Airplane! turns 30...And Leon is getting laaaaarrrrrger.

[Jangler]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/movies/27airplane.html

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.

“A lot of comedies in the last 30 years have wanted to be ‘Airplane!,’ ” said Patton Oswalt, a comedian and actor and the voice of the hero in “Ratatouille.” “But most of those movies took the wrong message from ‘Airplane!’ They were gag, gag, gag, gag, where ‘Airplane!’ is really structured, driving the story along all the time. In a weird way it’s like a Beatles movie. It looks like the easiest thing in the world, but there’s a lot of sweat and blood that went into it.”

“There is one line in ‘Zero Hour!’ where a stewardess says, completely seriously, ‘The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner,’ ” Mr. Abrahams said. “That was the essence of the movie. We just repeated the line. We didn’t have to change a thing.”

Mr. Oswalt said: “Seeing the movie for the first time taught me a great lesson: You’ve got to play comedy as if it’s deadly serious. You’ve got to play weirdness as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.”

Couple of months ago TCM played Zero Hour, I had never seen it. It was almost as funny as Airplane!, only because so much of it is in Airplane! And it's not a very good movie. I'm sure TCM will play them again next month.

[Matt Foley]

Ted: It's a good thing he doesn't know how much I hate his guts.

Elaine: It's a good thing you don't know how much he hates your guts.

[Jangler]

Rumack: You'd better tell the Captain we've got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.

Elaine Dickinson: A hospital? What is it?

Rumack: It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.

[Matt Foley]

Black guy: Sheeeeeeeit

Subtitle: Golly!

[Jangler]

TCM is playing Zero Hour! July 17th @ 4PM

and Airplane! August 16th @ 1:15AM

Elaine Dickinson: You got a telegram from headquarters today.

Ted Striker: Headquarters--what is it?

Elaine Dickinson: Well, it's a big building where generals meet, but that's not important right now.

[Matt Foley]

Elaine: Joey, have you ever been in a cockpit before?

Joey: No. I've never even been on a plane before.

Pilot: Ever...seen a grown man naked?