I really enjoyed this documentary about one of my all time favorite comedies a true classic that has stood the winds of time. Airplane was shot in quick time on a shoestring budget with unknowns Julie Hagerty and Robert Hays as the stars but it became a sleeper hit that summer of 1980 and I still remember the first time I watched it as a 12 year old and still enjoy it today now that I am seven years away from my first Social Security check. There is so much delightful trivia about this film such as it was Leslie Nielsens first comedy after thirty years as a dramatic actor and afterwards comedy was all he was known for. What a lot of people don't know is that Airplane was a spoof of an old movie with Dana Andrews called Zero Hour! That came out in 1957. His characters name is also Ted Stryker and he is a traumatized war pilot who has to land a plane after the pilots get food poisoning. The Zuckers literally copied a lot of the scenes word per word they just made them funny!. Also the man who wrote the book that Zero Hour was based on is Arthur Hailey who also wrote the novel Airport that launched a popular disaster movie franchise in the 1970s. Yes i mean to say the man who wrote Airport also inspired Airplane!
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