Happy 30th Airplane

The movie Airplane debuted on this date, thirty years ago.

From the New York Times:

Surely It's 30 (Don't Call Me Shirley!)
When the creators of Airplane! were lining up actors for their rollicking parody three decades ago, some of the straight-arrow character actors that ended up in the cast worried about the harm it might do to their careers. One of the most skittish participants: Peter Graves, the taciturn 'Mission: Impossible' star who played the movie's pilot, a kindly veteran who welcomes a little boy named Billy into the cockpit and asks questions like "Ever seen a grown man naked?"

"His agent got him the script, and he was totally turned off by it," Jerry Zucker, who wrote and directed the film with his brother, David Zucker, and their lifelong friend Jim Abrahams, said recently during a phone interview with his erstwhile partners. "He thought it was tasteless trash."

Mr. Abrahams interjected, his voice perfectly deadpan: "I don't understand. What did he think was tasteless about pedophilia?"

Graves (who died in March) needn't have worried. Within months of its release in July 1980 Airplane! became the highest-grossing comedy in box office history, a distinction that held until Ghostbusters came along in 1984. And it remains one of the most influential. Its anything-goes slapstick and furious pop culture riffs can be seen in the 20-gags-a-minute relentlessness of The Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy and grab-bag big-screen parodies like Epic Movie, Date Movie and the Scary Movie franchise (the third and fourth installments of which were directed by none other than David Zucker). It also inspired Airplane II: The Sequel in 1982.

Time flies...

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on July 2, 2010 8:29 PM.

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