Some movies seemed to just come around at the right time. When Airplane! opened in the summer of 1980, the Irwin Allen-produced era of the disaster movies that dominated the 1970s had ended with the atrociously bad When Time Ran Out… and it seemed the movie could’ve been a parody that was a few years overdue.
Yet, the comedy team of childhood friends Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker or ZAZ as they were known were smart enough to keep the movie from being a one-joke concept. In fact, it was a parody of the 1957 movie Zero Hour! they had discovered on the late show one night. ZAZ fell in love with the movie and decided to use it as the basis for Airplane! even using similar names of the protagonist, Ted Stryker, and even some of the dialogue.
Mel Brooks said you make fun of the movies you love. It would’ve been easy for someone to mock the disaster movies for a short skit on Saturday Night Live. But the genius of Airplane! is having famous celebrities delivering their outrageous lines with the serious dramatic inflection as if they are making an actual disaster movie. When Barbara Billingsley pops up to act as a interpreter for two Jive-talking guys, it’s grossed into the absurd lunacy of a great comedy.
It was like ZAZ was pulling from the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, and Brooks’ movies with their own style of having jokes appear on screen so quick and to the point the audience finds themselves laughing just on instinct. Airplane! was a huge success and catapulted them into stardom.
On Tuesday, Nov. 26, Abrahams, the oldest of the Wisconsin-based trio, died from cancer at the age of 80. Abrahams had pretty much remained silent from the entertainment world for years. His last writing credit was in 2006 on Scary Movie 4, directed by David. His last directing credit wasn’t his best effort. Mafia! opened in the summer of 1998 a week after the smash hit There’s Something About Mary and it seemed a new style of comedy was the rave.
For the most part, Abrahams mostly had his biggest success in the 1980s and early 1990s. Following the success of Airplane!, ZAZ skipped the studio’s call for a sequel and went to the small screen with Police Squad! It reunited them with Leslie Nielsen who had been in Airplane! and was known as a jokester around Hollywood circles. With his deadpan delivery as Det. Frank Drebin, the show was a parody of old police procedurals like M Squad and Felony Squad.
Unfortunately, the series’ use of sight gags and play on crime show tropes went over people’s heads with some Hollywood people saying it was canceled because you had to watch every scene of it. Nielsen reiterated the comments in an interview before he passed in 2010 that people couldn’t turn the show on as background noise or jokes to hear in the other room. The series only resulted in six episodes being produced. Years later, Nielsen would revive the role in The Naked Gun and two sequels. Abrahams co-wrote the first movie and produced with David directing.
ZAZ had pretty much went on their own after three movies and a failed TV show. In 1984, they made Top Secret! which is Val Kilmer’s first movie role as a parody of Cold War espionage movies from the 1950s and 1960s. However, like Police Squad!, they relied on a lot of sight gags, most notably a whole scene shot in reverse with a cameo by Peter Cushing to make it look like everyone is speaking Swedish.
The movie grossed just $20 million and didn’t find its audience until the home video market and the explosion of Kilmer’s career later. Roger Ebert praised the movie and “Weird Al” Yankovic, who would go on to appear in all three Naked Gun movies, claims it’s his favorite comedy movie.
Abrahams worked again with the Zucker Brothers as directors on the comedy Ruthless People with Danny DeVito, Bette Middler, Judge Reinhold and Bill Pullman. In my opinion, it shows their talents to branch out. The movie about a million refusing to pay the ransom on his wife who is kidnapped was a success despite not being an original script by ZAZ. DeVito, himself, gives one his best roles as the slimey sleazeball Sam Stone wants the kidnappers, played by Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater, to kill his wife so he can inherit her estate. The movie’s title song would be sung my none other than Mick Jagger.
Abrahams went on to reunited with Middler in Big Business which also starred Lily Tomlin and Fred Ward. Middler and Tomlin play dual roles as identical twin sisters switched at birth. One set goes up in high society and the other grows up in rural America and they both meet at a hotel in New York City during a big business merger deal is being negotiated.
He branched out in making straight-forward comedies like Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael with Winona Ryder. But then returned to the parody format with the Hot Shots movies with Charlie Sheen, Lloyd Bridges and Valeria Golino. The movies were both huge hits at the box office.
Off-screen, Abrahams was hit with personal family issues. His mother made a noteworthy appearance in Airplane! as she is the passenger seated next to Nielsen’s Dr. Rumack and is one of the passengers waiting in the aisle with a baseball bat to have her moment trying to calm a hysterical passenger. But his son, Charlie, would become the focal point of The Charlie Foundation to Help Cure Pediatric Epilepsy. Charlie suffered from epilepsy and Abrahams and his wife, Nancy, would bring awareness to epilepsy in children.
Abrahams appeared briefly on camera as one of the religious zealots at the airport in Airplane! who tries to harass Robert Stack’s Rex Kramer. In Top Secret!, he appeared with the Zucker Brothers as East German soldiers who arrest Kilmer’s character. ZAZ would also make a cameo in BASEketball, which David directed and co-wrote, as spectators who are ogling the young cheerleaders. They would appear as themselves, even though very anachronistic, in a scene in Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, as it would detail a filming of a scene with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The movies of ZAZ, most notably Airplane!, would inspire future filmmakers. Seth MacFarlane is a huge fan and has made references to the movie several times in Family Guy as well as the 2015 Ted movie. He’s also the co-writer and producer on a remake of The Naked Gun with Liam Neeson set to be released in 2025. The first Hot Shots! movie, which opened a month after the second Naked Gun movie in the summer of 1991 would usher in a new era of parody/spoof movies with Brooks and Carl Reiner getting some attention with younger audiences.
Unfortunately, the success of the first Scary Movie would lead to the filmmaking duo of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer turning the genre into a gross-out humor, pop culture references that would be quickly dated and lame cameos of actors mugging for the camera. The genre is now pretty much dead as the Internet and video shorts seems to be where most of the material is now as most of them don’t have enough for an entire feature movie.
And one thing the movies don’t have is that love Brooks was talking about. There’s a humor about some of their earlier works in which you can see how foolish even the most serious movies can be. Rest in peace, Jim! Thanks for the laughter.
What was your favorite movie? Please comment.
Zane Says 