List of gags in Airplane!
The 1980 Zucker brothers film Airplane! contained a number of running, visual, and verbal gags.
| Contents |
Running Gags
- At the very start of the film a man gets into a cab as Ted Striker, who was driving, gets out but starts the meter first. Periodically through the film we are shown the man in the cab with the meter slowly ticking up, reaching $16,000 at one point. This gag continues into the credits with the man muttering "another 20 minutes and that's it!"
- Airport Manager Steve McCroskey picked the wrong week to quit the following: smoking, drinking, amphetamines, and sniffing glue.
Visual Gags
- A tannoy message comes over for the pilot of the aircraft (while still in the airport) to go to the white courtesy 'phone. However he picks up the red phone to a voice which says, "the white phone."
- Half way through his conversation with someone from the Mayo Clinic, the operator comes on the line to inform him of another call from someone called Hamm, to which he responds, "OK, give me Hamm on five, hold the Mayo."
- The doctor from the Mayo Clinic is shown sitting at a desk in front of his bookshelves, which contain nothing but bottles of mayonnaise.
- When Striker buys a ticket for a flight on the spur of the moment, he's asked if he wants smoking or non-smoking, to which he replies smoking and is handed a ticket with smoke pouring off it.
- There are many gags in the credits, including; "Author of A Tale of Two Cities: Charles Dickens," a credit for "Generally in charge of a lot of things," "filmed with Panavision camera and lenses" (note the non-plural camera), and the legal notice at the end finishing with "so there."
- Sister Angelina (the singing nun, Maureen McGovern) plays her guitar and sings Aretha Franklin's hit "Respect" to the black Jive-speaking men and makes one of them vomit.
- When asked 'what he makes of this report', effeminate flight controller replies grabs report and responds "Could be a hat, could be a brooch, could even be a Pterodactyl."
- Flight controllers in background opening the front of the circular radar screens and taking out clothes washing.
Verbal Gags
- "Surely you can't be serious!" "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."
- "We have clearance, Clarence." "Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?"
- "This man needs a hospital." "What is it?" "It's a large building with patients, but that's not important right now."
- "There is a problem in the cockpit." "What is it?" "It's the small room at the front of the plane, but that's not important right now."
- Barbara Billingsly's character is fluent in jive, and briefly acts as an interpreter between the flight attendant and the Jive-speaking men before the men insult her.
- Johnny, the weird flight controller, when asked what's been going on up to this point, starts rambling on: "Well, first the Earth cooled, and then the dinosaurs came. But they got too big and fat, and they died and turned into oil. Then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes-Benz's..."
Red Zone/White Zone
In the beginning of the film, at the airport, there are male and female PA system announcers saying where drivers can and cannot stop their vehicles, referring to the areas as the "Red zone" and the "White zone". Initially both say "The White zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the Red zone." The male announcer swaps the two areas, and they begin to argue. Suddenly the female announcer claims the argument is about the male wanting her to get an abortion, to which the male claims it is "the only sensible thing to do". The gag is usually cut out on TV airings.
Pop Culture References
- Perhaps the most visible reference is the movie's similarity to the Airport series of films involving air disasters.
- Another notable reference to pop culture is the similarity between Ted Striker, the main character of Airplane, and the main character, Captain Benjamin Willard, in Apocalypse Now, a movie showing the perils of the Vietnam War.