Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!
This month we’re looking at some of Hollywood’s greats, last week we took a look what inspired Alfred Hitchcock, this week, we’re going to look at the comedy genius behind the greatest comedy of all time, making this weeks book Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! By David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker.
This book is written like a long, 343 page interview between the three authors. And it’s wonderful! One would think a 343 page interview would be wretched, but really, about 10 pages in, I realized it was almost like a documentary script. Like, you can almost picture a camera on them, with cutaways to comments provided by other people involved in the film and impacted by the film.
It covers everything from their start as Kentucky Fried Theater in Madison Wisconsin, to moving that theater to California, Kentucky Fried Movie, and the five year long process to create and make Airplane!, from how they came to cast who they cast, to what inspired the movie.
So the team of ZAZ (Zucker Abrahams Zucker) were all born and raised in Wisconsin, like their families were friends, I believe their fathers were in business together, somebodies sister married someones brother or something. All of this is in the book. But what sort of launched them on the path that led to Airplane! Was when the Zucker’s house caught fire when they were kids. And while the firemen were running around, trying to set up their ladders, their neighbor Mrs. Zubatsky, who they give full credit to, yelled at the firemen to forget the ladders and point the hose at the fire!” Which the firemen did, and the fire was duly extinguished. The boys took this to heart and created what they call Mrs. Zubatsky’s Law: Never assume that just because it’s someone’s job, they know how to do it. If you have a better idea, put down your laundry and do something about it.
And basically, using that as a model, they would grow up watching these super serious shows with heavy dialogue, and then make up their own dialogue…sort of Mystery Science Theater 3000 before that was a thing. And this habit of creating their own funny diaglogue in these like ultra serious dramatic pieces, led to them finding a movie called Zero Hour. This would become their template for Airplane! And enough of the dialogue and story was so shot for shot, that they ultimately ended up purchasing the rights to Zero Hour, just to avoid copyright infringement. Because claiming its satire will only take you so far before you land in court. And if you own the rights to the inspiration piece, there are no lawsuits.
But the good times spent laughing at that gave them the kernel of an idea for deadpan humor. And those shows would very much impact who they got to play the key roles of Rex Kramer (Robert Stack), Steve McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges), Captain Clarence Oveur (Peter Graves), and Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen). None of these actors were known for being comedic. They all had long histories of being serious dramatic actors. The actors weren’t even sure if the deadpan delivery would work or if the script was even funny, until they started seeing the dailies and finally the screening.
Casting Elaine and Ted Striker was a bit harder because they needed romantic leads who could carry the story, play it completely straight, but with pitch perfect comedic timing. And they had several actresses who would go on to be Hollywood A-listers come in an audition, including Shelly Long and Sigourney Weaver. One of the reasons Weaver didn’t get the part is she said point blank there was one line she would not be saying.
And everything is continuing a pace except they’re getting closer to recording and still don’t have their Striker. Then Kismet steps in again and an agent who had just started workgint with Robert Hays agent said she knew Howard Koch, who was a studio producer looking for a male lead on a comedy. And Hays read for the part and was cast opposite Julie Hagerty.
The only genuine comedian they had on cast was Stephen Stucker, aka Johnny. The crew met Stucker when they were I think it was auditioning a piano player for their Kentucky Fried Theater show in California, after the show had moved to CA from WI. Stucker was openly, flamboyantly gay, and so wickedly funny and talented that the ZAZ team didn’t care. All they cared about was putting on a good show that got lots of laughs. And while they insist that the entire dialogue was completely scripted, there was no ad-libbing, but anything Johnny said, they’d have him give them the dialogue. Like this.
And then once they had the script written, began the real challenge: getting the movie made in such a way that they retained creative control. Which you wouldn’t think would be so hard, given that Kentucky Fried Movie had been a smash success, earning back the $600,000 it took to make and distribute it the first weekend.
Their stroke of luck landed when they got an interview with Michael Eisner, who at the time ran Paramount. Part of this came about when a script reader for United Artists had read their script. UA passed on the script, but the script reader, Susan Baerwald, knew Eisner. And when they were having dinner one night, she told him about this script, and he went and made a call, directing his staff Don Simpson “by the time I get in tomorrow, I hope you own this movie.”
So the ZAZ team found themselves at Paramount in a meeting with Eisner. And ZAZ really wanted to make this almost a period piece, set in the 1950’s with a propeller plane, in black and white. And Eisner listened politely, and however much he loved the idea of the movie, said basically you’ve made some interesting points and you’ve been logical and convincing and “you may be right. You may go on to actually make this movie in black and white and on a prop plane, and it even may be a big hit. But it won’t be at this studio.” About the only thing Eisner insisted on was it meet modern audience expectations, which meant a jet airliner, it meant color film. And ultimately Eisner was right. And the ZAZ team caved on that one in an excellently chosen case of pick your battles. Because some of their upcoming battles included casting choices, where the studio wanted to cast well known comedic actors, and even whether or not they’d be able to direct the movie.
They initially were given a what I’m going to call yellow light to direct. Basically, the studio would let them start directing, but retained the right to fire them and take over the movie I think for the first two weeks. Luckily, the dailies were such a hit, that was quickly a non-issue.
And of course the movie was made, and it is consistently ranked funniest movie other made, which is the rank it earned with the American Film Institute. Rolling Stone rated it second place to Blazing Saddles which is fair…both are hilarious.
Obviously, there is a lot more in a book that’s 345 pages, and there is. This book covers from their childhood, to casting choices, why they use their family in movies, how they came to pick Kareem Abdul Jabar…it’s hilarious. One of the quotes from Kareem Abdul Jabar, and this is also on the back cover, says “I was flying to Europe on a 747, and the pilots came back, made me get out of my seat, and pulled me into the cockpit to take off with them—so they could say they flew with Murdock!”
And Peter Graves tells about a time he was standing in the super market and there’s a kid with his mom in front of him, and they’re both trying to figure out where they’ve seen Graves before. So as the mom and kid are leaving, he leans down and says “Son, do you like movies about Gladiators?”
There are so many parts of this book that had me laughing out loud, I actually got it on audible too for my husband, because he prefers audible, he’ll listen to books while working. On the audible side, I *think* that everyone quoted in the book read their quotes. I might be wrong, I haven’t listened to it yet, but it has a full cast, including Weird Al Yankovich, the ZAZ team, Jimmy Kimmel, Beau Bridges…all of whom are quoted in the book.
This book was an incredibly fast read, I think I read it in 2 days, and honestly if I hadn’t had work, I probably could have read it in a day. It was wonderful, and funny, loved every second I spent reading it and could hardly put it down. Highly recommend if you need a good laugh and a walk down memory lane…I mean…OTHER PEOPLE’s memories, but still. It was fun to read, and gods know we could all use a laugh these days.
