Celebrating 40 years of laughs with five favorite moments of this comedy classic.
As we depart what has certainly been the dreariest July most of us have ever known, we can’t say leave without giving a shout out to Airplane!, one of the greatest comedies ever made. In a year that’s already brought us Covid-19, a recession and Donald Trump at his most Donald Trump, while calling John Lewis, Carl Reiner, Regis Philbin, Alan Parker and Olivia de Havilland home, celebrating something as continuously joyous like Airplane! (which turned 40 this month) is very much needed! Although the brand of comedy/spoof/parody that Airplane! embodies feels commonplace now, it can never be forgotten that it was the one who set the tone for this specific level of humor.
Gifted with the goodwill of a major studio and armed with a cast that included Julie Haggerty, Robert Hays, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Peter Graves, among others, the writing/directing/producing trio of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker set off to achieve their goal of making a comedy chock full of random gags which sent up popular culture and commented on the social climate of the day. What no one banked on was the fact that the comedy movie landscape would be forever changed as a result.
For the precious few who’ve never seen the movie (those poor dears), Airplane! is a comedic take off on the “disaster in the air” sub-genre of films. The movie stars Julie Haggerty and Robert Hays as Elaine and Ted, a flight attendant and former fighter pilot, respecitvely, whose relationship is on the rocks. When the flight they’re on is left in danger after the crew becomes incapacitated from some bad airplane food, it’s up to the two to safely land the plane in Chicago.
In celebration of Paramount’s new blu-ray edition of Airplane!, here are a rundown of five key elements from the movie and how they’re all essential for bringing to life one of the greatest comedies ever made.
1. The Jive Guys– It’s hard to know what element of this hilarious sequence operates as the key to making it work as solidly as it does. Maybe it’s the totally improvised dialogue with its rhythmic flow (which was mostly improvised by actors Al White and Norman Alexander Gibbs), Elaine’s good-hearted, but hopelessly clueless attempts to understand it, or the surprise that the Beaver’s mom (Barbara Billingsley) is able to hold her own jive game, but the scenes featuring the jive guys are pure awesomeness. The subtitles are hilarious, the chemistry between the actors works and the filmmakers go back to them enough times to make them feel like they’re more than just a throwaway gag. At a time when racial relations still had work to do, Airplane!’s look at the differences between black and white societies were handled with good humor and honesty, playing up the stereotypes of both sides in a way which said that the two still had plenty to learn about each other.
2. Captain Rex Kramer’s House– No one should ever accept a dinner invitation to the home of Captain Rex Kramer (Stack). The movie only spends one scene in his house but it manages two of the biggest laughs in the entire Airplane! experience during that brief time. When Paul Carey (Craig Berenson) arrives to pick up Kramer, he’s greeted by the family golden retriever who greets him with enthusiasm before quickly turning into a ferocious beast. While all this is going on, Kramer is adjusting his hat and complaining about the situation awaiting him at the airport before pulling off one of the best mirror gags in all of cinema history. It’s admittedly a simple trick, but one which is so slickly executed thanks to the lighting, camera setup and Stack’s precise timing and delivery, that when it happens, it makes an already funny scene even more hysterical, while adding a touch of the surreal. Kramer has many great moments in Airplane! and his unforgettable entrance perfectly sets the stage for all of them.
3. What Planet is Johnny On? Although his entrance is perhaps the most subtle one in all of Airplane!, Stephen Stucker is probably the one actor (apart from Neilsen) whose character manages to score with every moment he’s given. Nothing about Johnny makes sense, including his role in the control center. At one point he’s seen typing like a secretary before taking over talking to reporters about the danger in the air (leading to his brilliant Tylenol comparison) and then springing to the tower with the higher-ups. I have a feeling that Johnny may be the conduit for many of the filmmakers’ jokes which had little room elsewhere. “Your husband is alive, but unconscious,” Bridges tells a frightened wife (Lee Terri) whose husband is aboard the plane. “Just like Gerald Ford,” adds a sympathetic Johnny. One of the few characters to re-emerge in the sequel, Johnny is always a welcome sight when revisiting Airplane! thanks to the way he so perfectly embodies the total lunacy of the world Abrahams and the Zuckers have created.
4. “I’ve got to get out of here”– The beauty of Airplane! is how all of the passengers have their signature joke, whether it be trying to haplessly put on some questionable makeup or snorting some cocaine. Mrs. Hammen (Lee Bryant), however, was thankfully blessed with two. After expressing her thoughts in a hilarious send-off of a classic Folger’s commercial, she’s then given one of the most iconic gags of the film when she starts freaking out about the situation she’s in, hysterically claiming that she needs to leave the airplane right then and there. Seeing flight attendant Randy (Lorna Patterson) and Dr. Rumack (Nielsen) try and calm her down through a series of shakes and slaps is hilarious enough, but Abrahams and the Zuckers take the joke to town when the camera shows the long line of passengers lining up in order to inflict their own various kinds of pain onto Mrs. Hammond. How is she supposed to survive the kind of punishment inflicted by a meat hook? How is the sick jive guy still well enough to take a place in line with a wrench? Where did all these “methods” come from?! Asking these questions and reveling in the fact that they can’t be answered remains a key part of why the scene is one of the funniest in all of Airplane!
5. What’s going on in the cockpit?– No scene or scenes have had the same kind of effect in defining the zany surrealism of Airplane! better than when Joey (Rossie Harris)visits the cockpit. What starts off as a typical visit of a young passenger being wowed by seeing the front of an airplane soon becomes something quite different. It all would be cringeworthy, if it wasn’t also side-splittingly unexpected. Hearing Captain Oveur (Graves) ask Joey whether or not he’s ever hung around a gymnasium or likes movies about gladiators is jaw-dropping but made wonderfully comedic by his matter-of-fact delivery and his winsome looks into space while asking them (the actor reportedly only agreed to recite the lines if he was allowed to look away from his young co-star while saying them.) Taking things even higher on the absurdity scale is the presence of Kareem Abdul-Jabar as co-pilot Roger Murdoch. Although introduced earlier in the film, he’s noticed by Joey who calls him out for the real-life basketball star he was at the time. Abdul-Jabar’s struggle to hold it together as the young fan persists results in a great moment when Kareem angrily admits who he is. It’s a perfectly postmodern move to think of a basketball star hiding out under the guise of an airline pilot and the fact that it’s followed up by another one of Captain Oveur’s jaw dropping questions shows that skilled comedic balancing act that makes Airplane! soar.
Airplane! was one of the biggest moneymakers of 1980, spawning a very funny sequel and elevating its young filmmakers into comedy pro status. Rewatching Airplane! in preparation for this piece, I was struck by just how much the humor not only holds up, but also gives back in terms of being able to escape from the very real horrors the world finds themselves waking up to each day. Now more than ever, a movie like Airplane! proves vital for a person’s sanity, allowing them to laugh out the fears and frustrations they find themselves battling on a regular basis. In a Q&A following a special screening recorded especially for this release, one attendee commented on how much the movie meant to him when he showed it to a dying loved one, giving them both the chance to share one last laugh-filled memory. The younger Zucker responded by saying he’s been privileged enough to hear many similar stories throughout the years from fans who have found comfort in the movie he helped make. In a sense, that may be the greatest testament to Airplane! as well as the reason for its longevity. Few, if any, other comedies can pioneer a level of humor with enough potency to last for decades, while also managing to feed the soul in ways no one anticipated and which are almost impossible to describe.
Airplane! is now available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Paramount Pictures.