the horror movie The Bees.
- WZAZ, the call letters of the radio station whose transmitter is destroyed by the airplane, is a reference to the directors' names (Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker).
- The air carrier operating the plane in the movie is the seemingly fictional "Trans-American Airlines". Trans-American was, at the time of the film's production, a real operating cargo carrying airline, who consented to their name being used in the spoof. (Source: Filmmakers's commentary on the Airplane! DVD)
- All external shots of the jet airplane at cruising altitude are of a crude scale model, and are accompanied by the loud drone of a propeller-driven aircraft. (These were deliberate gags, according to the filmmakers's commentary on the Airplane! DVD)
- MaximOnline.com named the airplane crash in Airplane! #4 on its list of "Most Horrific Movie Plane Crashes."
- Aeromexico is the only airline to show the film on its flights.
- The German translation of the movie title is Die unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug[2] ("The Unbelievable Flight in a Crazy Airplane")
- The French translation of the movie title (released in Canada) is Y a-t-il un pilote dans l'avion?[3] ("Is There a Pilot on the Plane?")
[edit] Cultural references
- The opening sequence parodies Jaws.
- The argument between the LAX announcers over the PA is taken from the Arthur Hailey novel Airport.
- The marshaller accidentally directing the plane to crash into an arrival hall parodies the film Silver Streak.
- The side plot of the ill-fated George Zipp, which is paid off later by a pep talk given to Ted is a parody of the famous "Win one for the Gipper" speech from Knute Rockne, All-American.
- Lloyd Bridges' role was a direct spoof on his San Francisco International Airport television role of Jim Conrad.
- Captain Oveur asking Joey "Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?" is a reference to the movie Midnight Express
- The first wartime flashback parodies both Casablanca and Saturday Night Fever, and a later flashback is similar to the famous kiss scene in From Here to Eternity (although the filmmakers deny seeing it beforehand and say they came up with it on their own).
- Rumack's last line, "I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.", which is repeated three times in the movie, is Nielsen's final line in Scary Movie 3, also a Zucker film.
- The band Gomez has referenced characters from this movie with a song called "Rex Kramer" on their album In Our Gun and a B-side titled "Steve McCroski" which appears on their album Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline.
- The TV show Family Guy makes a reference to the film in the episode "Prick Up Your Ears" when it depicts Stewie in shock and being slapped by Brian and Chris. A line forms similar to the film where other various characters in the show are holding bats, guns, and other weapons waiting for their turn to get Stewie out of shock. In the Season 5 episode "Airport '07", many scenes from Airplane! are parodied, and prominently feature musical cues from Elmer Bernstein's original score.
- The film is referenced in the parody videos Conversations with the SSS in the Anime Series MADLAX.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Airplane! at the Internet Movie Database
- Airplane! Script at Simply Scripts
- Airplane! Clip Crash Scene
