Airplane!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the movie. For the aircraft, see Fixed-wing aircraft.

Airplane!
The knotted plane was used on a movie poster and VHS and DVD covers.
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.
Language	English
Budget	$3,500,000 (estimated)
Followed by	Airplane II: The Sequel
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 and 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 dialog slightly, and of course add the visual gags, to make a comedy classic. Many devotees 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".

1 Plot synopsis
2 Cast
3 Response
4 Notable gags
5 Trivia
6 Cultural references
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Plot synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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.

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.

Image:Airplane!1.jpg

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 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.

Spoilers end here.

[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-Jabaar as Roger Murdock
Lorna Patterson as Randy
Stephen Stucker as Johnny Henshaw
Otto as himself

[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. 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. It also came 2nd 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.

[edit] Notable gags

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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".
In the beginning of the movie, a man (played by politician Howard Jarvis) sits down in the cab that Ted Striker is driving. Striker tells him that he will be back in one minute, starts the cab's meter, then runs into the airport and subsequently boards the plane. Throughout the movie, there are shots of the man sitting in the cab waiting for Ted, with the meter still running.
As a running gag the movie plays on words and sentences as characters repeatedly misinterpret questions and statements. For instance: "Captain, can't you take a guess on how soon we can land?" "Well...not for another two hours." "You can't take a guess for another two hours?" There are also numerous "what is it" phrases throughout the movie, in that when someone asks "what is it," the question is answered literally. For instance: "I have to get these people to a hospital." "A hospital? What is it?" "It's a big building with doctors and patients, but that's not important right now."
The plane's Captain, played by Peter Graves, constantly drops hints to a naive young boy of pedophilia with lines like "You like watching Gladiator movies?....Ever seen a grown man naked?"
When Ted sits down he begins to tell his excruciatingly tedious life story to a variety of fellow passengers. Each time, after the stereotype flashback sequence, eventually the picture fades back to the cabin with Ted saying: "Well I could probably go on for hours, but I'd probably bore you to death," by which time his fellow passenger has either committed suicide or is in the process thereof. The first older woman he told the story to hung herself, a Japanese General (James Hong) he next told the story to committed seppuku, and an Indian man had doused himself in gasoline and was about to set himself on fire (he accidentally sets himself on fire once Ted has gotten up and left).
In a running gag throughout the movie, Ted has a "drinking problem" where he brings a drink up to his forehead or torso and pours in on himself instead of drinking normally.
Whenever an exterior shot of the plane flying in the air is used, the sound effects heard are that of a propeller driven plane, like a DC-3, even though it's a jet.
When Ted notices he forgot to check engine #3, he responds with "When Kramer hears about this the shit's gonna hit the fan." In the next scene, a piece of feces actually hits a fan at the airport.
Steve McCroskey explains that he picked the wrong week to quit various addictions. During one week he attempted to quit smoking cigarettes, drinking, amphetamines, and sniffing glue. After a week of going cold turkey, it took one day to make him go back to his habits.
When both pilots are taken out by food poisoning, Elaine activates the auto-pilot, which turns out to be a blow-up doll named Otto (as in autopilot). However, Otto soon starts to de-inflate, and the area to re-inflate Otto is located between his legs. When Dr. Rumack comes into the cabin to see how things are going, it looks like Elaine is giving Otto oral sex. Eventually, we get shots of Otto smiling, and, moments later, the both of them smoking, with a satisifed expression on Otto's face.
Two of the passengers only speak "jive." Though they speak in English, subtitles or translations are provided anyway. This cumulates in a scene where an old lady (Barbara Billingsley) has to translate their speech for a stewardess when one of the jive talkers gets sick with food poisoning.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Trivia

Airplane! was filmed in 34 days, mostly during August 1979.
David Letterman screen-tested for the Ted Striker role that eventually went to Robert Hays.
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.
Adolf Hitler is listed in the crew credits as the Worst Boy.
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. According to the producers, Stack was "doing an impression of John Byner doing an impression of Stack."
Gregory Itzin, who played President Charles Logan in the FOX series 24, played "Religious Zealot #1" in Airplane! and said the film's first lines.
David and Jerry Zucker appear as two ground crew members who accidentally direct a plane into an arrival hall.
The Zuckers' mother, Charlotte Zucker, who is cast in small roles in all of their films, makes a cameo as the woman attempting to apply makeup in the plane as it violently shifts.
Jim Abrahams is one of the many religious zealot characters scattered throughout the film.
In her final film appearance Ethel Merman makes a cameo as a soldier who is convinced he's Ethel Merman.
Barbara Billingsley makes a brief appearance as the woman who speaks jive.
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).
All ground shots of the main airplane were of a TWA Boeing 707.
David Leisure (Joe Isuzu, Empty Nest) plays a Hare Krisnhna in the movie.

[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 sideplot 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.
The first wartime flashback parodies both Casablanca and Saturday Night Fever, and a later flashback references 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, 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.