AIRPLANE
1980
Jim Abrahams
David Zucker
Jerry Zucker
Kinds of jokes relative to film
Visual
Early films (silent) were involved in VISUAL humor. Title cards gave some small bits of humor but by and large the jokes are Visual
Verbal
With the advent of sound, films switch to a more verbal humor. The long complex humorous episodes of physical comedy are gone and verbal “gags” dominate. To some degree, reaction shots help but the humor is facial or done by a person’s body language.
Mixed
Here the camera works with or against the verbal material to make the joke. It will often as in Without a Clue, manage to comment on spoken dialog while revealing something else altogether.
The trio of directors Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker responsible for the film would eventually go on to solo careers, but not before making Top Secret! and Ruthless People. They would also be involved with a number of other films like the Naked Gun films.
Leslie Nielsen who had been a leading man earlier in his career, (See for example, Forbidden Planet (1956) ) suddenly had a whole new career open up.
With many of the films that were made after sound, the humor moved more towards comical dialog (e.g. Arsenic and Old Lace, The Man Who Came to Dinner, His Girl Friday and so on).
“Silent” films relied almost totally on visual humor and one of the problems for many of the silent screen comics was their inability to move to verbal humor although some, like Laurel and Hardy, made the transition quite well.
Airplane was a film which returned dramatically to the “sight gag” and in fact is in many ways a string of sight gags held together by a rather loose plot. The film spoofs largely that genre called “disaster movies” which in many ways rely heavily on special effects which are of course visual effect. There are many early disaster films in the silent like the 1926 The Johnstown Flood. Many of the biblical films like Noah’s Ark, The Ten Commandments and so on also contain spectacular disaster sequences in them although the genre “disaster film” does not usually include these film.
Science fiction films also produced some remarkable effect as for example the Academy Award winning film When Worlds Collide in which the earth is destroyed.
In 1939, The Rains Came produced remarkable scenes of flooding in India as a result of the monsoon. But even here, the film is not quite the kind of disaster film that was to follow, in which the disaster is the main focus of the film and the various character’s stories are caught up and intertwined with the disaster.
The grandfather of these modern disaster film with an all-star cast with interwoven stories is probably 1954’s The High and the Mighty starring John Wayne as the pilot of plane headed from Hawaii to California. His co-pilot in the film is Robert Stack who appears in Airplane! as well. From there on there are a number of disaster films in which major stars appear in some ensemble performance. This pattern also occurred in Agatha Christie murder mysteries starting with And then there Were None (1945) and continues through Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and so on.
It is often the case that when a genre suddenly achieves a kind of meteoric popularity, a spook follows. The horror films of the 30’s and 40’s were spoofed to some degree by the Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein while Murder by Death (1976) spoofs the mystery detective films (like the films with Miss Marple, Poirot, Nick and Nora Charles Thin Man series; Charlie Chan and others).
Airport (1970) was a film about problems at an airport during a blizzard and a bomber who had smuggled a bomb onto a plane and was going to detonate it. Films like Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974), Towering Inferno (1974) all were on the disaster route and with far more disaster special effects than The High and the Mighty or Airport. The genre is hardly dead at this point.
However, the closed locale (a boat, a plane, a building) which constrains the characters to a specific setting – not unlike the Agatha Christie mysteries –an island, a train, a ship) seem less popular today, and it is these films that Airplane! spoofs. This means that the film maker will play with the genre rules in a way that by exposing them makes them comedic. The basic plot is lifted almost whole cloth from a dramatic film called Zero Hour. Comparing the two is interesting in that it is easier to examine the way the same events can be approached dramatically or comedically
Consider the way in which the humor happens in the film.
AFTER THE FILM
One review says "This spoof of the Airport series of disaster movies relies on ridiculous sight gags, groan-inducing dialogue, and deadpan acting -- a comedy style that would be imitated for the next 20 years. Airplane! pulls out all the clichés as alcoholic pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays), who's developed a fear of flying due to wartime trauma, boards a jumbo jet in an attempt to woo back his stewardess girlfriend (Julie Hagerty). Food poisoning decimates the passengers and crew, leaving it up to Striker to land the plane, with the help of a glue-sniffing air traffic controller (Lloyd Bridges) and Striker's vengeful former captain (Robert Stack), who must both talk him down. Along the way, we meet a clutch of stock disaster movie passengers like the guitar-strumming nun, a sick little girl, a frightened old lady, and two African-American travelers whose "jive" has to be subtitled. Leslie Nielsen portrays the plane's doctor, launching a new phase of the actor's career that carried him through the next two decades in several similarly comedic roles. The trio of directors Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker responsible for the film would eventually go on to solo careers, but not before making Top Secret! and Ruthless People".
Based on a 1957 film called Zero Hour in which a former pilot “Stryker” is guilt ridden over a command decision which caused the death of several fliers, Airplane! follows the plot fairly closely. Stryker is trying to repair his marriage and is flying to his wife; the passengers and crew get food poisoning from fish; the plane is on auto pilot but cannot land, only Stryker can land it and does and thereby gets the girl.
The “jokes” (rather juvenile and silly) are not intrinsic to the film. In many cases go unnoticed by the characters. The situations in the film are not funny (i.e. the potential plane crash). (There is some question whether the term “adult film” should be replaced by “juvenile film” on the grounds that juveniles are people with little experience in things that come along with physical maturity and that jokes are frequently seen as being made to allay some fears – presumably about what is happening to them.
So to the question – are the jokes visual, verbal or a mixture or do they work off one another?
Are the jokes constructed into the plot line or are they almost more important than the plot?
Humor occurs in different aspects – making fun of authority, making someone feel superior (is it jealousy) relieving tension, ethnic humor, gross out humor, body humor. Humor sometimes pokes fun of things people fear (it lessens the fear/tension). One problem with psychological interpretations is that they come closer to artistic interpretations than scientific ones. From the time of Freudian approach until now, the psychological arguments have been debated and altered over time (true too for physical sciences but in a rather different way.
Jokes in the film are ethnic, sexual, gross out and these are sometimes seen as juvenile – that is the people who make them find the topics tabu and a bit frightening, since their experience with them is limited and there is a kind of testing of “how far can I go” which is sort of the way some analysts interpret children’s behavior. “I will get away with as much as I can – ie until someone stops me”. One can wonder why X rated movies and “foul” language are called “Adult” rather than “juvenile”
Acting style: somewhat deadpan. Lack of reaction.
Repeated action with elaboration - each person approached about flower - each reaction different and more extreme. Consider similar approach in Laurel and Hardy's "Fight of the Century" with escalating pie fight. Consider the question of qualitative vs. quantitative. Quantitative increase in amount, qualitative in kind. Comedy may escalate beyond reasonable bounds (and often does).
Camera movement: Panning generally when there is action on the screen. One visual joke when panning across the enormous dashboard of the plane
At least one "direct address"
A lot of intertextuality - some in music some in visual:
Intertextuality, like spoofs, requires the audience have knowledge of the piece being referenced.