And of course it exploded.

It went through the roof, became a sensational hit, revived several careers which we'll get totly, and launched several others, and remains one of the funniest movies ever made.

Hey, everybody, welcome to the movie Guy with Malton and Davis.

I am Brendan Danna of the four figure Discount Network, joined right now by Guy Davis.

I'm just here to talk about letting out of movies as well as the Led and Malton.

How are you, Lenn?

I am well, thank you.

I'm recovering still from my infection.

Let's not go any grizzilier than that, but let's just say I'm on the men.

I'm well on the men.

Did you have the steak or the fish?

Leonard?

You're looking hale and hearty and fighting fit.

So yeah.

No, we're glad to have you back in form and we're especially glad to have you talking about Airplane.

Well, what could put me in a better frame of mind than watching Airplane?

Absolutely not.

It is a one hundred percent serotonin hit.

I rewatched it the other night to prep for the show.

Laughed pretty much NonStop from beginning to end.

Yeah, it is just and it is literally from beginning to end, because they give you the first laugh within thirty seconds.

Oh yeah, they hit the ground running thirty.

Seconds of the movie beginning, you're laughing at the first show, which we won't give away, and then there's a laugh at the end that you may not know about.

And by the end, I mean the very end, Well, we'll get to that.

And due course they did the stinger before the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Yeah, but as I am prone to say on shows from the Four Finger Disco and Network, it was my understanding it will be no math.

But I did some math for this particular episode.

Found out that there are approximately two hundred and seventy one jokes in the movie Airplane.

The movie Airplane runs for eighty seven minutes.

You do your division, you break out your calculator, you find it that is approximately three jokes per minute, or actually something like three point one.

Now, not all those jokes going to land.

Not every joke in this movie is for everybody.

But every joke in this movie is for somebody.

Am I right?

That's absolutely true?

And of course not all of those jokes holds up one hundred percent in the twenty first century.

You know, it's been forty five years and we have to allow that to reality to sink in.

But it's a higher batting average than any other movie I can think of.

I one hundred cent agree with you, and that's why we have our section.

You had to be there, which is what we'll get to.

But why are we talking about Airplane today?

Well, parody is apparently back on the menu.

Some would say it never really left.

I mean, you've got parody movies well throughout the twenty first century.

You've had a few in recent years that have been really quite good.

Scary Movie was one notable for my childhood.

Absolutely, yeah, the Scary Movie foranchas.

They had their sort of spin offs like Epic Movie, Date Movie, Superhero Movie.

All of these are absolute garbage and should be stricken from the record.

Let us not talk about them again.

But more recently, you've had movies like pop Star, Never Stopped, Never Stopping, from the Lonely Island Guys from SNL.

You've had the classic Walk Hard, You've had mcgruber, all of which have that great combination of they clearly love the material that they're taking the mickey out of.

But also, No, it's blind spots and its flaws, and they're willing to really sort of stick the pin in.

But it's back in a big way.

They require but they require you to be familiar with the material that they're making fun of.

There's that as well.

Even if you're not a one hundred percent student of it, you'll be familiar enough with it.

Yeah, because it's sort of infiltrated the Zad guys and everybody knows the tropes and the cliches and all that kind of stuff.

So yeah, but it's back in a big way because the Naked Gun is being reloaded the hit comedies from the eighties nineties starring Leslie nil And as Frank Dreben of Police Squad.

He's back, but in the form now of Liam Neeson as Frank Dreben Jr.

Is This will probably be in cinemas by the time this episode of the movie Guide hits your airwaves.

But we figured why not go back to if not the one that started at all, then certainly one that reignited it.

Back back in nineteen eighty you Americans called airplane we are here in Australia we referred to it as flying high for some reason.

I always thought it was because, well, we use the Queen's English here and we refer to an airplane as an aeroplane, which it's not quite as funny.

Again, did a little bit of research, Dan, I's looking at me amazed.

He's like, what, guy actually did some research?

First time?

In ten years.

I often, oftentimes you wing it appropriate for airplane.

But it was called flying High in Australia and New Zealand because they had the same distributor, and that same distributor was also releasing Airport seventy nine the Concord, and they thought, a aren't that brought?

They might pay I might pay a ticket to Oh, they might buy a ticket to go into what is it incredibly memorable title and instead get airplane and be utterly confused but also utterly amused.

So yeah, that's why it's going flying high down here.

Well, that's that's confusing.

It is you explained, it's still just as confusing.

I've got more questions and answers now, guy, what are you doing now?

But but what I find interesting is the backstory of this of this film and its aftermath are equally interesting.

The backstory is that these three.

Fellows David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrams.

Those three guys had a little troop called Kentucky Fried Theater, and they're from Wisconsin.

They moved here to Hollywood and they set up shop in a little low rent theater and and built a following, and it eventually made a movie called Kentucky Fried Movie, which is a very low budget, low rent but sporadically funny.

Did you know follow the.

Roll directed Bud John Landis.

That's right, And so then they had supporters early on, and Landis was not yet John Landis, but he was.

He was still climbing the ladder himself.

Then someone proposed this film and the producer, Howard W.

Kotch, who used to run Paramount Pictures but now is a stat sort of like a staff or contract producer at the studio, heard them out.

He said, I know the guy who can make this film for us and do it cheaply, and that's what we need because we have no marquee names to sell this.

So he gave it to my old friend John Davison.

We've been friends since college at NYU, and John had been working for Roger Corman, King of the B Movies, and Roger talked to him and many others, from Martin Scorsese down the line, Ron Howard, so many others how to make films econ so the scenes didn't show, but do you do it economically?

So he put this movie together and he got a great cast, which we'll discuss in detail.

And then Paramount looked at it and said, we're going to shelve this film.

Really really, they they thought it was so bad they weren't going to release it.

They were going to put it on the proverbial shelf.

All their marbles that summer were on American Jigglow with Richard Gear, so that's where all their advertising money was going to go.

All their promotional theft was going to be expended.

And then the trailer for Airplane started showing up in theater screens and people they couldn't get enough of it.

They couldn't wait opening weekend.

John who's an East Coast guy like me, said, can I fly back to New York for the opening?

I want to be in Manhattan.

I want to see it with an audience, you know, my home turf.

He had to pay his own way back to New York so he could see this movie.

And of course it exploded.

It went through the roof, became a sensational hit, revived several careers which we'll get to shortly, and launched several others, and remains one of the funniest movies ever made.

Now, I said that it got the first laugh with the sort of a musical joke.

We'll call it.

The second laugh is that there's a man who hailed a taxi at the airport.

Do you know who that man is?

Remind me his name was Howard Jarvis, and he would be unknown to anybody but Californians.

At that time.

He was the man behind a rather controversial and revolutionary tax reform which came up for ballot as Proposition thirteen, and so he was in the news all all the time.

So this is a little inside joke for the locals, because at the very end of the movie, he who doesn't want to want to spend a dime that can be saved is sitting in a taxi with the meter still running after ninety minutes of movie going.

But even beyond that, there is, as there is the end of every movie, a legal notice.

You know, every movie is copyrighted, right, Yeah, and they haven't notice, and this one reads, this motion picture is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries.

Unauthorized duplication, distribution, or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution.

So there, that's what they added.

So there, and John, being nobody's fool, knew that if the lawyers saw that, they'd strike it.

So in the days of actual movie prints not digital copies, he had the lab print their last reel first, So says they had already spent the money on six hundred and thirty five millimeter prints of the last reel of Airplane, and when they did see it, they blew a fuse.

I've just made the gate to you.

The it doesn't get anything.

It's a joke, but it's a joke that you have to look for.

But well that's emblematic though of the z Z style or the ZAZ style.

Yeah, I mean, this just has unbelievable joke density.

They're all the way through, and they're all different kinds of jokes.

I mean, this has got wordplay jokes, visual jokes, dad jokes, even your dad would cringe at.

It's got stereotypical jokes, got raunchy jokes, inappropriate jokes got non sequents, and they just keep coming.

As you said, I mean right down to the very end, right if this had the stinger before the MCU as I said, but even ones that just you really have to be looking.

But throughout the end credits, I mean, you've got the gaff of the best boy that naming all these various crew members.

Wedge in the middle of there is author of Taylor Two Cities, Charles Dickens.

Exactly, so their next film had a credit for re Union Goon.

Now, of course there were parodies before Airplane.

I mean, you'd go all the way back to Aban Costel and meet the Wolfman if you wanted to do that.

But I mean probably the most famous were from mel Brooks.

I mean, the likes of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.

But it seems like every generation or so the parody needs to be rebooted by young Blood.

It's interesting that there wasn't as much faith in Zuker Abram Zucker given their reputation, given the reputation the Kentucky Fry Theater had.

I mean, I was astonished to learn how influential they were and on people sort of of their contemporaries, but also people that came after them, apparently Lord Michaels and Chevy Chase when they were sort of trying to formulate Saturday Live and put it together and I don't know, give it identity.

Sore at Kentucky Fride Theater show in LA and basically said, well, that's what SNL should be, yeah, which I found amazing that it seems that these guys don't really get the respect that they do, given the influence they had on so many people, whether it's the Farley brothers or Poker and Stone from South Pockets.

Yeah, it's kind of wild.

And yet they understand.

I don't know whose idea this was.

I used to know, but that part of my brain has receded.

They knew enough that they needed a strong storyline, they needed something specific to parody, so they bought the rights or acquired the rights to a nineteen fifty seven movie, an undistinguished nineteen fifty seven movie with Dana Andrews called Zero Hour, which was actually written by Arthur Haley, who wrote Who Went On?

Who Wrote to great success Airport and its sequels, But that was still in his future.

He wrote this little programmer called zero Hour.

Wait a minute, Lana, let let's give it.

Do you respect zero hour?

Because it's actually on an exclamation in the time.

That's right, It's true.

My inflection wasn't good there, it was perfect.

So what they had was they had this through line.

They had a clothes line on which to pin all of these dozens and dozens of gags.

And in fact, if you chanced to see zero Hour, I believe you will actually hear the exact line.

So what we have to do is find somebody who can fly a plane but hasn't eaten the fish.

And in another parenthetical, I'm full of parenthetical phrases today, I'm sorry about that.

I got hired by Zaz to find them another film to.

Make fun of Oh Wow.

We shared a lawyer at the time, an entertainment lawyer, and he suggested that I might be able to lead them to another film that would, you know, inspire.

Them, give them the scaffolding.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It did not work out.

Ah, it did not work out, and I think they were a little irritated by that at the time.

They wanted me to find it.

First it was a newspaper movie, and then they wanted a spy movie, but they wanted a spy movie with very specific story turns and I could not provide that for them, So I regret that.

But they went on to make Top Secret, that was their next film, Yeah, which is a good film, not a great film, but then very little can compare to Airplane.

That's correct.

They really set the bar high with the Airplane, didn't they.

It was just saying to Dana before we started recording that, you know, I've done a bit of a review of Zazz and their work recently, and everything's good, but not great, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, I mean the Airplane just is so incredibly funny and so incredibly inventive, and everybody is on the same page, working prizes as one goal.

They found it a very uh engage aging pair of actors to be the leading man leading lady Robert Hayes and Julie Hagerty, both of them talented people, and Julie Hackerty still working.

Yeah, just saw on a TV show a week or two ago.

They played their roles straight as they were supposed to.

But what people and young people in particular may not realize about the supporting cast is that those guys Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack.

You Peter Graves in the micheon.

Peter Graves and Leslie Nielsen had never cracked a smile in their thirty to forty year careers in films and television.

Not only weren't they seen in comedies before, As they say, they were sort of sober to an extreme.

So the idea of having them in this farcical situation was part of the overall joke of the film.

Absolutely still is.

Yeah, those four guys you mentioned, I mean, that's the real casting coup of the movie.

I've got a lot of time for Hayes and Haggerty in the leads.

They're both so sincere.

They're both playing it so dead straight, which makes it even funny.

I mean to use the piles of the times they understood the assignment.

But you're having the likes of Nielsen and Stack and Bridges and Grace.

These are guys who would probably would have appeared in Zero Hour, you know, they would have appeared in the version as the square jawed hero.

And for them to again play it one dead pan, one hundred percent straight faced, not try to sell the gags.

The gags sell themselves.

And Kenneth Tolby, who was a favorite of a lot of fifties sci fi fans.

My man is there in support.

The one guy who isn't playing it straight is Stephen Stucker, who is absolutely hilarious as a very flammedant member of the ground crew who just pops in talk me about non sequitor.

Yeah, he pops in or pops up at different moments, always with a funny with a punchline.

He's a one man punchline machine.

And I asked a friend of mine who's gay, if he had any trouble with it.

He said, oh, no, he owns it.

Yeah, absolutely, he owns.

It, and no one makes fun of him.

He's He's just there as a Greek chorus to sprinkle his absurdities throughout the script.

It may be insensitive for me to say so, but yeah, springs with a fairy dust on the movie, but in a very very positive way.

Yeah.

I mean, I remember seeing this back in nineteen eighty with my parents, who are good humored people.

I have never seen them laugh more loudly, more hotly, and more frequently than at than at an airplane.

My mom especially, she almost locked usself into an aneurysm.

I think it's Randy the flight attendant is playing guitar for the poor little sick girl and knocking out her rye whenever she swings the guitar and the poor little girls put are pulling this very sick face.

It is one of my fondest memories, fondest movie going memories of my mum just absolutely dying at that moment.

So wonderful, what a wonderful memory.

Indeed.

Yeah, but she also just love loved the Steven Stucker's Johnny.

But everybody did.

I think so many people walked out of that movie thinking why isn't this guy going to be a major star.

I rewatched the Kentucky Ride movie after watching Airplane the other night.

He's got a small role in that as well.

And again just I don't think actually he's actually got any lines.

And I think he's like a court stenographer or something in some scene, but he's really just he's bashing away at the apostography machine, really dialing it up to ten.

So even if you don't like who is that person and what are they doing that, you're laughing at them.

Nonetheless, the two.

African American guys who are talking in there Patois, let's say, and then they're approached by none of this.

Then Barbara Billingsley forever known as June Cleaver to baby boomers.

Yeah, and she's able to converse with them in their lingo.

She speaks John, that's just she speaks.

Jive talk, a perfect capper that for that joke, I mean, it just goes online.

But the aftermath of this movie is interesting too.

It was a big hit and made a ton of money.

Chris John Davison did bring it in inexpensively.

May I just say quickly?

Apparently something like a three million dollar budget and made some close to one hundred and twenty million dollars worldwide.

Not a bad ROI no.

No, no, not at all.

And of course there is inevitably an airplane too, which I can't even recall.

Apparently there was.

You have an online contingent that will occasionally pop up and say, you know, it's not bad airplane too.

The sequel, I'm not sure.

Yeah, but several years went by before they had someone half's the idea for using Leslie Nielsen up to this time a dead serious actor, deadly serious like Robert Stack, to cast him in a TV series called Police Squad, which shot six episodes, six half hour episodes, two of them directed by my friend Joe Dante.

Oh well, and they're hilarious.

They're incredibly funny, and he is stupendously funny in it.

But people didn't watch that.

I find that amazing.

They canceled the show after four weeks and didn't even air there raining two episodes.

But out of that, out of that mess, someone said, no, this is too good an idea to let it die.

Let's try making a feature film and call out the Naked Gun.

And they did, and this time people got it.

They did, they showed up, they paid their money, and they had a hitch, which led to sequels.

Of course.

I think it also led to people readiscovering Police Squad as well.

It's been brought out on disc and people are realizing this is just a perfectly formed little comedic gem.

These six episodes probably run twenty minutes each or so, but they are just perfect.

His takes of you know, the cop, the Cops series of the era a great great showcase for Nielsen as well.

Yeah, I mean, Nielsen's really the one who sort of took took the airplane but on it and ran with it, didn't he.

He ran with her?

He certainly did.

Here's the story you may not know.

I interviewed Jeff Bridges who told me this story on the on the Juncket forre Blown Away.

There was a part in this movie for an all kind of an old sailor, an old sea salt type of character.

And he said, well, what about using my dad, Lloyd Bridges?

And the producer said him, Lloyd Bridges, he's a comedian.

All they knew was that they'd seen them an airplane and and so he was typecast.

What I mean, talk about irony.

You would think so based on that though, because I mean, he really sells that gag.

Just just that I picked the wrong week to was he?

I think he starts where they picked the wrong week to quit smoking, buddy, and it's the wrong week I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

But all of these guys, yeah, these straight faced, square jeweled guys, whether it's Bridges or Graves, I mean apparently Peter Graves, who was, you know, famous for the Mission Impossible TV series.

He really sort of had an issue with playing this perverted plane captain who is saying all these terribly inappropriate things.

This little boy who comes to the comes to the cockpit, I mean, all those lines about seeing a grown man naked apparently, Yeah, he had some sort of like I'm not sure I see the gag here.

Luckily we all did.

But yeah, it's yeah, easy to understand why people would think, oh, Lloyd Bridges does comedy because he's so good at it, or because he's just given such great material to work with and directed so well in that rec guard, Yeah.

Well they all got they all got to joke, indeed, and they and they, whether you know them specifically from having seen them in movies or TV shows or not, I think you still get the idea that these these you know, stoic, heroic looking, you know, handsome men era of virility in Hollywood are overturning the apple cart.

Let's say absolutely.

Well, I mean we're talking about nineteen eighty here, and I think you're talking about an audience that has basically grown up on the Late Show, on watching you know, B movies late at night.

Washing Robert Sackers, Elliott nesson The Untouchables, Yeah, watching Bridges and Sea Hunt.

Yeah.

Yeah, you've seen these guys on TV on the four channels, that you had as opposed to the multitude of channels that we have now.

So even if you're not one hundred percent conversonal familiar with what they're going for, it's like I know it in my bones for some reason.

I've just it's seeped in by Osmosis mentioned nineteen eighty.

That leads us into you had to be there, because yes, this is a very nineteen eighty movie.

In a lot of ways.

You've got bear jiggling breasts, but no other reason that they're bear jiggling breasts.

I mean, you.

Mentioned the two black gentlemen before who their lingo That patoire is kind of stereotypical, but it does pay off with that Barbara billions Ley joke as well.

I mean, saying I speak jib is just marvelous.

What I think.

I get the feeling that people at airports don't really get hassled by delegates from various religions anymore.

This happened a lott.

No, no, no, that was that was very much of that time.

There's a horror Christiana solicitations at major airports, and it is, as I say, it's a nineteen eighty movie.

You can't hide it you can't deny it, and some things will strike some people as being in questionable taste today, am I would say, get over it.

You got to push the boundaries a little bit.

Come on on.

Having said that, Leonard, let's ask about let's talk about favorite gags in this which it's a tough ass because, as we said, two hundred and seventy one jokes in this movie.

So are there any that really leap at it you when you're talking about Airplane and saying, oh, it's the movie with that, which is your favorite?

Do you think?

Well?

I think Lloyd Bridge is saying I picked the wrong week to give up smoking, and then and then the repeated callbacks to that line, that's something I cherish.

That final shot of him hire as a kite on the glue, just floting upside down, it's fantastic.

There's a bit that maybe wouldn't fly today, but apparently this used to be the technique for coming down someone who was hysterical.

You're given a good rap across the wa yes, yes, this poor woman who's starting to freak out, and there's this long lined passenger all just waiting to take a shot out of just a Calmo down yeah, quote unquote Calmo down.

There's just one little bit in that where Leslie Nielsen is the one who's doing it.

He gives her a slap and then he's called away, so he just gives you a one more slap for good measure as he's dragged away.

No, no, I'll just find that hilarious.

Some reason probably says something terrible about me.

I think the most I laughed on and I laughed for about thirty seconds straight watching this.

The other night was the two black guys.

They both had the fish for dinner.

They're not feeling all that great.

The singing None comes along to try and cheer them up with the most white bread rendition of a wreath of Franklin's respect, and it just makes them more sick.

I don't know why, but Woes are really going wild on the acoustic guitar, going sucker to be sucker to be, sucker to be sucking to be and they're just a fantastic.

And if you worried, folks, if you're worried that we're spoiling too much of this film, there's more.

There's more.

It's also a forty year old baby Leonard.

Well, if you haven't seen it, it's new to you.

Very good true, very good point, very good point.

Let's talk about the most valuable player of Airplane.

It has to be Leslie Nielson.

This reinvented his career and gave us a chance to see him do things he'd never done before.

I do love that half hour series Police Squad, and I recommend it to anybody who wants to fish it out online or on disc, because it's so good and he is just he's a master, He's a comedic master.

And who would have dreamt, Who would have dreamt he's Debbie Rynolds leading a man in Tammy and the Bachelor.

In fifty seven or fifty Yeah, he's the spaceship captain and Forbidden Planet, he's the ship captain of the Beseidon Adventure.

Yeah, he's all these authority figures.

And I think he works best in Airplane because he's still got traces of that old school leading man handsomeness to him, and he's playing at one hundred percent straight.

In Police Gord, you see him start to steer into the comedy just a little bit more like he's in on the joke, and by the time he get to the naked gun movies.

He's even more in on the joke.

He's still playing it straight, but with a tiny bit of a wink to the audience.

And I think I prefer what he does in Airplane, like with Robert Stack and like with with Pete Graves, who were just like, we're not one hundredercent shore.

We're in a comedy here is so you know, we'll just play it, yeah, straight down the line.

I talked to an actress who was cast with him and a TV production of The Venerable Old play Harvey about the man who imagines a six foot rabbit as his best friend.

She was a little condescending about oh Leslie Nielsen.

She she didn't respect him, and then she found out that he was there.

He was theater trained, he's Canadian my birth and theater trained and was a serious actor and had serious chops and uh and she loved working with him, and so that turned her around.

Yeah.

Look, it's it's kind of a natural to say Nielsen is the is the MVP of this movie.

I do want to give a shout out to Julie Haggetty.

She just reminds me of Dying Caton in a little way.

She's got this wonderful sort of space see energy, but you combine that with this this crack comic timing.

Yeah, it's little one of that she's still working today because I think she's just she's as marvelous and I want to give a shout out to I mentioned her character before, Randy, the flight attendant, played by an actor named Lorna Patterson, who I honestly thought that she was going to go and have a really if not huge people did.

Yeah, yeah, because she's got a very Goldie Horn style energy, and it's like, okay, well you go to the movies to see Goldie Horn this stage, but you know, we can have Private Benjamin at time, and she actually did play the lead in a Private Benjamin TV series.

I was saying, well, that could be her lane and she could, you know, work for a fair long time like that.

Her career never really took off in the way that I thought it would, but she's quite marvelous in this just got a really sort of bubbly effervescent energy to it, but also really good comic timing.

Yeah, it's odd that she never really made it as big as as I thought she would.

Anyway, I got to Jesse and I do a podcast called Maltnin Movies.

So it was just quite unlike this one that I enjoyed doing with you much guy.

You psaged yourself, Lennon.

I was bad to say, you're doing another podcast.

I don't know about this, man.

We've been doing it for eight years now, and it's an interview show, casually converse for about an hour with our guests.

And as with any such show, booking guests is a challenge.

You know, you have to go through publicists, you have to the timing has to be right.

Well, we're members of a synagogue congregation here called the Beverly Hills Temple of the Arts, and we meet at what was formerly the Wilshire Theater, a grand old movie palace which our congregation has lovingly restored.

And as the theater was thinning out at the end of the services, I saw familiar face standing I think with her companion.

It was Julie Haggerty at rosh Hashana Haggerty.

That doesn't doesn't quite fit the mold, does it, But indeed it was she.

I went over and introduced myself to what a fan I was, and she was a guest on our podcast.

A delightful woman, A delightful.

Woman starting Albert Brooks is Lost in America.

She's fantastic in that as well.

Yeah, that's right, she there is double feature time, Leonard.

Honestly, when I watched The Airplane the other night, I was like, I could just watch this from beginning to end again because I'm sure this stuff I missed, or i just want to feel as good as I did when watching Airplane.

But you know, variety is a pact, the spice of life.

So I don't think we're going to go with Airplane to the sequel.

Maybe the hot Shots movies that you know, sort of take the mickey out of Top Gun and it's ill.

I wouldn't want to pair this with another paradis.

I would want to go in a different.

Direction, a smart move to be fair to.

Both movies and to not dilute our enjoyment at all.

So I would go with something different, or maybe Private Benjaminers film you.

Just matched there you go beyond Yeah, one I was thinking of that kind of gets overlooked in the zazz body of work because it's not a parody.

In the Airplane or Naked Gun Days is a nineteen eighty six comedy called Ruthless People.

It's one that I really jure.

Yeah, one that I really enjoyed the first time I saw it, and I've enjoyed it every time I've revisited it.

But yeah, it's more of a straightforward comedy than a parody.

It's yeah, where Danny DeVito is this loathsome millionaire who's somewhat shrewish wife Bette Midler is kidnapped by a couple of very amateur criminals and then he decides he's not going to pay the ransom.

He didn't want to around anyway.

So yeah, it's a very very funny movie, well made by Zazz and yeah, definitely worth checking out.

I think it'd be a good match with Airplane.

What about a more serious film set on a plane?

Can you think of any movies set on a plane, like an action flick that might go with this comedy set on a plane?

One that immediately brings to mind, it's a little known movie from Master of Horror Wes Craven called Red Eye.

Do you know this one, Lennon?

No?

Yeah, This stars Killian Murphy from Oppenheimer and Rachel McAdams from the Notebook and many other things.

Rachel mcadda's boards are plane.

She's on her way to see her father.

She seated next to a very handsome gentleman who eventually reveals that he's got a sinister plan, and Rachel mcaddams is sort of pivotal to it.

White knuckle stuff, very tense, very sort of single location stuff.

But yeah, awfully, awfully well made by Craven.

I mean, it's not horrific in the way that say the Nightmare on Elm Street or Scream movies are, So you don't have to worry, Leondar.

You won't be too scared, as I am prone to say, because I love my cliches.

You'll pay for the whole seat, but you'll only use the edge.

Yeah, Red Eye definitely worth checking out.

Dando, what a clever guy coming up with coming up with an alternative spin on the double feature.

Yeah, that's one that I recommend, or you know, if you can track it down, try and find the original Zero Hour or Airport or yeah, one of those late sixty early seventies sort of blockbusters, because you'll see the DNA of airplane in those movies.

Because yeah, yeah, the secret source of a good parody is that it respects honors and borrows wholesale from something really really serious.

Yeah, it's what Parker and Stone do all the time.

We talk about it when we're talking about South Park.

So yeah, I think.

That's anything else about Airplane.

You wanted to make sure we covered Lenda before we wrap this up.

Well, Howard Jarvis has to be identified for almost everybody, but ethel Merman, who makes a very funny cameo apparently long suffering Attenant Hurwitz in the next Hospital Ward.

Ethel Merman was the one of the greatest of all time Broadway musical stars.

She was in the original cast of Anti Get Your Gun.

She was the original Mama and Gypsy, among many many others Baby boomers Mate now at her best for being and it's a mad, mad, mad mad world.

But she was really synonymous with Broadway musicals.

I'm so glad you mentioned ethel Mourment Lennard because, Yeah, like I said, when I saw this back in nine and eighty as a kid, I only had the vaguest idea of whoever moment was what she was about.

I had no idea about her Broadway credits, the ones you mentioned, all that kind of stuff.

I knew that she was a singer, but Robert Hayes to say that, gay, there's Lieutenant Herwitz.

He thinks now it thinks he's Ethel.

Moment you cut to act actual Ethel moment?

Who's really going for belding out in that wonderful dist thing.

I just thought it was the funniest thing.

It was probably my favorite gag in the movie when I saw it at that stage.

Yeah, so, yeah, I'm glad you brought it up.

And the reason it works too is you touched on it earlier.

I'm not sure what was yourself, Lennon or a guy where you had to know the subject matter to understand the gags of more modern parody films, where that's a gag where honestly, I had no idea who she was, and a lot of the audience who are kids, probably had no idea who she was.

But it's just so funny in itself that.

You just have to laugh anyway.

Yes, you're expecting some you know.

The absurdity of it is what makes it funny.

Yeah, some hard bitten airman to be in the next bed and it turns out to be the actual Ethel moment or you know, the guy you were talking about how a Jarvis fellow who you know, had this political history or he was in the news for these various reasons.

The joke works if you know about that.

The joke works if you don't know who this guy is.

He's just a guy who's willing to sit in a cab for god knows how long and just let you know, let the met to keep racking up.

Yeah, and that's why it's timeless.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it's as I like to say, it's as deep as you need or as dumb as you like.

Oh that's nice.

How bad is it?

Feel free to borrow?

I think that might be all.

Look, there's so much to say about airplane, but I think that might be all we need for now.

And this discussion may lead to us reviewing because, as you said earlier, the new neckd Gun film is coming out.

Maybe we'll do a review of one of the original neckad guns, and maybe once the new one comes out, we may touch on that one as well in future episodes.

I was thinking we might do a little bit of a parody month.

We might pay tribute to the great mel Brooks.

Yeah, we might talk about space balls all.

One of the ones we mentioned like Blazing Saddles or Young Young Rings.

It was just about space Balls too, is in production he has.

Indeed, we might talk about a Leam Neeson movie because Liam Neeson is the start of the New Naked Gun.

The possibilities are actually endless.

Truly, tap into that encyclopedia that is Leonard's brain, That's what I like to say.

Well, all those encyclopedia books that he actually wrote.

Alrighty guys, well, I hope you enjoyed our review of Airplane Don't Forget.

If you do want to support the show, you can rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Review do find the podcast.

You can subscribe to us on YouTube, and you can also support us on Patreon for as little as just two dollars per month.

Link for all of that is in the description of this podcast.

But for now, thanks for joining me.

Guy, sure you can't be serious, Dander, thank you, the Leonard Moulton.

Thank you, and stop calling you Shirley Apple.

Catch you all in the next episode of the Movie Guide with Malton and Davis.