Posted on 07/03/2020 8:52:32 AM PDT by Stravinsky
Surely, we can be serious: Forty years ago in the summer of 1980, Airplane! flew into theaters and made the friendly skies safe... for laughter. The disaster movie spoof became an era-defining hit and launched the directorial careers of writing partners David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker — better known by their comedic call sign ZAZ. The trio went on to make such oft-quoted favorites as Top Secret!, The Naked Gun and Hot Shots!, but Airplane! remains their crowning achievement, even landing a spot on the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry.
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While Airplane! is filled with gags that are funny in every age, some jokes play very differently in 2020 versus 1980. That includes moments like the “I speak jive” sequence, which might strike contemporary audiences as being out of step at a time when the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests are shining a light on the way race is addressed in Hollywood comedies from the past and present.
Zucker, though, stands by it four decades later. “It’s evenly laughing at Black people and white people. Everything is so sensitive nowadays, but when we show the movie, it still gets a laugh. People get it. It cuts through all the sensitivity, because in humor, you can’t be that sensitive.” On the other hand, Zucker notes that ZAZ made a point of road-testing all of their movies in front of preview audiences in order to spot jokes that crossed the line into meanness. “Sometimes stuff just isn’t funny, and that’s our fault. If the audience doesn’t get it, we haven’t done our job and we cut it out.”
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
"I beeped... vhat I vin, a Pinto?"
-PJ
I watched “Blazing Saddles” again recently after about a 30 year hiatus, and...OMG, that was a riot!
And yeah. They poke a blacks. And whites. And men. And women. And racists. And snowflakes. All of them got ridicule.
That is one of the problems I see today. There is no middle ground where people can laugh.
Hollywood couldn’t do Airplane today. Snowflakes ruin everything...
Love that scene, the most memorable from the movie.
"This is WZAZ, in Chicago, where disco lives forever!"
One of the black women in my office told me that a couple of weeks ago. She said she wished white people would stop assuming all blacks think the same way. She told me (with tears in her eyes) that she’s humiliated and ashamed of what BLM does.
She’s furious and brokenhearted at once.
Just talking calmly and rationally will make the social justice warriors scream and riot in outrage.
We need more black people to start speaking out. We need to unite with Black People, and destroy all vestiges of White Liberalism, that is what is destroying this country. It's not the black people, they've been cowered into silence by the White Liberal Establishment.
I own Airplane so f ‘em. Funniest scenes include “I like mine black, like my men”, Japanese soldier commits hari kari, “teaching” the black natives b-ball, every word out of the black dudes mouths on the plane.
All the black guys working on the railroad break out in song and dance, and done quite well, singing in great harmony, the moves with the music...
Come on, boys! The way you're lollygagging around here with them picks and them shovels...you'd think it was 120...It cant' be more than 114. Dock that Chink a day's pay for napping on the job. Now, come on, boys, where's your spirit? I don't hear no singing. When you were slaves, you sang like birds. Go on. How about a good old n*gger work song?
"I get no kick from champagne.
"Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all.
"So tell me why should it be true...
"... that I get a belt out of you?
"Some get a kick from cocaine. "
What the hell is that shit? I meant a song. A real song. Something like..."Swing low, sweet chariot... "
Swing low? Sweet chariot?
Don't know that one, huh? How about "De Camp Town Ladies"?
"De Camp Town Ladies"?
Ah, you know. "De Camp Town Ladies sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah. "De Camp Town race track five miles long, all the doo-dah day!
"Gonna run all night, gonna run all day.
"Bet my money on the bobtailed nag, somebody bet on the bay!"
What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here? I hired you people to try to get a little track laid...not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas City faggots!
Now, they made the white guys look pretty stupid and foolish and racist in that scene, which made it even funnier!
You can’t make anything which is actually funny today. These neo Puritans have killed humor.
I had a friend years ago who was a driver for some movie production company and one day he was her driver taking her to the set and back. Driving Mrs. Cleaver was a highlight for him. It was in that era when Airplane was made so it had a cool hip irony to it all.
Blazing Saddles made fun of everybody. That’s what makes Mel Brooks such a genius. Absolutely no mercy for anyone.
Perfect.
Very cool.
Several Mel Brooks movies have been turned into Broadway Musicals.
Blazing Saddles could be a great Musical, but even Mel said there was no way he could do it, in this current environment.
It was pure satire and poking fun at everyone and everything. Remember the Ronald Reagan Home For The Mentally Ill? Apparently it was perfectly OK to make fun of the mentally ill and the elderly.
But that episode is now banned.It's sad because it's the best episode and because Marxists have,yet again,thrown the baby out with the bath water. But fortunately I have it on DVD.
Yep, that’s basically what John Cleese said. And also it makes the English seem stupid, and the Germans were the reasonable ones.
The other Fawlty Towers episode that comes to mind was “The Builders” which really piled it on the Irish.
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