Jim Abrahams (1944–2024)

Confronted by a book with the title “Surely You Can't Be Serious,” the only possible reply is, "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."

The movie “Airplane!,” released in 1980, was the first Hollywood movie with three directors, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, also the authors of this 2023 book about the making of that groundbreaking film. Having three directors was not as difficult as one might think, they say. Majority ruled. Plus, all three of these Wisconsin natives show more shared the same sense of humor, which nobody else in Hollywood seemed to share at that time.

The key to the success of this comedy, thought by many to be the funniest movie ever made, was being completely serious, they tell us. Hollywood bigwigs insisted they needed someone with the comic stature of Chevy Chase or Bill Murray to make a funny movie. Instead they chose the most serious dramatic actors they could think of — Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves and Leslie Nielsen. Nielsen, of course, went on to become a comic genius in film after film, but he did it by always playing his roles seriously, just as this young trio taught him.

Every actor in the film was told to play each scene as if they were in a B-movie drama like “Zero Hour!,” the 1957 B-movie that it parodied. Having serious actors deliver ridiculous lines seriously worked. Audiences never stopped laughing, and still haven't after all these years. The comedy holds up remarkably well so many years later. (I have been watching several “Airplane!” scenes on YouTube lately, and each one makes me laugh as hard as I did the first time I saw them.)

The book takes the form of a movie screenplay, but with lots of stills from the movie. It is a compilation of quotes about what happened before, during and after the making of the movie. Many of the comments come from people like Jimmy Kimmel and Maya Rudolph who had nothing to do with making the movie but have fond memories of watching it.

The trio got away with many gags that would not have been allowed in other movies and would certainly be impermissible today. Yet the jokes are so funny and fly by so quickly that nobody seems to mind. Many parents have watched “Airplane!” with children too young to understand the jokes.

Reading this book is a poor substitute for watching the movie, but it makes a wonderful companion to it. show less

Extremely enjoyable oral history from Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker about the groundbreaking, joke-a-minute Airplane!, including interviews with the stars, bit players, production crew, and current comedians who were influenced by its unique brand of humor. The book also looks back at ZAZ's youth and college days in Wisconsin, where their dream of writing and directing a hit comedy movie flourished despite their lack of knowledge, money, or connections. Their unlikely journey (anyone remember show more Kentucky Fried Movie?) eventually led to the point where ZAZ were cold calling Robert Stack, Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges and other Hollywood drama veterans and begging them to star in their bizarre movie, playing it completely straight while chaos reigned around them.

Among the many fun facts I learned from the book: the Paramount studio heads wanted Barry Manilow (!) to play leading man Ted Striker instead of Robert Hays; Shelly Long of Cheers fame auditioned for Elaine's part; and most of the dueling PA announcers' lines were lifted verbatim from Arthur Hailey's blockbuster suspense novel [b:Airport|124918|Airport|Arthur Hailey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309288724l/124918._SY75_.jpg|120317].

It should be noted that the non-ZAZ interviews were conducted by Will Harris, a former writer for the A.V. Club, whose "Random Roles" columns were highlights of the pop culture site. Sadly, AVC is now a shell of what it used to be because Capitalism, but I relish seeing writers from its heyday securing plum jobs like this one. show less

I received an advance copy via NetGalley.

If you love the movie Airplane!, read this book. It's a hoot. I knew absolutely nothing about the story behind the movie or about the three main creators, Jewish boys from Wisconsin. I hadn't heard of Kentucky Fried Theater or even the Kentucky Fried Movie. Even so, the story kept me engaged from page one. It doesn't follow a typical narrative nonfiction format with blocks of information. Instead, it flows in the form of an interview, with Zucker, show more Abrahams, Zucker, and many other essential people throughout the process chiming in with their experiences. There are also many notes from other major comedians of recent decades who were influenced by Airplane!

One thing that threw me off at first was the absence of a chronological flow. The book jumps back and forth through time from the making of Airplane, to the formation of the core group, then back to Airplane, and so on. I can see why they did it that way--most everyone is reading to find out about Airplane, not what happened in Madison in the early 1970s--and overall I feel it worked, because I kept reading. It was odd, though--which I suppose should be expected in consideration of the wits involved.

Some of my favorite bits were about how the actors were cast, how the Jive dialogue developed and how the famed "Mrs. Cleaver" learned her lines, and how many of the jokes evolved. Nothing was actually ad-libbed. It mostly stayed on script, though there were a few strokes of brilliance on filming day. show less

This is an oral history of how the movie Airplane! came to be, in the words of the three directors (Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker), the cast, and some of the producers. I skipped a fair chunk of the early bit because I wasn’t actually that interested in Kentucky Fried Theater (ZAZ’s precursor project), but I can understand why it was included. I was more interested in learning about how the directors translated their vision into an actual movie and what the cast thought of the whole idea show more of bringing in “serious” actors from B-movies to play the comedy roles. show less