The absolute best thing about this movie - Airport (1970) Discussion

[–] k-gage 9 years ago

while i like airport on its own, i agree. favorite parts? barbara billingsley speaking jive is priceless. to many other to mention!

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[–] gheilers 9 years ago

while i like airport on its own, i agree. favorite parts? barbara billingsley speaking jive is priceless. to many other to mention!

I actually hated that bit. To have the hip-hop-ish Black guys speaking (and with subtitles!) "jive" was hilarious, because it was totally plausible and believable. But, having an old White lady being able to translate? That defied belief, and therefore failed as comedy.

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[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

It inspired the classic parody AIRPLANE.

Actually it didn't. Airplane was inspired by the 1957 movie Zero Hour, even lifting the basic plot, character names and much of its dialogue.

Without Airport there would be no Airplane.

But that's probably true. Even though Airplane had nothing directly to do with Airport, it's unlikely it would ever have been made but for Airport and its three sequels in the 70s.

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[–] Chiscully 9 years ago

... Plus aren't the nuns and girl playing the guitar in Airplane ripped out of the Airport movies? My favorite part of Airplane is when the passengers line up to take cracks at the hysterical woman.

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[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

The guitar-paying nun is indeed ripped off from the dreadful Airport 1975, and Airplane took things from lots of air disaster movies, including the original one, The High and the Mighty (1954) -- even one of its stars, Robert Stack! It also parodied scenes from non-airplane movies, and some of its stuff was simply original material not directly making fun of any other movie. But the basics were all from Zero Hour. The ZAZ boys even said they were inspired to make Airplane after watching Zero Hour on late-night TV in Milwaukee in the late 70s.

But I think Airport has even more clichés than Airplane!

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[–] truther 9 years ago

Holy crap. I'm watching Zero Hour right now on TCM and had no idea -- it's practically the same movie!

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[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

Yeah -- they even lifted whole tracts of dialogue intact from Zero Hour! to Airplane!...as well as the name "Stryker". But what was supposed to be serious in 1957 was a joke in 1980. Amazing, really.

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[–] truther 9 years ago

The funny thing, to me, is that the one big change they made in the plot between Zero Hour! and Airplane! actually makes sense. It works better for Stryker to be on the plane because he's trying to get back together with Julie Hagerty rather than being on the plane with his wife and son. Airplane! combines the wife and stewardess roles from Zero Hour! into one love interest, and gets rid of Jerry Paris' part. It works better.

But I mean yeah, the dialogue and even sound effects are identical in so many parts. And I had no idea that Airplane! having Kareem in the cockpit was a direct nod to Zero Hour! having Crazy Legs Hirsch as the pilot.

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[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

I hadn't seen Zero Hour! in years when I saw Airplane! in a theater in 1980, but immediately recognized it as the source. But I had entirely forgotten about Jerry Paris's Señor Wences imitation and it was over 20 years before I saw ZH again. I really think the ZAZ boys missed a golden opportunity to do something with that character...preferably having him meet an appropriately bad end.

Like Airplane!, Zero Hour! was a Paramount picture. But somewhere along the way Warner acquired the film and in typical WB practice, it cut out the Paramount logo at the end of the film (there was apparently none at the beginning) and substituted a modern WB logo. Drives me crazy when studios do this.

A sad thing about Zero Hour! is that it was the last movie Linda Darnell was ever in that she lived to see. It always amazed me how quickly her career faded after Fox declined to renew her contract in 1951. After a couple of so-so films at RKO and elsewhere, she slipped steadily. ZH was her last film for eight years, until a low-budget western called Black Spurs in 1965. But if I remember correctly Linda died her horrible death before that film was released.

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[–] darryl-tahirali 9 years ago

It inspired the classic parody AIRPLANE. Without Airport there would be no Airplane. - fifthquartile

Regardless of all the "inspired by" saga, I think we can squarely lay credit--or blame--at the feet of Arthur Hailey.

Hailey of course wrote the novel Airport, first published in 1968. But before that, he wrote a teleplay called Flight into Danger (later novelized as Runway Zero-Eight) that was a big hit on Canadian television in 1956 and was made into the film Zero Hour! the following year; this indeed was the template for Airplane! complete with the exclamation mark and, one of my favorite details, the sound of propeller engines in external shots of the airplane in Airplane! even though the airliner was a jet aircraft.

So, no matter how you slice it, Arthur Hailey is the source.

------------------
"He not busy bein' born is a-busy dyin'." - Bob Dylan

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[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

That's quite true. Arthur Hailey is the culprit. Obviously he felt the notion of lots of people in danger in an airplane offered too many possibilities for just one script. I wonder who he got the idea from.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

That remark was facetious, and I mentioned The High and the Mighty earlier. But the concept of a group of disparate people confined to one area -- a plane, a hotel, a bus, a stagecoach, many things -- and acting out their personal dramas is an old one. Gann simply reworked a basic and oft-used premise, as did Hailey, and many other writers.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] nutsberryfarm 9 years ago

orson welles? jean renoir?

🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴

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[–] samoanjoes (52986) 7 years ago

Airplane is better than this. Even Airplane II and that one sucked.

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