In short
A Rewatchables discussion of Airplane! (1980), focusing on why its style—deadpan “straight” acting by non-comic stars, relentless setup/payoff, and genre-parody structure—became a template for later comedy.
Guests
Bill Simmons (sportswriter/podcast host; wrote an Airplane book/has long championed the film; describes seeing it constantly on cable in Oklahoma and later experiencing big comedy-theater reactions with Naked Gun). Bill Hader (comedian/actor; says Airplane has always been part of his life via TV; highlights specific bits and how the movie’s “serious” tone enables the jokes).
Key claims
- The “secret sauce” is using serious actors (Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Peter Graves, etc.) and playing the absurd as if it’s normal.
- The comedy is both high-density gagging and long, carefully constructed lead-ups.
- Airplane’s influence is visible in later parodies, but it’s hard to replicate because it removes the “shouldn’t they react?” realism instinct.
Notable examples
- “Have you ever hung around the gymnasium?” and “Surely you can’t be serious” running jokes.
- The stethoscope “I’m a doctor” bit, plus the “jive” scene (Leave It to Beaver’s mom speaking jive).
- The inflatable pilot, the gasoline/covering-himself gag, and the “poison fish” sequence.
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s cameo and the “apex mountain” timing of his 1980 peak.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOHader's Early Memories of 'Airplane!'
0:45 to 2:15
Bill Hader shares his lifelong connection with the movie 'Airplane!'.
“So you didn't see it when it came out, did you?”
The Impact of 'Airplane!' on Comedy
2:15 to 4:09
Discussion on how 'Airplane!' influenced comedy and filmmakers.
“They were always, they were just kind of like, oh, that's how you're supposed to do comedy.”
The Unique Style of 'Airplane!'
4:09 to 6:05
Exploration of the comedic style and techniques used in 'Airplane!'.
“And it's so disturbing and funny when you watch it now where he's like, you like movies.”
Memorable Theater Experiences
6:05 to 8:12
Hader and Simmons reminisce about their unforgettable theater experiences.
“Well, it's funny you mentioned that theater thing because we did Naked Gun a couple years ago and I told the story about seeing that in the theater.”
The Role of Non-Comedic Actors
8:12 to 11:56
The discussion focuses on how non-comedy actors contributed to the film's humor.
“I only remember two comedies because the other one was There's Something About Mary.”
Legacy and Rewatchability of 'Airplane!'
11:56 to 14:01
Examining how 'Airplane!' remains a timeless classic in comedy.
“And there was like, I remember people were like, there's smart.”
The Impact of 'Airplane!' on Comedy
14:01 to 18:17
Explore how 'Airplane!' changed the landscape of comedy films and influenced later works.
“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.”
Comedy's Unique Structure and Influences
18:18 to 22:44
Delve into the unique comedy structure of 'Airplane!' and its inspirations from earlier films.
“And that's why it's like, oh, no, it's got to be those guys, you know?”
The Evolution of Movie Business
22:45 to 24:56
Discuss the difference in the movie business landscape from the 70s and 80s to today.
“I mean, 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.”
The Evolution of Movie Business
25:08 to 25:45
Discuss the difference in the movie business landscape from the 70s and 80s to today.
Show all 37 chapters
Comparative Analysis of Comedy Releases
25:46 to 28:00
Review the remarkable comedy releases of 1980, focusing on their cultural impact.
“And I looked through because I'm a psycho.”
Caddyshack and Judge Schmails Appreciation
28:00 to 29:27
A discussion on the comedic brilliance of Caddyshack and its standout character Judge Schmails.
Memorable Quotes and Family Jokes
29:27 to 30:49
Exploring how lines from Airplane! have become family jokes and cultural references.
“Like, he really, again, because there's something rooted in reality that's very funny to me, you know?”
Classic Scenes and Characters
30:49 to 31:54
Discussion on the memorable characters and scenes from Airplane! and their lasting impact.
“After she says she's lovely, supple breast, amazing figure and all that.”
Understanding Humorous Contexts
31:54 to 33:59
Analyzing humorous moments in Airplane! and the context behind their comedic effect.
The Role of Comedians in Airplane!
33:59 to 36:29
Exploring the unconventional casting choices and how they contributed to the film's humor.
“They were part of the Kentucky Fried theater.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Airplane!
36:29 to 39:47
Discussing Kareem's surprising role in Airplane! and its impact on his public persona.
“Kareem said, I love the Ebonics scene because they poked fun at a very real subject without diminishing it.”
LeBron James and Comedy in Film
39:47 to 42:01
Comparison of LeBron's comedic timing in film to earlier athletes in comedic roles.
“And that was just the thing I was saying, like, to him.”
Comedic Highlights from 'Airplane!'
42:01 to 45:02
Discussing memorable and humorous scenes from 'Airplane!', including character reactions and iconic moments.
“I was like, I wonder if they understood what was happening in that scene.”
1980s Pop Culture References
45:03 to 47:42
Exploring various 1980s pop culture references and how they are portrayed in 'Airplane!'.
“I mean, the cockpit led to more jokes over the next 30 years just in real life than anything.”
'Airplane!' - Timeless Humor and Jokes
47:43 to 49:54
Examining the jokes and humor that have aged well in 'Airplane!' and their cultural significance.
“especially when they pull him out the end of the goggles and it's just like that's clearly kareem in 1980 in death they just admit it yeah it was kareem All right.”
Length and Pacing of 'Airplane!'
49:55 to 53:16
Debating the ideal length and pacing of 'Airplane!' and how it compares to modern films.
“I don't know how old she is now, but she's great in this movie.”
What's Aged the Worst in 'Airplane!'
53:17 to 56:00
Discussing elements of 'Airplane!' that have not aged well and their impact on contemporary viewers.
“Wait, Craig, Craig, you're on this, right?”
Reflections on 'Airplane!' and Its Humor
56:00 to 57:30
This segment discusses the humor in 'Airplane!' and how perceptions of it have changed over time.
“I probably knew him from this first and before.”
Casting Choices and What-ifs
57:30 to 59:10
The hosts explore various casting decisions for 'Airplane!' and discuss potential alternate timelines.
“I think Lorna Patterson should have been a bigger star.”
Behind-the-Scenes Insights on Performances
59:10 to 1:01:00
The discussion shifts to notable performances and behind-the-scenes anecdotes from 'Airplane!'.
“It was like one of those, like she's kind of surprised she didn't get it.”
Audition Stories and Actor Experiences
1:01:00 to 1:03:10
The hosts share their personal audition experiences and stories involving famous actors.
“I will say forever when I would audition, I could put money on it that Adam Scott was reading for the same thing.”
The Impact of 'Airplane!' on Careers
1:03:10 to 1:05:40
This segment discusses how 'Airplane!' impacted the careers of various actors and comedians.
“And they told him later on in the movie, we're going to explain it, but they never did.”
Fun Trivia and Lesser-Known Facts
1:05:40 to 1:10:02
The hosts share fun facts and trivia about 'Airplane!', enhancing listeners' appreciation for the film.
“You ran into Ted Levine and Ted Levine was furious about Buffalo Bill.”
Behind the Scenes of Airplane!
1:10:02 to 1:14:46
Exploring trivia and anecdotes related to the making of 'Airplane!'.
“Wasn't that usually the part for like, you know...”
Character Analyses and Casting Choices
1:14:46 to 1:20:28
Discussion on character roles and potential casting alternatives in 'Airplane!'.
“Caddyshack though, it's like they actually tried to make it like a real love scene with Michael.”
Sequels and Cultural Impact
1:20:28 to 1:23:34
Reflections on the sequel to 'Airplane!' and its comedic legacy.
Comedy Legends and Oscar Snubs
1:24:04 to 1:26:26
Explore the impact of comedy on awards and personal memories of iconic performances.
“And Peter Graves is like, do you like when Scraps rubs up and down your leg?”
Unanswerable Questions about Airplane!
1:26:26 to 1:28:38
Delve into intriguing questions and mysteries surrounding the film 'Airplane!'.
“And you see that like now, like you see someone 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.”
Lessons and Inspirations from Airplane!
1:28:38 to 1:31:00
Discuss valuable lessons learned from the film's production and its innovative style.
The Evolution of Comedy Films
1:31:00 to 1:35:01
Reflect on the changing landscape of comedy and its impact on filmmaking today.
“And it's like, you know, when I worked in a movie theater in the late 90s, you would go like, oh, there's like indie movies next to like Armageddon.”
Personal Connections to Airplane!
1:35:01 to 1:36:46
Share personal experiences related to watching and enjoying 'Airplane!' with family.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:14All right.
0:15Bill Simmons:The man, the myth, the legend, Bill Hader is here. We haven't done this since COVID. It's been almost a half decade drought for you on the rewatchables. That's true. That's very true. 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 Airplane. Yeah, yeah. I've talked about Airplane and others. I'm in that book that came out about Airplane. But that is such a formidable movie for me, you know. So, yeah, that was the one that my eyes immediately went to. So you didn't see it when it came out, did you?
0:50Bill Simmons:You saw it after, probably? No, that movie came out when I was like two years old or something. 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 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 cable forever. And then it was also like on TBS and WGN and where I grew up in Oklahoma, like we got those channels. And so it was like edited for those. And so, I mean, it was just constantly on television and I'd watch it every time I was on.
1:36And still to this day, I just, I just showed it to my girlfriend. Allie hadn't seen it 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.
1:55Bill Simmons:Well, it's 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 it 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 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 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.
2:50They were always, they were just kind of like, oh, that's how you're supposed to do comedy. And then you 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.
3:02Bill Simmons: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. 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. L airplane. I remember my dad telling me, he's like, if you, if you, that movie is funny, but if you grew up watching like sea hunt and watching with Lloyd bridges or those movies, you know, a forbidden planet or Poseidon adventure that had Leslie Nielsen in it, like all these movies where they were always the straight guy.
3:47Yeah. 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 the secret sauce
4:24Bill Simmons:right because if you think you're doing a movie like this you're gonna have harvey corman as in the leslie nielsen role and he's gonna be hamming up you 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 falls off 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.
5:02I mean, I don't know what time in my life where my friends and I weren't quoting that, you know. You ever hang around the gymnasium? Like, any time you would go into the gym, I remember I had friends in elementary school, you go, you ever hang around the gymnasium? you know just so weird and 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're just following their intuition because 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 yeah 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 there's two things going on at the
6:03Bill Simmons: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 what is it the ham on the mayo whatever that one is on the mayo yeah yeah but he said they set it up for like 35 seconds 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 and so i had seen this movie first and then i saw a 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 i 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 might see here 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 fried movie and i brought that to a sleepover when i was in fourth grade and the mom some nudity yeah 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 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.
8:02Bill Simmons:Well, it's funny you mentioned that 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 almost caused a riot. It was so funny. People fucking 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 in The Hangover was the other one. Oh, right. 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 yeah 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 theater and get scared, you know, but you can't go to the theater and like laugh as much like that anymore.
9:01And I was telling my kids, 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 L.A., a 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, it's David Zucker.
9:44Holy shit, you know, and he was so nice. And 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 was it like with the announcers? What was, you know? Yeah. And then and then Airplane, too. 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 like wait what'd you guys get me into and then like leslie nielsen like immediately got it and was like a pro you know and and it was just it was just really cool
10:23Bill Simmons:getting yeah this the secret sauce of this is the using the non-comic actors which 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 how 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 ham first hosted i don't think anybody knew that john was funny they only knew him as like don draper right remember that episode when he came out and was being funny the place was like no i 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 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 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 or if we're joking or not?
12:18Or 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, 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, Like, you know, at the time, like, Knocked Up. Yeah. A dumb comedy. Like, at the time, it was Hot Rod. It 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.
12:55Right. Which is, 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 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 a hundred times just like, Oh, that the group who made it, they're just trying to make themselves laugh. Yeah. Like they're, they're like, Oh no, this is like funny to us, you know? And then suddenly, you know, I showed my kids when they were young, this movie and naked gun and they, they were dying laughing.
13:33I mean, I have three daughters and the scene where the woman knocks the, where she's playing the guitar and she knocks the little girls tube out and she starts dying they thought that was hilarious yeah they were like crying laughing in the face she's making and everything like they just thought that was great well so in that book there was a
13:54Bill Simmons:bunch of people that weighed in these are uh 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 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's the star wars thing is kind of apps where you can't kind of make a delineation of like before and after Airplane in some ways.
14:46Even 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 um crime wave sam raimi movie crime wave like there's a bunch of them where they have that look you know yeah um 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 uh there's nothing Here's another one.
15:30Bill Simmons: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. They apparently, I guess, showed it to Michael Eisner, who was the head of Paramount at the time. Michael Eisner's kids loved it. They were like, we don't know if he liked to but his kids were like cracking up and so i think we all owe a debt to mike mike liesman's kids because they were the ones that were like holy shit this is so funny you know pat oswald said um a lot of comedies in the last 30 years have wanted to be airplane they're 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 yeah 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 um that 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.
16:56Right. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Just keep moving. You know, that's like one of the things that screwed up, you know, you 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 is like, well, wouldn't they, in reality this would happen it's like right this isn't reality right it's like its own weird universe you know and it's like a weird movie reality but um letterman said oh letterman oh
17:35Bill Simmons: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 a lane 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 watching streets of san francisco yeah or like yeah or like watching the stuff from the early 60s and late 50s that's what my you know watching sea hunter yeah those film those shows where it's so deadly serious but it's like jimmy we gotta 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 I mean, it's very clear, like, all these dudes, like, grew up on TV and just sitting around, like, making fun of it.
18:48And that's why it's like, oh, no, it's got to be those guys, you know?
18:54Bill Simmons: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. yeah there's a really good youtube video some crazy person or they they do the comparison yeah and they're just like the scenes of like the the nuns singing to the um to the little girl like there's like five scenes that they just take somebody coming into the cockpit yeah you gotta have 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 a plane in my house and then yeah i was watching that and i was like god this movie is like airplane right no and i go and then looking it up i go oh yeah this is what airplanes based on you know the other one was airport 75 it ripped off a few things from that but i hadn't seen any 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.
20:10They were giving all the context of why it was even a bigger thing for them than it was for me. I was just like, oh, this is hilarious and weird.
20:20Bill Simmons:Yeah, because when I was little in the 70s, this was a whole industry. Poseidon Adventure, all the airport movies, Towering Inferno, Black Sunday. yeah they were like the superhero movies of the 70s yeah yeah and they 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 there's like burt i gordon movies and and um yeah all those guys uh i'm blanking on the other guy's name the big guy but uh um but yeah the there's one about bees with michael kang called the swarm oh jesus that's got a bunch of big name actors just people going ah who's fighting bees gotta get away from these bees yeah yes it's just it's crazy um 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 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 kiara wayne's i mean i'm gonna get you stuck it was a great movie and i think it's very very funny um but uh but yeah they didn't and company yeah because again like mel brooks was doing the parody thing but it was all comedic actors and those movies are great but it was all comedic and their ham ended up yeah and they're having fun and they're going crazy i mean i i mean i love harvey corman and blazing saddles is so funny to me but but uh they're yeah it's definitely big and then you they were that's why i mean these 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.
22:18And they're like, why would we do that? They already did that. Let's do this thing.
22:21Bill Simmons:Right. You know, Matt and Trey are very much like that, where it's like, well, why are we going 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, Team America. We'll do it on puppets. You know, fuck it. Let's do that. Because it's more exciting for us. This last quote was from Katzenberg, who was one of the execs 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 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.
23:17I hope so. I mean, 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. I sound like an old man. But that movie is so clear. People are like, oh, he likes 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, Scorsese called them smugglers, But, you know, it's like filmmakers like like Douglas Sirk or something.
24:12He would make these melodramas that were women's pictures, quote unquote, but were really his. He's just, 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's about American life, 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 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 always nice when that happens, you know.
24:57Bill Simmons:we had to take a break and then come back one more thing to throw you before we get to the categories this episode is brought to you by hulu glenn powell is chad powers coming september 30th to hulu and hulu on disney plus eight years after flushing his college football career down the toilet hot shot quarterback russ holiday makes a comeback disguised as chad powers an oddball athletic talent who walks onto the struggling south georgia catfish strong name determined to once again take college football by a storm our guy glenn powell we are glenn powell supporters here at the rewatchables watch the hilarious new hulu original series chad powers september 30th streaming on hulu and hulu on disney plus for bundle subscribers terms apply 1980 blues brothers comes out june 20th airplane comes out july 4th and caddyshack comes out july 25th.
25:53Bill Simmons:Wow. And I looked 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. There's been stretches, and you were even involved in one where it was like an 07, Knocked Up, and Superbad, and Tropic Thunder all came out in the same year. But nothing like this, these three influential where we hadn't had a lot of rewatchable comedies yet. I remember Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder came out a week apart or something. i remember that like there was a couple 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 were still you know people still talk about and they were all like within two like influential ones because 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 yeah 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 eight millimeter which I now consider a comedy yeah I didn't machine was arguably the best comedic actor we had um but nothing the the only other and you were involved in the the era that was like the last like distinct era when it was Apatow it was for you know uh Pineapple Express it was the hangover and it just felt like for five years there we were just firing out these classic yeah bridesmaids was yeah and it just kept going all the way through like basically this is the end of neighbors but um yeah 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 um but i i mean i will say i've watched those films a lot and and airplane is the one nothing against those other movies but airplane is one i keep going back to because it's just so unique you know yeah it feels the least dated for some reason yeah it's just it's like it's its own thing that you can't and then blues brothers is very funny and it's so like extravagant that movie like the car chase scenes yeah 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 brother 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 well 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 i was just as a side caddyshack for all the comedy 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 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 Schmills.
29:30Bill Simmons:Unbelievable. It's a tour de force. It really is. Like, he really, again, because there's something rooted in reality that's very funny to me, you know? Oh, Billy, Billy, Billy. Oh, Billy, Billy. 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 in the book. Yeah, yeah. That's what Alec Berg would say. And yeah, I think it was Alec would say that to me or I would say - No, you would say that.
30:12Bill Simmons:I would say it to Alec. He was like writing, he had some deadline and pull up some scene and you would just keep opening his door. Oh yeah, I 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. good luck we're all just keep it going but we had that we had the the surely must be serious stop calling me surely that was the running thing yeah that's huge what a big one for my 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 yeah 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 i remember yeah i had the fish right you know a big one in my family was the lasagna sorry i fucked it up i had the lasagna yeah the lasagna the 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 of my dad's family for 45 years because we have a couple relatives where you're just like and you see them trapped in the corner and we start looking like it pulling out the samurai sword and also all those care actors are so good.
31:20That old lady is so funny. After she says she's lovely, supple breast, amazing figure and all that. But then when he starts talking, the way she takes her glasses off, oh no. I didn't want this guy to get into a story. I like
31:41Bill Simmons:my coffee black like my men. That's lasted 45 years. Have you ever been in a Turkish prison who's just been undefeated? yeah leon's getting larger big leon's leaning larger uh the fog is getting thicker and leon and then uh and then it looks like i picked a bad week to quit doing blank you know yes or whatever yeah that was always that keeps going forever looks like a long pick 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 gonna have coffee today and she's like hmm bill always has coffee in the morning that's like eternal i feel like that keeps that's gonna keep going i guess that was based on a commercial that it was yeah it was based on a coffee commercial um quickly before the categories so we mentioned all the stuff that they borrowed from paramount bought it um 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 um 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 right sketch people still think about that because it was william shatner going get a life like him 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 re-watched 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 yeah i mean yeah it was a childhood it was a living hell you know he goes 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 forget i said it i don't know why i said that like he's just completely spinning out and he's like municipal bond head 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'd go kicked in the head an iron boot
34:24Bill Simmons:so written directed by the zucker brothers 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 what you call that. They were part of the Kentucky Fried theater. Yeah, and then they did Kentucky Fried movies. 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 Ebert, our guy, three stars, said it was a comedy in the great tradition of high school skits, the Sid Caesar TV show, Mad Magazine.
35:03Bill Simmons:blah blah blah um the reason it's funny frequently is because it's sophomore predictable corny etc 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 uh that whole part um the jive guys boarding the plane yeah i mean the jive guys with um And June Cleaver's 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 going to show up and be like, I speak jive. And then 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.
36:00But 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.
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36:21Bill Simmons:Yeah, they unleashed at least one of the actors. I think his name was Al White on how to just like, hey, can you write this? Yeah, that was so funny. Kareem loved it. I was surprised. Kareem said, I love the Ebonics scene because they poked fun at a very real subject without diminishing it. Oh, that was funny. When he says, I don't to the kid, that is very funny. Yeah, I got that one. 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 uh girl scouts or something it makes yeah i don't know what it's about but it's so funny and that goes right into stabbed and he starts like pointing to the knife in his back and yeah really haggardy 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 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 i just remember trying to like keep my she's like the nicest human being on the planet julie haggard 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 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 every time 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 mclove and i'm sorry i blocked your cock i couldn't get through this line i just kept laughing i just could not stop laughing because uh i didn't realize christmas class 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 uh it just it 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 yeah people are getting mad at you come on man please get it like get it together dude uh but that one was a lot of fun i remember i was laughing a lot on that yeah um a couple more rewatchable 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 um captain over meets joey and 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 gotta 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 he had no feel for him at all he's the biggest star in the league and then to see him in airplane that like broke my brain because i love basketball fan do you think the kid's dad has a point that was the 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 you know uh you know sports uh you know master uh 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 yeah and rad do you think i loved it well the i was going to talk about this later the funniest thing with the cream 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 yeah and he 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 like i 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 guys and slap shot right no hockey guys in that and then long it was it was just so unconventional like by the time i guess it would be like retired people right like right yeah right yeah well and then you go 35 years later you did train wreck and lebron is in it right and at that time we're used to athletes doing shit like that but yeah 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 um you know he 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.
41:38And that was just the thing I was saying, like, to him. Like, I had met somebody who was, like, really famous and, like, really rich. And I just had a dinner with them. And I was like, 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 and he played it great you know yeah 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 the play in the song for the sick little girl goes right into
42:23Bill Simmons:ted's story about living in africa when they're teaching basketball and the soldier ends up killing himself that all stretch uh my favorite part we didn't talk about yet uh the inflatable pilot getting blown oh yeah that's the kind of yeah when i was 10 that was the height of comedy for me i just 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. I was like, I wonder if they understood what was happening in that scene. The inflatable head smiles. The guy smiles so clearly.
43:06It starts going up and down at one point. It goes up and down. It was awesome. I remember it got cut in some of them and the other ones it wasn't cut. I thought that was interesting.
43:17Bill Simmons: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, like, please, please go. Um, 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. Also Leslie Nielsen. It's so brutal. He slaps her and they go, doctor, they need you. And he slaps her one last time. He goes. You're like, Jesus Christ.
43:54it'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 yeah it's for no reason i was like god damn it that's awful
44:09Bill Simmons:the stewardess i speak jive yeah um here it is uh 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 i have a husband classic and then uh 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 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 i don't know watermelon falls yeah like you know and all right so what's your favorite what's your most rewatchable i had that moment with robert stack where he loses it at the end where he's like municipal bonds ted i just 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 and 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 shit on so ted is very funny i have inflatable or I have the cockpit, obviously.
45:46Bill Simmons: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 Merman, you'll be swell. Right. 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.
46:25Or the Anita Bryant concert.
46:27Bill Simmons:Yeah, Anita Bryant concert, Ronald Reagan film, just some of the pop culture that's in here. They do a disco is dead joke. There are smoking and non-smoking sections to the airplane. Yeah, that was my dad and his brothers told me the biggest laugh of the entire movie in the zucker brothers 22 is when it's like where disco lives forever and it takes it hits the thing right people were so sick of disco he said that thing yeah it like stopped the movie like people were cheering for like the next two scenes because people hated disco so much but at that point it was so played out a movie starting with a jaws parody.
47:04Bill Simmons:The announcer going, pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon, Minnie Mota. I have Harry Krishna as in an airport because there's just not people handing out stuff in airports anymore. I think that era is long over. Also, I will say, people do cocaine jokes, but the old lady's sniffing the cocaine and the coffee. But Anita Bryant concert is pretty... And also just the look of it i don't know for me i'm always like just the look of like like the harsh lighting and their shadows and stuff like very 80s to me my answer is uh 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 in death they just admit it yeah it was kareem All right.
48:02Bill Simmons: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. This is 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. Oh no. nightmare um 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 whacking material is also the idea that the every time they cut to the model you know the exterior of the plane those the sound of the plane is is that's not what the plane sounds It's a propeller.
48:53Yeah. It was very funny.
48:57Bill Simmons:The wordplay stuff of like, this woman has to be gotten to 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. 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, and they're in it. Yeah, Jim Abrams, he's one of the Harry Krishnas. And then the two Zucker brothers are the ones where, you know, hey, Tony, they're the... Oh, yeah, the air traffic guys.
49:33The air traffic guys, like, where? It's over there. Yeah, those are them.
49:36Bill Simmons:So Leslie Nielsen, being a comedy actor, has aged the best since this unleashed him into three naked gun movies and police squad and all kinds of different things. and then uh i think that 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 stuck in where there's a plane and it's got like a beard on the bottom yeah it looks like a rabbi yeah yeah um the uh the famous jewish sports legends pamphlet is funny yeah that was very small yeah light reading material and then uh i gotta say I'm throwing her in here.
50:17Bill Simmons:Lorna Patterson. Had a crush on her for 45 years. I don't know how old she is now, but she's great in this movie. She had a great voice. Home run all the way around. Any other would say it's the best for you?
50:32I don't know. Just the things we've been talking about earlier, but just it's its own thing. I can't describe it. It's like you can't. It's a one-on-one. I don't really know what else. you can really compare it to.
50:49Bill Simmons:Zipping through some quick categories. The Big Kahuna Burger Award for Best Use of Food and Drink has to be the Poison 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 but the light is very it's all very dark oh yeah yeah that's good and everything it's very like the lighting in the cockpit suddenly changes right or a movie is very funny kid cutty pursuit of happiness the word for best needle drop um this has to be the bgs sped up bgs in the disco yeah yeah chess rockwell and brocklanders were for best character name ted striker is really good unless there's one you like more yeah ted striker 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 broke my i brought my own pack award for excellence in on-screen smoking stack and bridges are simultaneously just just heating darts and 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 yeah yeah all right the butch's girlfriend award for weak 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.
52:43Bill Simmons:This movie's like five minutes too short. Oh, interesting. I could have gone a little further. I like it that it's so short. I like that they just are, they leave you wanting more, you know? I had some ideas. I could have had one more scene with the jab, guys. I could have had Stephen 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 you got the mom their mom that's the zucker brothers mom is the lady putting on the yeah 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 just knowing what we know yeah that's that's pretty good because This movie's like 80 minutes.
53:42Bill Simmons:Wait, Craig, Craig, you're on this, right? You're listening? Yeah, I think it's 88 minutes. Craig's the shepherd of this movie is too long. So was this movie the right length for you, Craig? Or could you have gone five more minutes? I mean, if we're picking five minutes, sure. But I like that 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 a guaranteed two plus hours now, anything you go to. I've been in movies where 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?
54:20Bill Simmons:That was the second It movie was really long. Yeah, the second It movie is that was it. We were at the premiere, and they were like, yeah, so this movie is 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? How long have we all looked at the director, and he was laughing and put his head down? And we're like, why is it so fucking long? Why did you guys keep everything? And then afterwards be like, it was that long, but you cut the scene where we did the, you know? Somehow we still didn't make, you know, the cut in some way.
54:52It was very funny.
54:53Bill Simmons:I only have a couple of what's age the worst, but we'll do them right after the break. What's age the worst? So Robert Stack was offered an extra 20K 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 yeah 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 yes i don't know how that translates in french portuguese whatever and then the uh 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 now as the years passed that 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.
56:04I probably knew him from this first and before. It was like later. I was like, oh, Skyhook. Oh, that's the guy from Airplane.
56:15Bill Simmons:The only other one I have you mentioned already, which is when Leslie Nielsen goes in for that second smack. It's so shocking. It's like, I'm laughing because it's just like, Jesus Christ. It's so horrible. Yeah, I don't know if that's happening in 2025. Yeah, I don't think that's good. Also, I mean, there's also like, I don't know about all the African guys in Africa. The basketball is the other one, yeah. 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.
56:54My 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 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 movie. Yeah, just trust me. Just trust me. She's like, fuck this guy. I'm not watching this. Like this guy, that's disgusting. Fuck this dude.
57:19Bill Simmons:Yeah. It's the 80s is a great excuse for a lot of behavior. 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 uh they lasted through this one but some of them like back to the future and some of the other ones they were like no 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.
57:59Bill Simmons: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, at that time for actresses. Well, there wasn't that whole rom-com infrastructure yet that doesn't happen to the late 80s. But I think if she's 10 years later, now there's different types of things for her. Because she would have been good in a rom-com. Yeah, yeah. She was really good in this. I mean, everybody across the board, I mean, I'm just thinking about the performances. I don't know. Not a lot of weak links.
58:38Everybody's so funny in it.
58:39Bill Simmons: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 couldn't pull it off. The studio pushed Barry Manilow at one point. David Letterman, you can go on YouTube, and he has the Zucker Brothers and Abrams on late nights. Yeah, in the early 80s. And they show his audition on that. 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 yeah it's Ted Stryker yeah he spits the water yeah that yeah I love letterman I'm George Zipp George Zipp'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 it should have been either I think it's it's great as Robert Hayes and Julie Haggard it's like I just think the casting across the board's 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 uh and trying to get into acting audition for ted did not get it wow now caleb jenner yeah i mean robert hayes is just the one for me i just think 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 no question you know so it works elaine's part was auditioned for by sigourney weaver and shelly long went to Julie Haggerty and Shelley Long had a quote where she's like, I thought I had it.
1:00:31Bill Simmons: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. 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 I tell me after the podcast, I'll take after the podcast, but there's been a couple where they're like, do they love you? Get ready. I mean, I've had the whole thing, right? 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. 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.
1:01:09This is like 20 years ago. Oh, interesting. And I would walk into a room and he'd be walking out and 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.
1:01:31Bill Simmons:Dr. Rumac, Leslie Nielsen's character, 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 he does. And when he cracks the egg and the bird flies out, he does that almost like karate chop hand where he's like, it's unbelievable. He's so good. Vincent Price does not, I don't see that one. It just makes it a different movie.
1:02:14It just makes it a different thing. And he would be doing campy, funny stuff by then for years. So this guy loves the Nielsen.
1:02:24Bill Simmons:Well, this would have made it a different movie too. They wanted Pete Rose for Roger Murdoch, but it was during baseball season and he couldn't do it. So they got Kareem. Pete Rose. 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 scene that they wrote for Pete Rose. That would have been interesting. Well, it turned out to be Kareem. And then Jive Lady Translator was supposed to be Harriet Nelson from Ozzie and Harriet. She turned it down. They went to June Cleaver. And then this made me laugh too. Peter Graves said no, because he thought the script was tasteless.
1:03:05Bill Simmons: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 they 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. Jerry Zucker was the one that was really good at explaining what they wanted and that they had it. The thing I always say is that they had to explain to Robert Stack, like, remember the scene of Robert Stack's like, it's his ball game now. He's the big, he's the head honcho, the blah, blah, blah.
1:03:37He goes, you know, it's like what you do and like he was doing it wrong and Jerry Zucker was like, no, you know, it's like when you did, 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 he goes no no it's it's that you can list you do that a lot in your stuff you know and uh he didn't get it and then he nailed it and they loved it you probably had
1:04:03Bill Simmons:moments like that on snl with different actors right yeah yeah where you're like hey so um 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 in like, like John Malkovich or Christopher Walken 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 OK 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 or something? throw them off like, well, 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.
1:04:50Yeah. 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 would have people, you know, stop ahead and 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 yeah 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 it was very nice not many
1:05:24Bill Simmons:people have gotten mad like i remember mark walberg got mad at the india sandberg man and he got really upset at that yeah he got really he had to like come on the next week to get his he came on back he came on the uh he was at the the show that sarah palin was at which was like the most watched show my time there was most watched show of the yeah my like in the history of the show or something but yeah that that i remember that was weird where 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 like tina's palin you know which made sense but uh 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 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 percent of 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 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 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.
1:06:56I called him sir. Sir, thank you. It was so nice meeting you, sir. I was just like, holy shit.
1:07:01Bill Simmons: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 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 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 saying he's been in a lot of good stuff he's uh but yeah he's got like he's going from like what 8 000 feet to 200 000 feet what an asshole and then he's great and then uh the guy who gets sick who's married to the lady who's like jim never has a second cup of coffee he's the he's the dad on parker lewis can't lose right he's the dad in risky business oh that's right he's the dad joel he was the chancellor in 90210 he's he was in there for 20 years he was not on parker lewis can't lose take take that back uh 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 think joel yeah uh dion waiter's award for the best heat check in the movie our nominees are ethel merman yeah kareem the jive guys lloyd bridges or steven stucker i think steven stucker is just i think he wins it and 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 um in a courtroom sketch and um you just tell they just loved him and they're just like yeah do whatever you want yeah go nuts and he's on 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 an 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 ladd linda carter somebody from that era.
1:10:09Wasn't that usually the part for like, you know...
1:10:14Bill Simmons:It was always like a famous actress. And then she has like an assistant who's like... Yeah. We needed some famous things. Alright, 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. Perfectly normal thing. I mean, you want me to get an abortion? right jesus christ um 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 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 mockingbird in 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 uh cousin worked at universal it was like one of those Nate's cousin works at Universal.
1:11:35So we're 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 Elmer Bernstein. And the piano player went, ladies and gentlemen, this is Elmer Bernstein. and he sat down at the piano and went, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Oh my God. He started doing, and I was like, this is what Hollywood is?
1:12:10People just sit out. I had never, and by the way, I'd never seen anything like that since, but he just sat down and he showed the guy his ID and then played stuff, and the piano player was like, dude, you're the man.
1:12:23Bill Simmons:You know what that sounded like in the basketball podcast? they always ask like lamella ball be the guest they'll be like what was your welcome to the nba moment and it'll be like oh i was playing lebron dunked 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
1:12:49yeah unbelievable yeah hey one other research thing um
1:12:55Bill Simmons:the cream was in there because in zero hour they used elroy crazy legs hirsch was one of the three pilots who is this famous wide receiver in the 50s he was like the amon saint rossst brown of the mid 50s and uh so that's why they did that they wanted to uh do that and then crazy legs 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 jl 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 they're like okay cool man do your thing um and he wrote barbara billings's stuff as well oh my god so um and then this this made me laugh for some reason jim abram abram said that uh 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 loogie 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 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 lost in america and yeah yeah her losing all the money and lost in america lost in america yeah that's like she's so good in that movie the zuckers and abrahams as a 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 this one's the one that's like well when do you think they had their most juice to do whatever they want 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 kind of like it's like i can't it's like i can't say one's better than the other but because they're both so special but i i definitely think this one i mean 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 uh 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 um i mean i i really you know young frankenstein when i was a kid i thought that i mean that movie um i'd vote for airplane steven stucker yes kareem we covered yes lorna patterson unfortunately yes um unexpected movie nudity in an 80s movie oh just a breast that come well i was almost thinking like this summer yeah we have the the uh all of a sudden we have bouncing breasts we have in Caddyshack they sneak in a couple and then the Shining.
1:16:09Yeah, Shining yeah. Caddyshack though, it's like they actually tried to make it like a real love scene with Michael.
1:16:16Bill Simmons:Right, like a raunchy, sexy. Like an actual like it was like dissolves in the movie and everything. But this was almost like, okay, here's a pair of tits because 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's crazy and for it's like all right here's here's the action here's everything you guys want right it's like it made no sense so yeah i like it yeah um inflatable pilots definitely i have a section on that later bridges and cult no and then the last one lovable elaine's the nominees would be elaine bennis and seinfeld or elaine in this movie i still my heart's with elaine in airplane yeah she's pretty great all right yeah okay next category cruise or hanks you could have either of them in this movie in any role at any point in their life i mean cruise just because if you if Because Tom Hanks did so much comedy and everything, and he can do everything.
1:17:30Cruise being really serious Cruise would be pretty funny.
1:17:34Bill Simmons:Yeah, initially I thought Hanks is Ted Stryker. That's a no-brainer. Early, mid-'80s Hanks, he's just playing it straight. There's something so funny about him. But yeah, it's like, yeah, it's maybe. No, you're right. The answer is Cruise in the Robert Stack part. Yeah, like Days of Thunder era Cruise in something would be really funny in this you know it's just the whole it's all there how about scorsese or spielberg only one of them can direct this 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 gotta 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 yeah so crazy i picked spielberg because it's corsezi did it there would be some sort of catholicism you know or whatever uh 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 um 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 want 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 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's upside down snorting glue and stuff that'd be really fun i gotta say bridges i in hot shots he is very underrated in hot shots he's so funny in that movie i gotta say i'm shocked i thought you're gonna do a different have a different choice i thought for sure you would have been peter graves oh no no i peter graves is great and Leslie Nielsen's great, but I just like Lloyd Bridges.
1:19:51Bill Simmons:I thought you would have wanted to be in the cockpit and just rattling off lines like, would you have 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 would want to get out of it. It gets old fast where you're like, dude, this is claustrophobic. Can I go to the bathroom? And they're like, no, no, you can't go anywhere. In the newsroom, you get to hang out. You get to sit down. like 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 nets so ted fought in world war ii korea what war was he in and he's like 27 but it's 1980 was it 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 they're attacking their flanks and blah blah blah she's like oh 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 war war it's supposed to be world war i think so the little girl when the 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 right jim ask on you can't see her face and it's kind of probably more disturbing yeah you get to see her do a silly face because i'm sure I'm just guessing but it's like alright we're doing a bit and the joke is that a kid does like we gotta make sure it's silly and let her do that stupid stupid this is why we call it picking nits that's why wouldn't the poison fish have made people throw up or have diarrhea it seemed like it was almost like all the pastures were roofied by the fish but I think in real life it's just like i think the bathroom is just getting annihilated yeah yeah i guess be throwing up or sick but it wouldn't be uh 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 wasn't a giant plane i was that somebody of 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 Kareem out of the plane into like the ocean.
1:22:36Bill Simmons:Yeah. Oh, I also like the scene when Robert Stack goes, all right, all right. So we're going to 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 Christ. We're fucked. Just route him into Lake Michigan. Killing a bunch of innocent people. Like there's been this buildup that Robert Stack's the guy who can save the day and out of the gate he's like fuck it this isn't right uh sequel prequel prestige tv all podcasts are untouchable 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 think i ever saw the sequel i think i kind of stayed away from it because i like 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'd you'd real honor even as a little kid yeah even as a kid i was like a like a insufferable movie geek they had they reenacted the slapping scene but it was with somebody who's like i can't believe i'm gonna die a virgin oh and then it was just the same line of guys but so it's a couple like the job 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 is the little kid brings a dog in, Scraps.
1:24:04Bill Simmons:And 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 Trejo, Mad Dog Russo, Doris Burke, Buffalo Bill, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford 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 I had 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 Oh man Just one Oscar who gets it The writing Yeah I mean I don't know the writing is pretty great um and i would i mean i would have leslie nielsen up there as like a supporting supporting actor yeah he's so well as you know they don't respect comedy in the oscars oh i know oh 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 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 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 was like no and I go why and he goes and he said it was in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1987 he was like they don't like comedies yeah like he just knew it like okay yeah 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 uh i think they made that 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 that was it this is a great one this question actually is unanswerable the nude scene that we mentioned earlier the topless scene nobody knows who the actress was and this actress who was like a soft playmate in a softcore porn person named kitten nativity dad 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 gonna fucking find out who and i couldn't find so we'll never know I think it's best 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 45 years 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 alright like that's putting you through school you don't know it um 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 and it's like that's a good that's a good answer i would like that i think that'd be fun i wanted the automatic pilot auto yeah um but apparently they said uh 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 it's just auto's gone and they only had one version of it um coach finstock 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 use 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.
1:28:15And you see that like now, like you see someone 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 stuff come out that way, you know, and that, and I always, I always find those, those things really inspiring. Best double feature choice. You'd go naked gun yeah i think airplane 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 yeah it's zero hour and then airplane might be really fun you know to do that all right who won the movie i i'm gonna i mean steve stuck i just love him so much in the movie but leslie neilson
1:29:08Bill Simmons:or 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 bunch of other things totally but i think it's leslie nielsen yeah because he 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 you know right 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 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 right 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 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's 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 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're 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 he they changed the whole it changes the whole game and like what you're saying craig like hard jokes you know it was like yeah you see it on tv you know like you can still watch south park and see like them do jokes you know yeah or even like veep had a lot of just like jokes yeah totally but it's going away now and um i don't know i it's you know paramount all these major studios taking risks on these movies uh it's just great i you know 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 and i think comedies comedies are coming back i hope i think it's gonna 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 gonna put all our eggs in like these four baskets and so they have to work right no And if they don't work, we are so fucked, you know, so there's so much pressure and everything on those movies working.
1:32:27And it's like, you know, when I worked in 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
1:33:04Bill Simmons: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 the there's a is it was his name robert stack is that the actor 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 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 i really respect it oh 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 technicians to be in the movie and they want their stuff to be good you know and to be good it costs money so you have like a dp that's like you can't go to your cinematographer and be like hey can we make you look kind of shitty he's like no my name's gonna be on it and you fuck you you know or i yeah i mean a good dp like i have paolo we dobro 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 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 it i you could kind of use the sean penn i brought my own pack 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 doll 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 i like to send me craig would you have squeezed danny mcbride into this movie i'd squeeze danny mcbride into every movie that's craig loves danny mcbride pops in the movies oh that's funny yeah he could he could have i don't that's the thing is nobody would have there was no room for a danny mcbryard 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 steven 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 ethel mormon 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 he was like a gong show guy i remember that guy 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 uh your son seen this movie bill has ben seen it who uh my son yeah um yeah wait i threw this one at the kids pretty early probably a little too early um but you know yeah that they the cockpit stuff really plays it just does the turkish the 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 way you like movies about gladiators i mean turkish prison is you know i guess referencing minie express right let's go to a prison and and have sex with each other i mean yeah it's really yeah i thought naked gun did better with my kids though than 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 Horlbeck.
1:36:47Bill Simmons:Thanks to Gahau and Ronick as well. And thanks to Bill Hader. Next time we have to do this in the studio. Yeah. We'll bring a third person. It was great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. All right. We'll see you next week in the Rewatchables.
From the publisher
Looks like we picked the wrong week to quit rewatching movies. The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by actor, writer, and director Bill Hader to revisit an all time comedy classic, ‘Airplane!’ starring Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, and Robert Stack.
Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, and Ronak Nair
Chad Powers - Series Premieres Sept. 30 on Hulu
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