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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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Jewish Woman Wearing Israeli Flag Attacked in Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo: Furya via Wikimedia Commons.
A Jewish woman wearing an Israeli flag was almost “lynched” in an antisemitic attack in Copenhagen, Denmark, last week.
According to the Danish newspaper BT, the 39-year-old woman was riding her scooter through the Christiania neighborhood in the Danish capital on Friday night, wearing an Israeli flag, when a man dressed in black approached her and asked her if she was Jewish.
After the victim said yes, the assailant reportedly asked, “Are you proud of that?” and then called her a “child murderer,” she told BT.
While she was calling the police, another man appeared and told her to throw away her Israeli flag.
“Before I could even get answers from the police, things escalated further,” the woman said. “Suddenly, a group of men rushed towards me.”
“A strong man with a Middle Eastern appearance shouted at me to take off the flag immediately,” she recalled.
When she refused to throw away her flag, the group of men started tearing it apart. According to her testimony, there were at least 50 bystanders who watched the attack without intervening.
“When I screamed for help, one of the men smiled mockingly and said, ‘Nobody will help you here.’ Then he grabbed me by the throat and started choking me with his hands,” the woman recounted.
“One of them pulled the flag over my head so I couldn’t see what was happening. I kept shouting for help, but no one intervened,” she continued. “Then they started dragging me off the asphalt.”
The woman also said one of the assailants cut off her jacket with a knife. When she tried to call the police again, the group of men allegedly began taunting her and calling her a “Jewish whore.”
“When I finally got through to the police, the policeman didn’t ask if I was OK,” she said. “Instead, he asked me why I was carrying an Israeli flag in an area like Christiania. I felt completely abandoned.”
“I had to beg and convince him that I was in extreme danger,” she continued. “Finally, he agreed to send two female officers.”
Local police confirmed they have opened an investigation into the antisemitic attack after receiving a report about the incident.
According to BT, the victim was left with scratches and bruises on her body after being discharged from the hospital.
In an interview with Israel Hayom, the woman said she usually displays her Jewishness, hanging an Israeli flag on her balcony and wearing her Star of David at work as a nurse.
“The patients notice it immediately; sometimes I see their faces contort. But this is my identity, and I don’t intend to hide it,” she said.
However, the woman recently noticed a much more hostile reaction to her displays of Jewishness in her daily routine.
“People look at me differently,” she told Israel Hayom. “A week ago, someone called me a ‘Zionist s–t.’ Others refused to talk to me because I’m Jewish. I could live with that — as long as it didn’t turn into physical violence.”
She said this was her first experience of such violence.
“They broke my phone and tried to tear up the flag. I almost got lynched,” she recalled. “I was afraid they would burn it, so I held on to it with all my strength.”
“They shouted ‘Free Palestine’ at me … It was so humiliating.”
Mikkel Bjørn, a member of the Danish Parliament for the Danish People’s Party, condemned the attack in a post on X.
“A Jewish woman is brutally attacked in Christiania by a group of men with a Middle Eastern background. Spit on, called a ‘child murderer,’ choked and dragged along the ground while 50 people watched and laughed. No one helps. Is this the import of hatred we want to accept in Denmark?” Bjorn wrote.
En jødisk kvinde overfaldes brutalt på Christiania af en gruppe mænd med mellemøstlig baggrund. Spyttet på, kaldt “barnemorder”, kvæles og slæbes hen ad jorden, mens 50 ser på og griner. Ingen hjælper. Er det denne import af had, vi vil acceptere i Danmark? #dkpol #dkmedier pic.twitter.com/d12ekbyGiJ
— Mikkel Bjørn (@Mikkel_Bjorn) March 11, 2025
The post Jewish Woman Wearing Israeli Flag Attacked in Copenhagen first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran, China, Russia Call for End to ‘Unlawful Sanctions’ Amid Tensions With US Over Tehran’s Nuclear Program
From left to right: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi pose for a photo as they meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025, in Beijing, China. Photo: Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS
China and Russia have called for an end to the “unlawful sanctions” imposed on Iran, as the three nations expand their cooperation amid growing Western pressure over Tehran’s nuclear program.
During a meeting in Beijing on Friday, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov discussed areas of cooperation and the Iranian nuclear program, expressing solidarity over a range of issues.
In a joint statement, the three countries emphasized the “necessity of terminating all unlawful unilateral sanctions,” seemingly referring to US and other Western economic penalties imposed on Iran’s imports and exports as an attempt to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
They called on all “relevant parties to refrain from taking any action that would escalate the situation” and undermine diplomatic efforts, stating that dialogue based on “mutual respect” is the only viable option.
The countries also “emphasized that the relevant parties should be committed to addressing the root causes of the current situation and abandoning sanction, pressure, or threat of force,” calling such actions “unacceptable” and highlighting the risks of regional escalation and environmental disaster.
In their statement, Russia and China praised Iran’s purported commitment to comply with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Safeguards Agreement to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
After their meeting, Beijing and Moscow emphasized that Tehran’s right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy should be “fully” respected.
“The Iranian side has never said a single word about intending to obtain nuclear weapons,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a separate statement. “In this respect, of course, all sanctions and restrictions are, in our view, illegal.”
“We believe that our Iranian friends have the right to develop a peaceful nuclear energy industry in their country,” he continued. “Russia is actively involved in this and is assisting our Iranian friends in this regard.”
On Thursday, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, accused Western countries of spreading false information about Tehran’s nuclear program to impose “illegal sanctions” that have deprived Iran of essential medical supplies and restricted its exports.
“Despite these facts, certain Western countries, particularly the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, have persistently sought to create a false narrative about Iran’s nuclear activities, alleging non-cooperation [with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog] and military ambitions,” Iravani said.
In their joint statement, Iranian, Chinese, and Russian officials also announced they achieved “very important and valuable agreements regarding the development of trilateral cooperation on significant international issues, including the necessity for the three countries to work together to counter US unilateral and bullying sanctions.”
Friday’s meeting came after Iran, China, and Russia on Wednesday concluded three days of joint naval drills in Iranian territorial waters in the Gulf of Oman, bolstering defense cooperation. Experts told The Algemeiner this week that expanding military cooperation between the three countries presents a rising threat to the US and its allies in the Middle East, especially Israel.
Both Beijing and Moscow have had deep interests in Tehran as a partner in the Middle East. China has continued to purchase Iranian crude oil despite Western sanctions and remains one of the top markets for Iranian imports. Meanwhile, Russia has relied on Iran for the supply of bomb-carrying drones used in its war on Ukraine.
Iran’s growing ties with China and Russia come at a time when Tehran is facing increasing sanctions by the United States, particularly on its oil industry, as part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at cutting the country’s crude exports to zero and preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Even though Tehran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon, the IAEA has warned that Iran is “dramatically” accelerating uranium enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level.
Tehran has repeatedly claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than weapon development.
However, Western states have said there is no “credible civilian justification” for the country’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
Last week, Iran’s so-called “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tehran will not be bullied into negotiations after US President Donald Trump revealed he had sent a letter to the country’s top authority to negotiate a nuclear deal.
Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected the possibility of nuclear talks with Washington.
“There will be no possibility of direct talks between us and the United States on the nuclear issue as long as the maximum pressure is applied in this way,” Araghchi said during a joint press conference with his visiting Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
Iran and Russia, which recently signed a pact to deepen their defense ties, have been working on an initiative to form an international alliance against US sanctions.
The post Iran, China, Russia Call for End to ‘Unlawful Sanctions’ Amid Tensions With US Over Tehran’s Nuclear Program first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Elise Stefanik Blasts UN for ‘Antisemitic’ Report Accusing Israel of Sexual Violence in Gaza
United Nations Ambassador-designate Elise Stefanik spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the next American ambassador to the United Nations has repudiated a new UN-backed report accusing the Israel Defense Force (IDF) of perpetrating sexual violence against Palestinians in Gaza, lambasting its claims as “antisemitic” and baseless.
“The corrupt UN Human Rights Council’s new baseless report is antisemitic and anti-Israel slander,” US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) posted on social media on Thursday, when the report was published. “The so-called ‘Human Rights Council’ [UNHRC] has failed to condemn the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israel including the brutal slaughter, torture, kidnapping of thousands of innocent civilians, and Hamas’s horrific use of rape and sexual violence against Israeli women and girls, yet disgracefully attacks Israel with unfounded smears.”
Stefanik continued, “This report exposes the disgraceful and obsessive antisemitism of UNHRC and reaffirms why President Trump took the strong, correct decisive executive action to withdraw from it.”
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Thursday published a report, commissioned by the Human Rights Council, that accused Israel of committing “genocidal acts” and employing sexual violence in Gaza. The report alleged that Israeli military forces have used sexual abuse and forcible stripping as weapons of war against Palestinian civilians.
“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” the report said.
Upon the report’s release, Israel’s permanent mission to the UN released a statement rejecting the allegations, arguing that they lacked substantiation and were based on uncorroborated sources.
“In a shameless attempt to incriminate the IDF and manufacture the illusion of ‘systematic’ use of [sexual and gender-based violence], the [Commission of Inquiry] deliberately adopts a lower level of corroboration in its report, which allowed it to include information from second-hand single uncorroborated sources,” the mission said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also repudiated the UNHRC, arguing that the “antisemitic” council has launched unsubstantiated allegations against the Jewish state with the goal of tarnishing its reputation.
“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the UN is once again choosing to attack Israel with false accusations, including unfounded accusations of sexual violence,” Netanyahu wrote.
In contrast, Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza, said that the report confirmed Israel’s “genocidal” actions within the enclave.
“The UN’s investigation report on Israel’s genocidal acts against the Palestinian people confirms what has happened on the ground: genocide and violations of all humanitarian and legal standards,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told AFP.
Several investigations have revealed that Hamas-led Palestinians perpetrated widespread sexual violence against Israeli women and girls not only during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel but also later against Israeli hostages kidnapped during the onslaught.
Anne Herzberg, legal adviser and UN representative for NGO Monitor, told The Algemeiner that the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice will likely use the report to bolster their genocide cases against Israel. Other anti-Israel initiatives such as the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS) will also likely reference the report in future activities.
Stefanik was tapped by Trump to serve as the ambassador to the United Nations for the current administration. However, Stefanik has not yet been confirmed by the US Senate to serve in the post. Senate Republicans are reportedly slowing her confirmation process due to concerns over the narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives, where her vote is seen as necessary to pass key legislation.
The post Elise Stefanik Blasts UN for ‘Antisemitic’ Report Accusing Israel of Sexual Violence in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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