‘Airplane!’ With Bill Simmons and Bill Hader

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This episode is brought to you by a 20th Century Studios new film, Springsteen, Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White and Academy Award nominee Jeremy Strong.

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all right the man the mythology bill hayer is here we haven't done this since covet it's like it's been almost a half decade drought for you in the rewatchables that's true that's very true yeah but you're back and i asked you let's do a movie i sent you a bunch of titles and you saw airplane and you were out of your mind excited to discuss who yeah yeah i've talked about airplane and others i'm in that book that came out about airplane but that is such a

a formidable movie for me you know so yeah it was yeah that was that was the one that my eyes immediately went to you know So you didn't see it when it came out, did you?

You saw it after, Brabbay.

Yeah.

No, that movie came out when I was like two years old or something.

Yeah.

But i can't remember a time when that movie wasn't in my life you know it's like

you know whatever like star wars or indiana jones or something like that it was just always

i i don't know if i can like remember the exact moment when i saw it it was just always there because it was on cable for

whatever and then it was also like on

tbs and wgn and where i grew up in in Oklahoma, like we got those channels.

And so it was like edited for those.

And so I, I mean, it was just constantly on television and I'd watch it every time I was on.

And still to this day, I just, I just showed it to my girlfriend.

Allie hadn't seen it in, since she was a kid, she said.

And we watched, I was like, oh, we got to watch airplane.

Yeah.

We watched it.

And I'm still, I know every word to it.

And I'm still like dying laughing, you know, just watching her reaction to it was really fun.

Well, it it was funny reading the book.

The book came out, I think, two years ago, and it's like a mix of an oral history, but there's a lot of people like you in there.

Cause I saw this movie in the theater.

I think I was 10, the summer of 1980, and just immediately was like, this is, I can't believe this happened.

And then it was in my life, like, you, like for the next 45 years.

And I always felt like it was one of the great movies, like the great comedies, influential, the whole thing.

But I didn't know, I didn't know how many other people felt that way.

And then you see that book and it's like a who's who of all these people are like, yeah, that was the moment.

Yeah, that was the movie that like you go, oh, that's how you do it.

You know, there's certain films like that for me, like

Spinal Tap or Monty Python, the Holy Grail or Life of Brian, you know, these things where you went, oh, or, or those, you know,

Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles and then the early kind of Woody Allen movies like Love and Death and some of those things.

They were always, they were just kind of like, oh, that's how you're supposed to do comedy.

And then you would would see other, whatever, more famous comedies and they wouldn't do it for you because there wasn't this kind of edge to it.

Yeah.

But Airplane is different because

I don't know if you could do, because my friend Akiva just did that Naked Gun movie, which was really fun.

And, but the thing is with this movie.

Airplane, which is so hard to replicate, is that everybody,

whether it's Saturday Night Live or just whatever, all these people do a funny version of themselves, you know?

Yeah.

I remember my dad telling me, he's like, if you, if you, that movie's funny, but if you grew up watching like Sea Hunt and watching with Lloyd Bridges or those movie, you know, Forbidden Planet or Poseidon Adventure that had Leslie Nielsen in it, like all these movies where they were always the straight guy.

Yeah.

Robert Stack watching the Untouchables as a kid and being like, I'd never seen them be funny.

I only knew them as that specific

kind of uh character which isn't even like around anymore those very super serious yeah things and and them playing it straight and actually having the real people instead of comedians it was like it was uh

you know yeah it was it it wasn't uh

it was like a hallucination or something it was like wait you're allowed to do that like it was it was great

well they cracked a secret sauce right Because if you think you're doing a movie like this, you're going to have Harvey Corman as in the Leslie Nielsen role and he's going to be hamming up.

We're going to have Chevy Chase in the Robert Hayes role and they're trying to be funny.

Somewhere in there.

The only comedic actor, I think, in the whole movie is Jimmy Walker and he doesn't have any lines.

He's in 10 Texas.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He just, he's a guy.

He's a gag in the background, you know.

But I mean, Peter Graves.

I mean, that

thing of him talking to a little kid in the cockpit is one of the funniest things ever.

And it's so disturbing and funny when you watch it now where he's like, you like movies?

Gladiators.

I mean, I don't know a time in my life where my friends and I weren't quoting that, you know, you ever hang around the gymnasium?

Like, we would go into the gym, right?

In elementary school, you go, you ever hang around the gymnasium?

Just so weird.

And also a comedy too, that those, it was like, you know, Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrams.

And you could just tell these guys like grew up in Milwaukee and they were just following their intuition.

Cause there's some of it, it's like, not like jokes like when we, you know, you work at SNL or something where it has to kind of have some sort of meaning or

just, you could tell they were just watching.

Zero hour, that movie, and then just like riffing on it and just being stupid and making themselves laugh.

And they just trusted their instincts to be like, well, if we find this funny, we'll just go for it, you know?

Well, it's funny.

There's two things going on at the same time.

One, it's like a high volume joke movie, right?

They're just getting off stuff left and right.

And sometimes you don't even catch it right away, right?

So it's like they're almost like firing a bunch of threes in an NBA game.

But then on the other side, there are these long, well-constructed minute long where nothing seems to happen, but it's all leading to some joke they want to get to, like hold, like hold five and keep paying.

What is that?

The ham on the mayo, whatever that one is.

Ham on the mayo, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But he said it, they set it up for like 35 seconds.

And you're like, what are they doing?

And then it's like, oh, that's why they did that.

And they have a million of those.

Yeah, it's this whole long lead up

to.

Yeah.

And I had, and so I had seen this movie first, and then I saw Naked Gun, the original when it came out.

Yeah.

That came out when I was 10.

And I saw that in the theater.

And I remember that was like,

you know I'd never

to this day I've never experienced a theater a comedy theater experience like that like people were genuinely losing their minds like the whole baseball sequence at the end of that movie people were going when he sang the national anthem and then when he gets stoked on saying strike and he starts dancing as the ump do you remember like oh yeah people like lost their minds i mean like literally like people jumping up out of their seat and going crazy and like that, you guys hear like people falling in the aisles.

Like people were genuinely falling all over the place.

And I had never seen anything like that.

So I was a big fan of theirs.

And then I went back and saw a Kentucky Fright movie.

And I remember I brought that to a sleepover when I was in fourth grade.

And the mom.

Some nudity.

Yeah.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yeah.

Catholic high school girls in trouble.

They're like, whoa, what's this?

And I was like, I haven't seen it yet.

I haven't seen it.

It says it's the guys who made airplane and the director of Animal House.

And they're like, what is this?

You know?

um

but yeah this that style is so bad they just kind of made up their own thing well it's funny you mentioned the theater thing because we did naked gun a couple years ago and i told the story about seeing that in the theater and the baseball scene like almost caused a riot it was so funny people lost their minds i only remember two comedies because the other one was there's something about mary Oh yeah.

There's two comedies.

And then

the closing credits and the hangover was the other one.

People were just like, could not believe what was happening and just laughing their asses off.

But for the most part, you kind of remember when the whole theater is dying laughing at the same time.

It's such a unique experience.

Yeah, it's such a, it's a wonderful experience.

And yeah, you miss it.

And that's what was nice going to see the new one with Liam Neeson that Akiva directed because I was like, oh my God, I'm in a theater and everybody's laughing.

I haven't.

They don't make comedies really anymore.

So it was kind of awesome just to have that experience where you're like, I mean, you can go to the the theater and get scared, you know, but you can't go to the theater and like laugh as much like that anymore.

And I was telling my, you know, my kids, I was like, okay,

we're going to watch the original one.

And yeah, that baseball scene, you guys have no idea from beginning to end, the place was going nuts.

Well, especially using

real announcers.

Oh, yeah.

Every joke killed.

I remember I went when I had to go to it.

When I got Barry, the head of HBO was like, you got to look like you were once in the military.

So you got to go to the gym because you don't look like you're in the military.

So I went to this gym in LA, this small gym, and Dave, David Zucker was there.

And so that's how I met him.

And I was like, you know, over there going like, oh my God, that's David Zucker.

Holy shit, you know.

And he was so nice.

And I, I mean, he answered all my questions where I was like, how'd you guys get, you know, all these people to do it?

What What was it like with the announcers?

What was, you know,

and then Airplane 2.

And then I once had lunch with Jerry Zucker and they're so open about like,

oh yeah, Robert Stack totally got it and like he loved it and just was totally on board.

Lloyd Bridges, a little bit confused, you know, Peter Graves is like, wait, what did you guys get me into?

And then like Leslie Nielsen like immediately got it and was like, a pro,

you know, and it was just, it was just really cool getting.

Yeah, this, the secret sauce sauce of this is the using the non-comic actors which now seem now we've been doing that for 45 years but back then nobody thought that way one of the snl episodes that i was a part of that was like one of the hottest episodes ever was when it was brian williams because he they had only seen him you know do the news yeah so seeing brian williams i remember he was on a bronx beat uh that sketch with Maya and Amy, and he was just like, hey, how you doing?

And like, the place was going crazy because they had no, they had never seen him.

They were like, I didn't know you could do that.

Or like when John Hamm first hosted, I don't think anybody knew that John was funny.

They only knew him as like Don Draper.

Remember that episode when he came out and was being funny, the place was like, no, like they just went crazy.

Yeah, The Rock was like that too, where we had just seen him as a wrestler, but nobody realized that he actually was funny.

Yeah, he's very funny.

Yeah, he's very funny and like

has great timing.

And

like yeah all those guys could do that and

but even like that leslie nielsen knew like they just that's why i asked those guys i was like did they know how to play that you know and they're like yeah leslie nielsen like we didn't have to tell him anything like when he has the stethoscope on and he's like yes i'm a doctor like he knew not to like be weird or like yeah i'm like he just the stethoscope and him being straight was what the joke was

you know

and

that it's uh

it's well, that's that's why these movies have had trouble because people have been trying to do this format ever since.

And there's this is the one that played it straight the best.

And I always feel like the silliness kind of seeped in over the next 45 years when people did, yeah.

Well, that's like this insecurity thing of like, oh God, will people know if we're joking or not?

Or I don't know if that's just,

I, yeah, I don't know what it.

I mean, that was a thing I remember early on, like 20 years ago,

when, you know, you go would,

I got the SNL and I would go on these meetings with people about silly movies.

And there was like, I remember people were like, there's smart,

someone told me there's smart, it's easy to do a smart comedy, like, you know, at the time, like, knocked up,

a dumb comedy, like.

At the time, it was Hot Rod was with the guy because I was in that movie and he was like, like, Hot Rod.

He goes, it's really hard to do smart, dumb comedies,

which he's like airplane and naked gun were like the best one where it's like it's dumb but it's smart you know like those are really difficult and and those guys just had the

i think what they just naturally found funny is what made it work i think the best comedies for me always felt like i've said 100 times just like oh that the group who made it they're just trying to make themselves laugh you know like they're they're like i don't know this is like funny to us you know and then suddenly

you know, I showed my kids when they were young this movie, A Naked Gun, and they're dying laughing.

I mean, I have three daughters, and the scene where the woman knocks the, where she's playing the guitar and she knocks the little girl's tube out, and she starts dying, they thought that was hilarious.

Yeah.

They were like crying, laughing.

And the face she's making and everything.

Like, they just thought that was great.

Well, so in that book, there was a bunch of people that weighed in.

These are some quotes.

Trey and Matt, they said, Airplane was sort of the Star Wars of comedy.

The tone of it was just something we'd never seen.

We went to see it several times with different friends and everything.

It was a big deal.

That's true because Caddyshack came out a couple of weeks later.

And it was, these were when you would just go to the same comedy movie like four times.

Like we had like, we had like five channels.

Like, so if something funny was out, you just kept going back to it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now those would be like like a TV show or something.

They're like, well, how can we make this a TV show or something?

But when it was a movie, yeah, you would go out, you'd see it over and over again.

And I do think it was that Star Wars thing is kind of apps where

you can kind of make a delineation of like before and after airplane in some ways.

Even the look of airplane I saw in other movies where it was airplane, I think, purposely

was kind of like harsh light and the sets were like obviously kind of fake and it has this thing.

And then you see 80s movies, like comedies just become that, you know, like these kind of lower budget movies.

There's one called like Jekyll and Hyde Back Together Again with Mark Blankfield and then

Crime Wave, the Sam Raimi movie, Crime Wave.

Like, there's a bunch of them where they have that look,

you know?

Yeah.

That's, but yeah, that's very much like, oh, it's like an early 80s comedy.

But I don't know.

Yeah, I, I, I just, I, yeah, I agree with those guys.

There's nothing wrong with it.

Here's another one.

Here's Apatow.

When you make a list of the best movies of all time, you're always going to put airplane on it.

If somebody made a movie as funny as airplane right now, it would make a billion dollars.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, that was that time, though.

You know, that's like.

Like they apparently, I guess, showed it to Michael Eisner, who was the head of Paramount at the time.

Michael Eisner's kids loved it.

Like they were like, we don't know if he liked it, but his kids were like cracking up.

And so I think we all

owe a debt to Michael Eisner's kids

because they were the ones that were like, holy shit, this is so funny.

Patton Oswald said,

A lot of comedies in the last 30 years have wanted to be airplane.

They were gag, gag, gag, where airplane is really structured, driving the story along the whole time.

You've got to play comedy as if it's deadly serious.

You've got to play weirdness as if it's the most normal thing in the world.

That's something you've been good at.

And a lot of the stuff you've done is like, people are being weird, but it's, it seems completely normal as they're being weird.

Yeah, that's probably got it from watching airplane a lot as a kid.

That's what I mean.

It was like, you don't,

you don't like showcase like, oh, this is.

People ignore stuff, which is funny.

Like in comedy, you always have that where, at least in my experience, where it's almost, you know, they go, well, that guy should react, right?

And it's like, no, no, no, no, just you keep moving.

You know, that's like one of the things that screwed up.

You know, it was say, you know, whatever,

you know, like that scene where it's like, are you a doctor?

Yes, I'm a doctor.

He's a stethoscope.

If you cut back to that girl going, well, that's weird.

He has a stethoscope.

It kills the whole thing.

And I've been in those situations where a producer or somebody's like, well, wouldn't they, in reality, this would happen.

It's like, right, this isn't reality.

It's it's like its own weird universe you know and it's like a weird movie reality but um letterman said oh letterman oh yeah letterman auditioned for it letterman auditioned for it and was relieved he didn't get it because he didn't think he was a good actor and he loves this movie and he said my son and i when we're driving the city he will say to me just move over elaine and i'll say i'll move over but quit calling me elaine it just goes on and on film comedy became different after that movie and it makes so much sense that he loved that movie because i'm like an early letterman guy and a lot of the absurdist like deadpan people being weird but not knowing they're weird all that stuff was like in the first couple years of his show it's definitely a movie where you could see the filmmakers grew up on television and like grew up on like right you know what i mean like watching the streets of san francisco yeah

or like yeah or like watching the stuff from the early 60s and late 50s that's what i mean you know watching Hunt or

those shows where it's so deadly serious, but it's all like, Jimmy, we got to get you home because, you know, it's all very wholesome and stuff.

I mean, having June Cleaver do jive in it, you know, Leave It to Beaver's mom is doing jive and I mean, it's very clear, like, oh, these dudes like grew up on TV and just sitting around like making fun of it.

And that's why it's like, oh, no, it's got to be those guys, you know?

Well, the story of it was that they randomly taped this movie, Zero Hour, because they would tape TV and look at the commercials.

And they were trying to figure out all this different comedy stuff and stumbled across this movie that came out in the late 50s.

And the structure of it is basically identical to Airplane.

There's a really good YouTube video some crazy person did.

They do the comparison.

Yeah.

And they're just like the scenes of like the nun singing to the

to the little girl.

Like there's like five scenes that they just take.

Somebody coming into the cockpit.

yeah you gotta have it like those things are so specific they had to come from another source and it's fun because i didn't know about the zero hour thing and then one time i just had tcm i would just have it playing in my house and then yeah i was watching that and i was like god this movie is like airplane

you know and i go like and then looking it up and go oh yeah this is what airplane's based on you know the other one was airport 75 it ripped off a few things things from that

but i hadn't seen any of the airport movies and that's what again my dad and my uncles his brothers were the ones that were kind of like the older brother kind of guys for me of like well it's airport movies but it's also this and it's also this like they were giving all the context of why it like

was even a bigger thing for them than it was for me i was just like oh this is hilarious and weird and you know yeah because when i was little in the 70s this was a whole industry the airport Poseidon Advention, Poseidon Adventure, all the airport movies, Towering Inferno, Black Sunday.

Yeah, they were like the superhero movies of the 70s.

Yeah.

And they're all played the same way.

There was always famous people in it.

Like OJ, I think, was in Towering Inferno.

I'm sure.

Yeah.

And also, there's one called The Swarm.

It was like Burt I.

Gordon movies and

yeah, all those guys.

I'm blanking on the other guy's name, the big guy.

But yeah,

there's one about bees with Michael Kang called The Swarm.

Oh, Jesus.

That's got a bunch of big name actors in it.

It's just people going, ah, ah, who's fighting bees?

You got to get away from these bees.

Yeah.

It's just crazy.

Keenan Ivory Wayans.

Said they took what Mel Brooks did to a whole other level.

They not only made fun of the genre of the main story, but within that, they made fun of 10 other movies, which is true.

Nobody had done that either i think that's a good point like all of a sudden saturday night fever is being parodied in this out of nowhere and you know yeah yes it was saturday night fever and um

i mean there's so many other things in there and then keener waynes i mean i'm gonna get you suck is a great movie i i think it's very very funny um

but uh but yeah they they encounter yeah because again like mel brooks was doing the parody thing but it was all comedic actors and those movies are great great, but it was all comedic actors.

And they're hamming it up.

Yeah.

And they're having fun and they're going crazy.

I mean,

I love Harvey Cormann and Blazing Saddles.

It's so funny to me.

But, but,

yeah, it's definitely big.

And then they were, that's what I mean.

The Zucker Brothers and Abrams, like, they were savvy enough, but it's also the thing you find, like, they were just, they just watched a lot of shit.

I guarantee and just were fans of stuff.

And they're like, why would we do that?

They already did that.

Let's do this thing.

Right.

You know, Matt and Trey are very much like that, where it's like, well, why are we going to to do this when that's what everybody's doing?

Let's try to, let's make it, you know, puppets like Thunder, you know, what, you know, Team America, we'll do it all puppets.

You know, fuck it.

Let's do that.

Because it, it, it's more exciting for us.

This last quote was from Katzenberg, who is one of the execs on the, on the movie, because he worked for Eisner.

And he said, what happens in the movie business today bears no resemblance to the movie business 70s and 80s.

We were always determined to do unique and original.

There was no franchise business, sequel business.

It was all about original ideas.

And you look at it.

I was looking at the movies that came out in 1980 and there's like, you know, barely any sequels.

There's no, really, no superhero movies.

And it's all these original idea movies.

Some of them fell by the wayside.

Others stuck.

But, you know, I feel like that's starting to come back a little bit now in 2025, but not totally.

Yeah, I think I was just talking to Patton the other day and he was like, you know, it says something that the Indiana Jones movie,

the last Indiana Jones movie, lost to Five Nights at Freddy's or something.

That

I sound like an old man, but but like,

but that that movie is so clear.

People are like, oh, we like something, just something somewhat original and not like your mom and dad's sequel.

It's like, we want the original stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah, I feel that definitely.

And you can feel it in some superhero movies now where you can feel the filmmakers and the writers trying to like

get things

you know artistic and try to get things through but in the superhero

way you know it's kind of like uh

i guess courses he called them smugglers but you know it's like the filmmakers like like douglas cirque or something he would make these melodramas that were women's pictures quote unquote but were really his he's this you know German guy who fled the Nazis and it was all his kind of like, you know, thinking how America was so, you know, it was about America like American life, you know, he was getting all these ideas and this kind of, you know,

critique of

America within this like Rock Hudson Jane Wyman movie, you know?

And

I feel like you're starting to see that with some superhero movies.

But hopefully, yeah, they'll be more and more original stuff.

I mean, that's why it's so great when stuff like Weapons and Sinners does well.

You know, like it's it's always nice when that happens, you know.

We take a break and then come back.

One more thing to throw you before we get to the categories.

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1980.

Blues Brothers comes out June 20th.

Airplane comes out July 4th.

And Caddyshack comes out July 25th.

Wow.

And I looked through through because I'm a psycho.

I went through every year and tried to figure out is there anything remotely approximating that?

And there just isn't.

Like there's been stretches.

And you were even involved in one where it was like an 07, Knocked Up and Super Bad and Tropic Thunder all came out in the same year, but nothing like...

Nothing like this.

These three like influential where we hadn't had a lot of rewatchable comedies.

Like I remember Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder came out like a week apart or something.

I remember that.

There was a couple there there was like a

knocked up and yeah, knocked up was at the beginning of summer and Super Bad was at the end of the summer, but nothing like that where you're like, well, those are three massive

comedies that we're still, you know, people still talk about and they were all like within two months.

Yeah, like influential ones.

Cause I was looking at like the comedy eras.

And like mid-90s, that was all of a sudden we had all those Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler,

Chris Farley movies, but they're pretty spread out.

In the late 90s had the Farrelly Brothers and American Pie, and Austin Powers, and multiple Sandler movies, and 8mm, which I now consider a comedy.

Yeah, Adam Machine was arguably the best comedic actor we had.

But nothing, the only other, and you were involved in the era that was like the last distinct era when it was Apatow.

It was for, you know, Pineapple Express.

It was the Hangover.

And it just felt like for five years there, we were just firing out these classic comedies.

Yeah.

Bridesmaids was in the

And it just kept going all the way through like, basically, this is the end of neighbors, but

nothing like this stretch of just three movies in a row that became like iconic.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy that those are all that close together.

And,

but I, I mean, I will say I've watched those films a lot.

And, and Airplane is the one, nothing gets those other movies, but airplane is the one I keep going back to because it's just so unique, you know.

Yeah, it feels the least aided for some reason.

Yeah, it's just it's like it's its own thing that you can't and blues brothers is very funny and it's so like extravagant that movie like the car chase scenes at the end it's you just like they had so much money for a comedy and and cocaine there was a lot of cocaine decisions yeah a lot of coke decisions um

but and i mean blues brothers is so funny because of all the shit in that movie the thing that i the only thing i hold on to for that movie is orange whip i mean my friends orange whip orange whip john candy right that's like what we say

we'll say that like orange when i'm asking people if they want stuff and then i'll be like orange whip you know um

but

uh and then caddyshack is so you know it was really funny but the the the the the i was just as a side caddy shack for all the comic i mean again to what we're talking about when i watch caddyshack There's so many funny people in that movie, and obviously they're all amazing.

But the person I always think about is Ted Knight in that movie is so fucking funny because he's not, he's not, he just feels real.

He feels like such a, do you know what I mean?

He just has that when he's talking to his golf club at the end, like, oh, Billy, Billy, like, so funny and weird.

And he has like all the stakes of the movie are in his eyes.

Like, he's so like his son, he fucking hates, and like, all that shit.

I just, I think he is so funny in that.

And, and, yeah, so it's it's one of my favorite characters of any movie ever judge nils unbelievable tour de force it really is like he he really again because there's something rooted in reality in it

that's very funny to me you know um

oh

um i was thinking with airplane One of the things that's crazy and different than Caddyshack has it, especially if you play golf, but this movie had so many bits that just became part of conversation, like in my family, my friends.

Like you had a story about good luck, we're all counting on you that you told me about.

Yeah, yeah, that's what Alec Berg would say.

And yeah, or I think it was Alec would say that to me, or I would say, no, you would say that.

He was

like writing, he had some deadline or pull up some scene and you would just keep opening his door.

Oh, yeah.

I would keep opening his door going, good luck, we're all counting on you.

And then I would call him in the middle of the night and go,

good luck.

We're all counting.

Like, just keep it going.

But we had that.

We had the Shirley must be serious.

Stop calling me Shirley.

That was the romantic thing.

Yeah, that's huge.

What?

A big one for my family.

The other thing is, oh, yes, I had the fish.

That was the other thing that we would always say.

Like, if it wasn't on the menu,

that was another thing in my family.

We'd be like, at a, you know, what'd you guys have?

Oh, I had the burrito.

I had taco.

Oh, I remember.

Yeah, I had the fish.

Right.

You know,

a big one in my family was the.

I had lasagna.

Sorry, I fucked it up.

I had the lasagna.

Yeah, the lasagna.

The

people that are sitting next to the Robert Hayes character who are committing suicide because the stories are so long.

We've had that as a running joke in my dad's family for 45 years because we have a couple of relatives where you're just like, and you see them trapped in the corner and we start looking and like at pulling out the same resource.

And also, all those care actors are so good.

That old lady is so funny.

I mean, after she says like oh she's lovely you know supple breast amazing figure you know and all that but then when he starts talking the way she takes her glasses off oh no

like oh god i didn't want oh this guy's gonna go into a story you know i like my coffee black like my men that's lasted 45 years yeah that's huge have you ever been in a turkish prison has just been undefeated yeah leon's getting larger big

leon's leaning larger uh the fog is getting thicker.

And then it looks like I picked a bad week to quit doing blank, you know,

or whatever.

Yeah, that was always.

That keeps going forever.

Looks like a long picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue, whatever you want.

And then the other one my wife and I do, I don't know if this is enough, but anytime I do something, because we've been together since like 1998, wait, if If I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to have coffee today.

And she's like, hmm, Bill always has coffee in the morning.

It's like, what this?

That's like eternal.

I feel like that keeps that's going to keep it.

That was based on a commercial.

It was.

Yeah, it was based on a project commercial.

Quickly before the categories.

So we mentioned all the stuff that they borrowed from.

Paramount bought it.

And a big thing was

them convincing the studio that they didn't need comedy actors, that they wanted to get people like Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen and all that stuff.

And it's funny.

McKay says this in the book, which is along the lines of what you just said with Brian Williams about anytime we had older, high-status white dudes on the show hosting when they weren't really actors, they were the easiest to write comedy for because they could fall a lot further.

And it was so fun to hear them say crazy, crazy things.

It's true.

I mean, think of when William Shatner says, get a life at the Star Trek convention sketch.

People still think about that because it was William Shatner going, get a life, like him doing.

It's like, and you were shocked.

You're like, oh my God, I've only seen him be Captain Kirk and him actually doing that.

I will say, incidentally, when I rewatched the movie, the thing that, and Keenan Thompson and I would talk about this all the time, I think maybe my favorite part of the movie now, when I watch it, there's so many favorite parts.

I really like the end of the movie when Robert Stack is talking on the, on the record, and to Robert Hayes, and Robert Hayes leaves and he keeps talking.

And he goes,

I mean, yeah, it was a childhood was a living hell.

You know, he goes, get get kicked in the head with an iron boot.

And then he gets in his head.

He goes, of course, you don't know what that's like, Ted.

No one knows.

I forget I said it.

I don't know why I said that.

Like, he's just completely spinning out.

And he's like, municipal bonds, Ted.

Like, he's

just like that thing was so weird.

And that Robert Stack played it straight.

Me and Kean Thompson would do that all the time.

We would go kicked in the head with an iron boot.

Oh.

So written directed by the Zuckerberg and Jim Abrahams.

The original title was Flying High, and then it was called Kentucky Fried Airplane in the like the script process.

They knew they were going to call that.

3.5 million.

It was part of the Kentucky Fried Theater.

Yeah.

And then they did Kentucky Fried Movies.

So this was anyway.

$3.5 million budget.

It made $171 million.

It was the fourth biggest movie of 1980.

And

obviously a massive hit for Paramount.

Yeah.

Helped the Eisner piece.

Roger Rebert, our guy, three stars,

said it was a comedy in the great tradition of high school sits, skits, the Sid Caesar TV show, Mad Magazine, blah, blah, blah.

The reason it's funny frequently is because it's sophomore, predictable, corny, et cetera.

But he liked it.

All right, categories.

So I tried to narrow down most rewatchable scene.

Red zone, white zone argument.

Listen, Betty, don't start with your white zone shit again.

That whole part.

The jive guys boarding boarding the plane yeah i mean the jive guys with um

june cleaver is is was pretty shocking like it's still like it just you don't expect that bit to take that turn that leave it to beaver's mom's gonna show up and be like i speak jive

and then i hear i saw on like patton sent me this thing that was funny which was on the making of airplane like the 25th anniversary or something they had those two actors who played the jive talking guys and they were speaking, you know, obviously like

normal people.

But underneath it, they subtitled them in jives.

So it was like reverse to the movie.

I was like, oh, that's funny.

So yeah, and they made up a lot of that stuff.

Those two guys, yeah, that's what one of the Zuckers said.

They were like, oh, those guys deserve a lot of credit for that because they were just making stuff up.

Yeah, they unleashed at least one of the actors.

I think his name was Al white and had a just like hey can you write this yeah like in somehow yeah yeah that was so funny kareem loved it i was surprised kareem said i love the abonics scene because they poked fun at a very real subject with that oh that was funny when he says the hell i don't to the kid that is a very funny scene yeah i got that one just not because you don't see that coming either

so i have ted's story about meeting elaine when we're in the disco there's a stunt woman fight that just keeps going and going.

Yeah, two Girl Scouts or something.

It makes, yeah, I don't know what that is about, but it's so funny.

And that goes right out.

And he starts like pointing to the knife in his back.

And Julie Haggerty thinks it's a dance.

I worked with her once, too, and I asked her about it.

And she was like, oh, I go, were you guys laughing a lot on the set of that?

And she goes, well, you know how it is.

No, you're kind of like trying to get it right,

you know, and then they go cut and you'd be like, oh, God, I hope that was all right.

You you know, and right.

So, there wasn't like, oh, we're having a hard time keeping it together because the tone was so weird.

So, she's like, I had a great time, but I just remember trying to like keep my

she's like the nicest human being on the planet, Julie Haggerty is, and but she was like, I was just trying to like make sure I was getting the right tone and everything.

It was very, it was very sweet.

Did you have a movie where everybody was just laughing on the set the entire time and almost being able to, or is it just serious comedy everywhere?

Uh, no, I mean,

I mean, Super Bad, we laughed a lot on.

I remember Super Bad.

I mean, it's on the DVD.

There's a whole scene I couldn't get through because I kept laughing.

What scene was it?

When I tell McLovin, I'm sorry, I blocked your cock.

I couldn't get through the line.

I just kept laughing.

I just could not stop laughing because I didn't realize Christmas Plast was going to be naked in the scene and like under the covers.

And we walk in on him with this girl.

And so just seeing this nerdy guy with, you know,

I just, it was just the whole image of him and me as this cop apologizing to him.

It just, I just, it just, I was like, guys, I don't think I can do this.

And it went from being funny to then, you know, people like, you know, like, dude, get your shit together.

Yeah.

People are getting bad at you.

Come on, man.

Please get it, like, get it together, dude.

But that one was a lot of fun.

I remember I was laughing a lot on that.

Yeah.

A couple more re-watchable scenes.

Well, the kid bringing the coffee to the girl when they're both like little kid adults.

Yeah, Republican kids.

Yeah.

I don't know.

That just was a fun idea.

Captain Over meets Joey and Roger meets Joey too.

We get all, we're playing all the hits on this one and then it goes to the Kareem, which I got to say, when I saw this at age 10 and I knew Kareem as just this guy who had no emotion when he played basketball, just shot the sky hook, had the goggles.

You had no feel for him at at all.

He was the biggest star in the league.

And then to see him in an airplane, it like broke my brain.

Because I love basketball.

I'm a basketball fan.

Do you think the kid's dad has a point?

That was what was great about that scene was that was the rap on him that he only tried in the playoffs

and that he was on autopilot during the season.

As a sports, if you know, you know, sports, you know, master,

what do you think about what Kareem said back?

Do you think his like have your old man, I've been hearing that shit ever since UCLA.

Have you had drad?

Do you think I loved it?

Well, the fact I was going to talk about this later.

The funniest thing with the Kareem thing is it's we have this category Apex Mountain.

It's literally his Apex Mountain because they just won the 1980 title.

He had had the best game of his life in game five where he got hurt, he sprained his ankle, he came back, had this real game.

Oh, so he's like at the top of his, yeah.

And he had just finished like this incredible 11-year run, uh, you know, top of the mountain.

He's playing with magic, he's in LA,

but nobody had a feel for him.

And then when he did this, it like,

I actually think it really helped him from a public standpoint.

People are like, oh, Kareem's not an asshole.

Oh, he has like a sense of humor about himself.

Yeah.

And also, athletes weren't in movies.

Like Bernard King was in Fast Break.

Dr.

J was in Fish That Save Pittsburgh.

But they weren't in movies like this.

Hockey guys and Slapshot, right?

No.

Hockey guys and that.

And then Long.

But it was, it was just so unconventional.

Like by the the time...

I guess it'd be like retired people, right?

Right.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Well, and then you go 35 years later, you did Trainwreck and LeBron is in it, right?

And at that time, we're used to athletes doing shit like that.

But with Kareem, we were not.

Yeah.

You said LeBron was good, like good, like a good actor, though.

He was really good.

What I thought was funny about LeBron was that Judd,

you know, he was pitching some kind of things like, I remember, oh, what if, you know, you go, you guys go to a, it was like bigger kind of set piece stuff, like more comedy stuff.

And, um,

and, and LeBron was more into like the idea that he was cheap.

He thought was really funny.

Like, and that was just the thing I was saying, like, to him, like, I met somebody who was like really famous and like had, like, really rich and had a dinner with, I just had a dinner with them.

And I was like, and dude, they like, we split the check.

It was crazy.

It's like one of the most richest people in the world.

And we split the check and LeBron was like, oh, I should do that.

Like that was like, he got really excited by that.

And he was like, oh, let's do that.

You know, which I like, so I was like, oh, man, he's funny.

He's got like a real comedy,

you know, brain.

And he played it great.

You know,

and then, and Judd was so delighted by that.

He was like, oh, he wants to do, oh, that's so awesome.

You know, so yeah, he was great.

A couple more scenes.

The, uh, the

playing the song for the sick little girl goes right into Ted's story about living in Africa when they're teaching basketball.

Oh, yeah.

The soldier ends up killing himself.

That all stretch.

My favorite part we didn't talk about yet, the inflatable pilot getting blown.

Oh, yeah, that's the kind of...

When I was 10, that was the height of comedy for me.

It felt edgy.

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to see it.

Also, the funny thing about that scene is that some of the WGN and TBS, like my memory is one of them cut it and the other one didn't cut it.

And I was like, I wonder if they understood what was happening in that scene.

You know,

I mean, the

inflatable head smiles, like, the guy smiles.

So clearly, it's like it starts going up and down at one point.

Like, this is awesome.

But, like,

yeah, like, I remember it got cut in some of them, and the other ones, it wasn't cut.

And I thought that was interesting.

Well, that goes right into the attack golden retriever,

and then it goes right into the guy covering himself in gasoline.

Oh, yeah.

Holding the match.

And she's like, Hey, Ted, you want to?

And the guy got

a nod, like, please, please go.

Um, a couple more quick ones.

The lady who freaks out, and everyone lines up to hit her.

That was borrowed from one of the airport movies where somebody's freaking out, and somebody slaps her, and they just decided to take that money crazy.

Also, Leslie Nielsen is so brutal.

He slaps her, and they go, Doctor, they need you.

And he slaps her one last time.

He goes,

and you're like, Jesus Christ.

Like, he, it's like, so mean.

Like, he,

that's still shocking to me when I see it because it's like you're kind of used to this thing.

And then

it's for no reason.

I was like, god damn it.

That's awful.

The stewardess, I speak, jive.

Yeah.

This is a small one, but Randy breaking down when she's like, I'm 26 and I'm not married.

And that other lady comes in and says, you got to have a husband.

Classic.

And then The Landing the Plane has the i just want to tell you all good luck we're all counting on you i quit the wrong week to quit sniffing glue uh all that's it's playing all the hits down the stretch oh yeah where he says uh

um

also there's that weird moment where where lloyd bridges is talking and that and he's and that spear for no reason just flies into the

and then he goes and if we don't do it this thing will go right down to the ground and then a giant watermelon falls down yeah you're like what is happening They were just throwing jokes at the end.

They were there.

I don't know, watermelon falls.

Like, you know, and

all right.

So what's your favorite?

What's your most re-watchable?

I had that moment with Robert Stack where he loses it at the end, where he's like, municipal bonds, Ted.

I just, the reason I like it, because it really, it just, I get logically why those guys did it, but it's an intuitive thing that you realize that this guy who's like so cool just really wants a friend and he's just trying to connect to somebody

and that he had a horrible childhood

it's just really funny to me that no one's on the other end it's like why would anybody it's just that he picks that time to to unload all his onto ted is very funny i have inflatable or i have uh i have um the cockpit, obviously.

I mean, the cockpit led to more jokes over the next 30 years, just in real life, than anything.

And especially those.

It's just anyway.

what's the most...

Oh, I also liked at the time because my grandmother used to listen to it all the time, was the Ethel Mermin.

You will be swell.

Right.

Like, it's such a shocking thing that it's actually Ethel Merman.

It was very funny.

What's the most 1980 thing about this movie?

All right.

Nominees,

the second cup of coffee being a parody of a coffee commercial that was in the moment, but nobody would know now.

Somebody's saying, I haven't felt this awful since I saw the Ronald Reagan film.

Or the Anita Bryant concert.

Yeah,

Anita Bryant concert, Ronald Reagan film, like just some of the pop culture that's in here.

They do a disco's dead joke.

They're smoking and non-smoking sections to the airplane.

That was, yeah, that was the my dad and his brothers told me the biggest laugh of the entire movie.

And the Zucker brothers told me too is when it's like, where disco lives forever and it takes

the thing.

Right.

People were so sick of disco.

He's that that thing, yeah.

It like stopped the movie.

Like people were cheering for

like the next two scenes because people hated disco so much by that point.

It was so played out.

A movie starting with a Jaws parody,

yeah.

Announcer going pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon, many Motaga.

Um,

I have Harry Krishna in an airport because yeah, that's there's just not people handing out stuff in airports anymore.

I think that that era is long over.

Also, I will say, I mean, people do cocaine jokes, but the old lady sniffing the cocaine and the coffee.

Yeah.

That was one.

But Anita Bryant concert is pretty.

And also just like the look of it.

I don't know.

For me, I'm always like, just the look of like

the harsh lighting and their shadows and stuff.

Like very 80s to me.

My answer is Kareem.

Kareem still with hair.

Especially when they pull him out the end of the goggles.

And it's just like, that's clearly Kareem in 1980.

But in death, they just admitted this.

Yeah, it was Kareem when they took Japan.

All right.

What's age the best?

So

the premise is just pretty good for a movie.

A crew becomes sick with food poisoning and an erotic pilot must safely land the plane full of passengers.

It's a good premise.

Yeah.

Being stuck to next to somebody on a plane who won't shut up, you just instantly think of airplane.

Yeah, totally.

If you're like, so where are you flying?

And you're like, oh boy, here we go.

I don't know.

All the hidden jokes we mentioned earlier that you don't maybe catch the first time, but like, for instance, in the newsstand where it says whacking material for a boardwalk

whacking material is also the idea that

every time they cut to the model, you know, the exterior of the plane, those it, the sound of the plane is, is, that's not what the plane sounds like.

It's a propeller.

Yeah, it's all day.

It was was very funny um the wordplay stuff of like this woman has got has to be gotten a hospital hospital what is it it's a big building with patients but the fact that they just keep doing that over and over again but that's not important right now 19 different things

um

i thought that the theme music's pretty good yeah it's elmer bernstein right yeah yeah it's pretty good i want to throw that in there and the zucker brothers uh

and they're in it yeah jim abrams is he's one of the harry krishnas

And then the two Zucker brothers are the ones that were, you know, hey, Tony.

Yeah, they're the.

Oh, yeah, the air traffic guys.

The air traffic guys.

Like, where it's over there.

Yeah.

So Leslie Nielsen, being a comedy actor, is aged the best since this unleashed him into

three naked gun movies and police squad and all kinds of different things.

And then.

I think the Air Israel joke is really underrated.

I can't believe they did that at the moment, but I think they felt like they could get away with that because it was Jewish.

But it was just like, it's so snuck in where there's a plane and it's got like a beard on the bottom.

Oh, yeah.

It looks like a rabbi.

Yeah, yeah.

The

famous Jewish Sports Legends pamphlet is funny, too.

Very small.

Yeah.

Light reading material.

And then

I got to say, I'm throwing her in here.

Lorna Patterson.

I've had a crush on her for like 45 years.

I don't know how old she is now, but she's great in this movie.

And she had a great voice.

And

home run all the way around.

Any other what stage is the best for you?

I know.

Just like, just the things we've been talking about earlier, but just like,

it's its own thing.

It's like, I can't describe it.

It's like you can't, it's like, it's a one-on-one.

It's a one-on-one.

Yeah.

It's like you can't.

I don't really know what else you can really compare it to.

Zipping through some quick categories.

The Big Kahuna Burger Award for best use of food and drink has to be the the poisoned fish.

Oh, yeah, the poison fish and the whole reaction, him talking about it and him puking.

Yeah, Peter Graves is very good in that scene where he has to do all the symptoms.

We have a great shot Gordo Award for the most cinematic shot named after Gordon Willis.

The water nailing them on the beach when they get covered in seaweed.

Pretty good.

Yeah, it's pretty great.

Yeah, that's a good shot.

I also like

there's a the shot where they're in the cockpit and the when he's telling them, you know, you have to land the plane and everything, that the light is very, it's all very dark.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's good.

Like the lighting in the cockpit suddenly changes.

It's like a horror movie.

It's very funny.

Kid Cuddy Pursuit of Happiness award for best needle drop.

This has to be the BGs, sped up BGs in the disco.

Yeah, yeah.

Chess Rockwell and Brock Landers award for best character name.

Ted Stryker is really good, unless there's one you like more.

Yeah, Ted Stryker is, yeah, and you hear it so many times throughout the movie, too, and it's always funny.

And Leon, I don't know what Leon's last name is, but I like that that guy's name is Leon.

And then we don't get to give this out all the time, but the Sean Penn,

I brought my own PAC award for excellence in on-screen smoking.

Stack and Bridges are simultaneously just heat and darts.

And it just look like it is not the first time.

No, that seems like they're just, yeah, they just, they were smoking off camera and they just were like, well, I'm not

out.

Yeah.

All right.

The Butch's Girlfriend Award for week link of the film.

I have one unless you want to go first.

So

we never say this on the rewatchables.

We always are mad that the movie's too long.

This movie's like five minutes too short.

Oh, I could have, I could have, I could have gone a little further.

I like it that it's so short.

I like that they just are in, they leave you wanting more, you know?

I mean, I had some ideas.

I could add one more scene with the jab guys.

I could have had Steven Stucker, who is trying to steal the second half of the movie in the first half of the movie, maybe for 20 seconds.

Yeah.

I could have done one more round with the kids acting like adults.

And then there's nothing with the airplane bathroom.

That just seems like there could have been a scene in the bathroom, something.

But you got the mom, their mom, that's the Zucker Brothers' mom is the lady putting on the

makeup and everything.

I mean, I, i mean

yeah i mean yeah i don't want to see more about the relationship of the the guy's wife and the horse i don't really know that i like this i like just knowing what we know yeah

that's that's pretty good because this movie's like 80 minutes wait craig craig you're on this right you're listening yeah i think it's 88 minutes

because craig is the craig's the shepherd of this movie is too long so did was this movie the right length for you craig or could you have gone five more minutes i mean if you're if we're picking five minutes, sure, but I like that these, you keep people wanting more.

I like it wanting more.

Yeah, most movies, especially now, I'm always like, how the heck was that so long?

You know?

Oh, it's like I guarantee you, two plus hours now, anything you go to.

I've been in movies where like you're at the premiere and they're like, all right, the movie is two hours and 45 minutes and we're in it.

And the whole cast goes, what?

That was the second hit movie was really long.

The second hit movie is, that was it.

We were at the premiere and they were like, yeah, so this movie is like over three hours or something.

And it was really funny.

The whole cast, we were all sitting in one row at the premiere.

We all went, what?

And how long?

We all looked at the director and he was laughing and like put his head down.

We're like, why is it so fucking long?

Why didn't you guys keep everything?

Then afterwards be like, it was that long, but you cut the scene where we did the

same thing.

Somehow we still didn't make the cut in some way.

It was very funny.

I only have a couple What Sage age the worst, but we'll do them right after the break.

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What's age the worst?

So Robert Stack

was offered an extra 20K or a percentage or a percentage of the movie, and he took the 20k.

Oh, yeah.

And he's been mad about it ever since, just kicking himself because the movie made almost 200 million dollars.

Tough one.

Yeah, it's a tough one.

Um,

the jive scene when they dub it in other languages has caused complete chaos.

And they said, um,

when they do it in Germany, they use a thick Bavarian dialect that

sounds amazing.

Oh, wow.

Uh, Yeah, so I don't know how that translates in French, Portuguese, whatever.

And then the

shock impact of Kareem being in this, we mentioned earlier, which now in 2025, but it really was shocking to see him in this.

And now as the years pass, that's kind of faded.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, but I'm sure that was like...

Yeah, you couldn't believe it how shocking that was at the time.

I mean, and it's funny for me because I was so young, I probably knew him from this first than before

as a basketball player.

You know, it was like later.

I was like, oh, Skyhook.

Oh, that's the guy from Airplanes.

Right.

The only other one I have you mentioned already, which is

when Leslie Nielsen goes in for that second smash.

So shocking.

It's like, he's like, I gotta get in on it.

Because it's just like, Jesus Christ, it's so horrible.

Yeah, I don't know if that's happening in today's video.

Yeah, I don't think that's Also, I mean, there's also like,

I don't know about all the African guys in the world.

The basketball is the other thing.

Basketball is not, that, that doesn't, I mean, when I watched that with my kids, they were kind of quiet during that scene.

They were like,

I don't know about this.

I mean, that was the moment in any movie I watched.

My kids always had to be like, it was the 80s, you know, like, watching Back to the Future.

And when, like, Martin McFly's dad's like up in a tree, like watching girls undress.

And my, my kid was like, He's a pervert.

And I'm like, No, no, no, you're going to want to see him win at the end of the day.

Yeah, just trust me.

So just trust me.

She's like, Fuck this guy.

I'm not watching this.

Like, this guy, that's disgusting.

Fuck this dude.

Yeah.

It's the 80s is a great excuse for a lot of people.

It was the 80s.

It was the 80s.

It was all made by white guys for white guys.

Yeah, sorry.

I'm sorry.

But yeah,

they lasted through this one, but some of them, like Back to the Future and some of the other ones, they were like, nah, we're not into this.

The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford Award for the hottest take.

I'm going to throw this one at you.

I think Lorna Patterson should have been a bigger star.

Yeah.

I don't really get it because

she was in this and then Private Benjamin, which was the TV version of it.

Yeah.

And she was on that for three years and it never kind of happened.

And then that was it.

Every guy that I knew had a crush on her in this movie.

But it was a hard time, though, you know,

at that time for actresses.

You know, well, they didn't have, there wasn't that whole rom-com infrastructure yet that doesn't the late 80s.

But I think if she's 10 years later.

Now there's like different types of things for her.

Because she would have been good in a rom-com.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

She was really good in this.

I mean, everybody across the board, I mean, when I'm just thinking about the performances, there's no, I don't,

not a lot of weird stuff.

Everybody's so funny in it.

Well, this has more casting what-ifs than any movie we've had in a while, including.

We mentioned Ted Stryker was written for David Letterman.

Yeah.

And then he was for David Letterman.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He

couldn't pull it off.

The studio pushed Barry Manilow at one point.

But David Letterman, you can go on YouTube and he has the Zucker Brothers and Abrams on late 90s.

Yeah, the early 80s.

Yeah.

And they show his audition on the

it's really, yeah, you could see the what if.

Like, that's what the movie would have been if it was Letterman.

Yeah, the scene is him in the hospital as Ted Stryker.

Yeah,

he spits the water.

Yeah, that, yeah.

I love Letterman.

I'm George Zip.

George Zip's another good name.

Sorry.

Oh, that was a good one.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm glad Letterman's not in this movie because I think as the years pass, it makes it weird.

He kind of overpowers.

I think he should have been either.

I think it's great as Robert Hayes and Julie Haggard.

It's like, I just think the casting across the board is like perfect.

I can't imagine anybody else.

Fred Willard said that he was offered the role of Ted Streker and didn't really understand the script and turned it down.

Yeah.

Tim Matheson was offered Ted Streker, but was filming 1941.

And then they said Bruce Jenner, at the time, an Olympic gold medalist and trying to get into acting, auditioned for Ted, did not get it.

Wow.

Now Caleb Jenner.

Yeah.

I mean, Robert Hayes is just the one for me.

I just think Robert Hayes.

because he plays it straight and it's not, he's not trying it off.

He seems like if they were making that movie now, like if they're making an honest version of like, like Paramount was like, hey, we want to do a straight remake of Zero Hour.

Those are the two people they would cast as the one.

No question.

You know, that works.

Elaine's part was auditioned for by Sigourney Weaver and Shelly Long.

Wow.

Went to Julie Haggerty and Shelly Long had a quote where she's like, I thought I had it.

It was like one of those.

Like she's kind of surprised she didn't get it.

That's a terrible feeling.

I know that feeling.

It's the worst feeling.

What's your number one, I thought I had it movie?

Oh, I don't want to say what it is, but yeah, there's been a couple where tell me after the podcast.

I'll tell you after the podcast, but there's been a couple where they're like, dude, they love you.

Get ready.

I mean, I've had the whole thing where I do the, you know, the wardrobe fitting, everything, and then they give you a call and go, oh, dude, so-and-so read the script and they're a bigger name.

Sorry.

You know, or you just lose it.

I will say forever when I would audition, I could put money on it that Adam Scott was reading for the same thing.

This is like 20 years ago.

Oh, interesting.

I would walk into a room and he'd be walking out.

We both just start laughing.

I'm like, of course.

I was like, God damn it, Adam read for this.

There's no way I'm going to get this.

You know, he's so good.

But yeah,

a lot of actors, you usually have that person that's always reading the same thing you are.

Dr.

Rumack, Leslie Nielsen's character, turned turned down by dom deluise christopher lee vincent price and jack webb from dragnet and

christopher lee and vincent price both said it was the biggest mistake of their career oh yeah that'd be pretty amazing it's got to be leslie nielsen though he's just too i agree he's just perfect

Every line, everything he does, even the weird egg thing, like he does, and when he cracks the egg and the bird flies out, he does that like almost like karate chop hand where he's like word.

It's unbelievable.

Like he's so good.

Vincent Price does not, I don't see that.

It just makes it a different thing, you know?

And this would be doing campy, funny stuff by then, you know, for years.

So

it's gotta be Leslie Nielsen.

Well, this would have made it a different movie, too.

They wanted Pete Rose for Roger Murdoch, but it was during baseball season.

He couldn't do it.

So they got Kareem.

Pete Rose.

there's somewhere there's somewhere i think in that book where they have the script pages for pete rose i think it's in that airplane book where they have the scenes that they wrote for pete rose that would have been interesting well it turned out to be kareem and then uh jibe lady translator was supposed to be harriet nelson from ozzie and harriet she turned it down they went to june cleaver

uh

and then

This made me laugh too.

Peter Graves said no because he thought the film was the script was tasteless.

yeah but then they talked him into it and he still didn't really understand the cockpit stuff and they told him later on in the movie we're going to explain it but they never did and yeah just kind of rope a doped him to get him to say all the lines yeah they told me jerry was usually the person that had to talk to the actors yeah zucker was the one that was really good at explaining what they wanted and that and that they had the thing they always say is that they had to explain to robert stack like remember this thing robert stack's like it's his ball game now he's the big he's the head honcho, the blah, blah, blah.

He goes, you know, it's like what you do in, and like he was doing it wrong.

And, and Jerry Zucker was like, no, you know, it's like when you did, uh, you know, this scene from this movie you did, and he goes, I had to do Robert Stack to Robert Stack

to get him to be Robert Stack.

To be Robert Stack.

He goes, No, no, no, it's, it's that.

You listen to the list.

You do that a lot in your stuff, you know.

And he didn't get it.

And then he nailed it.

They loved it.

You probably had moments like that on SNL with different different actors, right?

Where you're trying to do it.

Sometimes, yeah, yeah.

Where you're like, hey, so I was wondering.

My thing I always had to do is I would have to do an impression of somebody to them.

Like I had to go and like, like John Malkovich or Christopher Watkin or Robert De Niro would have to go into their dressing room and say, hey, I'm doing you in the sketch, you know, so I just want to do it.

So we're not just out there.

I hope you're okay with this, you know, and I would do the, that was very weird.

Because you were worried that if you did it out there it would throw them off yeah throw them off like whoa it's just like i just felt like that was a respectful thing to do instead of like in front of a ton of people and like not like on live shows when we're doing rehearsal like in front of a bunch of people like surprise them by doing them yeah sometimes you would do an impression of people and they didn't they didn't appreciate it even if you know it was like not bad you know i i would have people you know stop hey i didn't like that or whatever not a lot but it happened a couple of times so with those guys, I respect them so much.

I was like, Hey, do you want to hear?

I would say, Hey, do you want to hear it?

or whatever.

And they go, Yeah, yeah, what is it?

And so, you do like to Christopher Walken.

Christopher Walken was like, Oh, everybody does me, don't worry about it.

But I had to do Malkovich to Malkovich, and he was so sweet about it.

He was like, Oh, that's good, that's good.

You know, like he was very nice.

Not many people have gotten mad.

Like, I remember Mark Wahlberg got mad at the India Sandburg.

Mark Wahlberg got mad, and he got really upset at that.

Yeah, he got really upset.

He had to like come on the next week to his

first back.

He came on the

he was at the show that Sarah Palin was at, which was like the most watched show.

My time there was the most watched show of the, of the, yeah, my,

like in the history of the show or something.

But yeah, that I remember that was weird.

Yeah, he was, he was really upset.

I think that was probably of all the impressions I saw.

And I don't know, I don't think Palin liked Tina's Palin, you know, which made sense.

But my stuff was always like I would go to a restaurant and the person would be there, you know, right?

They'd come over and be like, Hey, I didn't like that or whatever.

And you're like, Oh, sorry.

Oh, somebody would say that to you?

Yeah, that happened twice.

And then Jesus.

But it wasn't.

And then usually it's fine.

I would say 98% of the time it's totally fine.

You know, and or Elliot Spitzer, I saw him and I like kind of it was at this event and I kind of froze, like, oh my God, Elliot Spitzer.

And he immediately went, I'm not mad at you.

And he gave me a hug.

And then just about three months ago, I finally met Pacino and I met Al Pacino and he came up and he was like, oh my God, that was, I never got a chance to meet you.

That was great.

Like, he was, oh, that's good.

He was so sweet.

Like, it was, it was crazy.

I was so starstruck.

I was like, oh, my God.

I called him, sir.

Sir, thank you.

So nice meeting you, sir.

Like, I was just like, holy shit, you know, you ran into Ted Levine and Ted Levine was furious about Buffalo Bill.

That's been ruining my life.

I don't talk like that.

Why'd you do that?

You're acting like a big, great fat person.

No, no, yeah, but yeah, it is very rare that that happens.

Next category is best that guy award.

And this movie's filled with that guys, but I wanted to shout out.

That guy from Breaking Bad is working with air traffic controller who ended up having like an awesome career.

yeah one of the best line mike from um yeah breaking bad jonathan brooks jonathan brooks no sorry jonathan banks jonathan banks yeah jonathan banks from also in midnight run he's he's been in a lot of good stuff he's uh but yeah he's got like well he's going from like what 8 000 feet to 200 000 what an asshole

and then he's great And then the guy who gets sick, who's married to the lady who's like, Jim never has a second cup of coffee.

He's a dad on Parker Lewis, can't lose, right?

He's the dad in risky business.

Oh, that's right.

He's the dad in the 20 business.

Joel.

He was the chancellor in 90210.

He was in there for 20 years.

No, he was not on Parker Lewis Can't Lose.

Take that back.

He was risky business, better.

Risky business.

That's way better.

I'm thinking of another guy.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

He was in risky business.

And that's, yeah, Joel.

So he's our winner because I'm thinking Joel.

Yeah.

Deion Waiter's award for the best heat check in the movie.

Our nominees are Ethel Merman,

Kareem,

the Jive guys,

Lloyd Bridges, or Steven Stucker.

I think Steven Stucker is just...

I think he wins it.

Steven Stucker wins it because he comes out of nowhere and just, he does, he just owns the movie.

He starts just stealing scenes out of nowhere.

And you could tell, like, he was in there.

He was in the Kentucky Fried Theater with those guys, and he's in Kentucky Fried movie.

He's really funny.

He's a stenographer in this one sketch

in a courtroom sketch.

And

you could just tell they just loved him.

And they're just like, yeah, do whatever you want.

Yeah.

Go down.

And he's,

I mean, for what is arguably one of the funniest movies ever made, he steals one of the funniest movies ever made.

Yeah.

I think he's one of like the, like what could have been, he died, unfortunately, really young, and he could have been like massive, that guy he was so funny recasting couch director city i'm gonna give you this one as a thought experiment one more character on the plane a famous actress

and it's linda carter we just get linda carter in the airplane for no reason just for 90 extra seconds maybe there's an autograph thing maybe she sits next to ted and kills herself dressed as Wonder Woman.

I don't know.

Something, just some sort of era-specific.

It's always like, oh, era-specific.

Yeah, like Cheryl Labb, Linda Carter, somebody from that.

Wasn't that usually the part for, like,

you know,

it was always like a famous actor.

Yeah.

And then she has like an assistant who's like,

yeah,

yeah.

We needed some famous thing.

All right.

Some half-ass internet research.

The red zone, white zone scene.

They hired the real-life married couple who had recorded the announcement tapes at LAX and just had them do it because they couldn't find better actors.

That's a perfectly normal thing to, I mean, that you want me to get an abortion.

Robert Hayes said the dailies were so funny that the studio had to add a second screening room for the dailies because so many people wanted to come to see the dailies.

That's sweet.

This was Ethel Merman's final acting role before she died in 1984 at age 76.

You mentioned Elmer Bernstein.

He did the scores for 10 Commandments, Magnificent Seventh, Kill a Mockingbird, and the great escape.

And they went to him and they were like, can you do a goofy version of what you're normal?

And he just immediately understood what they wanted and banged it up.

Elmer Bernstein was the first famous person I ever saw in LA.

Like the day I moved to Los Angeles, my friend and I.

Did you recognize him?

So the way we know, we went to this restaurant with his like, so my friend, his, his

cousin worked at Universal.

It was like one of those things like you moved to LA and it's like, my roommate's cousin works at Universal.

So like her in to get jobs or whatever.

And we went to this restaurant and it was like the nicest restaurant I had ever been in.

And we were just eating and this guy was playing the piano and this older gentleman walked over and starts talking to him.

And the guy at the piano goes, get out of here.

And he goes, no.

And he takes out his driver's license and it was Elbert Bernstein.

And like the piano player went, ladies and gentlemen, this is Elmer Bernstein.

And he sat down at the piano and went,

oh my God.

He started doing, and I was like, this is what Hollywood is?

Like, people just sit out.

Like, I had never, and by the way, I'd never seen anything like that since, but he just sat down and like,

he showed the guy his ID and then played stuff.

And the piano player was like, dude, you're the man.

Like, yeah.

You know what that sounded like in the basketball podcast?

They always ask like Lamella Ball, I'll be the guest.

And I'll be like, what was your welcome to the NBA moment?

And it'll be like, oh, I was playing LeBron dunked on on me.

That was like your welcome to Hollywood moment.

Yeah, it was my being at a restaurant with Elmer Bernstein playing the piano.

He just went over and started playing.

Uh, oh no, it was.

Yeah, it was unbelievable.

Yeah,

hey, one other research thing.

Um,

the Kareem was in there because in Zero Hour, they used Elroy Crazy Legs Hirsch, was one of the three pilots who was this famous wide receiver in the 50s.

He was like the Amon

St.

Ross St.

Brown of the mid-50s.

And so that's why they did that.

They wanted to do that.

And then

Al White was one of the jive guys.

They asked him to write the drive, and he went and got a couple of books.

One was on Black English by J.L.

Dillard.

The other was on another one on Black Language.

And he basically created the sentences and just showed them to the Zuckers and Abrahams.

And they were like, okay, cool, man.

Do your thing.

And he wrote Barbara Billings' stuff as well.

Oh, my God.

So,

and then this made me laugh for some reason.

Jim Abrams said that one joke was cut from the opening montage in the airport.

A very attractive woman was walking through the airport.

Suddenly she turned and hawked a Lugie on the wall.

And in the screenings, nobody laughed.

So they took it out, but they thought it was like the funniest thing ever.

Sounds like they should have put that back in.

Um,

all right, Apex Mountain, uh, which I wouldn't even bother to explain to you, is that basically peak?

Is this the peak of somebody's career?

Robert Hayes, so he's on Angie at the same time on ABC.

Yeah, I'm gonna say yes, Julie Haggerty.

It's probably the Albert Brooks movie, right?

Modern Problems, yeah, well, or uh, Lost in America, and yeah, yeah, her losing all the money in Lost in America is Lost in America, yeah.

That's like she's so good in that movie.

The Zuckers and the Abrahams as

a combo, probably Naked Gun, just because now they had that police squad and airplane under their belt.

And I feel like...

I don't, yeah, I mean, Naked Gun is pretty amazing, but to me, it's that this one's the one that's like.

Well, when do you think they had their most juice?

To do whatever they wanted.

Because that's kind of the category.

Yeah, I see.

But I mean, airplane, it's hard for me because for me, airplane and naked gun are very...

It's like, it's like the two.

Yeah, you're right.

It might be airplane.

I don't know.

It's like, I can't say one's better than the other

because they're both so special.

But

I definitely think this one, I mean, when you do a movie that kind of like changes the thing, like, you know, you look at comedy differently, it's kind of hard to.

Yeah, that's fair.

How about how about spoof movies?

Did we peak with this one?

Was this the best one we've ever made?

I don't know.

It's pretty amazing.

I mean, airplane's great.

Naked Gun's great.

I mean, I really, you know, Young Frankenstein, when I was a kid, I thought that, I mean, I would love to see that movie.

I'd vote for Airplane.

Steven Stucker, yes.

Kareem, we covered, yes.

Lorna Patterson, unfortunately, yes.

Unexpected movie nudity in an 80s movie.

Oh, it's just a breast that comes.

Well, I was almost thinking like this summer.

Yeah, we have the

all of a sudden we have bouncing breasts.

breasts we have in caddyshack they sneak in a couple and then the shining catty shack yeah shining yeah caddyshack though it's like they actually tried to make it like like a real love scene with my clothes right like a raunchy sexy like an actual like it was like dissolves and the yeah and everything but this was almost like okay here's a pair of tits because we're supposed we have to have a pair of tits in the movie it's so gratuitous and stupid yeah also what i like about that is like it comes across it makes no sense there's no sense for it to be in the movie and then it cuts those two guys sword fighting like two packages are sword fighting and it's just kind of like everything crazy and for it's like all right here here's the action here's everything you guys want right just like it make no sense so yeah i like it yeah it's pretty um inflatable pilots definitely i have a section on that later bridges and cult no and then the last one lovable elaines the nominees would be elaine bennis Bennis and Seinfeld or Elaine in this movie.

I still, my heart's with Elaine in airplane.

Yeah, she's pretty great.

Yeah.

Okay.

Next category, Cruz or Hanks.

You could have either of them in this movie in any role at any point in their life.

I mean, Cruz, just because if Cruz played, because Tom Hanks did so much comedy and everything, and he can do everything, but Cruz being really like serious Cruz would be pretty funny.

Yeah, initially I thought Hanks is

Ted Stryker.

That's no-brainer.

Like early, mid-80s Hanks.

He's just playing it straight.

It's kind of funny about him, but yeah, it's like, yeah, I guess maybe, but I like.

No, you're right.

The answer is Cruz in like the

Robert Stack part or like one of those phase of Thunder era Cruise and something would be really funny in this.

You know, it's just the whole, it's all there.

How about Scorsese or Spielberg?

The director.

Only one of them can direct us.

Yeah, just one.

You have to pick.

I don't know, man.

That's a tough one.

I mean, they both would make, I mean, part of what's so great about it is that it looks janky.

You know, it's got to be,

you know.

I mean, the thing is, like, when they both have done comedies, like, you know, it's like Spielberg when he does 1941, it's so fun, but it's so bombastic, you know?

So crazy.

I picked Spielberg because it's...

And if Scorsese did it, there would be some sort of Catholicism,

you know, or whatever.

I don't know.

Yeah, Spielberg, I guess.

Yeah.

If I had to pick one, Spielberg.

Yeah, I said Spielberg because he had kind of done this in 1941, you know, and he could have blown out.

All right.

So normally this next category is what role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played?

I have to flip it because you're on here.

What role

would you have wanted to play if Time Machine, you could go backwards

and play any role in the movie at any point in your career?

What do you pick?

I mean, I would love to be Lloyd Bridges in the movie because I just think he just, I just like him, just and that he got to play this guy who's like, he starts out calm and then you watch him just slowly go crazy.

That's always that's very fun to do, you know, where he starts off like he's really got it together and he's the guy in charge.

And then he just, by the end of it, he's hanging it upside down, snorting glue and stuff.

That'd be really fun.

I gotta say, Lloyd Bridges, I

in hot shots, shots, he is very underrated in hot shots.

He's so funny in that movie.

I gotta say, I'm shocked.

I thought you were gonna do a different, have a different choice.

I thought for sure you would have been Peter Graves.

Oh, no, no.

Peter Graves is great and Leslie Nielsen is great, but I just like Lloyd Bridges.

I thought you would have wanted to be in the cockpit and just rattling off lines like.

No, no.

Did you ever been in a Turkish prison?

Get to hang out with Kareem.

I got to do so many.

Here's the thing.

I've done things where you're in a cockpit before.

You want to get out.

It gets old fast where you're like, dude, this is claustrophobic.

Can I go to the bathroom?

And they're like, no, no, no, you can't go anywhere.

You know, in the newsroom, you get to hang out.

You get to sit down.

You get to like, you know, all that.

But it really is just that character really goes off the rails.

He gets to jump out a window.

You know, like he really goes nuts.

And that's really funny.

All right.

Picking nits.

So Ted fought in World War II, Korea.

What war was he in?

And he's like 27, but it's 1980.

1980.

Was it Vietnam?

It's supposed to be Vietnam.

What's happening?

And all the flashbacks are from World War II, but also like during the inventions of planes.

And I forget what the thing was, but then remember when he says, like, attacking their flanks and blah, blah, blah.

She'd be like, well, when are you leaving?

He goes, I can't tell you that's classified.

After he's told her the entire mission.

But I forget what the mission is, but I think it's World War I.

It's supposed to be World War II, I think.

So the little girl, when they're in the singing scene and they knock out like the tubes and she immediately starts convulsing that probably should have been just an oxygen mask right yeah why would she start convulsing because the tube got like what what was what was being fed into her body i don't know but i think visually it's nice to see that thing go and like yeah yeah and then you want to see her face making those faces

on you can't see her face and it's kind of probably more disturbing yeah you get to see her do a silly silly face because i'm sure i'm just guessing but it's like all right we're doing a bit and the joke is that a kid dies

like we gotta make sure it's silly yeah let her do that stupid like stupid this is why we call it picking nits you know

that's why yeah

wouldn't the the poison fish

have made people throw up or have diarrhea?

Like one of the better, like, it seemed like that, it was almost like all the passengers were roofied by the fish.

But I think in real life, it's just like, I think the bathroom is just getting annihilated.

Yeah,

just be throwing up or sick, but it wouldn't be passing out.

And yeah, you wouldn't be like, I don't feel great.

Yeah, yeah.

Just like us, and it wouldn't have happened that fast either, I think.

No.

And then where did they put all the sick people?

It wasn't a giant plane.

I was

all three pilots.

When I was a kid, I honestly thought they were throwing them out of the plane.

When I was a kid, I was like, oh my God, they just threw cream out of of the plane into like the ocean yeah

oh i also like this scene when

when robert stack goes all right all right so we're gonna show you everybody okay so ted have you ever flown you know this kind of plane before and he goes no and he goes jesus

just route him into lake michigan better than killing a bunch of innocent people like that there's been this buildup that robert stacks the guy who can save the day and out of the gate he's like it this isn't

sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all broadcaster untouchables.

So they did make a sequel.

I like the sequel.

I'm in the, I know different people made it, but I think the sequel, even though they're running back a lot of the bits, I think it has some funny moments.

I don't think I ever saw the sequel.

I think I kind of stayed away from it because I liked the original so much.

Yeah, it's not bad.

And I think I was so kind of like, oh, did the original people have something to do with it?

And if they didn't, I was like,

you had real honor, even as a little kid.

Yeah, even as a kid, I was like an insufferable movie geek.

They had, they reenacted the slapping scene, but it was with somebody who's like, I can't believe I'm going to die a virgin.

Oh.

And then it was just the same line of guys.

But so it was a couple of like the jive guys were in it.

Space.

Yeah, they're going to space.

All right.

The cockpit guys back.

That was the funniest part in Airplane 2 was the guy, the little kid brings the dog in, Scraps.

And Peter, Peter Graves is like, Do you like when Scraps rubs up and down your leg?

And he does that.

They kind of took it up a notch.

Next category: Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treyo, Mad Dog Russo, Doris Burke, Buffalo Bill, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilfred Brimley and the firm?

I think Buffalo Bill would have been nice.

Chris Collinsworth.

Chris Collinsworth, you want to do that one?

Chris Collinsworth being like, oh, I have the fish, you know,

oh man, I had the fish and it's making me sick.

Oh, it's making me real sick.

Oh, man.

Just one Oscar who gets it.

The writing?

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know.

The writing's pretty great.

And I would.

I mean, I would have Leslie Nielsen up there as like a supporting actor.

Best supporting actor, yeah.

He's so.

Well, as you know, they don't respect comedy in the Oscars.

I know.

That was when I first was like, I don't know about these Oscars when I was a kid because I assumed when I was nine, after I saw Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, that John Candy was going to win an Oscar.

I was like, oh, he's going to win an Oscar.

I laughed super hard.

And at the end, he made me cry.

He's going to win an Oscar, you know?

And then I saw it and I was like, what the hell is this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it was,

yeah, it was Sean Connery for the Untouchables.

And I remember like looking at my dad and I was like, John, John Candy wasn't even nominated.

And my dad's like, no.

And I go, why?

And he goes, and he said, in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1987, he was like, they don't like comedies.

Yeah.

Like he just knew it.

I was like, okay.

Still the case.

Yeah, still the case.

Probably unanswerable questions.

So.

Did planes actually have inflatable pilots in 1980 or did they make that up?

I I don't think they made that up.

I think I'm assuming they made that up, but I don't know.

Because I would also believe it if it was like, no, they tried it.

Or maybe they tried it.

And then, yeah, too many people were giving it blowjobs.

And they had to

take it down.

This is a great one.

This question actually is unanswerable.

The nude scene that we mentioned earlier, the top of scene.

Nobody knows who the actress was.

And this actress who was like a soft playmate and a softcore porn person named Kitten Natividad claimed to have done it.

But then on the internet, you can find people debunking this and talking about her body type and breast size.

It definitely wasn't her.

And it's just this mystery who did this.

And I could not, I actually was like, I'm going to fucking find out who, and I couldn't find her.

So we'll never know.

I think it's best left on left to the yeah, left to the imagination.

Can you imagine if it was like somebody's grandmother and she's like, hey, did you ever see the movie Airplane?

Yeah, it's like this weird secret she's holding on to.

Like the people who killed Jimmy Hoffa.

Just

like, oh, you all watching Airplane in there?

Why don't you want to watch this, Grandma?

Oh, it's all right.

Like, that's putting you through school.

You don't know it.

What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie if you could take anything?

I would like the model of the plane, like the one that they're using anytime it cuts to the exterior.

Oh, that's a good, good, that's a good answer.

I would like that.

I think that'd be fun.

I wanted the automatic pilot auto.

Yeah.

But apparently they said

it was in Jerry Zucker's garage for years and it disintegrated and they didn't realize it just like it became like rubber dust.

So she's auto's gone and they only had one version of it.

Coach Finn Stock award for best life lesson.

I would say just don't forget to zag when you're making a movie.

These guys zagged on using you playing actors playing it straight over doing comedy yeah they just kind of stuck to their instincts you know and the fact that they just stuck to the instincts and made something new and you see that like now like you see some like nathan fielder or tim robinson like those are guys that when i look at their stuff i'm like oh man they are just making what they find funny it's like they can't help it but right stuff come out that way you know and that and i always I always find those things really inspiring.

Best double feature choice?

You'd go naked gun.

Yeah, I think airplane and naked gun.

Yeah.

I mean, that might be just too much because if you're laughing so much during airplane and then you try to do another one, or maybe it's zero hour and then airplane.

Yeah, it's zero hour and then airplane might be really fun, you know, to do that.

Who won the movie?

I'm gonna, I mean,

Steve Stuck, i just love him so much in the movie but leslie nielsen and him i would say that

i would thought i was gonna say the zuckers and jim but i i actually because i think they did win in a lot of ways because then it parlayed into a whole bunch of other things totally but i think it's leslie nielsen yeah i think because it completely changed his career and then he ended up getting another 20 years out of doing that too but I'm happy that people got to see Steve Sucker like what that dude was.

And I think I just have heard other things about him where people are like, dude, you have no idea how funny that guy was.

Like seeing him live and doing sketches and shit.

Like he was somebody that,

you know, you, when you meet other people, and so it's so great that you have a record of like, oh, that guy was, look how funny that dude was.

You know, so we got to bring in, I always bring in producer Craig at the end for his take.

especially when it gets to movies from the 80s.

Gets super exciting.

Craig, you have to join the Zoom.

There he is.

um i actually have seen this movie many times this is a movie that my dad showed me uh growing up that i i just adore um because i i grew up you know i grew up in the like basically the early 2000s is when i was starting to watch comedy movies so i was kind of around like the last great era of comedy movies and so i was still trained to like love comedy movies and it was something that i was still seeking out so this movie is awesome i mean this and naked gun just the the jokes per million jokes per minute style is something that, like the hard joke style is something that is completely gone now.

And I love it.

I just love it.

Yeah.

It's so good.

It's true.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, it's funny because Woody Allen did stuff for like Love and Death.

There's a Woody Allen movie called Love and Death that is really silly.

Like he did those silly movies and he would cast people.

that weren't comedians in like smaller roles, but he was always the lead of it.

So you were always kind of like, okay, there's Woody Allen being Woody Allen or whatever.

Yeah.

And, but they were silly movies, but this one is the one where it, like, yeah, they changed the whole,

it changes the whole game.

And like what you're saying, Craig, like hard jokes,

you know, was like, yeah.

You see it on TV, you know, like you could still watch South Park and see like them do jokes, you know.

Yeah, or even like Veep had a lot of just like hard jokes.

Yeah, totally.

But it's going away now.

And

I don't know.

It's, you know, Paramount, all these major studios taking risks on these movies.

It's just great.

I think the idea now is that you need a movie to appeal to everybody and they won't make it unless they think it can appeal to everybody.

But I almost think you should go the other way.

I think comedies are coming back.

I hope so.

I think it's going to happen.

Well, it's also like what you're saying, Craig, too, is like.

It used to be, you know, I'm sure if you go through how many movies were made in the 80s and

I remember when I was like late 2000s, when I was going out and like, you know, meeting on movies and stuff, there was so many things getting made.

It was like, you know, and now it's just kind of like, I mean, this is like, it's like, we're going to put all our eggs in like these four baskets.

And so they have to work.

Right.

And if they don't work, we are so fucked, you know?

So there's so much pressure and everything on those movies working.

And it's like.

You know, when I worked at a movie theater in the late 90s, you would go like, oh, there's like indie movies next to like Armageddon.

And then, you know, this movie, there was such a variety of it.

And now you have that on like a streaming service.

And now I watch my kids and it's like so overwhelming.

There's like a mile of those choices, you know?

So it's just a different, it's a different world right now.

But I hope, I do hope that it was such a nice thing going and seeing that Naked Gun movie.

and taking my kids and people laughing in the theater and how weird that was to be like oh i haven't heard people laugh in the theater like this in a long time.

I also just, I respect that paramount.

Like this movie, you guys are talking about how it feels low budget and it is low budget, but it also makes the movie better.

Like there are, there's a, is it, is his name, Robert Stack?

Is that the actor's name?

Yeah, yeah.

When he's walking through fighting everybody as they try to like pin flowers on him and give him clothes in the airport, you can see boom mics and you can see the

pads on the ground that he's like flipping people onto, but it's it's okay.

And they understand it's silly and it plays into it.

To me, it's just, that's just something that would never fly now, and I really respect it.

Well, yeah, they're just people want their it's just hard, yeah, because I get on the other end of it is you hire these technician technicians to be in the movie and they want their stuff to be good, you know, and good, it costs money.

So, you have like a DP that's like you can't go to your cinematographer and be like, Hey, could we make you look kind of shitty?

He's like, No, my name's gonna be on it, and you feel like you don't know it's gonna be, you know, or I, yeah, I mean, a good DP, like I have Paolo Widobro in the first two seasons of Barry, and she made everything look way better than I, I learned so much from her, you know, so it's like

I get it, you know, but it's just so expensive now, you know, that's why it's, it's all on television.

Can I put, can I point out one scene that you guys didn't that is quietly one of my favorite scenes in the movie?

You could kind of use the Sean Penn.

I brought my own PAC award for excellence and on-screen smoking, but the scene right after the blowjob with the autopilot, and it's just it just cuts to julie haggerty and the and the pilot the the blow up they're all just awkwardly sitting next to each other and you can feel the tension between them and they're both smoking and she gives him like a glaring look yeah and it's just you just hear like the hum of the plane it's just a still shot of them for like five seconds like that killed me craig would you have squeezed danny mcbrad into this movie I'd squeeze Danny McBride into every movie.

Craig loves Danny McBride pops into movies.

Oh, that's funny.

Yeah, he could have, he could have, I don't, that's the thing is nobody would have, there was no room for a Danny McBride because they didn't want like, he's so basically Steven Stucker is the only one who's allowed to do stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah.

It's, it's kind of like, yeah, I guess Stephen Stucker is the other, him and Jimmy Walker.

And I think that's a really, that was a famous stand-up comedian too, or a big comedian at that time who's the guy in the

the Ethel Merman scene.

You remember it's like, oh, that's so-and-so.

He thinks he's still.

And he's like, I found a hole.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Yeah, he was like a gong show guy.

I remember that.

He was like a gong show and stuff like that.

So I think there was a couple of comedy people in it.

But yeah, Danny would just, I don't know what he would have done in it.

Has your son seen this movie, Bill?

Has Ben seen it?

Who?

My son.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I threw this one at the kids pretty early.

Probably a little too early.

But, you know,

yeah,

the cockpit stuff really plays.

It just does.

The Turkish, the gymnasium, all that stuff.

Because then we could just do the lines.

Anything where you can do the lines after you see the movie around the house is always a big one.

You like movies about gladiators?

I mean, Turkish prison is, you know, I guess referencing Midnight Express.

Right.

And have sex with each other.

I mean, yeah, it's really.

Yeah, it held up.

I thought Naked Gun did better with my kids, though, than airplane.

Oh, my God.

Naked Gun with the beginning when OJ gets shot and he like falls in the paint and then the cake and everything.

My kids like lost their minds at that.

I thought it was really funny.

Yeah, all right.

Well, this podcast was produced by Craig Rollbeck.

Thanks to Gahal and Ronic as well, and thanks to Bill Hayter.

Next time, uh, next time we have to do this in the studio, yeah, we'll bring a third person.

Well, it was great to see you.

Thanks for coming on.

Appreciate it.

All right, we'll see you next week in the rewatchables.