Hacker Cinema
Airplane!
1980 · Film · 88 min
Part of Airplane Collection
Directed by Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams
An ex-fighter pilot is forced to take over the controls of an airliner when the flight crew succumbs to food poisoning.
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99 comments on Hacker News
Which bomb would advertise itself as such.. this is something I’d expect in the movie Airplane!, not something to happen in real life.
The really fun part is that the couple who read those lines in the movie Airplane actually had been announcers at, IIRC, LAX airport. They must have had a great time doing the movie.
Airplane! also features tons of other TV and movie references doesn’t it? Basically what would have happened in these well known shows and movies when you add absurd scenarios while still playing it straight (the joke is never acknowledged of course!).
I absolutely love his performance in Airplane, the facial expressions are perfect and the way he looks around after “the hell I don’t” shows he really has great comedic timing and movement.
Incidentally, for anyone that didn’t know, the film Airplane was an almost shot for shot remake of a film called Zero Hour [1] and the copilot in the original film was a famous NFL player (Elroy ‘Crazy Legs’ Hirsch), hence why they’ve got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to play the copilot in Airplane.
We have clearance Clarence. Roger, Roger. What's our vector Victor?
[1] https://youtu.be/8-v2BHNBVCs?feature=shared
I don’t think they were misled by the name. I dislike musk and Tesla, but the use of autopilot to describe their cruise control is one of those things where they are being fairly pedantic, and, out of character for them, actually technically correct. Anyone who knows what an autopilot does won’t be misled, anyone whose only experience with the term is from the 1979 movie Airplane! (Otto Pilot anyone?) also isn’t going to be misled. Then what we basically have left are HN pedants who themselves personally got the term wrong and didn’t do any due diligence.
Airplane is mostly physical humor and dumb wordplay. 90% of the jokes would be fine as-is. There are a few you'd have to update, but that's hardly surprising for a movie released 35 years ago. You could have said the same in 1980 about most comedies made in 1945.
My son is a teenager but loves to watch old politically incorrect comedies like "Airplane". There's no way you could make that movie today... but there's certainly a market for it, cruel or not.
Now that I think about it, it's no more cruel than what most kids watch on YouTube today.
Let’s be real, the overwhelming majority of those 500 are straight up terrible. Netflix alone has produced well over 100 movies, and IMO at best some of them are worth finishing not that I can think of any off the top of my head.
Now I’m sure you’ve looked forward to many movies but off the top of your head list stuff you’ve either seen more than once and or actually recommend to someone that came our in the last 10 years vs…
(78) The Deer Hunter, Superman, National Lampoon's Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (79) Apocalypse Now, Alien, Life of Brian, Mad Max, Escape from Alcatraz (80) The Shining, Star Wars: Episode V, Airplane!, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, The Elephant Man (81) Raiders of the Lost Ark, Das Boot, The Evil Dead, Mad Max 2, Escape from New York, Time Bandits (82) Blade Runner, The Thing, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Conan the Barbarian, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Tron (83) Scarface, WarGames, Star Wars: Episode VI, Trading Places, The Evil Dead
Obviously not all great movies but that’s ~30 classic movies in just 6 years and I’m sure I’ve missed a few as kids movies are largely missing from that list.
Their AI seems to have been trained on that one scene from Airplane (the movie). Not surprising since there are probably thousands of instances of that clip online.
Apparently, David Zucker (of Airplane! and Police Academy!^W^W Police Squad! film-making fame) bought a race horse which he named "All Pink" and instructed the jockey to run the horse as close as possible to the inside rail. The intention was to cause the announcer to say some funny words:
> It was 1989 through 1993. Saratoga, NY, not Sarasota Fla. The goal was to get the track announcer to call out: "...and it's All Pink on the inside!" In fact, it took three horses over about four years. The first horse, "All Pink" ran on the inside, but never got the call. "Ol Pink" ran too close to the rail, and jumped it, ending up on the infield. Finally a mare, "Awl Pink" got the call in late '93. A $60,000 joke.
https://800poundgorillamedia.com/blogs/the-laugh-button/creators-airplane-pulled-off-one-funniest-jokes-weve-ever-heard
IDK the over reactionary, fishing for outrage, talking heads were parodied in the movie Airplane back in 1980 i think? "They bought their tickets, they KNEW what they were getting in to. i say let them crash".
Airplane is a PG movie where there are literally tities and the finale involves a blowjob joke.
We can certainly discuss 1980s vs 2020s and how the Overton window has shifted. Boobs weren't as big of a deal in our past.
80s were also quite violent in our movies/media as well. It seems like everything has been clamped down.
I was surprised to see the dick of the David Statue get messed up in the children's movie 'The Goonies' for example. Apparently dicks weren't a big deal either even into the 90s.
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/26/jim-abrahams-airplane-naked-gun
The Hollywood Reporter: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jim-abrahams-dead-airplane-naked-gun-hot-shots-1236071689/
Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/jim-abrahams-airplane-hot-shots-filmmaker-dead-1235182245/
The submitted seems to present misleading information about Police Squad!: all six episodes of the first series were released (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Squad! ). (The obituary from Variety says that the set will be enriched though: «Paramount is releasing a sequel [of The Naked Gun] in 2025, starring Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., directed by Akiva Schaffer and with a story by Seth MacFarlane».)
Edit: HN member Toomuchtodo suggests to consolidate the obituary information above with the general information on Jim Abrahams, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Abrahams
Sure thing! I often use it to add code comments to my powershell scripts after I've written them, sprinkling in quotes from some of my favorite movies from the 80s like Spaceballs, Princess Bride, Airplane, etc...
"User '$username' found. Preparing to eject them from the AD universe." "Failed to import Active Directory module. Inconceivable!" "Failed to delete user '$username'. I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."
Other times I will ask it questions related to scripting commandlets and it often responds in a tone that is more fun to read at least.
"Firstly, ensure you're connected to the mystical realm of Exchange Online. If you're scratching your head wondering how, refer back to the ancient scrolls on how to establish a connection. It involves Get-Credential, New-PSSession, and a bit of patience."
These are just my favorites, and in the order of which the popped into my mind.
- Office Space, 1999 (especially for people who work at offices) - The Matrix, 1999 - Fight Club, 1999 :)
Umm, what else? - Spirited Away, 2001 (and many others from Miyazaki) - Requiem for a Dream, 2000 (Very Heavy addiction-related film! I actually got watery eyes just by typing this, I've seen it too many times.) - Joker, 2019 - Full Metal Jacket, 1987 (and many others from Kubrick, such as Dr. Strangelove and The Shining) - Django Unchained, 2012 (and many others from Tarantino, at least Pulp Fiction) - Alien, 1979 - The Silence of the Lambs, 1991 - Saw, 2004
I made a bit longer list, so that I can share the link to my friends.
Actually there are many quirky ones which came to my mind, such as Borat, the South Park movie, Team America, Airplane! (alternatively titled Flying High!), Idiocracy and Hangover, but I wouldn't say these are in the must-see category. Actually I wouldn't even recommend these to most people, if I didn't know what kind of humor they like.
> (It helped that at this time my English got good enough that I could read whole novels complete with puns and obscure references.)
It's been almost a decade since I started watching movies/tv shows, and playing games with original audio (usually english or japanese) and english subtitles instead of my native language, to help improve my english. But I to this day, every time I rewatch the movie Airplane, there are new jokes I hadn't understood before. It's one's of the reason I like to rewatch it every couple of years, the other being that it's my favorite comedy movie.
Yes, movie sounds are intended to sound like viewers expect, not how they actually sound. See Airplane! where the action all takes place on a passenger jet but the background sound effects are all for a propeller airliner, because it evokes the sound and feel of Zero Hour, the movie it’s parodying. (https://www.google.com/search?q=zero+hour+movie&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari#fpstate=vclbx)
There's no real consistency in any of it. Sometimes breasts are PG-13 (Titanic) but usually any breasts are an automatic R (most other modern movies, except for those with sufficient "art cred"). In movies from the 1980s or earlier, breasts could be in a PG movie (Airplane, Logan's Run.)
The PG-13 rating was created in response to violence in PG movies (somebody getting their heart ripped out in Temple of Doom), not nudity.
Wasn't a clip of that test shown as the in-flight movie in "Airplane!"?
It was still pretty normal in Britain in the 70s. As a kid I remember watching the end of some disaster movie before it went back to the beginning - most likely Airport '77 or '79/'80. It started to change in my (relatively) small town with Star Wars, Superman and Raiders, when at least some performances required standing in line on the street and waiting to be let in at the right time (nobody had dreamed of pre-booking, or seat reservations, at this point). During the transition period newspaper listings would specify "cont.perf." for continuous performance to indicate when the old system was still in play, which carried on well into the 80s.
Edit to clarify: they did generally list the times that each showing would start, so you could choose to arrive at the beginning and leave at the end. But nobody was forced to do either. You could arrive in the morning and watch the same film five times in a row, if you wanted. Or two films alternating, if it had a B-movie showing between the main film... ah yes, fond memories of strange B-movies like a documentary around offshore oil production - perhaps due to the time period when movie studios became just one part of massive industrial conglomerates, perhaps because they wanted to bore the audience into leaving and freeing up seats... also the combination of Airplane! with the execrable Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Beatles jukebox-musical starring the Bee Gees).
That film was so bad.
It became the SpaceWar' equivalent of 'Airplane' (aka 'Flying High') with every cliche possible that it became a satirical comedy.
Reminds me of movies like "Top Secret" and "Airplane", where they spend a big chunk of time setting up elements of the story and characters lines, all to deliver a slapstick joke.
That's part of our struggle. We had an unexpected gift of $1,000 as an anniversary present from her parents. We have free childcare available anytime we want it. We had the entire summer of 2021 to find and go do something together that we could both enjoy. We didn't come up with anything.
We're compatible roommates, but we have very different languages of play. I like to explore, she prefers to stay home - if you gave her a choice of 'the same thing we did that you enjoy' or 'the new thing that you might not enjoy or is mildly inconvenient' - she'll choose 'the same thing' every time.
We've had kid-free Friday nights for years, we've only went for a 1 mile walk around the neighbourhood less than 5 times, never left our small town to go to something. Most date nights are spent sitting on the couch and failing at choosing a movie or show we'll both enjoy.
She did say I could pickout the movie once, no complaints. So I chose Airplane. She said, oh, I don't want to watch that - which then kills any Airplane related jokes you could ever make. Pinocchio was also rejected as being too weird. She'll watch entire seasons of TV shows, on her phone with headphones in, as she does work around the house. She made a reference once that a song sounded like the theme to XXXX show. She'd watched all 5 seasons and I'd never even heard of the name of it.
So, ya. Find things to do together has been well explored.
Ah, yes, the inspiration for the 1980 documentary Airplane!, with Leslie Nielson:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane!
The word "censorship" has gotten frivolous, imo.
I don't claim any specific boundaries for the term, but... there are more angles to this than censorship. Spielberg is from perhaps the most commercial art form, cinema. They make Airplane cuts, TV cuts, video cuts. They remaster the score, cut regional releases... These are all commercially oriented "censorship," arguably. Cinema is an art form that's literally pitched to investors and financiers. Purity and absolutes don't exist here.
Meanwhile... Books have come in editions since printing. Before that, stories evolved too. Especially for important or really old texts, we're always interested in "The Original." That tends to be when the history matters to us more than the story. That's somewhat at odds with stories "Living." We have stories today that originated milenia ago in forgotten civilisations. They've been written countless times.
The original Nancy Drew may be an important cultural artefact. But, solving mysteries by racial profiling or otherwise violating "modern sensibilities" makes it a dead story. Revising additions keeps Nancy Drew suitable reading material for 9 year olds, which is what being a living story means here.
Anyway... I'm taking the dissident position. I do like and want the raw, "uncensored" cuts. I want Reservoir Dogs. I want even edgier materials that large, centralised studios
OTOH, I have no hard objection to releasing updated editions that reflect updated morals. The freedom & openness obligation that we have is to keep the original intact and available. Intellectual property tends to be the barrier to this, not censorship.
It's often fine to rewrite, recut. In fact, it can keep art alive. Guns and Roses pulled a track from an old album, because it had bigoted lyrics. IDK why exactly they "censored" the album, but my guess is that the band doesn't want to sell the album like that anymore... they definitely don't want to play it anymore. Maybe social norms changed. Maybe Axl changed. What seemed edgy and rebellious to 20 year old Axl just seems asshole now.
"Anti-Censorship" is a failing paradigm, currently.
Is moderating HN or a subreddit censorship? Is having a a newsroom editor censorship? IMO it's a lot more about who makes the decision than what they do. If GnR revise an album, IMO it's ridiculous to call it censorship. Same for having moderation on HN, revised editions of children's books etc.
Censorship is a feature of power and monopoly. A subreddit does not have power to "censor," just moderate. Facebook or Twitter's moderation policies are censorious by default. You can't have global-scale, medium-wide content policies that are not censorship.
I got into four-word proverbs (Yojijukugos), like the one described here, when I was brainstorming some names for a new collection of quad-CPU workstations. Fifteen years ago, such beasts were new to us.
A friend and co-worker gave me a book that was a collection of Yojijukugos for English speakers. I will try to dig it up, it’s in storage at the moment.
But it got me thinking of traditional English-language Yojijukugos, some of which are mentioned in the great comments here. They probably go back thousands of years to Classical (5th Century BCE) Greek Aesop. Who probably didn’t speak 21st Century English.
.
- “[killing] Two birds, [with] one stone”
- “[A] stitch [in] time saves nine” — Literally, refers to losing count when stitching a crochet pattern: if you drop a stitch, you have to unwind back to the place before the error, because the yarn has no backspace key. But of course it’s a reminder that doing things at the right time can save a lot of work later.
- “[a] Bad week [for] quitting glue” - Lamenting the wisdom of kicking a dangerous habit of inhaling toxic substances, just when things are getting very strange and stressful. First appeared in the 5th Century BCE feature film “Airplane”, but refers to this past week’s collapse of banks SVB and Signature Bank. (This guy Aesop really knew how to look ahead.)
- “Same stuff, different day” - we’ve all seen this before.
Very partial list of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar movie/TV roles or cameos:
* Airplane * Fletch * Uncle Buck * A movie called "Matrix" that seems to be unrelated to "The Matrix" * The Critic (yes, the animated one) * Scrubs * Simpsons * Dave (recent TV show not movie) * Glass Onion
Also wrote at least on Episode of Veronica Mars.
This seems like a MUCH more fun sports retirement than just flying to golf destinations and chugging champagne... (not to mention his extensive philanthropy and personal writing)
I really like the use of Otto on post's main picture[1].
For those unaware, Otto was a inflatable autopilot in the 1980 movie "Airplane!"[2]
[1] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/tesla-autopilot-flying-800x449.jpg
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane!
Airplane! was a complete spoof of a then popular genre from beginning to end. Glass Onion isn't really like that but it does play around with some detective movie tropes.
Ya, that's a really good example of exaggeration comedy. Also Airplane! was directly made as a reaction to the overly serious action/drama films of the time (literally a shot for shot remake of Zero Hour!) And those films definitely were a product of the 70s, but honestly that analytical line is just overwhelming.
But still, direct parody movies are a mostly dead genre on mainstream delivery channels, for reasons described in the article.
Lets see... the most recent comedy movies I've seen...
Knives Out (2019) was probably the one I enjoyed the most.
JoJo Rabbit was trying too hard IMO, but I still smiled/laughed throughout it. WW2 is kinda overdone at this point (though serious films like Downfall are worth revisiting)
Free Guy was fine? Apparently "The Suicide Squad" also counts as a comedy. I guess Deadpool and Deadpool 2 were also fine. Maybe other people are tired of comicbook / superhero movies, but really I'm personally only tired of the "Marvel Formula" (and Deadpool / The Suicide Squad strays pretty heavily from the formula). Going back a bit further is "Jumanji"...
There's a lot of flicks / comedy films out there. Nothing is quite as good as Airplane but I'd say Knives Out is on-par, maybe even better than Clue (1985).
I don't really like the "Despicable Me" series, but my nieces really wanted to watch "Minions: Rise of Gru" and I actually enjoyed that one. (My nieces love this series, so I can say that I've watched all of it and its mostly trash. But Rise of Gru actually got me to laugh)
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I'm no critic. I enjoy just a basic flick now and then. Honestly, I'd rewatch "Knives Out" more than any Adam Sandler movie from the 90s or even Austin Powers. 90s era comedy just didn't mesh well with me, despite me growing up at that time. I do have a soft spot for the dry 80s stuff with Leslie Nielsen, and I guess I really liked Jackie Chan's action/comedies through the 90s and 00s.
I dunno, if I think "90s comedy I enjoyed", I think of Men in Black or Aladdin? Nothing in the list that this author wrote.
Well, Adams books appear that way too. The writing is very contrived and stiff (even as comedic writing) - so it's all about the jokes. They're still great jokes and funny characters, but what's left as the strongest impression is them, not the writing flow, turn of phrase, or even plot.
I mean that in the same sense a movie like Airplane! is just about stringing jokes together, and has no deeper plot or "cinematic" qualities (compared to a comedy like Shaun of the Dead or Young Frankenstein).
I think this post is referencing a joke from the movie Airplane! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/
In the movie airplane the jet makes the sound of a propeller plane. :)
Zero Hour? What is it?
I've seen Airplane! many, many times and I just found this out recently. There are a dozen or more videos on YouTube comparing the two movies.
Did you know Airplane was a remake of an earlier film ‘Zero Hour’? Most impressively, Zero Hour was a serious film that had a script adjusted and combined with directing, acting, and visual gags to create this comedic masterpiece.
I do think there's kind of an element of truth to this, though it feels very broad to say so. American absurdism does exist, just maybe not as much on TV? Screwball comedy is very much a thing in film, and occasionally reaches for the same feeling.
Stuff like Airplane! or some of Mel Brooks' stuff or National Lampoons movies, and later the "Scary Movie"/"Teen Movie"/etc. things... but it's like when they go much deeper than an average SNL sketch they almost always go too far and suddenly reach into trying to offend or anger or even disgust (though the new KITH has a bit of that too).
Also: Airplane! and Airplane 2 DVD: $6. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XGD93BP Spaceballs $7, less if you're ok with used: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004TJ1H32 Cannonball run, $10, though less if used and there are some $10 "Cannonball Run + another movie" sets on Amazon as well.
While I tend to agree that piracy and/or ripping isn't something everyone can do, I've filled out my Plex collection legally lately with DVD acquisitions at bargain-bin prices. Used doesn't matter if you only have to be able to read the disc once to rip it, and I'm yet to get something used off Amazon that couldn't be read once. (I haven't even had to clean it or anything, it's all just worked.)
So, my Plex install in terms of raw content isn't up to Netflix's size. However, I rather suspect there are some people reading this who have more hours of video on their Plex than Netflix even has available. And while mine isn't that large, it is much better tuned for me and my family's interests at this point. And I don't have to worry about getting halfway through a series, only for some licensor to notice it has become popular enough to pull it and run it on their own service. Netflix has the problem now that anything that becomes popular on their service will get yanked. I do not know how they overcome that. They hoped to do it with enough original content, but to my eye, that has failed, and there is now no longer enough time to fix that. While I understand the complaints that they treated it too much like "content", to be honest, I've never thought this would work out, from the moment they announced it. A single company just can't produce a sufficiently diverse set of "content" to be the everything-to-everybody they would have needed to be to justify a Netflix valuation.
In my case, it's where they wrapped up the long-tail movies. Want to watch Airplane!....$3 rental. Spaceballs? $3 rental Cannonball Run? $3
I am not going to pay to rent stuff I used to be able to encounter for free by surfing channels...well, on top of my dish/cable bill
I find it to be almost the opposite for movies. Yes, it's rare to find something unique, but after starting watching at least a movie per week, I'm now getting references I would never have gotten otherwise and put the movies in a completely different light.
For example, you're not gonna fully appreciate the latest spider-man movie unless you already watched the whole 3 series.
Or the other day, I was watching Ted (the teddy bear movie) and they recreated the dancing scene from Airplane. If I had never seen Airplane, I would probably still have laughed, but I wouldn't truly have gotten the joke.
Or in the Doctor Sleep movie, there's a story being told, but the Director also tried to reconcile The Shining movie, The Shining novel with the Doctor Sleep novel. You don't truly experience the movie fully unless you've experienced all of them.
I don't know for other media, but I find movie makers tend to be very meta and you gain as much by having seen all the low fruits as you lose by doing so.
That site users an image from the movie Airplane to illustrate their autonomous pilot.
Airplane! might be the greatest movie of all time. It's funny, but it is also suspenseful, has great acting, and is full of serious subtlety and commentary. Even with the humor removed it is a terrific film.
'Airplane!' is something like 'Family Guy' - and please note, for cartoon fans; I'm not saying 'South Park', here.
There's an episode called '200'; (or something) where 'Family Guy' creator Seth MacFarlane discusses the show along with many of its voice actors, producers, etc.
He mentions that 'Family Guy' is absolutely not meant to be a high-brow humour show; and that part of the technique of the writing of 'Family Guy' is, in his own words; guided by how many jokes a minute they can get - how many times they can make the audience laugh.
If we have a casual pause in a show; someone looks to the camera, dead-pan, and just, quite seriously - says, 'penis' - out of the blue - I'm gonna laugh my ass off. I love intelligent humour as much as the next girl, but there is a nuance to some of the low-brow humour in 'Airplane!' that is just as complex to pull off effectively as a well-told and intelligent joke by Bill Maher, Norm MacDonald, or George Carlin.
We are talking about a 41-year-old film, in a genre (comedy) that famously doesn't age well. 'Airplane!' probably shouldn't come off well today, if it follows our previously established rules of comedy.
That being said, it's still hella funny.
AS others have said, they seem lazy as they've been copied ad nauseam in the 40 years since the movie. I believe that Airplane! was the first zany comedy containing these ridiculous types of jokes. Many movies have followed and tried to copy the humour but have failed. Will there be discussions in 30 years about Scary Movie and its sequels? I doubt it.
I'm French and I also find Airplane (and also other ZAZ movies and many 80 and 90's American comedies) to be way funnier in the local dubbed versions. It kind of add a layer of absurdity, dubbing writers and actors were really creative.
Honestly, I kind of am. I find it ridiculous that people can't tell that something like Airplane! and Blazing Saddles are satires. Needing that much hand holding explains a lot about people today. It's also like how Netflix now has warnings that a show/movie may have smoking in it. Come on, be an adult and learn how to deal with things that make you a bit uncomfortable, that's called life.
I'll agree that some of the jokes are dated - you can't smoke on airplanes anymore, but the idea that most of the jokes are dated?
Shirley you can't be serious? The word play and visual comedy in the movie is classic. The Roger/Clarance/Ouver take-off sequence, Leslie Neilsens deadpan "Dinner was the chicken or the fish? - yes I remember, I had the lasagne", the guy waiting in the taxi, "everything is ok" as the pilots are dragged down the corridor, Stiker being stationed outside of Drambuie. Hell I think Airplane has the first dramatic double-sunglassed removal.
There is so much clean, zany humour in that movie - the idea that you can claim classic, surrealist comedy is dated makes me question whether you believe that statement at all.
as a native english speaker and fluent german speaker... airplane is the only movie that is even BETTER in the dubbed version. The bavarian scene absolutely kills me.
You sound like the kind of person who thinks everything is black and white.
I love comedy. I like some of the jokes in Airplane. I think most of the jokes are dated and the movie hasn't aged well.
Make the case for those. This is very pretty pose but it doesn't really say anything except that you think these elements exist without any real criticism to back it.
Airplane! is still funny to me but I've never looked at it as anything more than a well delivered (almost) 90 "anything for a laugh" reel.
In fact, the world building part where they establish the backstory is the weakest part for me as structurally it serves as a pause from the non-stop schtick for most of the present day sections, but the differences are very prolonged jokes that don't survive a first watch in my opinion.
The genius isn't so much the architecture it's the delivery and the speed. You don't get time to fully think through everything that happens and the actors play it straight for the most part. There is comedy atop a functional parody and as soon as the gag is done it moves on to the next progression.
In general I like Zucker and his movies but I think here both he and you misunderstand why his movies worked then and which elements worked. The scene with the kids and the lame "like my coffee" joke is not a good scene not because of the joke's adherence to puritán values, but because the entire joke is "look these young kids are saying things adults should." They can't deliver the lines with the same commitment to the short term deviation from reality and it falls flat.
The joke Zucker references in the article about sucking dick again falls flat for me not because of inappropriateness but because it's a lousy joke for someone not in the room or having that relationship dynamic, it's a weak joke without much substance besides the shock of "[Dad] said suck cock".
It's not about right vs left here, it's about understanding what's funny and why stuff is funny. The discussion earlier on this thread about the German dub is a perfect example where the idea of the funny is what makes it work, even if there is no such thing as jive in German; the core logic of the joke is understoodand that's why the dub worked. Comedy has a logic to it and if it's understandable immediately, it's funny because we get how they got to that point. Even early 2000's random humor had a logic to it, albeit a little out there, but there's a reason that it worked for some flash vids and not others.
Comedy is all of the brain, and arguably even more logical part as you have to get the joke to laugh at it. I think we all know a time when someone got the joke way later because they just didn't process it or couldn't process it.
Others have already written about this extensively but there is a difference between humor that punches down and humor that punches up. There's also a big difference between the joke being bigotry and the joke being that a character is bigoted.
In the Airplane! cockpit scene the joke isn't that the pilot makes the stewardess and kid uncomfortable by sounding like a pedophile, the joke is that he's supposed to be a heroic character but acts like a total creep. It's a subversion of expectations based on the tropes of 1950s/1960s Hollywood movies.
Likewise the scene with all passengers lining up to slap the woman while shouting at her to calm down doesn't make fun of women for being hysterical. It makes fun of the sexist trope of women being hysterical and needing to be "calmed down" with physical violence. The sexism isn't what's funny, the sexism is what's being made fun of.
The problem with modern comedy is that a lot of political punditry has moved to taking the form of comedy and "it's just a joke" (or for a few years on YouTube "it's just a prank") has become a way to defend actual bigoted statements.
When a conservative pundit who is opposed to gay rights calls a gay person a homophobic slur or follows a mention of them with a caricature of them wanting to have oral sex with a lot of men, the "joke" only works if you share the idea that gay people are sexual deviants and bad. It isn't really a joke, it's just mockery.
The reason a lot of older comedians find it hard to adjust is not that comedy has changed. The mechanics of humor have largely remained the same, it's just cultural attitudes and politics that have changed. If your politics have remained the same, you'll find it harder to do comedy expressing those politics now than when they were more closely aligned to mainstream.
In other words, if you used to have a close circle of friends with misogynist opinions a misogynist joke may have gotten a few laughs out of them. If they've all grown out of it and matured in their understanding that women are actual persons rather than just objects of sexual attraction, your old jokes will no longer work on them. They may not actually get offended, but they won't be amused.
Jokes work because they carry a message through a combination of context, content and subtext. If that message is expressing support for an oppressive social dynamic, it can be bullying. It's that simple.
Aside note: since they have been less available to some, it is possible that some may have missed the Police Squad! (ZAZ 1982) series or The Kentucky Fried Movie (Landis 1977). I must recommend to those who only know the prominent works (Airplane!, Naked Gun etc.) to find and try the preparatory works.
He states that:
> Airplane! would probably not have been made, and Police Squad! (the ABC sitcom that was the root of the Naked Gun movies) would have been cancelled after two episodes instead of six
the idea of losing masterpieces is utterly, totally unacceptable. Masterpieces are irreplaceable.
Fun Fact: Airplane! is a spoof of the Paramount film Zero Hour (1957) which is itself a clone of the wildly famous John Wayne Classic "The High and Mighty" (1954), which was the first disaster film and a breakout hit. Robert Stack, who plays the captain in The High and Mighty, also plays the captain in Airplane, as a parody of his previous role.
It's pretty cool to watch The High and Mighty after Airplane and recognize so many of the scenes, including the sweating pilot, the little life stories of the characters, the operations manager (Regis Toomey) pacing back and forth in the control room, etc.
> current lack of talent
I thought his commentary was witty. Much wittier than mine.
I saw Airplane when it was first released. I laughed so hard my gut hurt. Many thanks to the Zucker Bros for that!
(One of the jokes that almost nobody gets is when there's an exterior shot of the jet, you hear the sound of a 4 piston engine bomber. I love how the Zucker movies are stuffed with nice touches like that.)
Are you talking about the Scary Movie 4 that made even more money than his previous Scary Movie 3, to the extend that he was allowed to direct Scary Movie 5?
I won't argue these movies are as good as Airplane! or the Naked Gun series but as someone who basically only watch comedies, he has a point, it's a sad state of affair you get in America, and by extension the Western world.
What recent (non-animated) funny movie or show have you seen that is not "feel good" or filled with sexual jokes?
Airplane! is considered to be a good comedic film. Bearing that in mind, what makes you say that its writer lacks talent?
'Airplane' (aka 'Flying High') has always been my favourite movie. I never mind shelling out for it in different media.
Many of it's lines come out of my mouth in relevant day-to-day situations. Just yesterday it was 'Vector, Victor'.
“Some things which were commercially successful for broad markets in the past would not be today, just as some are today that would not have been in the past, because of strong offense to disproportionately influential groups. Because the group offended by work in which I have a financial interest is the one in play today, this constitutes a ‘decline’ of culture. Or at least my passive income opportunities, which is approximately the same thing.”
Of course, its also wrong on top of the other problems: genre-parody movies of the type for which Airplane! is the iconic example still get made [almost stamped out on a production line] today, and while the exact jokes change with the times, the style and themes of the humor are quite similar. You absolutely can make movies like that; the only challenge with selling them to studios seem to be competing with the 97 other variations of the same broad idea the studio has in development for funding and a release date.
But that was a DC-10. It’s good share of the 400 Air Crash Investigation episodes. The first reason is that it has had a long life. The second is that it was comically badly engineered. Again, perhaps because AutoCAD didn’t exist in 1970 engineering. But the mistakes are still funny:
- They forgot to include a compas in the cockpit, so they put it in the overhead space and added mirrors to see it. It often resulted in mechanics mounting it backwards (since the mirror showed a reverse view). You have certainly see that in the movie Airplane, thinking the rearview mirrors were part of a joke.
- The MD-11, its successor, was too long, so pilots didn’t feel when they touched down, and they tended to slam the nose because of that, resulting in at least one filmed accident. The FAA shouldn’t have approved the elongation, at least not without adaptation, this was milking too much of the same cow,
- It’s a plane which loses pieces. Its successor the MD-11 lose the famous piece that broke the Concorde. This is in addition to the DC-10 losing doors in flight, due to badly engineered mechanism, and getting FAA approval to not have to replace them immediately, which caused another crash. Two plane crashes for the same cause, does it ring a bell? and FAA approving the defective aircraft again, sounds twice familiar?
In the later days, DCs were only used for postal services and not carrying passengers. Boeing bought MD circa 2003.
Airplane was not strictly an original, it was a remake/spoof of Zero Hour from 1957 and more broadly spoofing the "disaster" film concept.
> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not,
It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020:
* Bad Boys for Life (sequel) * Sonic the Hedgehog (videogame) * Birds of Prey (comic book) * Dolittle (book) * The Invisible Man (book) * The Call of the Wild (book) * Onward (original) * The Croods: A New Age (sequel) * Tenet (original) * Wonder Woman 1984 (sequal, comic book)
Two originals. Now go back 20 years:
* Mission: Impossible 2 (sequel) * Gladiator (book) * Cast Away (original) * What Women Want (original) * Dinosaur (original) * How the Grinch Stole Christmas (book) * Meet the Parents (remake) * The Perfect Storm (book) * X-Men (comic book) * What Lies Beneath (original)
Four originals. Go back another 10 years:
* Ghost (original) * Home Alone (original) * Pretty Woman (original) * Dances with Wolves (book) * Total Recall (short story) * Back to the Future Part III (sequel) * Die Hard 2 (sequel) * Presumed Innocent (book) * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (comic book) * Kindergarten Cop (original)
Five originals. Another ten years to 1980:
* The Empire Strikes Back (sequel) * 9 to 5 (original) * Stir Crazy (original) * Airplane! (original) * Any Which Way You Can (sequel) * Private Benjamin (original) * Coal Miner's Daughter (original) * Smokey and the Bandit II (sequel) * The Blue Lagoon (book) * The Blues Brothers (SNL sketch)
Five originals again. I'm going by top box-office gross here because I think that's a good proxy for what is successful. You can look at other years, but there is a very clear (but not overwhelming) trend towards movies based on familiar content. It's not clear whether studios are leading audiences or vice versa. Probably some iterative process of both.
There's also a clear trend away from dramas. I think that's because drama (and non-slapstick comedies) tend to rely heavily on specific cultural norms for their effect which makes them translate poorly. There is a very clear trend especially in the last decade or so of Hollywood focusing on movies that will also do well in China in particular.
I don't understand what point you are making?
1) Superbad was sleeper hit - it did well in the theatres but far better in the long run. It launched a bunch of careers into the mainstream. It's also a broad comedy.
It was no more or less 'Hollywood' than the films you listed.
2) The films you listed are mostly Oscar Winners - which get a massive, global boost from that kind of exposure. They're also 100% 'artsy' kind of comedies made by highly respected auteurs - they're not broad comedies like Airplane or Animal House (or Superbad).
3) They're also mostly from the 2000's era, in which the general point is being made about 'challenging to make comedies' these days.
4) I don't think the box office differential rally helps that much as conceivably Superbad is going to naturally appeal a little bit more to North American audiences for the reasons you stated.
Here is a Hollywood reporter take on it [1] the decline of comedy is not a controversial idea.
"It’s been a decade since any comedy launched a blockbuster franchise. "
"The studios have backed away from comedies, just as they have mid-budget dramas, perceiving both as far harder to sell than tentpoles. "
"Even a comedy superstar like Will Ferrell has had trouble getting movies made. “It’s becoming a little finicky,” he told the podcast Armchair Expert in early June. “I’ve recently come across things where I thought, ‘Boy, what a great idea,’ and went around town and everyone just went, ‘Nope.’ “"
...
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/comedy-box-office-dwindles-but-is-netflix-blame-1219121/
> Airplane! is another movie that "wouldn't be allowed to be made today"
Yes, the kind of comedy it has is very tied to the immediate social context for commercial viability, both as to the what it is lampooning (late-70s disaster films) and how.
The broader template of Airplane! (broad take-it-to-11 parody of recently popular film patterns) because it was itself the pattern for its own flood of films in the 2000s (Scary Movie, Date Movie, Superhero Movie, and several sequels to Scary Movie).
have you ever seen an episode of it's always sunny in philadelphia? the show is regularly far more offensive than any line in airplane, and nobody cares.
Shock horror, society has moved on in the 40 years since Airplane was made...
How do you even know it wouldn't be allowed? People love to spout this kind of stuff, but... have you even tried?
Edit: A very nice example I've come across is Ricky Gervais stating that the British Office couldn't be made today. I think he's being very disingenuous saying that because while out of context it could appear to have a lot of controversial jokes touching on taboo subjects, within the show it was always clear who the real target of the jokes was (same with Borat). Masterfully done and I believe (from what I've seen in terms of comedy recently) that kind of stuff would still fly at the BBC. There's even a documentary from a couple of decades back about the success of the office and a BBC producer admits even back then they had to reign in a few of the areas Gervais wanted to go in terms of race & disability (it was also mentioned that he is quite obsessed with these topics), so its all bullshit that people like him are shouting about "THESE DAYS...!".
In fact maybe he's right and the Office couldn't be made today. But that's primarily because Gervais isn't funny these days
Airplane! is another movie that "wouldn't be allowed to be made today"
The line "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" would be a scandal today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfgO90yGusI
> Another argument you could advance is that TV and Film have generally been moving away from comedy as a genre
I noticed this for movies and it makes me sad. I asked people around me what's the latest funny, full-on comedy they've seen, and I think the newest one would be "Tropic Thunder" which is 13 years old.
There are still a couple around, but I can't think of an equivalent of "Airplane!" or "Blazing Saddles" for the current generation. The closest one is probably half of "Zoolander", and even that one is almost old enough to drink.
Mad was great before it became Mad Magazine.
The first 23 issues were insane stream-of-consciousness comic books. Anything you liked about the the tv show Police Squad or the movies Airplane!, The Naked Gun, etc., was basically just early Mad. Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Basil Wolverton at his manic best. Legends.
The stuff you're talking about, the pure gags, the Spy vs. Spy... some of it was great, most of it was mediocre, but the main thing it did was let them make every magazine a digest. You could have a mix of new content and old every month.
I vividly remember buying a copy of Mad Magazine in the early 90's that included one of their moronic movie spoofs. You know, carnival-style big head caricatures, everybody just has a new name that's a poop joke?
In 1992, that spoof was of the movie Love Story, released in 1970. Half the jokes in the Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions at that time were about key parties and leisure suits.
That's why you perceived it as "old hippie humor from people who didn't understand social currents that arose since the 1960s, like video games and hip-hop... and didn't want to."
They were just reprinting old content with a little new stuff sprinkled in.
I read Foucault's Pendulum and finished it, but it was heavy going. I then read "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" [0] which I enjoyed much more, because it was more intentionally cranky and funny. It is to conspiracy novels as "Airplane!" was to disaster movies, and then some.
[Edit] Both of them make Dan Brown look really, really unimpressive. If "The Da Vinci Code" is a vaguely thought-through concept aimed at general readers, "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" is an explosion in a conspiracy theory factory.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy
Classics get lower scores because they have a more differentiated audience. People are made or feel culturally obligated to read them. So the Grapes of Wrath (3.97) has a lower score than Anarch (4.62) the 15th Gaunt's Ghost novel set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. This is because the only people who are likely to read the latter are people likely to enjoy it.
Clearly though, different movies and books server different purposes. Is Schindlers List a better movie than Airplane! Sure, but I'm not going to put on the former when I want a few laughs.
> scams in Europe where someone will grab your hand and put a bracelet on or put a flower in your hair or something and demand payment
This used to be commonplace in the US, particularly in airports, in the 70s. It's the source of a gag in the movie Airplane (or one of those comedies). I don't know why it faded out.
Yes. This is the worry. "Airplane" is considered one of the funniest movies ever made and most of the jokes would probably never see the light of the day today.
It's not even that deceptive from a technical standpoint: an airplane autopilot maintains course and speed, and nothing more. Tesla's autopilot maintains course (lane) and speed, and nothing more. It's in the common imagination that airplane autopilot, based on name alone is more autonomous than it is (you can't takeoff/land on autopilot in a plane, and a pilot isn't just napping during autopilot). A lot of people seem to imagine the joke version of autopilot from the movie Airplane! where an inflatable "pilot" takes over full control of the plane, when the reality is much simpler and less autonomous.
The question remains if Tesla expected more goodwill from the common/popular imaginative view of the thing over the technical description, and I have no idea how "deliberate" that was.
I also probably should have put a sarcasm/irony tilde on mistake as my post above was intended more as a joke than an honest attempt at problem solving.
The 1980 movie "Airplane" spoofs prowords with this dialog between Captain Clarence Oveur, co-pilot Roger Murdock, flight navigator Victor Basta, and the airport tower: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/quotes/qt0484135
No I think its the other way around. "Jive" was still in use up until the late 70s - The Bee Gees hit "Jive Talkin'" and a well-known scene form the comedy movie "Airplane" both being examples. It is/was almost always used in connection with speaking i.e "don't jive talk me"
The earlier musical dance/reference is the really just the Johnny Otis song which is actually just a Bo Diddley rip-off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxU995zbfno
In the movie “Airplane” the autopilot is an inflatable humanlike doll full on manning the plane. :-)
Just want to give a plug to the Pima Air and Space Museum [0] in Tucson, AZ. The admission ticket includes access to an ICBM silo [1] ~40 km to the south. Visitors can optionally sign up for periodic tours of the neighboring boneyard at Davis Monthan AFB. Several of the docents are retired aeronautical engineering Ph.D's who helped design many of the aircraft on display and are happy to answer questions. They even have Otto the Automatic Pilot from the movie Airplane!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pima_Air_%26_Space_Museum
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Missile_Museum
Brings back fond memories of foraging in the Welsh Valleys every September October, millions of them for free (must be the sheep turds) - they were just as good fresh or dried, mushroom tea - amazing, despite the muddy fragrance, was particularly good for watching comedy films such as Steve Martin’s The Jerk or Airplane - used to be literally rolling on the floor with unstoppable laughter. Of course our Idiotic UK government could not allow such fun to be had, so deemed this wonderful gift from nature illegal and now turds like this couple can make a fortune.
The plot of Airplane! was lifted verbatim from a non-comedy 1957 movie called Zero Hour!, specifically because AZZ knew they couldn't write plot.
They were up-front about it - paid for the rights - but it does suggest that writing comedy and writing plot are very different things.
>Not that the story should be the main appeal of a parody, just that there must be a good story for the jokes to serve. Although “Airplane!” was a joke- and gag-heavy enterprise, the film had an obvious story with three distinct acts, along with a main character who had a clear arc. “Top Secret!”, though, had major narrative and character issues.
It seems like modern style parodies seem to ignore this point entirely but it is exactly why Airplane and Hot Shots and Naked Gun worked. I can’t think of a single spoof that has worked so effectively since the 90s.
Thanks for reposting this. It made me go and re-watch Airplane - I forgot just how funny that movie was! It has aged relatively well.
If you're telling a joke, you don't want emotional context switching. A quick explanation, laughter might be preserved (so the above pun may or may not inhibit the execution of the original joke).
But every joke has an emotional gravity and the longer you compliment it with other emotions (e.g. intellectual explanations), eventually escape velocity is reached and you're in an entirely different emotional state.
Airplane! has three laughs per minute on average (https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2012/09/21/top-10-funniest-movies-ever-as-measured-in-laughs-per-minute/#2d4080493c40). That's not much time pull in other emotional states. And that's on purpose.
I'm glad someone mentioned this. It's frustrating that the general public doesn't understand what the word 'autopilot' means... Otto the automatic pilot from the movie Airplane! isn't what an automatic pilot is.
However, since it is commonly misrepresented, they should change the name of Tesla's system.
Unfortunately, most people attribute the word 'autopilot' with the way Otto performed in the movie Airplane!...
Sensible Move - Magic Mushrooms are a truly wonderful very safe natural drug which does not harm others, like violence inducing Alcohol. Some suffer bad trips especially Women, but like a bad dream soon passes, with no harm done. One positive of the damp weather in Wales UK is abundant Magic Mushrooms in the Welsh Valleys in September to October. I took tens of thousands age 17 to 21 then grew out of them, fond memories though. The most I laughed in my entire life was watching Airplane on MM literally rolling on the floor creased up, Steve Martin films like the Jerk were also good on MM. Idiotic UK government made them an illegal Class I drug.
What you're starting to edge towards, then, is an educational issue. Personally I feel the only time I've seen an 'autopilot' shown as a fully autonomous system was in the 1980's film Airplane!
I couldn't narrow down exactly where in life I learned about autopilot systems in aircraft, but I always considered it to be common sense that autopilot doesn't mean "can completely fly itself"
I should have clarified: there's no sampling bias. These are incredibly popular movies. Here are some movies not on Netflix streaming that I've wanted to watch this year: Gladiator. Star Wars IV. Shawshank Redemption. The Wizard of Oz. When Harry Met Sally. The Princess Bride. All Star Trek movies. Goodfellas. Lord of the Rings. Gone with the Wind. All Godfather movies. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Airplane. American Graffiti. The Usual Suspects. All Jim Carrey movies except a bad one (the Grinch) and one I've never heard of (the Number 23). Toy Story. There's Something About Mary. All Austin Powers movies.
The last time I tried searching for a good movie to watch on Netflix streaming, I gave up after 10 minutes. I'd think of one movie after another after another. Nothing was there. All it could suggest was "related titles," as if that's what I would want.
Agree with parent. Unfortunately for your profession "Airplane!" the movie ruined the perception. When I read "autopilot" I think robot guy driving airplane without any intervention meaning I can sleep from takeoff to landing.
Even when considered only as an analogy, and not the serious point about trivializing "rapist", it's a lousy analogy.
Consider a panhandler asking you for money on the street, someone passing out fliers in a mall, a street hawker, or even someone asking for directions. These can all be unwanted physical interactions.
Think also of the religious people who go door-to-door asking very politely if you've found everlasting life, or historically (thinking now of the Hare Krishnas and the movie 'Airplane') at an airport terminal.
Or for that matter, someone working in a boiler room call centers.
I submit that spamming is much closer to these unwanted public interactions than anything like rape.
Furthermore, calling someone a spammer does not have "devastating social consequences", despite what Vachani said. For example, stand up at a conference and yell "the speaker is a spammer!" What devastating social consequences might the speaker face? Is it as devastating as calling someone a speeder, a pot smoker, a thief, a rapist, or a murderer?
I see what you mean, sorry to have been unclear. I think you see what I intended now.
You probably can't find it on a car without getting into SF, but an excessively sophisticated autopilot on an airplane could probably fit into an otherwise non-SF movie. Like the example of Airplane! but played seriously. I just assumed that's the sort of thing people were talking about with the idea coming from entertainment, since "obviously" technology in an SF movie is going to be unrealistic.
There certainly are some similar misconceptions generated by movies not usually considered to fall into the category of SF. For example, I'd wager a lot of people think spy satellites really can read a license plate from orbit, or that silenced guns just make a soft "pew" sound.
> Adults are watching this stuff, and taking it seriously!
Wait, seriously how? Who? How many of them?
> Films used to be about challenging, emotional journeys.
Charlie Chaplin. Laurel and Hardy. Buster Keaton. John Wayne. Die Hard. Lethal Weapon. Airplane.
The World's End.
> Now we’re really not thinking about anything, other than the fact that the Hulk just had a fight with a robot.”
Yep. I took an afternoon off to treat a few people to Age of Ultron. It was awesome. Afterward, I went back to work.
I think this article can go sit right next to the nonsense about Clint Eastwood and the empty chair: "Person states opinions about society and ends up in the news because they're an actor, more at 11."
I see lots of strategies for dealing with noise, so here is one of mine. I got a pair of one of those industrial ear protectors, the kind that carpenters or construction workers wear. Then I use simple in-ear buds and listen to ambient music or jazz. Anything without vocals.
I use this setup pretty much anywhere I am around annoying sounds and it's pricelessly quiet. I've tried numerous noise cancellation BS headphones and none of them can come close. On airplanes it's like entering a warm cocoon of sound that allows me to forget I'm there. I can listen to an airplane movie soundtrack at the lowest possible volume and hear nothing else. The only problem is when the captain pipes up and blasts me away with some stupid announcement. So I keep my hand near the socket to remove the plug and when I hear the click of the captain's mike I immediately unplug.
Forget about these overpriced over engineered noise cancellation whatever devices. My low tech solution is way better for concentration and it costs only around $50-$70. I've actually had people ask me what kind of noise cancellation headphones I'm using when wearing my ear-muffs. I even had a guy in a datacenter ask me if they were USB enabled ;)
Reminds me of this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WAwuSK36Gw
"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffin' glue."
I wonder if that dates me, or if "Airplane!" is a movie that is still relatively well-known with a younger crowd.
</off-topic>
The movie Requiem for a Dream is, to me, a perfect example of a high quality movie that I will not watch twice.
The acting, directing, cinematography, pacing, and sound design are all excellent. However, the film is such a grueling emotional experience, I don't foresee myself sitting down with it again.
Contrast that to, say, Airplane. It's a good movie. Funny. If I'm bored in a hotel room, I'll watch it again. However, it is emphatically not a "great film."
Buster Keaton noticed the opposite in his time. He mentioned in his autobiography that there was a silent comedian whose movies got bigger laughs than himself, Chaplin, or Lloyd. Lots of absurd cartoony stuff, like jumping into an empty swimming pool, then coming out of the hole with a Chinese family, or being shot out into space. Keaton noticed that guy's movies got bigger laughs, but audiences didn't remember scenes from his movies like they did for Chaplin and himself.
If people remember lines from Airplane! it's not necessarily due to the absurdity. They could just be good lines. Try remembering a line from any of the Scary Movies.
I had never thought about categorizing movies in this way, now that I am it seems very clear. Some comedies revolve around the characters, their interaction and their situation in a funny, yet vaguely realistic way ("The Hangover"). Other comedies are blatantly absurd and ridiculous and are propelled forward by the jokes themselves which are often slapstick, the characters are tend to be flat and their situations simply a frame to hang the jokes upon ("Airplane!" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/).
I agree with the OP, having a mix of these types of comedies is a good thing. Too many of one or the other type wears on an audience. I haven't seen "The Hangover II" but already I have concerns that it will be funny in parts yet depressing overall ("Very Bad Things," http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0124198/).
But what country could have produced "Airplane!", or "O Brother Where Art Thou?"
You could say that something like "Seinfeld" (and "Curb Your Enthusiasm") is more the product of a very unusual subculture (in fact, this is the basis for much of the humor, how poorly new yorkers fit in the rest of US culture), but keep in mind Seinfeld had the highest ratings of any sitcom in US history, so the appeal is obviously very broad.
IMDB reports that 2322 movies were released in 1939 alone, is it really surprising that there were a handful of good movies among them?
1980 for comparision, IMDB lists 6007 movies (8000+ if you include TV movies), and contains modern (popular) classics such as Stir Crazy, Superman II, Empire Strikes Back, Airplane!, The Blue Lagoon, Ordinary People, Urban Cowboy. The Shining, Caddyshack, Raging Bull, Friday The 13th, The Fog, The Blues Brothers.
Hmm, looks like 1980 was a much more 'classic' era than the 40s for hollywood, but you wouldn't have heard that from film buffs in the 80s.
Hollywood has always been a great abuser of the 'sling lots of shit at the wall and see what sticks' approach to 'greatness', they're just slinging a lot more shit these days.
Even if we take a really contemporary year and do the same study, we see a pattern of greats no matter what year, take 2005 at random:
Batman Begins, Sin City, V for Vendetta, Revenge of the Sith, King Kong, Brokeback Mountain, Harry Potter/Goblet of Fire, Serenity, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mr & Mrs Smith, Wedding Crashers, Munich, Saw 2, Hostel, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Madagascar, Pride & Prejudice, Land of the Dead.
Ah, but the movie buff will point out that they're not established classics like Gone with the Wind, or Wizard of Oz. Not yet, anyway.
Edit: Btw, for 2005, the number of movies was 28,000+. Is it any wonder that there is a lot of formulaic stuff in there as well?