Hey, there! Log in / Register
Shirley, they must be joking
By adamg on Mon, 11/10/2014 - 2:14pm
Watch "Airplane!" with an MIT aeronautics professor at the Coolidge Corner on Dec. 8.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Looks like I picked the wrong week
To give up sniffing glue!
In my sophomore year at Northeastern
I took a course titled "The History of Flight and Space". The instructor's focus in teaching this course was how aviation technology was reflected in the popular culture of the time, so we spent most of the course watching films like "Strategic Air Command", "The Right Stuff", and such.
During the course, the instructor told us that he would have something special for the last class prior to finals. Sure enough, he used the last class to show us "Airplane!". And, as I recall, the instructor was one of the people in the room laughing the loudest during the film.
Zero Hour
It wasn't until a few years ago that I watched the movie Airplane was based on -- a horrible flick called "Zero Hour". Much of Airplane's script was lifted verbatim from Zero Hour and it's hilarious to go back and watch the original.
Zero Hour was only one
of multiple "aviation disaster" themed movies and books that Airplane! got its material from. One of my favorite things about Airplane! was the casting of Robert Stack as Captain Kramer. This is because Robert Stack played a principal role in the 1950s film The High and The Mighty, which was one of the first "plane in peril" movies made.
Airport
Airport and Airport 1975 were also source material for Airplane, as were the other disaster movies that dominated the market from the early-mid 1970s (Earthquake in Sensaround!!).
And both the
food poisoning (did you have steak or fish?) bit and Kramer's ending line "Ted, that was probably the lousiest landing in the history of this airport" were lifted from Arthur Hailey's book Runway Zero-Eight.
Did you watch the Zero Hour
Did you watch the Zero Hour clips? It had both of those - in fact, according to Wikipedia, "Zero Hour! was an adaptation of Hailey's original 1956 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation teleplay Flight into Danger. Hailey also co-wrote a novel with John Castle based on the same plot, titled Flight Into Danger: Runway Zero-Eight (1958)." (I suspected as much from what you wrote, having just watched the clip, & looked it up to check.)
I suspect the scenes were lifted from the movie, not the book, but the movie and book were essentially one and the same.
Yes, you are correct.
However, I never saw the Zero Hour clips until after they were noted in the earlier posting (the History of Flight and Space course I mentioned earlier focused on military aviation development, not civilian - which is probably why our instructor never showed us that film) and after I had posted my comments.
I did, however, read Runway Zero Eight in high school (for pleasure, it was not required reading), which is why that reference immediately came to mind.
With some Airport thrown in
But especially Airport 75, with girl who needs a transplant (Linda Blair) and the singing nun (Helen Reddy). Plus, of course, George Kennedy.
Joe Patroni
(Kennedy's character) was far better in Airport than he was in either Airport 75 or the subsequent sequels. For one thing, in Airport 75, they never bothered to explain what happened to his first wife and five children.
That having been said, there never was a "gung ho maintenance man" type like Patroni in Airplane!.
Before Airplane, etc.
The son of a Mountie, Leslie Nielsen had many leading man roles, including the ship captain in The Poseidon Adventure.
I wouldn't exactly call the captain
of the Poseidon the leading man in the movie. Especially given that, if he had held his ground about adding ballast, the ship may have never capsized.
Adam
do you like movies about Gladiators?
Or have you ever been
to a Turkish prison?
Joey..
have you ever seen a grown man naked?
Gimme Ham on five, hold the
Gimme Ham on five, hold the Mayo.