Side-by-side comparison of "Airplane!" and its source, "Zero Hour!"

That's awesome!

 

Is there an Airplane! appreciation thread? If not, we need one.

One of my favorite all-time movie quotes:



Genius writing. Genius acting.

 

"I just want you both to know... we're all counting on you."

I think 90% of my jokes in the 1980s revolved around Airplane, Animal House, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein, plus some Monty Python and SNL stirred in.

 

This bit never gets old

Jive Speak Aeroplane!

 

Best part of the acting was they all played it completely straight as if it were a 'normal' movie. If the actors has tried to be funny, I don't think it would have worked nearly as well. (With the exception of the actor who played Johnny, of course.)

We could do a whole thread of favorite quotes from this movie. Would probably get as many pages as the one for The Godfather.

My favorite:
"How soon can you land?"

"I can't tell."

"You can tell me. I'm a doctor."

"No. I mean I'm just not sure."

"Well, can't you take a guess?"

"Well, not for another two hours."

"You can't take a guess for another two hours?"

 

Which is why his scenes stick out like horrifically unfunny sore thumbs and come close to ruining the last act of the film

 

Yeah, I don't completely disagree with you here.

 

Airplane's a total classic. Never understood why women hate movies like this and The Naked Gun series so much.

 

Two words:

Three. Stooges.

 

Funny to see this thread, since I just ordered Airplane on blu-ray today.

 

IIRC they had to explain to Lloyd Bridges he had to play his character straight; he kept wanting to mug for the camera a la Milton Berle. My favorite actor in the film was Robert Stack; he did it note perfect, and the scene of him going thru the airport knocking every Hare Krishna/peacenik/etc. out of his way is a keeper!

 

Aw, Johnny is great.

"What do you make of this, Johnny?"
"Oh, I can make a hat... a brooch... a Pterodactyl..."

C'mon, that's FUNNY.

 

Not at all! Johnny’s silliness helps to make the otherwise deadpan acting work so well.

“And Leon’s getting laaaarrrger!” is hilarious!

 

We'll have to agree to disagree?

I think he's atrocious. It's possibly my least favorite performance in film history -- though to be fair ZAZ must share the blame for casting him.

I am mystified as to why some people think it's right for every actor to play it straight -- except one.

Imagine how much more effective it would have been to cast an old time character actor -- Ed Binns, Charles McGraw, Gene Evans, somebody like that -- and have him doing all the silly things: "There's a sale at Penney's!"



Aside from consistency of tone among the actors, there is no incongruity when an over the top type like Stucker does these things. A successful incongruity is in the Police Squad pilot, when Drebin, in his Joe Friday tone, reminisces about living with his patrol partner and all the scurrilous gossip that ensued, especially after he lived with his partner's son for six months -- "it just wasn't the same."

 

Stephen Stucker was an outrageous, flamboyant, over-the-top gay comic comedian, and he'd done other movies prior to Airplane (and after it, too, until his unfortunate death from AIDS in 1986). All I can tell you is when the movie was released in 1980, the audiences in the theater screamed with laughter and went absolutely crazy every time he came on screen. Airplane is one of those movies that has about 150 repeatable lines, and I think Stucker totally fit in with the madness.

You might as well criticize the scene where Robert Stack is frantically driving to the airport and the (very obvious) rear projection behind his car goes to countdown leader and Indians riding horseback and chasing him. Is that realistic? No. Does it make sense? No. Is it funny? Yes -- very funny.

 

I've read that ZAZ actually considered cutting Stucker out of the film (finally coming to their senses), but he was the most popular thing with preview audiences.

I can't watch his scenes. I think he's terrible. We can keep this going if you want.

 

1. Is that the dirty cop from The Godfather??

2. I can't believe that Zero Hour also had the "hysterical passenger" scene!

3. Johnny rules.

 

No, that's Charles McGraw, fondly remembered as one of the killers in the original The Killers and as a cop in Armored Car Robbery and The Narrow Margin. You're thinking of Sterling Hayden, who was in Zero Hour! Too bad they couldn't get him to reprise that role in Airplane!

I always thought of Johnny as a younger Paul Lynde.

 

Yes, that is Captain McCluskey - Sterling Hayden (In Zero Hour)

Never knew about Zero Hour, always assumed it was just lampooning the Airport series and other disaster movies.

On another note I remember watching a rerun of a TV film about the 'Great Brinks Robbery' (made in the early 70's?) which went through how the heist was planned, executed and then the follow up FBI investigation.

Leslie Nielsen played one of the FBI agents and having already seen Airplane I just couldn't take the film seriously from the point he appears. He has the same deadpan delivery and whilst a serious film it just made me laugh...

 

Tell me everything that has happened up to now.

Well, first the earth cooled, then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they died and turned into oil, then the Arabs came, and they bought Mercedes Benzes...

 

You can't argue funny. It either is, or it isn't. It's funny to me -- I can't speak for anybody else.

 

I love Airplane I and II, but I hate the Leslie Neilson anything-for-a-laugh genre that it generated.

 

Love this moofie (known as Flying High! in Oz, for some reason).

Stryker: "It's a different kind of flying altogether"

Stewardess and Doctor, in unison: "It's a different kind of flying".



And the Johnny character is hilarious. The "Just kidding!" and the "And Leon's getting larger!" bits are champagne comedy.

--Geoff