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The Jewish team behind the classic comedy ‘Airplane!’ explains how it got off the ground

(JTA) — Growing up in Milwaukee in the 1950s, brothers David and Jerry Zucker entertained themselves by performing skits for their family during Hanukkah parties. In a recent conversation, David downplayed the skits’ significance, noting that they were “really just pre-9-year-old stuff,” but the younger Jerry had fonder memories of their performances.

“I’m not sure that the skits we were performing in our living room had a lot to do with Hanukkah — it was just wanting to get up in front of an audience,” said Jerry. “It was great because that’s the last time we didn’t need to be funny, and everybody laughed.”

Over 60 years later, the Zucker brothers, along with their friend Jim Abrahams, have entertained a much larger audience than just their relatives. Millions worldwide have embraced their anything-for-a-laugh approach to spoofing movie genres and cliches, exemplified in 1980’s “Airplane!,” a side-splitting lampoon of the disaster movies that Hollywood had churned out in the prior decade, such as “The Towering Inferno” and “Airport.”

“Airplane!” was not only a critical success, and an influence on legions of comedians including David Letterman and “Weird Al” Yankovic, but a commercial one: Paramount Pictures, which gambled on three first-time directors to the tune of $3.5 million, netted hundreds of millions of dollars from the film’s worldwide release. In 2010, “Airplane!” was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, along with “All the President’s Men” and “The Empire Strikes Back.”

The unusual, and far-from-inevitable, path they took towards a place in cinematic legend is explored in depth in their oral history “Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of ‘Airplane!,’” published in October.

It explores their career arc in depth, through their recollections and those of their friends and professional colleagues, focusing on “Airplane!”’s turbulent journey from idea to reality. After college, David, Jim and Jerry had founded Kentucky Fried Theater, a sketch comedy group in Madison, Wisconsin, that often mocked commercials they’d discovered by recording late-night movies. One night, they stumbled on “Zero Hour!”, a 1957 melodrama in which the pilots of a passenger jet fall ill from food poisoning, leaving the fate of everyone onboard in the hands of a Canadian Air Force veteran who hadn’t flown since World War II.

The team known as “ZAZ” describe how they adapted a script from a 1950s B-movie to create a joke-filled lampoon of the disaster movie genre. (‎St. Martin’s Press)

That find inspired “Airplane!”, a parody that used the plot elements of “Zero Hour!” (and even some dialogue, including the immortal sentence, “We need to find someone back there who not only can fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner.”) while playing its premise for laughs, and stuffing the film with puns and visual gags. Their approach was novel — employing stolid actors, such as Peter Graves, Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen, not known for their comedic chops, to deadpan outrageous dialogue — and proved an obstacle in getting the studios to understand it.

That approach to humor was a legacy from the Zuckers’ father, Burton, a commercial real estate owner and developer, and an active member of many Jewish organizations in Milwaukee, including the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, the U.W. Hillel Foundation in Madison, and the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. David recalled that his dad “didn’t tell jokes, but he would say funny, dry, humorous things with a straight face,” which David considered to be the antecedent to Nielsen adopting that same approach in portraying Dr. Rumack in the film. In the book, Abrahams praises Nielsen for perfecting “the art of pretending he had no clue he was in a comedy.” Playing Rumack revived Nielsen’s career, and the role featured his often-repeated response to the quote incorporated in the book’s title, “Surely you can’t be serious”: “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.”

While David, Jerry and Abrahams sought to have their jokes and humor appeal to a wide audience, they also included throwaway references for their own amusement, including ones inspired by their Jewish upbringing. For instance, when a passenger asks a flight attendant for some light reading, she is offered a leaflet, “Famous Jewish Sports Legends.” That was one of Abrahams’ favorite jokes in the film.

“Here we were three Jewish guys who were sub-mediocre athletes on our best days, making fun of Jews being poor athletes,” he recalls in the book.

In one of the film’s countless sight gags, Air Israel’s aircraft is adorned with a kippah, tallit, payes and a robust beard. Such shoutouts to their heritage also appear in some of their other films: 1977’s “Kentucky Fried Movie,” a sketch film that they wrote, featured an ad for Sanhedrin, a headache remedy that took its name from the Talmudic-era rabbinic court, as well as the use of a spirited rendition of “Heiveinu Shalom Aleichem” in two scenes, one a torrid sex scene, and the other a satire of Kung Fu movies. In their 1984 espionage spoof “Top Secret!”, which they wrote and directed, an imprisoned scientist played by Val Kilmer is stunned when his captors demand he complete a deadly weapon by “Sunday.”

“Sunday?” responds the Nordic-looking Kilmer. “But that’s Simchas Torah!”

The trio was also working in a tradition of show business satire whose best-known practitioners were Jewish. Mel Brooks, who wrote parodies of classic Hollywood movies for Sid Caesar’s shows, hit box office gold in the 1970s with films sending up the cliches of the Hollywood Western, horror films and Hitchcock movies. Mad Magazine, whose masthead was predominantly Jewish, was famous for its movie parodies. In his 1966 film “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?”, Woody Allen took an actual Japanese spy movie and redubbed it in English, turning it into a spoof about the search for the world’s best chicken salad recipe.

Columbia University professor Jeremy Dauber, in a biography of Brooks, calls such parodies “nothing less than the essential statement of American Jewish tension between them and us, culturally speaking; between affection for the mainstream and alienation from it.”

Does the “Airplane!” crew think there is something particularly Jewish about their brand of humor? “I would say there is, in the sense that Jews have always had a sense of humor,” said Jerry Zucker. “They’ve had to have a sense of humor because there was such a long history of persecution.”

Abrahams said he was less certain, commenting that while “the heart of our humor is that you’re better off not taking a lot of things seriously, I don’t think that’s a particularly unique Jewish point-of-view.” All three recalled using humor to get through sometimes long family Passover seders. When Abrahams shared that he’d “always related most to the simple child [of the Haggadah], seeing things through his eyes,” Jerry quipped, “Fortunately for Jim, David and I had wisdom, so, you know, things worked out.”

Today, the trio have different connections to their religion. David Zucker, who’s traveled to Israel, is the most observant, attending Shabbat Zoom services faithfully and studying Torah “as taught by Dennis Prager,” the conservative talk show host who started off as a Jewish educator. David’s general love of history led him to record his grandmother Sarah’s memories of her life in the small village of Hinkovitz in what is now Slovakia, which yielded his previous book, “Before the Invention of Smiling: The Incredible Journey of the Zucker Family from Horse & Buggy to Indoor Plumbing.”

Jerry, after joking that he’d joined a devil worship cult, shared that he’s proud of his heritage, and considers himself “very culturally Jewish,” but not religiously observant. Abrahams celebrates Passover and fasts on Yom Kippur. He credits the Judaism his parents practiced with teaching him to count his blessings and to feel responsible for giving something back to the world.

The three discounted any attempt to imbue the enduring popularity of “Airplane!” with any deeper meaning. David and Abrahams agreed with Jerry’s observation in the book that, “We all take ourselves too seriously.” David commented that, “I wouldn’t go for any deep social meaning other than we saw these movies, they were really serious, and we could make jokes.”

Abrahams concurred. “Life is much easier,” he said, “if you don’t take seriously all the stuff we do take seriously.”

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The post The Jewish team behind the classic comedy ‘Airplane!’ explains how it got off the ground appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Marco Rubio Says US Denying Visas to Foreigners ‘Celebrating’ Assassination of Charlie Kirk

Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the US is denying visas to foreigners who publicly celebrate the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a move he cast as part of a broader posture against extremist rhetoric.

While traveling in the Middle East, Rubio told reporters that the State Department has been denying visas to individuals glorifying Kirk’s murder online. He added that officials are also reviewing existing visas and that he expects some to be revoked.

“It isn’t just about Charlie Kirk. If you’re a foreigner and you’re out there celebrating the assassination of someone who was speaking somewhere, I mean, we don’t want you in the country,” Rubio said. “Why would we want to give a visa to someone who think it’s good that someone was murdered in the public square? That’s just common sense to me.”

When asked if the US has actually revoked any visas yet, Rubio responded, “We’ve revoked visas of people. I don’t know if we’ve revoked visas of people that are inside the country. We’ve most certainly been denying visas.”

Rubio also addressed the issue in a social media post on X while sharing a video from a Fox News interview during which he was asked if he planned to restrict visa access or revoke visas for those celebrating Kirk’s killing.

“America will not host foreigners who celebrate the death of our fellow citizens,” Rubio said in the post accompanying the video. “Visa revocations are under way. If you are here on a visa and cheering on the public assassination of a political figure, prepare to be deported. You are not welcome in this country.”

Kirk, a prominent conservative activist and founder of the influential Turning Point USA organization, was shot and killed last week while speaking at Utah Valley University. Authorities have formally charged 22‑year‑old Tyler Robinson of Utah with aggravated murder and several related offenses, including discharge of a firearm, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering.

Rubio’s announcement comes amid intensifying efforts by the Trump administration to expel foreigners who express support for violence or terrorism. The administration has launched an overhaul of the US visa system, part of what officials describe as an effort to root out individuals deemed a potential threat to the country. The sweeping measures include expanded social media vetting for new applicants, continuous monitoring of the 55 million current visa holders, and the revocation of thousands of student visas.

Several of the online posts praising Kirk’s assassination have emerged from the Middle East, with individuals condemning the slain political activist over his vocal support for Israel. During his life, Kirk repeatedly spoke in defense of the Jewish state and expressed support for its military campaign in Gaza.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau concurred with Rubio’s statement, calling on consular officials to prevent the distribution of visas to anyone “praising, rationalizing, or making light of” the murder of Kirk.

Rubio has not explained the standards the State Department is using to determine what qualifies as “celebrating” the assassination. Some critics have speculated that this ambiguity could set up legal challenges from advocacy groups, who are already warning about the First Amendment and due process implications.

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‘Down With Fascists’: Columbia Activist Who Said ‘Zionists Don’t Deserve to Live’ Celebrates Charlie Kirk’s Murder

Khymani James, Columbia University student who filmed himself saying Zionists should be murdered. Photo: Screenshot

A former leader of the anti-Israel movement at Columbia University expressed full support for the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week.

Khymani James, who made the posts, was a “campus a leader in the pro-Palestinian student protest encampment” at Columbia, according to The New York Times.

In the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, James posted on X, “More. MORE!!!,” referencing the killing. He followed up that post by saying, “Down with all the fascists 😍.” (He later also called California Gov. Gavin Newsom a fascist.)

In another post, James wrote, “‘Be careful what you post’ and it’s people rightfully celebrating the inevitable and just fate of fascists. anywho… NO ONE MOURNS THE WICKED 😩🤣.”

In addition to the posts he wrote, James also reposted statements such as “Thoughts and prayers for the bullet,” “rest in piss,” and “saw that s–t and started giggling and kicking my feet and shouting YOOOOOO.”

In James’s biography on the social platform X, he notes, “Anything I said, I meant it. DEATH TO EMPIRE.”

This is not the first time James has rhetorically supported violence. Last year, he was on video saying, “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” and proclaiming that people should “be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

He also said, “I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser. I fight to kill.”

The comments triggered widespread backlash, and James was suspended by Columbia. The incident also resulted in what was widely seen as an apology for James on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), one of the most notorious anti-Israel campus groups in the US. Months later, however, the group retracted its previous apology.

“All CUAD organizers were complicit in not maintaining our political line, keeping the statement public on our Instagram, and in neglecting the mental and physical safety of Khymani,” the post read. CUAD apologized for causing “irrevocable harm” to him.

Despite James’s comments about the possibility of murdering Zionists, CUAD’s post claimed that he was criticized and socially ostracized for “fight[ing] back against state violence.”

James also responded to this post, writing on X, “Thank you to my comrades for posting this beautiful, powerful letter. I never wrote the neo-liberal apology posted in late April, and I’m glad we’ve set the record straight once and for all. I will not allow anyone to shame me for my politics.”

“Anything I said, I meant it,” he concluded.

Kirk, 31, was shot and killed during a speaking event at Utah Valley University, where he was engaging in dialogue with students. He is survived by his wife and two young children. A young Utah man — Tyler Robinson, 22 — was taken into custody last week as the suspected shooter, about 33 hours after the assassination, according to state and federal law enforcement.

Kirk was an outspoken supporter of Israel and advocate against antisemitism. He regularly debated students on the subject of Israel and brought his ideas to young people at a time when, according to recent polling, that age group was turning decidedly against the Jewish state.

“There’s a dark Jew hate out there, and I see it,” Kirk told a student during a podcast episode which aired earlier this year. “Don’t get yourself involved in that. I’m telling you it will rot your brain. It’s bad for your soul. It’s bad. It’s evil. I think it’s demonic.”

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Spain’s PM Sánchez Faces Backlash for Fueling Anti-Israel Hostility Amid Surge in Antisemitic Incidents

Cycling – Vuelta a Espana – Stage 21 – Alalpardo to Madrid – Madrid, Spain – Sept. 14, 2025: Barriers are smashed by anti-Israel protesters during Stage 21. Photo: REUTERS/Ana Beltran

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is facing backlash from his country’s political leaders and Jewish community, who accuse him of fueling antisemitic hostility after incidents at the Vuelta a España disrupted the prestigious cycling race.

Amid a sharp rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes and anti-Israel sentiment, Lorenzo Rodríguez, mayor of Castrillo Mota de Judíos in northern Spain, accused the country’s leader of “fueling a discourse of hatred” against Israel and the Jewish people.

“The government is fostering antisemitism that will prove deeply damaging for Spain,” Rodríguez said in an interview with the local outlet El Español.

“Sánchez’s moves are less about serious foreign policy and more about deflecting attention from his trials and failures in governance,” he continued. “Spain isn’t leading anything — it’s merely whitewashing Hamas and other terrorist groups.”

On Sunday, anti-Israel protests forced the finale of the Vuelta a España cycle race to be abandoned as police tried to quell demonstrations against the participation of an Israeli team.

In his interview, Rodríguez blamed Sánchez for fostering a hostile climate in Spain, saying the country is witnessing “hatred toward an entire people.”

He also criticized the Spanish leader for failing to take a strong stand on other international crises, including those in Russia and Venezuela.

“We all recognize that the Palestinian people are suffering, but the solution cannot be to blame the Jewish people,” Rodríguez said.

“People are afraid. There’s growing concern because our town was recently targeted,” he continued. “We are being singled out and threatened even though we have nothing to do with this war.”

Before the incidents on Sunday that led to the race’s cancellation, Sánchez expressed “admiration for the Spanish people mobilizing for just causes like Palestine” through their protests.

Madrid’s Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida strongly condemned Sánchez’s statement, accusing him of encouraging hostility and fueling tensions.

“The prime minister is directly responsible for this violence, as his statements this morning helped instigate the protests,” Martinez-Almeida said after the race was canceled.

“Today is the saddest day since I took office as mayor of this great city,” he continued.

Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Vox party, also criticized Sánchez’s remarks, accusing him of stoking division to maintain his hold on power.

“The psychopath has taken his militias to the streets,” Abascal wrote in a post on X. “He doesn’t care about Gaza. He doesn’t care about Spain. He doesn’t care about anything. But he wants violence in the streets to maintain power.”

Shortly after the incidents, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) publicly denounced the violence, urging authorities to respond quickly and decisively.

“Violence and intimidation have no place in a democratic society and cannot be excused under the guise of freedom of expression,” FCJE said in a statement.

“These violent demonstrations fuel hatred and contribute to a concerning rise in antisemitism in Spain, which we have been warning about over the past two years,” the statement read. “It is unacceptable that violence is justified on ideological grounds and hostility is directed toward the Jewish community”

Since the start of the war in Gaza, Spain has become one of Israel’s fiercest critics, a stance that has only intensified in recent months, coinciding with a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents targeting the local Jewish community — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions.

On Monday, Sánchez called for Israel to be barred from international sports events after pro-Palestinian activists disrupted the finale of the Vuelta cycling race in chaotic scenes in Madrid.

“The sports organizations should ask whether it’s ethical for Israel to continue participating in international competitions. Why was Russia expelled after invading Ukraine, yet Israel is not expelled after the invasion of Gaza?” Sánchez said while speaking to members of his Socialist Party.

“Until the barbarity ends, neither Russia nor Israel should be allowed to participate in any international competition,” the Spanish leader continued.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned Sánchez’s remarks, labeling him “an antisemite and a liar.”

“Did Israel invade Gaza on Oct. 7th or did the Hamas terror state invade Israel and commit the worst massacre against the Jews since the Holocaust?” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.

The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas started the war in Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, when it led an invasion of southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating widespread sexual violence against the Israeli people.

Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities and political rule in Gaza.

As part of its anti-Israel campaign, Spain announced on Tuesday that it will boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel participates, citing the country’s military offensive against Hamas in the war-torn enclave.

Last week, Sánchez also unveiled new policies targeting Israel over the war in Gaza, including an arms embargo and a ban on certain Israeli goods.

The Spanish government announced it would bar entry to individuals involved in what it called a “genocide against Palestinians,” block Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons from Spanish ports and airspace, and enforce an embargo on products from Israeli communities in the West Bank.

In one of its latest attempts to curb Israel’s defensive campaign in Gaza, Spain has canceled a €700 million ($825 million) deal for Israeli-designed rocket launchers, as the government conducts a broader review to systematically phase out Israeli weapons and technology from its armed forces.

Saar has denounced Sánchez’s latest actions, accusing the government in Madrid of antisemitism and of pursuing an escalating anti-Israel campaign aimed at undermining the Jewish state on the international stage.

“The government of Spain is leading a hostile, anti-Israel line, marked by wild, hate-filled rhetoric,” Saar wrote in a post on X, accusing Sánchez’s “corrupt” administration of trying to “divert attention from grave corruption scandals.”

“The obsessive activism of the current Spanish government against Israel stands out in light of its ties with dark, tyrannical regimes — from Iran’s ayatollahs to [Nicolás] Maduro’s government in Venezuela,” the Israeli diplomat continued.

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