Airplane! (1980): 30 Small Details You Missed

[00:00:00]Yes, the stewardess is here with me.

[00:00:02]>> Good. Never sit in the co-pilot's seat.

[00:00:07]>> Elaine.

[00:00:07]>> Airplane has been making people laugh since the summer of 1980, and most of us have seen it more times than we can count. But even after all those viewings, the movie is still hiding things. Jokes tucked into the background, casting decisions with layers of meaning you'd only catch if you knew the history, gags that take the whole film to pay off. So here are 30 small details you missed in Airplane.

[00:00:35]1980.

[00:00:38]>> Those roads they had no thought of drainage in mind. So we had to take a special Jeep up to the main road.

[00:00:47]>> Detail 30. The whole movie is based on a real film nobody remembered.

[00:00:54]Most people assume Airplane is a broad parody of 1970s disaster movies. Airport 75, The Poseidon Adventure, that whole era. And while it certainly jokes fun at those films, it was actually built almost shot-for-shot on a single 1957 Paramount film called Zero Hour.

[00:01:15]The ZAZ team, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker, discovered it during a late-night videotape session while they were still performing as a comedy troop.

[00:01:26]They watched Zero Hour and realized they'd found something extraordinary.

[00:01:32]A completely earnest disaster film whose plot, characters, and dialogue were already inherently funny if you just played them with a straight face.

[00:01:43]The food poisoning on a flight, the war-traumatized pilot, the fog, the fish, all of it came from Zero Hour.

[00:01:52]They liked it so much they bought the rights to the film outright so they could use whatever they wanted without legal risk. The adaptation was so close that when Airplane was considered for awards, it was submitted in the adapted screenplay category, not original.

[00:02:10]>> Elaine.

[00:02:11]>> Ted.

[00:02:13]>> I came home early and found your note. I guess you meant for me to read it later.

[00:02:18]>> Detail 29. Ted Striker was already called Ted Striker in the original film.

[00:02:25]When ZAZ bought the rights to Zero Hour, they didn't have to rename the hero. The lead character in Zero Hour was already Ted Striker, just with a slightly different spelling. They changed the Y to an I and kept everything else. The character of Elaine was called Ellen in Zero Hour, and they nudged it to Elaine.

[00:02:46]These are barely changes at all, which was deliberate. The joke was that Airplane was hiding in plain sight as a remake of a movie nobody had seen.

[00:02:57]>> Traffic below us cleared. And I want a priority approach and landing in Chicago.

[00:03:06]>> Detail 28. The propeller sound running through the entire film.

[00:03:14]Every single time the exterior of the plane appears in Airplane, the sound you hear is a piston-driven propeller aircraft, despite the fact that the plane on screen is clearly a jet. This gag runs through the entire film, and most viewers never consciously register it. The sound itself was actually lifted from Zero Hour, which featured a propeller plane. Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker kept it in as both a tribute and a running joke that plays throughout the whole picture without ever announcing itself.

[00:03:51]>> Passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone.

[00:03:58]>> Hello.

[00:03:59]>> Detail 27, the Jaws parody opening nobody mentions.

[00:04:07]The very first shot of the film is a deliberate parody of the opening of Jaws. Where Spielberg's 1975 film opened on a shark fin cutting through open water, Airplane opens on what appears to be the same shot, except it turns out to be the tail fin of the airplane slicing through clouds. The music even mirrors the Jaws theme briefly. It goes by in seconds, and then the movie is already moving on.

[00:04:42]>> All right, now I want you to disengage the automatic pilot.

[00:04:45]>> Detail 26, the airport announcers were the real LAX announcers and married to each other.

[00:04:55]The recurring bit where the airport public address voices bicker about the white zone and the red zone, escalating from parking regulations to a discussion about abortion, was performed by the actual married couple whose voices appeared on the real announcement tapes at Los Angeles International Airport.

[00:05:15]ZAZ tried auditioning professional voice actors for the part, but couldn't find anyone who sounded authentic enough.

[00:05:22]They tracked down the real LAX voices, hired them, and let them escalate into absurdity.

[00:05:29]The detail that they were a married couple in real life made the domestic argument angle even funnier on paper.

[00:05:39]>> I'll be back in a minute.

[00:05:46]>> Detail 25, The man in the taxi was a real-life political figure, and that's the whole joke.

[00:05:56]Early in the film, Ted Striker hops out of a taxi to follow Elaine onto the plane, leaving the meter running and telling the passenger he'll be right back.

[00:06:05]The passenger in the cab is Howard Jarvis, the California tax activist who had successfully led the campaign for Proposition 13 just the year before, making him famous in 1979 for aggressively opposing unnecessary spending.

[00:06:22]The joke is that a man who made his public name fighting against wasteful costs is left silently accumulating a massive taxi fare for the entire length of the movie.

[00:06:33]The payoff comes after the end credits, when Jarvis is still sitting there saying he'll give the driver another 20 minutes.

[00:06:42]>> Properly, therapeutically, there's no danger involved.

[00:06:46]>> Taxi!

[00:06:50]>> Detail 24. The post-credit scene almost nobody stays for.

[00:06:58]Speaking of Howard Jarvis in the taxi, the scene where he finally gets his line appears after the closing credits finish rolling.

[00:07:07]In the theatrical experience, most audiences had already left by the time it played.

[00:07:13]The joke has two levels. First, the comic absurdity of someone waiting patiently in a cab for nearly two hours, and second, the political satirical layer that only California audiences in 1980 would have immediately understood.

[00:07:31]>> Where did you get that dress? It's awful, and those shoes and that coat.

[00:07:35]Jeez.

[00:07:38]>> Detail 23. All of Johnny's lines were improvised.

[00:07:44]Stephen Stucker played Johnny, the anarchic air traffic controller who delivers a stream of surreal non sequiturs throughout the film.

[00:07:53]According to the DVD commentary, ZAZ gave Stucker the straight lines of all the other characters around him and then told him to write his own responses.

[00:08:03]Everything Johnny says in the film, all of it, was Stucker's own invention.

[00:08:09]The directors kept what worked and cut what didn't.

[00:08:13]Stucker, who had previously appeared in ZAZ's Kentucky Fried Movie, was the only cast member given that level of creative latitude.

[00:08:23]His character became a fan favorite specifically because of how unpredictably he operated against the more controlled chaos happening around him.

[00:08:32]Stucker died of AIDS-related complications in 1986 at the age of 38, making Airplane and its sequel among the most visible records of his work.

[00:08:44]>> We better get back now, Joey.

[00:08:46]>> No, Joey can stay here for a while if he'd like.

[00:08:48]>> Could I?

[00:08:49]>> Okay, if you don't get in the way.

[00:08:52]>> Detail 22.

[00:08:54]Peter Graves initially threw the script across the room.

[00:09:00]When Peter Graves first read the screenplay, he reportedly threw it away and called it the worst piece of garbage he had ever read.

[00:09:09]His agent and his daughters urged him to take a second look. Robert Stack, by contrast, understood what was being asked immediately and reportedly helped Graves get comfortable with the material by telling him they just wanted him to play himself.

[00:09:25]Graves had previously appeared in the TV movie SST Death Flight and his casting was partly a direct reference to that role.

[00:09:36]>> You You have me confused with someone else. My name is Roger Murdock. I'm the co-pilot.

[00:09:40]>> You are Kareem. I've seen you play.

[00:09:44]>> Detail 21: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the second choice written for Pete Rose.

[00:09:53]The role of co-pilot Roger Murdock, the NBA star trying to maintain the fiction that he is an ordinary airline pilot, was originally written for baseball player Pete Rose.

[00:10:04]The timing didn't work out and the role was recast. Abdul-Jabbar was brought in after the producers couldn't secure Rose and he agreed to do the film under the condition that his character wear a Los Angeles Lakers jersey beneath the uniform, which becomes visible when the boy Joey yanks it open.

[00:10:24]At the time of filming, Abdul-Jabbar was still an active player with the Lakers and the criticism the fictional Joey levels at Roger Murdock's defense and court effort was a genuinely pointed real-world ribbing.

[00:10:39]The moment where Abdul-Jabbar breaks character entirely to defend his regular season effort is one of the film's most memorable beats and the kind of joke that landed harder if you followed the NBA in 1980.

[00:10:55]>> Yes, I remember I had lasagna.

[00:10:57]What did he have?

[00:10:58]>> He had fish.

[00:10:59]Doctor, there are two more sick people.

[00:11:02]>> Detail 20: The role of Dr. Rumack was offered to Vincent Price and Jack Webb first.

[00:11:12]Leslie Nielsen wasn't the first choice for Dr. Rumack. The role was offered to Vincent Price and Jack Webb before it went to Nielsen and both turned it down.

[00:11:22]Price later said publicly that it was one of his greatest career regrets.

[00:11:27]Nielsen's casting turned out to be transformative, not just for the film, but for his entire career.

[00:11:34]Before Airplane, he was primarily known as a serious dramatic actor, most recognizable as the doomed ship captain in The Poseidon Adventure.

[00:11:45]ZAZ instructed him specifically to play the role as though he had no idea he was in a comedy, to deliver every line as if he genuinely believed the medical emergency was real.

[00:11:57]Nielsen took direction so well that even the filmmakers forgot he wasn't actually confused. Airplane completely rewrote his identity, and he spent the rest of his career in comedy, including the long-running Naked Gun series and numerous other spoofs before his death in 2010.

[00:12:18]>> Excuse me, Doc.

[00:12:21]I've got a plane to land.

[00:12:26]>> Detail 19, David Letterman auditioned for Ted Striker.

[00:12:32]Paramount originally wanted Chevy Chase or Bill Murray for the lead role of Ted Striker. ZAZ wanted someone who wouldn't wink at the camera. Among those who screen-tested was a then little-known comedian named David Letterman.

[00:12:47]By Letterman's own account and by the account of the filmmakers, it was a disaster.

[00:12:53]He reportedly admitted almost immediately that he couldn't act and said so freely.

[00:12:59]ZAZ later showed the screen test footage on Letterman's own late-night show, and Letterman took it in good humor.

[00:13:06]Other names who circled the role included Bruce Jenner and Barry Manilow.

[00:13:11]Julie Hagerty beat out Sigourney Weaver and Shelley Long for the role of Elaine, with Weaver reportedly declining because of a specific line she found objectionable.

[00:13:22]Robert Hays, who won the lead role, was simultaneously filming the ABC sitcom Angie during production and later said the workload was grueling.

[00:13:38]Detail 18, the ZAZ mother is in the film.

[00:13:44]The woman seen trying to apply makeup as the plane shakes and jolts during turbulence is Charlotte Zucker, the actual mother of David and Jerry Zucker.

[00:13:54]She was not a professional actress, she was their mom.

[00:13:58]She later appeared in the same capacity in The Naked Gun films, which ZAZ produced. Jim Abrahams appears twice in the film as well, playing two different background roles.

[00:14:12]>> Calm [screaming] down. Get a HOLD OF YOURSELF.

[00:14:14]>> DOCTOR, YOU'RE WANTED ON THE PHONE.

[00:14:16]EVERYTHING'S GOOD.

[00:14:18]>> Detail 17, the slap line was improvised by the actress who was getting hit.

[00:14:26]The famous scene where a hysterical passenger is slapped by an increasingly long line of other passengers with items escalating from an open hand to boxing gloves to a tire iron to a gun was not in the original script. The scene was based on a moment from Zero Hour where one passenger simply slaps another once. Lee Bryant, who played the hysterical woman, suggested extending it into a running gag with a queue of increasingly aggressive helpers. ZAZ were hesitant because they were worried she might actually get hurt. They rehearsed briefly and shot it in one take.

[00:15:05]Bryant has said that Leslie Nielsen's second slap was unscripted and genuinely caught her off guard.

[00:15:13]>> I speak jive.

[00:15:14]>> Oh, good. He said that he's in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.

[00:15:21]>> Detail 16, Barbara Billingsley was the second choice for the jive scene.

[00:15:29]The role of the white-haired woman who unexpectedly speaks fluent jive was originally offered to Harriet Nelson of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

[00:15:39]Nelson turned it down because of the film's language.

[00:15:42]Barbara Billingsley, June Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver, took the role instead.

[00:15:48]The jive dialogue itself was almost entirely improvised on set by actors Al White and Norman Alexander Gibbs, who had prepared their own jive-inflected audition material because ZAZ's original version was inadequate.

[00:16:04]ZAZ later apologized to them for what they had originally written.

[00:16:09]>> R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me. R-E-S-P-E-C-T, take out TCB.

[00:16:17]>> Detail 15, Maureen McGovern was cast specifically because of disaster movie themes.

[00:16:25]The singing nun aboard the flight was played by Maureen McGovern, the singer who recorded the Academy Award-winning theme songs to The Poseidon Adventure in 1972 and The Towering Inferno in 1974, two of the most famous disaster films of the 1970s.

[00:16:45]Casting her was a deliberate layer of joke on top of the visual gag. The nun singing in the aisle while the plane shook was already funny, but putting the literal voice of two major disaster movie themes inside the airplane, Disaster, was another level of reference entirely.

[00:17:05]ZAZ had originally wanted Helen Reddy for the role as a reference to her singing appearance in Airport 1975, but Universal Pictures blocked it.

[00:17:15]McGovern was, if anything, a better fit given her direct association with the genre being spoofed, and audiences who made that connection had an extra reason to laugh.

[00:17:27]>> What are the storm lifting over Salt Lake, Clarence?

[00:17:30]>> Not not likely, Victor.

[00:17:32]I just reviewed the area report for 60 >> Detail 14. Jimmy Walker's appearance was an inside joke about his own career.

[00:17:44]Jimmy Walker, best known as JJ on the sitcom Good Times, appears briefly as the windshield wiper man who falls from the wing of the plane.

[00:17:53]Producer Hawk Koch had encountered Walker by chance the previous year while Walker was filming The Concorde, Airport '79, one of the actual disaster films Airplane was sending up.

[00:18:06]Koch thought it would be funny to include Walker in the spoof, a quiet joke about an actor from the disaster genre making a cameo in the film that was dismantling that genre.

[00:18:18]Walker was reportedly paid $600 for the appearance.

[00:18:23]>> YOU'LL BE GREAT. GOING TO HAVE THE WHOLE WORLD ON A PLATE. STOP in here. Stop >> Detail 13. Ethel Merman couldn't start work before noon.

[00:18:37]Musical theater legend Ethel Merman appears as Lieutenant Hurwitz, a shell-shocked soldier who believes he is Ethel Merman. The joke, of course, is that he actually is Ethel Merman.

[00:18:50]Getting Merman on set had its practical complications. She insisted on bringing her own hairdresser and could not arrive before noon because of how long her morning hair preparation took.

[00:19:02]She was in her early 70s at the time of filming and had no hesitation about the self-deprecating nature of the role.

[00:19:17]>> You're too low, Ted.

[00:19:19]>> Detail 12. Ted Striker's military branch changes between every flashback.

[00:19:27]Throughout the film, Ted's wartime flashbacks show him in different uniforms belonging to different branches of service, Army, Navy, Air Force, with no consistency between scenes.

[00:19:39]The aircraft shown in his squadron's flashbacks are from multiple different eras and nations, including some that predate powered aviation entirely.

[00:19:49]This was deliberate and ongoing as the filmmakers built in inconsistencies that reward repeat viewings.

[00:19:58]>> Okay, boys, let's get some pictures.

[00:20:06]>> Detail 11.

[00:20:07]The credits contain fake jobs. And one of them brought the FBI.

[00:20:15]The end credits of Airplane include a string of invented job titles, including worst boy, grapology, and in case of tornado, southwest corner of basement.

[00:20:26]The anti-piracy warning at the end, which in every other film of the era read as a straightforward legal statement, was amended to add the words so there at the end of the standard text. According to the DVD commentary, the FBI contacted ZAZ to request the addition be removed. Prints had already been made and were in distribution, making compliance impossible.

[00:20:51]The filmmakers later acknowledged that they were indeed mocking the FBI and did not appear particularly regretful about it.

[00:21:02]>> It's below 700 now, still going down.

[00:21:04]675, 650.

[00:21:08]>> Detail 10, the radio station the plane hits is called WZAZ.

[00:21:16]When the plane makes its approach at the end of the film, it clips the antenna of a radio station whose call letters are clearly visible as WZAZ, the initials of Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker.

[00:21:29]It goes by in the frame for only a second or two, also in the credits.

[00:21:34]Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's name is misspelled as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, though whether this was intentional is not confirmed.

[00:21:43]>> Acknowledge and standby. Every piece of emergency equipment you can reach.

[00:21:49]Alert rescue units every mile of the way.

[00:21:52]>> Detail nine, the score was written as if it were a serious film.

[00:21:58]Composer Elmer Bernstein, who had scored serious dramatic films throughout his career, including The Magnificent Seven and To Kill a Mockingbird, was brought in to write the music for Airplane.

[00:22:11]He later said that he approached the assignment as though he were genuinely scoring a disaster film, playing the emotional content and tension straight without winking at the material.

[00:22:23]The result is a score that sounds earnestly dramatic even when the scenes it accompanies are completely absurd.

[00:22:31]ZAZ considered this an essential part of the film's comedy.

[00:22:35]If the music had played along with the jokes, it would have undercut them.

[00:22:40]Bernstein's commitment to playing it straight is part of what makes the gags work.

[00:22:45]The film score was so convincing that at some moments, it genuinely sounds like a 1970s airline thriller rather than a comedy.

[00:23:03]Detail eight. Otto, the inflatable autopilot, was kept inflated between takes by crew members crouching out of frame.

[00:23:14]Otto, the inflatable autopilot who becomes a recurring presence in the cockpit and eventually a romantic partner for Elaine, was a physical prop that required constant maintenance during filming.

[00:23:27]Crew members hid below the camera frame and used a bicycle pump positioned between the prop's legs to keep Otto inflated between takes.

[00:23:36]The awkward placement of the valve reportedly caused the cast to break character repeatedly during filming, which in a movie built on deadpan delivery was a genuine problem. The production eventually developed a rhythm for managing it.

[00:23:51]Otto lived in Jerry Zucker's garage after production wrapped and became a minor celebrity at ZAZ events for years.

[00:23:59]By 1997, after years of storage, the prop had disintegrated completely and was thrown away. Arguably, the most undignified ending for any comedy prop from that era.

[00:24:18]>> Chicago, the passengers >> Detail seven. The sounds of the test audience changed the final cut.

[00:24:28]The first test screenings of Airplane went poorly. Jokes that ZAZ expected to land were met with silence and the pacing that the filmmakers had built around audience laughter felt wrong without it.

[00:24:41]The filmmakers went back and added a series of cartoon-style sound effects, boings, crunches, and squeaks layered over the visual gags to signal to the audience what kind of comedy they were watching.

[00:24:55]They tested the film again with the new sound design. The difference was immediate and dramatic. Material that had played quietly with no support from the sound mix suddenly produced consistent laughter because the sound effects gave the audience permission to recognize the gags for what they were.

[00:25:13]The sound effects stayed in the final cut. It is one of the more unusual cases of post-production comedy surgery producing exactly the right result.

[00:25:25]>> to the bone. Shaking me up.

[00:25:28]Take me.

[00:25:29]>> I'm sorry. I don't understand.

[00:25:31]>> Cutty say what?

[00:25:33]>> Detail six. The jive dialogue was inspired by blaxploitation films from the early 1970s.

[00:25:42]The two passengers credited as first jive dude and second jive dude, played by Al White and Norman Alexander Gibbs, developed their dialogue drawing from the language and mannerisms of blaxploitation films of the early 1970s, particularly the style associated with Shaft and similar pictures.

[00:26:03]The actors researched jive spoken by black jazz musicians from the 1940s as well.

[00:26:09]Their improvised dialogue was so specific and fully formed that ZAZ later acknowledged the original scripted version they had prepared was genuinely inferior.

[00:26:22]>> Ladies and gentlemen, this is your stewardess speaking. We regret any inconvenience the sudden cabin >> Detail five. The white zone argument escalates to include a pregnancy.

[00:26:37]Most people remember the white zone {slash} red zone argument as a running joke about parking zones.

[00:26:43]What goes by quickly is that the argument escalates progressively throughout the film.

[00:26:49]Past the argument about zones, past the implication that the two announcers have been fighting for years, and eventually to a line in which the male announcer suggests that the woman have an abortion, and the female announcer responds to this as if it is a settled and ongoing dispute between them.

[00:27:08]This was only a few years after Roe versus Wade, and played as a pointed piece of social satire to 1980 audiences.

[00:27:19]>> Over here.

[00:27:20]>> We have a visitor.

[00:27:22]>> Hello. Hi.

[00:27:23]>> This is Captain Over, Mr. Murdock, and Mr. >> Detail four. The scene in the cockpit with Joey was a direct reference to Peter Graves' TV past.

[00:27:37]Captain Over's questions to young Joey in the cockpit are a parody of a scene from Zero Hour, but the casting added an extra layer.

[00:27:45]Peter Graves had previously spent years as a paternal figure to a young boy in the television series Fury, which aired in the late 1950s.

[00:27:56]The boy in that show was also named Joey.

[00:27:59]The filmmakers were aware of this and cast Graves partly for that reason, knowing that audiences who remembered the show would have another level of recognition.

[00:28:12]>> Okay. All right. HAVE A NICE DAY.

[00:28:16]HAVE A NICE DAY. THANK YOU FOR FLYING Trans American.

[00:28:19]>> Detail three.

[00:28:21]Aero Mexico was the only airline that bought the film for in-flight entertainment.

[00:28:29]Given the obvious subject matter, no airline was particularly eager to show Airplane to a captive audience of actual airline passengers.

[00:28:39]Aero Mexico was the sole carrier to license the film for use in their in-flight entertainment system.

[00:28:48]>> Air Israel, please clear the runway.

[00:28:55]>> Detail two, the Air Israel gag was cut from some TV versions after 2001.

[00:29:04]During the third act sequence, a plane bearing Air Israel livery, decorated with a menorah and other obviously Hassidic imagery, appears briefly in the background of a shot.

[00:29:16]The gag remained in all theatrical and home video releases, but was quietly removed from some American television broadcasts following the events of September 11th, 2001.

[00:29:30]>> You shouldn't have come. I don't have time now.

[00:29:33]>> Who is Stewart is?

[00:29:34]>> Excuse me.

[00:29:38]>> Detail one, ZAZ turned down Airplane II because they had run out of Airplane jokes.

[00:29:47]After the success of the first film, Paramount wanted a sequel.

[00:29:51]ZAZ declined because, as they put it, they had genuinely exhausted their supply of Airplane jokes in the first film.

[00:29:59]Paramount made the sequel anyway in 1982 without them, bringing in director Ken Finkleman and adding William Shatner to the cast.

[00:30:08]ZAZ have said on multiple occasions that they have never watched it. The original film grossed approximately $83 million theatrically in North America against a production budget of around $3.5 million, making it one of the most profitable comedies relative to its cost in Hollywood history.

[00:30:29]It remains one of the highest-rated comedies ever on Rotten Tomatoes and is still cited by filmmakers across generations as a foundational influence.

[00:30:40]If you made it all the way to number 30, thank you for watching.

[00:30:45]If you enjoyed this video, please give it a like and subscribe to the channel.

[00:30:51]There is a lot more where this came from.