Airplane!
From Freepedia
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 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.
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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.
Airplane! is very close to Zero Hour!, following it virtually scene for scene, and lifting its major characters and most of its story line. Indeed, many of the best known lines are repeated verbatim, for example, "Can you face some unpleasant facts?" and "I guess 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 sniffing 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!).
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 a passenger "Surely you can't be serious?" Nielsen's character would respond: "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. 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 Aiplane 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 a red stripes, curtains at the windows, wheels, and it just looks like a big Tylenol!"
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.
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.
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 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.)
Gags in this motion picture
- When Robert Stack is driving to the airport to talk Stryker 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 a bicyclist.
- At the front entrance to the airport, a pair of voices - one male, one female - 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.
- When Ted gets his ticket for the flight, he's asked, "Smoking or non-smoking?"; he answers smoking, and is handed a ticket that is smoldering, and it is still giving off smoke when he is outside ready to climb aboard the aircraft.
- 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. Oveur started 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.
- A mechanic 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.
- Two pieces of luggage being pulled with leashes start growling and snapping at each other, resisting the efforts to keep pulling them along.
- In a wartime flashback, 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, "sorry, that's classified".
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.
Several actors were cast in order to spoof their established images: Stack and 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] 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. Ethel Merman has a memorable cameo as a shell-shocked fighter pilot who thinks he's Ethel Merman.
Another running gag was bilingual notices in normal English and phonetically-spelt "jive."
Nielsen saw a major boost to his career, and since Airplane! has specialized in playing clueless deadpan bumblers. Bridges and 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.
It is interesting to note that, according to the directors, the only airline to ever buy the rights to, and show the movie on its aircraft is Aeromexico.
External link
- Airplane! at the Internet Movie Database
