Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of ‘Airplane!’

The Zucker brothers and Abrahams debut with a rollicking oral history unpacking how their 1980 comedy Airplane! was made. In 1971, the trio, who had known one another since attending the same Wisconsin high school, formed the Kentucky Fried Theater, a live comedy troupe that built a reputation for itself around Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. Their success led them to seek financing for a screenplay spoofing a melodramatic and “obscure” 1957 airplane disaster movie about a PTSD-afflicted army pilot who has to “land a passenger plane whose pilots had been stricken with food poisoning.” The Zuckers and Abrahams recall their uphill battle to persuade Paramount to let them direct and their struggle to cast the film, with its “unconventional” humor going over the heads of many of the actors they approached. The authors are as quick-witted as one would expect (Jack Webb “came in for a meeting, but he turned down the role,” David Zucker says, to which Abrahams replies, “Probably because we let him read the script”), and brief reflections from the major players involved will intrigue fans (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recalls joining the film to lighten his serious public image). This is a must-read for anyone who loves the film. Photos. (Oct.)