21 ms·

David Zucker reflects on "Airplane!" in 2021

213 points by xqcgrek2 5y ago

smitty1e 5y ago
The one-minute courtroom drama "Over Macho Grande" from Airplane II, while not a Zucker credit, is worth a mention here because it's so immaculate => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JswFF2dKiLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JswFF2dKiLM
WalterGR 5y ago
Dupe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889668
- tessierashpool 5y ago
  not actually a dupe. that link is for the NY Post; this one is for Commentary.
  - WalterGR 5y ago
    It’s the exact same article. The only difference is the publication - previously a Murdoch-owned conservative rag and now a self-declared neocon publication.
    - tessierashpool 5y ago
      it's not though. I read both articles before posting. there's certainly overlap, but there's difference as well.
xrd 5y ago
There is so much great comedy out there that somehow avoids his concerns. What a lazy attempt at legitimizing his lack of talent.
- prvc 5y ago
  Airplane! is considered to be a good comedic film. Bearing that in mind, what makes you say that its writer lacks talent?
  - xrd 5y ago
    I'm assuming you read the article where he says none of his jokes could be made today and that good comedians have gone into hiding. I'm saying there are great comedians out there that have no problem creating great comedy, comedy that easily is able to avoid the impossible pitfalls he is intent on describing. That's laziness. For the record, I love Airplane. But this take of his is pure laziness and self pitying.
    - humanrebar 5y ago
      Name one of the top ten comedy films of 2019.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
        There were ten comedy films in 2019? Is that your point? It's been a comedy desert as of late as far as movies go. The trailer for Dave Chappelle's Sticks and Stones (2019) shows him walking in a literal desert. The top comedies of that year seem to all be stand up specials, does that really count? Comedy only comes woven into dramas now.
- antman 5y ago
  Such as?
  - hehetrthrthrjn 5y ago
    Chappelle would seem to be a relevant comparison.
- m0zg 5y ago
  Wait, you're saying Zucker "lacks talent"? For real?
williamsmj 5y ago
I wonder if there’s a simpler explanation for the fact that the guy who directed Scary Movie 4 is not revered to the extent he once was. Nope. Can’t think of anything. Must be the woke mob again.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Maybe you've lost connection with laughter and humour. What sorts of movies do you find funny?
  - GVRV 5y ago
    Tropic Thunder (which would be nearly impossible to make today).
    - willis936 5y ago
      It was nearly impossible when it was made. It truly rode the crashing wave.
- conradfr 5y ago
  Are you talking about the Scary Movie 4 that made even more money than his previous Scary Movie 3, to the extend that he was allowed to direct Scary Movie 5? I won't argue these movies are as good as Airplane! or the Naked Gun series but as someone who basically only watch comedies, he has a point, it's a sad state of affair you get in America, and by extension the Western world. What recent (non-animated) funny movie or show have you seen that is not "feel good" or filled with sexual jokes?
  - eru 5y ago
    Brooklyn 99 was pretty good. Not sure, if it counts as 'feel good'?
    - slfnflctd 5y ago
      Watching 'the 99' pretty much always made my household feel good. That's why we watched the whole thing.
telesilla 5y ago
He's right that mainstream comedy is going through a period of self-sanitising but there's plenty of good stuff to find outside of Hollywood. Maybe even today you couldn't make Seinfeld.
- nunodonato 5y ago
  He is still the master of his domain
  - blitzar 5y ago
    I'm out
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  It's not a pizza until it comes out of the oven! It's a pizza the moment you put your fists in the dough!
nineteen999 5y ago
Pfft. Everybody knows this movies real name is "Flying High".
labrador 5y ago
There are no transwomen jokes in the movie so I'm guessing it could get made today.
- m0zg 5y ago
  There are two black dudes speaking straight Ebonics, and the whitest woman in the world translating for them. Zucker (who is Jewish) would immediately be excommunicated and branded a Hitler for filming this in 2021. One of the funniest scenes in the history of comedy, and the genre is immeasurably diminished by the current inability to film such things. As is the arrival of the sheriff scene from "Blazing Saddles" by Mel Brooks. "Blazing Saddles" is one of the most potent bits of anti-racist satire ever filmed, but there's one problem: the woke mob lacks the sense of humor. So the movie (I kid you not) comes with a "trigger warning" now, specifically for people too dumb to get the meaning of the movie, and what it aims to satirize.
  - labrador 5y ago
    I don't think you got my joke. I would be surprised to learn that millions of black people didn't find this scene hilarious. However, if there was a transwoman joke, no transwoman would find it funny. The hair trigger outrage of a lot of transwomen is funny to me, but I have nothing against any transperson for any reason.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    You're offended that a satire is called out via text before a movie starts, in order to let more people in on the joke?
    - m0zg 5y ago
      No, I'm not offended by that. I'm just disappointed that we kowtow to moralist busybodies with the IQ of a house plant, and the sense of humor of a door knob, and this is somehow deemed not just socially acceptable, but "virtuous". It's a rather obvious, and a rather pointless death spiral, with increasingly stringent, humorless, and insane purity tests for all involved. Were it up to me, we'd be mercilessly laughing at such people.
AZ8244 5y ago
I have been cracking up everytime I see Martin Short walk into any scene on Only Murders in Buildings. Just watching his facial expressions as his character tries to make sense of things, he has no capacity to process is priceless. Then ofcourse he proceeds to come up with the most ludicrous answers to whatever problem with all the overconfidence in the world. That routine has me literally rolling on the floor. I dont think the woke/anti woke bs matters. There are really lots of ways to make people laugh if you really want too imho.
- flanbiscuit 5y ago
  My favorite bit from this series was early on when they were about to call Mabel but he hesitates and says "Calls bother them for some reason". Martin Short is amazing in this series! Actually all 3 of the main characters are great
ghostDancer 5y ago
I recently watched it with my 15 years old son. He laughed a lot and at the same he was surprised how they dare to make some of the jokes, he thought some were really wild.
rsj_hn 5y ago
Fun Fact: Airplane! is a spoof of the Paramount film Zero Hour (1957) which is itself a clone of the wildly famous John Wayne Classic "The High and Mighty" (1954), which was the first disaster film and a breakout hit. Robert Stack, who plays the captain in The High and Mighty, also plays the captain in Airplane, as a parody of his previous role. It's pretty cool to watch The High and Mighty after Airplane and recognize so many of the scenes, including the sweating pilot, the little life stories of the characters, the operations manager (Regis Toomey) pacing back and forth in the control room, etc.
- newsbinator 5y ago
  There's a terrific side-by-side comparison. Sooo many parallel scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-v2BHNBVCs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-v2BHNBVCs
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    Such a great watch! Thank you for sharing this :)
- MikusR 5y ago
  They got the rights, so it's more of a remake.
trabant00 5y ago
> In 2014, when my son, Charles, then a 14-year-old, wanted to attend a party unsupervised, my wife wanted to know whether there would be parents present. “You’re not going to take drugs or drink alcohol, right?” she asked. “You know, there’s going to be peer pressure.” > I couldn’t help myself. I jumped in immediately. “Charles, for example, you’re at this party and everyone is sucking d—k. What are you going to do? You have to resist the temptation.” > Charles laughed. His mom shook her head. And I found a way to not be bored. This strikes a cord with me. As a kid/teenager I learned some lessons a lot better because they came in the form of offensive humor. I still remember some of them word for word 20+ years later. I worry about this in the context of current day puritanism a lot more that I care about movies, TV, social media, etc. I think we're raising generations of stuck up people who will fall even harder in puritan extreme.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  Also, there is a number of people (some documented) that cannot understand jokes, and not even rhetoric (irony, references, acting etc.): is it possible they were not exposed in their formative years? It is, symmetrically, quite bewildering to see those people unable to manage the non-literal. This is a lack in intellectual formation, and it sticks to some - similarly to the lasting effects of not having been "exposed to mathematics" (a number of articles emerged in the recent times). Edit: in fact, there is much more to that, now that I think about it: in the past few years, I have met a large number of people who, somehow, basically cannot read: they have the text in front of them, but cannot interpret it, if it is not literal. It surely must be lack of exposure to intellectual challenge, even to phenomena that some would have called "normal daily experience". And they have degrees. How did those "cannot make any sense of it" people emerge? Lack of exposure to differentiated stimula is certainly part of it.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    I have interacted with some of these. "Not understanding metaphor is a real handicap." "Are you calling me disabled?!"
    - 5y ago
michaelgrafl 5y ago
In the German dub those black guys had to speak in some unintelligible dialect, but of course there's no such thing as German jive. So they made them talk in a very thick Bavarian dialect, which made the whole thing absurd on a higher level. The 70s and 80s had some great talent behind German dubs.
- caminante 5y ago
  Found it [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEkI0cH_rK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEkI0cH_rK4
- hnbad 5y ago
  For context for those unfamiliar with German dialects: dubbing a stereotypical Black person with a Bavarian accent in German is the cultural equivalent of dubbing them with a German or Swedish accent in English. Of course the joke mostly works because it lampshades bigoted cultural assumptions about race in Germany: a lot of Germans in the 1990s said "Afro-Amerikaner" when they meant Black (regardless of nationality, even Germans) because they thought it was more "politically correct" and the thought a Black person might be a native citizen never occurred to them. This has improved somewhat over the years but since the film was originally released in 1980, I doubt the cultural awareness was any better at the time. To be clear: I'm not saying the joke is bigoted, I'm saying the joke worked because it played off bigoted assumptions.
  - mewpmewp2 5y ago
    I was from Europe, but not from Germany. I was also taught to call black people "afro americans". It didn't makes sense, but apparently this was thought of as the only right thing to do.
    - hnbad 5y ago
      I think the unspoken assumption was that Black people only exist in the US or Africa, partially because many people would have likely seen or interacted with so few Black people in real life that their main reference frame are Hollywood movies and North American television shows. I don't think I heard the phrase "Afrodeutsch" (Afro-German) until well into the 2000s and one of the kids in my class in the 1990s was Black. I even remember thinking he must be American because of that. I think there was a period of general confusion in the 1980s and 1990s around what language to use as the German words "Mohr" (originally from "Mauretania") and the German equivalent of the n-word became socially unacceptable and there was a widely held belief that referencing skin color directly was also unacceptable because of a lack of understanding about the actual underlying reasons for this language change (i.e. bigotry and power structures). There's a general sense of detachment I think because this discussion is usually framed in terms of language use rather than actual oppression because Black people are rarely even acknowledged to exist.
philmcc 5y ago
The number of people complaining about “woke culture” are statistically disproportionately members of groups that are not traditionally insulted in media. Furthermore, this “take” requires a level of historical naïveté that borders on pure narcissism. A lot of social “fixing” looks like an “over correction” in the short term, but in the long term that’s just how things get dealt with. As a loose metaphor, If you put your hand on a stove you don’t lift it a millimeter off the heat source, right? That would “fix” it. Surprising no one, I couldn’t find a single essay from this concerned citizen about the death of George Floyd, or anyone else for that matter. But he found plenty of outrage and cultural commentary for the temporary death of the commercial viability of his outdated sense of humor. That IS funny, actually.
- fllkwg 5y ago
  That's not true. Jewish-, Italian-, German-, Irish-Americans have any number of bad characters and slurs applied to them in Hollywood movies (many of the "intellectual dark web" are Jews!). "Zucker" is also a Jewish name, so his ancestors will have experienced a fair share of racism.
- dcow 5y ago
  By your own rhetoric, your sense of humor will become outdated too one day and you’ll just have to live with it because progress.
  - jdub 5y ago
    Yes! And it's worth getting comfortable with change and learning from it, instead of being weird and reactionary about it.
    - RNCTX 5y ago
      I find it funny (pun intended) that you consider this learning, when on a basic level it's the opposite of that. If anything can be deemed offensive (and it will be, because there are people who profit from scolding others), and nothing is ever forgotten in the internet age, the eventuality of your mentality is no one being allowed to communicate about anything at all. What's worth doing is making fun of you, ironically. Because making fun of people like you is, historically, how flawed ideologies are cast aside.
thih9 5y ago
> I still don’t fully understand why there’s a problem with making a joke that gets a laugh from an audience, even if it is mildly offensive. Because it could be bullying.
- superduperuser 5y ago
  If a joke indirectly offending someone is bullying, how do you feel when comedians do "crowd work"?
  - beebeepka 5y ago
    I guess it depends on which end of the joke you are. And how often do you have to deal with it. It could be just a joke, or straight up bullying mascarading as joking. I am sure you know what I mean.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    Others have already written about this extensively but there is a difference between humor that punches down and humor that punches up. There's also a big difference between the joke being bigotry and the joke being that a character is bigoted. In the Airplane! cockpit scene the joke isn't that the pilot makes the stewardess and kid uncomfortable by sounding like a pedophile, the joke is that he's supposed to be a heroic character but acts like a total creep. It's a subversion of expectations based on the tropes of 1950s/1960s Hollywood movies. Likewise the scene with all passengers lining up to slap the woman while shouting at her to calm down doesn't make fun of women for being hysterical. It makes fun of the sexist trope of women being hysterical and needing to be "calmed down" with physical violence. The sexism isn't what's funny, the sexism is what's being made fun of. The problem with modern comedy is that a lot of political punditry has moved to taking the form of comedy and "it's just a joke" (or for a few years on YouTube "it's just a prank") has become a way to defend actual bigoted statements. When a conservative pundit who is opposed to gay rights calls a gay person a homophobic slur or follows a mention of them with a caricature of them wanting to have oral sex with a lot of men, the "joke" only works if you share the idea that gay people are sexual deviants and bad. It isn't really a joke, it's just mockery. The reason a lot of older comedians find it hard to adjust is not that comedy has changed. The mechanics of humor have largely remained the same, it's just cultural attitudes and politics that have changed. If your politics have remained the same, you'll find it harder to do comedy expressing those politics now than when they were more closely aligned to mainstream. In other words, if you used to have a close circle of friends with misogynist opinions a misogynist joke may have gotten a few laughs out of them. If they've all grown out of it and matured in their understanding that women are actual persons rather than just objects of sexual attraction, your old jokes will no longer work on them. They may not actually get offended, but they won't be amused. Jokes work because they carry a message through a combination of context, content and subtext. If that message is expressing support for an oppressive social dynamic, it can be bullying. It's that simple.
mdp2021 5y ago
Aside note: since they have been less available to some, it is possible that some may have missed the Police Squad! (ZAZ 1982) series or The Kentucky Fried Movie (Landis 1977). I must recommend to those who only know the prominent works (Airplane!, Naked Gun etc.) to find and try the preparatory works.
- lqet 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpGn37Svp6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpGn37Svp6I
- darrenf 5y ago
  Also Top Secret! ZAZ 1984 (and my favourite of the lot).
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    Surely. Lots of genial ideas there. And the ZAZ members themselves do not see that (with reference to the commentary): it's so natural to them that they themselves diminish it; this is why, also elsewhere here, I noted that genius is beyond intentions. And if I have to attribute something overwhelming importance and weight, it's genius.
  - nprateem 5y ago
    "My name is Deja Vu. Haven't we already met?"
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Police Squad! Is great.
- MikusR 5y ago
  Police Squad recently got a beautiful remastered Blu-Ray release.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    Oh good; i caught the first DVD and it sucked. Bad VHS rip grade.
beebeepka 5y ago
The first 30 minutes of Airplane are absolutely incredible. Frankly, I am surprised the "Joey" jokes made the cut even back then. They surely don't make them like they used to. Maybe in 10-15 years the cycle would start over.
ryan_lane 5y ago
This movie simply hasn't aged very well. The jokes are pedestrian. Many of them take aim at people's sex or race, but not in a challenging way. I'm not offended by any of the jokes, and I still laugh at some of them, but mostly because of nostalgia. If you're reacting poorly to people being offended by some of the crude race/sex based humor, I hate to break it to you, but you're getting offended in an even worse way than them.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  What about the architecture? The alternative world drawn? The originality of the whole product? You look at the pebbles and have not spotted the cathedral. You overworked the left analytic hemisphere and left the right synthetic one bumping for attention, you "I will only do pecs at the gym because legs are for losers" pedestrian you, comma slash jay. The architecture is pure genius, the jokes serve it.
  - ryan_lane 5y ago
    You're putting way too much thought into this movie. It's a movie of dad jokes with good delivery and timing. I can appreciate that, but it's not a work of genius.
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      Again (really, again): it's not "thought", it's "eyes" (analysis vs synthesis). On this side. On your side: you are just not seeing it.
    - conradfr 5y ago
      You should respect comedy more, it's way harder to do than drama.
    - toyg 5y ago
      What one would call "dad jokes" are a small part of the endless array of gags in the movie. From sniffing glue, to the queue to hit the anxious woman, the swordfighting when panic breaks out, speaking jive, blowing the automated pilot, the turkish prison bit - it's a relentless sequence of all possible types of humor. Comedy doesn't get enough respect because "it's just laughs", but this shit is hard. To pack so many accomplished jokes in such a short movie is genius - particularly in 1974.
blitzar 5y ago
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.
- logicchains 5y ago
  Well I really picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue!
shantnutiwari 5y ago
Non paywalled version: https://outline.com/r9eR5x https://outline.com/r9eR5x
funnay 5y ago
Next: David Zucker finds out it's hard to make mainstream comedy movies about pedophilia victims.
- funnay 5y ago
  caption: this was a joke about Zucker's inability to cope with the changing times.
- base698 5y ago
  LIE fetishized it. You could probably make dramas today.
chasd00 5y ago
I love this movie, I feel it defined the whole spoof/slapstick genre. The bar scene with the girl scouts fighting and then everyone starts disco dancing is great. “… it was worse than Detroit!” Haha
- toyg 5y ago
  The genre was really defined by Young Frankenstein a few years earlier, but arguably Airplane! is funnier (faster and even more absurd in gags). The decade 1974-1984 was a fantastic period for comedy.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.md/sDlQW https://archive.md/sDlQW
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
d23 5y ago
> I’m the guy who, on a soundstage, yelled, “Who’s blocking the camera?! I can’t see what’s on the monitor!” The assistant director replied, “It’s you, sir, you’re standing in front of the lens.” This is amazing. I have to imagine this inspired one of my favorite jokes from Naked Gun: > Frank: [looking into microscope] I-I can't see anything. > Ed: Use your open eye, Frank.
tomohawk 5y ago
We need a class action lawsuit against Twitter for enabling all of the neurotic and humor challenged people.
lostgame 5y ago
'Airplane!' is something like 'Family Guy' - and please note, for cartoon fans; I'm not saying 'South Park', here. There's an episode called '200'; (or something) where 'Family Guy' creator Seth MacFarlane discusses the show along with many of its voice actors, producers, etc. He mentions that 'Family Guy' is absolutely not meant to be a high-brow humour show; and that part of the technique of the writing of 'Family Guy' is, in his own words; guided by how many jokes a minute they can get - how many times they can make the audience laugh. If we have a casual pause in a show; someone looks to the camera, dead-pan, and just, quite seriously - says, 'penis' - out of the blue - I'm gonna laugh my ass off. I love intelligent humour as much as the next girl, but there is a nuance to some of the low-brow humour in 'Airplane!' that is just as complex to pull off effectively as a well-told and intelligent joke by Bill Maher, Norm MacDonald, or George Carlin. We are talking about a 41-year-old film, in a genre (comedy) that famously doesn't age well. 'Airplane!' probably shouldn't come off well today, if it follows our previously established rules of comedy. That being said, it's still hella funny.
bsanr2 5y ago
>Without trust, audiences begin to question the intentions behind every joke, they take jokes literally, and they use their collective voices to bully comedians and pressure studios against taking any comedic risk. This is the meaty bit right here. Because you have people who tell jokes that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ageist (normally wouldn't include that but I gotta play to the HN crowd), etc. and either 1) go out and actually do bigoted things/maintain relationships with outwardly bigoted people, or 2) the people who enjoy the jokes go out and do bigoted things and use the joke as cover. If you want to test this, go on 4chan right now and ask people how they feel about the difference between "black people and niggas" (Chris Rock) or "how white people are better" (Louis C.K.). (If you argue that 4chan isn't representative of the general public, you can try Facebook, but, uh, you're taking your life into your own hands with that crowd.) The problem may very well be less that people won't tolerate transgressive humor today, as it is that people can't be trusted with transgressive humor today. Some people see it as rhetoric, not humor.
- jollybean 5y ago
  I think this is fear mongering. People know the difference, and will mostly do it whether or not the comedy exists.
- ByThyGrace 5y ago
  > This is the meaty bit right here. Because you have people who tell jokes that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ageist (normally wouldn't include that but I gotta play to the HN crowd) As an ageing HNer, I liked that last bit because it reads like a joke, made me laugh, and consequently enabled my trust in what you say. I don't think you are ageist simply because you understand that some people can be mean to older people. Reality is fucked up. Being able to find humor in this reality isn't necessarily a sign of also being morally bankrupt. The ability to produce humor is a sign of intelligence. And laughing to it is but an expression of understanding.
RickJWagner 5y ago
Airplane Space Balls Eddie Murphy RAW Monty Python GhostBusters Man, I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way and bring back comedy everybody is offended by (in equal doses) and laughs at honestly. Hollywood has to go un-woke first, though.

213 points by xqcgrek2 5y ago

The one-minute courtroom drama "Over Macho Grande" from Airplane II, while not a Zucker credit, is worth a mention here because it's so immaculate => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JswFF2dKiLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JswFF2dKiLM

WalterGR 5y ago

Dupe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28889668

tessierashpool 5y ago
not actually a dupe. that link is for the NY Post; this one is for Commentary.
- WalterGR 5y ago
  It’s the exact same article. The only difference is the publication - previously a Murdoch-owned conservative rag and now a self-declared neocon publication.
  - tessierashpool 5y ago
    it's not though. I read both articles before posting. there's certainly overlap, but there's difference as well.

xrd 5y ago

There is so much great comedy out there that somehow avoids his concerns. What a lazy attempt at legitimizing his lack of talent.

prvc 5y ago
Airplane! is considered to be a good comedic film. Bearing that in mind, what makes you say that its writer lacks talent?
- xrd 5y ago
  I'm assuming you read the article where he says none of his jokes could be made today and that good comedians have gone into hiding. I'm saying there are great comedians out there that have no problem creating great comedy, comedy that easily is able to avoid the impossible pitfalls he is intent on describing. That's laziness. For the record, I love Airplane. But this take of his is pure laziness and self pitying.
  - humanrebar 5y ago
    Name one of the top ten comedy films of 2019.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
      There were ten comedy films in 2019? Is that your point? It's been a comedy desert as of late as far as movies go. The trailer for Dave Chappelle's Sticks and Stones (2019) shows him walking in a literal desert. The top comedies of that year seem to all be stand up specials, does that really count? Comedy only comes woven into dramas now.
antman 5y ago
Such as?
- hehetrthrthrjn 5y ago
  Chappelle would seem to be a relevant comparison.
m0zg 5y ago
Wait, you're saying Zucker "lacks talent"? For real?

williamsmj 5y ago

I wonder if there’s a simpler explanation for the fact that the guy who directed Scary Movie 4 is not revered to the extent he once was. Nope. Can’t think of anything. Must be the woke mob again.

brailsafe 5y ago
Maybe you've lost connection with laughter and humour. What sorts of movies do you find funny?
- GVRV 5y ago
  Tropic Thunder (which would be nearly impossible to make today).
  - willis936 5y ago
    It was nearly impossible when it was made. It truly rode the crashing wave.
conradfr 5y ago
Are you talking about the Scary Movie 4 that made even more money than his previous Scary Movie 3, to the extend that he was allowed to direct Scary Movie 5? I won't argue these movies are as good as Airplane! or the Naked Gun series but as someone who basically only watch comedies, he has a point, it's a sad state of affair you get in America, and by extension the Western world. What recent (non-animated) funny movie or show have you seen that is not "feel good" or filled with sexual jokes?
- eru 5y ago
  Brooklyn 99 was pretty good. Not sure, if it counts as 'feel good'?
  - slfnflctd 5y ago
    Watching 'the 99' pretty much always made my household feel good. That's why we watched the whole thing.

telesilla 5y ago

He's right that mainstream comedy is going through a period of self-sanitising but there's plenty of good stuff to find outside of Hollywood. Maybe even today you couldn't make Seinfeld.

nunodonato 5y ago
He is still the master of his domain
- blitzar 5y ago
  I'm out
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
It's not a pizza until it comes out of the oven! It's a pizza the moment you put your fists in the dough!

nineteen999 5y ago

Pfft. Everybody knows this movies real name is "Flying High".

labrador 5y ago

There are no transwomen jokes in the movie so I'm guessing it could get made today.

m0zg 5y ago
There are two black dudes speaking straight Ebonics, and the whitest woman in the world translating for them. Zucker (who is Jewish) would immediately be excommunicated and branded a Hitler for filming this in 2021. One of the funniest scenes in the history of comedy, and the genre is immeasurably diminished by the current inability to film such things. As is the arrival of the sheriff scene from "Blazing Saddles" by Mel Brooks. "Blazing Saddles" is one of the most potent bits of anti-racist satire ever filmed, but there's one problem: the woke mob lacks the sense of humor. So the movie (I kid you not) comes with a "trigger warning" now, specifically for people too dumb to get the meaning of the movie, and what it aims to satirize.
- labrador 5y ago
  I don't think you got my joke. I would be surprised to learn that millions of black people didn't find this scene hilarious. However, if there was a transwoman joke, no transwoman would find it funny. The hair trigger outrage of a lot of transwomen is funny to me, but I have nothing against any transperson for any reason.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  You're offended that a satire is called out via text before a movie starts, in order to let more people in on the joke?
  - m0zg 5y ago
    No, I'm not offended by that. I'm just disappointed that we kowtow to moralist busybodies with the IQ of a house plant, and the sense of humor of a door knob, and this is somehow deemed not just socially acceptable, but "virtuous". It's a rather obvious, and a rather pointless death spiral, with increasingly stringent, humorless, and insane purity tests for all involved. Were it up to me, we'd be mercilessly laughing at such people.

AZ8244 5y ago

I have been cracking up everytime I see Martin Short walk into any scene on Only Murders in Buildings. Just watching his facial expressions as his character tries to make sense of things, he has no capacity to process is priceless. Then ofcourse he proceeds to come up with the most ludicrous answers to whatever problem with all the overconfidence in the world. That routine has me literally rolling on the floor. I dont think the woke/anti woke bs matters. There are really lots of ways to make people laugh if you really want too imho.

flanbiscuit 5y ago
My favorite bit from this series was early on when they were about to call Mabel but he hesitates and says "Calls bother them for some reason". Martin Short is amazing in this series! Actually all 3 of the main characters are great

ghostDancer 5y ago

I recently watched it with my 15 years old son. He laughed a lot and at the same he was surprised how they dare to make some of the jokes, he thought some were really wild.

rsj_hn 5y ago

Fun Fact: Airplane! is a spoof of the Paramount film Zero Hour (1957) which is itself a clone of the wildly famous John Wayne Classic "The High and Mighty" (1954), which was the first disaster film and a breakout hit. Robert Stack, who plays the captain in The High and Mighty, also plays the captain in Airplane, as a parody of his previous role. It's pretty cool to watch The High and Mighty after Airplane and recognize so many of the scenes, including the sweating pilot, the little life stories of the characters, the operations manager (Regis Toomey) pacing back and forth in the control room, etc.

newsbinator 5y ago
There's a terrific side-by-side comparison. Sooo many parallel scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-v2BHNBVCs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-v2BHNBVCs
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Such a great watch! Thank you for sharing this :)
MikusR 5y ago
They got the rights, so it's more of a remake.

trabant00 5y ago

> In 2014, when my son, Charles, then a 14-year-old, wanted to attend a party unsupervised, my wife wanted to know whether there would be parents present. “You’re not going to take drugs or drink alcohol, right?” she asked. “You know, there’s going to be peer pressure.” > I couldn’t help myself. I jumped in immediately. “Charles, for example, you’re at this party and everyone is sucking d—k. What are you going to do? You have to resist the temptation.” > Charles laughed. His mom shook her head. And I found a way to not be bored. This strikes a cord with me. As a kid/teenager I learned some lessons a lot better because they came in the form of offensive humor. I still remember some of them word for word 20+ years later. I worry about this in the context of current day puritanism a lot more that I care about movies, TV, social media, etc. I think we're raising generations of stuck up people who will fall even harder in puritan extreme.

mdp2021 5y ago
Also, there is a number of people (some documented) that cannot understand jokes, and not even rhetoric (irony, references, acting etc.): is it possible they were not exposed in their formative years? It is, symmetrically, quite bewildering to see those people unable to manage the non-literal. This is a lack in intellectual formation, and it sticks to some - similarly to the lasting effects of not having been "exposed to mathematics" (a number of articles emerged in the recent times). Edit: in fact, there is much more to that, now that I think about it: in the past few years, I have met a large number of people who, somehow, basically cannot read: they have the text in front of them, but cannot interpret it, if it is not literal. It surely must be lack of exposure to intellectual challenge, even to phenomena that some would have called "normal daily experience". And they have degrees. How did those "cannot make any sense of it" people emerge? Lack of exposure to differentiated stimula is certainly part of it.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I have interacted with some of these. "Not understanding metaphor is a real handicap." "Are you calling me disabled?!"
  - 5y ago

michaelgrafl 5y ago

In the German dub those black guys had to speak in some unintelligible dialect, but of course there's no such thing as German jive. So they made them talk in a very thick Bavarian dialect, which made the whole thing absurd on a higher level. The 70s and 80s had some great talent behind German dubs.

caminante 5y ago
Found it [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEkI0cH_rK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEkI0cH_rK4
hnbad 5y ago
For context for those unfamiliar with German dialects: dubbing a stereotypical Black person with a Bavarian accent in German is the cultural equivalent of dubbing them with a German or Swedish accent in English. Of course the joke mostly works because it lampshades bigoted cultural assumptions about race in Germany: a lot of Germans in the 1990s said "Afro-Amerikaner" when they meant Black (regardless of nationality, even Germans) because they thought it was more "politically correct" and the thought a Black person might be a native citizen never occurred to them. This has improved somewhat over the years but since the film was originally released in 1980, I doubt the cultural awareness was any better at the time. To be clear: I'm not saying the joke is bigoted, I'm saying the joke worked because it played off bigoted assumptions.
- mewpmewp2 5y ago
  I was from Europe, but not from Germany. I was also taught to call black people "afro americans". It didn't makes sense, but apparently this was thought of as the only right thing to do.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    I think the unspoken assumption was that Black people only exist in the US or Africa, partially because many people would have likely seen or interacted with so few Black people in real life that their main reference frame are Hollywood movies and North American television shows. I don't think I heard the phrase "Afrodeutsch" (Afro-German) until well into the 2000s and one of the kids in my class in the 1990s was Black. I even remember thinking he must be American because of that. I think there was a period of general confusion in the 1980s and 1990s around what language to use as the German words "Mohr" (originally from "Mauretania") and the German equivalent of the n-word became socially unacceptable and there was a widely held belief that referencing skin color directly was also unacceptable because of a lack of understanding about the actual underlying reasons for this language change (i.e. bigotry and power structures). There's a general sense of detachment I think because this discussion is usually framed in terms of language use rather than actual oppression because Black people are rarely even acknowledged to exist.

philmcc 5y ago

The number of people complaining about “woke culture” are statistically disproportionately members of groups that are not traditionally insulted in media. Furthermore, this “take” requires a level of historical naïveté that borders on pure narcissism. A lot of social “fixing” looks like an “over correction” in the short term, but in the long term that’s just how things get dealt with. As a loose metaphor, If you put your hand on a stove you don’t lift it a millimeter off the heat source, right? That would “fix” it. Surprising no one, I couldn’t find a single essay from this concerned citizen about the death of George Floyd, or anyone else for that matter. But he found plenty of outrage and cultural commentary for the temporary death of the commercial viability of his outdated sense of humor. That IS funny, actually.

fllkwg 5y ago
That's not true. Jewish-, Italian-, German-, Irish-Americans have any number of bad characters and slurs applied to them in Hollywood movies (many of the "intellectual dark web" are Jews!). "Zucker" is also a Jewish name, so his ancestors will have experienced a fair share of racism.
dcow 5y ago
By your own rhetoric, your sense of humor will become outdated too one day and you’ll just have to live with it because progress.
- jdub 5y ago
  Yes! And it's worth getting comfortable with change and learning from it, instead of being weird and reactionary about it.
  - RNCTX 5y ago
    I find it funny (pun intended) that you consider this learning, when on a basic level it's the opposite of that. If anything can be deemed offensive (and it will be, because there are people who profit from scolding others), and nothing is ever forgotten in the internet age, the eventuality of your mentality is no one being allowed to communicate about anything at all. What's worth doing is making fun of you, ironically. Because making fun of people like you is, historically, how flawed ideologies are cast aside.

thih9 5y ago

> I still don’t fully understand why there’s a problem with making a joke that gets a laugh from an audience, even if it is mildly offensive. Because it could be bullying.

superduperuser 5y ago
If a joke indirectly offending someone is bullying, how do you feel when comedians do "crowd work"?
- beebeepka 5y ago
  I guess it depends on which end of the joke you are. And how often do you have to deal with it. It could be just a joke, or straight up bullying mascarading as joking. I am sure you know what I mean.
- hnbad 5y ago
  Others have already written about this extensively but there is a difference between humor that punches down and humor that punches up. There's also a big difference between the joke being bigotry and the joke being that a character is bigoted. In the Airplane! cockpit scene the joke isn't that the pilot makes the stewardess and kid uncomfortable by sounding like a pedophile, the joke is that he's supposed to be a heroic character but acts like a total creep. It's a subversion of expectations based on the tropes of 1950s/1960s Hollywood movies. Likewise the scene with all passengers lining up to slap the woman while shouting at her to calm down doesn't make fun of women for being hysterical. It makes fun of the sexist trope of women being hysterical and needing to be "calmed down" with physical violence. The sexism isn't what's funny, the sexism is what's being made fun of. The problem with modern comedy is that a lot of political punditry has moved to taking the form of comedy and "it's just a joke" (or for a few years on YouTube "it's just a prank") has become a way to defend actual bigoted statements. When a conservative pundit who is opposed to gay rights calls a gay person a homophobic slur or follows a mention of them with a caricature of them wanting to have oral sex with a lot of men, the "joke" only works if you share the idea that gay people are sexual deviants and bad. It isn't really a joke, it's just mockery. The reason a lot of older comedians find it hard to adjust is not that comedy has changed. The mechanics of humor have largely remained the same, it's just cultural attitudes and politics that have changed. If your politics have remained the same, you'll find it harder to do comedy expressing those politics now than when they were more closely aligned to mainstream. In other words, if you used to have a close circle of friends with misogynist opinions a misogynist joke may have gotten a few laughs out of them. If they've all grown out of it and matured in their understanding that women are actual persons rather than just objects of sexual attraction, your old jokes will no longer work on them. They may not actually get offended, but they won't be amused. Jokes work because they carry a message through a combination of context, content and subtext. If that message is expressing support for an oppressive social dynamic, it can be bullying. It's that simple.

mdp2021 5y ago

Aside note: since they have been less available to some, it is possible that some may have missed the Police Squad! (ZAZ 1982) series or The Kentucky Fried Movie (Landis 1977). I must recommend to those who only know the prominent works (Airplane!, Naked Gun etc.) to find and try the preparatory works.

lqet 5y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpGn37Svp6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpGn37Svp6I
darrenf 5y ago
Also Top Secret! ZAZ 1984 (and my favourite of the lot).
- mdp2021 5y ago
  Surely. Lots of genial ideas there. And the ZAZ members themselves do not see that (with reference to the commentary): it's so natural to them that they themselves diminish it; this is why, also elsewhere here, I noted that genius is beyond intentions. And if I have to attribute something overwhelming importance and weight, it's genius.
- nprateem 5y ago
  "My name is Deja Vu. Haven't we already met?"
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Police Squad! Is great.
MikusR 5y ago
Police Squad recently got a beautiful remastered Blu-Ray release.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Oh good; i caught the first DVD and it sucked. Bad VHS rip grade.

beebeepka 5y ago

The first 30 minutes of Airplane are absolutely incredible. Frankly, I am surprised the "Joey" jokes made the cut even back then. They surely don't make them like they used to. Maybe in 10-15 years the cycle would start over.

ryan_lane 5y ago

This movie simply hasn't aged very well. The jokes are pedestrian. Many of them take aim at people's sex or race, but not in a challenging way. I'm not offended by any of the jokes, and I still laugh at some of them, but mostly because of nostalgia. If you're reacting poorly to people being offended by some of the crude race/sex based humor, I hate to break it to you, but you're getting offended in an even worse way than them.

mdp2021 5y ago
What about the architecture? The alternative world drawn? The originality of the whole product? You look at the pebbles and have not spotted the cathedral. You overworked the left analytic hemisphere and left the right synthetic one bumping for attention, you "I will only do pecs at the gym because legs are for losers" pedestrian you, comma slash jay. The architecture is pure genius, the jokes serve it.
- ryan_lane 5y ago
  You're putting way too much thought into this movie. It's a movie of dad jokes with good delivery and timing. I can appreciate that, but it's not a work of genius.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    Again (really, again): it's not "thought", it's "eyes" (analysis vs synthesis). On this side. On your side: you are just not seeing it.
  - conradfr 5y ago
    You should respect comedy more, it's way harder to do than drama.
  - toyg 5y ago
    What one would call "dad jokes" are a small part of the endless array of gags in the movie. From sniffing glue, to the queue to hit the anxious woman, the swordfighting when panic breaks out, speaking jive, blowing the automated pilot, the turkish prison bit - it's a relentless sequence of all possible types of humor. Comedy doesn't get enough respect because "it's just laughs", but this shit is hard. To pack so many accomplished jokes in such a short movie is genius - particularly in 1974.

blitzar 5y ago

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

logicchains 5y ago
Well I really picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue!

shantnutiwari 5y ago

Non paywalled version: https://outline.com/r9eR5x https://outline.com/r9eR5x

funnay 5y ago

Next: David Zucker finds out it's hard to make mainstream comedy movies about pedophilia victims.

funnay 5y ago
caption: this was a joke about Zucker's inability to cope with the changing times.
base698 5y ago
LIE fetishized it. You could probably make dramas today.

chasd00 5y ago

I love this movie, I feel it defined the whole spoof/slapstick genre. The bar scene with the girl scouts fighting and then everyone starts disco dancing is great. “… it was worse than Detroit!” Haha

toyg 5y ago
The genre was really defined by Young Frankenstein a few years earlier, but arguably Airplane! is funnier (faster and even more absurd in gags). The decade 1974-1984 was a fantastic period for comedy.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.md/sDlQW https://archive.md/sDlQW

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

d23 5y ago

> I’m the guy who, on a soundstage, yelled, “Who’s blocking the camera?! I can’t see what’s on the monitor!” The assistant director replied, “It’s you, sir, you’re standing in front of the lens.” This is amazing. I have to imagine this inspired one of my favorite jokes from Naked Gun: > Frank: [looking into microscope] I-I can't see anything. > Ed: Use your open eye, Frank.

tomohawk 5y ago

We need a class action lawsuit against Twitter for enabling all of the neurotic and humor challenged people.

lostgame 5y ago

'Airplane!' is something like 'Family Guy' - and please note, for cartoon fans; I'm not saying 'South Park', here. There's an episode called '200'; (or something) where 'Family Guy' creator Seth MacFarlane discusses the show along with many of its voice actors, producers, etc. He mentions that 'Family Guy' is absolutely not meant to be a high-brow humour show; and that part of the technique of the writing of 'Family Guy' is, in his own words; guided by how many jokes a minute they can get - how many times they can make the audience laugh. If we have a casual pause in a show; someone looks to the camera, dead-pan, and just, quite seriously - says, 'penis' - out of the blue - I'm gonna laugh my ass off. I love intelligent humour as much as the next girl, but there is a nuance to some of the low-brow humour in 'Airplane!' that is just as complex to pull off effectively as a well-told and intelligent joke by Bill Maher, Norm MacDonald, or George Carlin. We are talking about a 41-year-old film, in a genre (comedy) that famously doesn't age well. 'Airplane!' probably shouldn't come off well today, if it follows our previously established rules of comedy. That being said, it's still hella funny.

bsanr2 5y ago

>Without trust, audiences begin to question the intentions behind every joke, they take jokes literally, and they use their collective voices to bully comedians and pressure studios against taking any comedic risk. This is the meaty bit right here. Because you have people who tell jokes that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ageist (normally wouldn't include that but I gotta play to the HN crowd), etc. and either 1) go out and actually do bigoted things/maintain relationships with outwardly bigoted people, or 2) the people who enjoy the jokes go out and do bigoted things and use the joke as cover. If you want to test this, go on 4chan right now and ask people how they feel about the difference between "black people and niggas" (Chris Rock) or "how white people are better" (Louis C.K.). (If you argue that 4chan isn't representative of the general public, you can try Facebook, but, uh, you're taking your life into your own hands with that crowd.) The problem may very well be less that people won't tolerate transgressive humor today, as it is that people can't be trusted with transgressive humor today. Some people see it as rhetoric, not humor.

jollybean 5y ago
I think this is fear mongering. People know the difference, and will mostly do it whether or not the comedy exists.
ByThyGrace 5y ago
> This is the meaty bit right here. Because you have people who tell jokes that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ageist (normally wouldn't include that but I gotta play to the HN crowd) As an ageing HNer, I liked that last bit because it reads like a joke, made me laugh, and consequently enabled my trust in what you say. I don't think you are ageist simply because you understand that some people can be mean to older people. Reality is fucked up. Being able to find humor in this reality isn't necessarily a sign of also being morally bankrupt. The ability to produce humor is a sign of intelligence. And laughing to it is but an expression of understanding.

RickJWagner 5y ago

Airplane Space Balls Eddie Murphy RAW Monty Python GhostBusters Man, I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way and bring back comedy everybody is offended by (in equal doses) and laughs at honestly. Hollywood has to go un-woke first, though.