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This holiday season. Let Paramount Pictures take you for the right of your life with Airplane to the sequel. Get your ticket for the funniest movie of the year. Airplane two the sequel.
I got smoking, not smoking, first class coach economy by an hour by the window.
Plane two the sequel reunites old friends Ted have.
The strangest feeling.
We've been through this exact same thing.
For except this time I know exactly what I'm doing.
Lane.
Well, my goodness, Scraps is a boy dog, isn't he. Airplane two will gives you more drama.
We've been thrown off course.
Just to Tad.
In space terms, that's about half a million miles. The bunch you feel are.
Asteroids smashing into the hull of this ship.
We're also out of coffee.
More action that your puppy's done, Yeah, Scraping, he's going to the MoU with us.
Oh no, I'm sorry. No, dogs are allowed on the shuttle.
I'm afraid scraps will have to be shot and more romance.
Sir, you should really put that case in the compartment above your head.
I'll keep it with it.
Why I can help you if you can't get it up. A word is out.
Now what kind of travelers checks were they give? We're American excess. Huh, I'm afraid you're screwed.
Oh see Airplane two the sequel. Because it will grow hair on bald men, make fat ladies thin, Let fish breathe out of water, make blind men see.
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We hope your use of these glasses has enhanced your enjoyment of scenes from Airplane Too, the sequel, The funniest comedy of the year, Airplane two, the sequel.
Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Join me once again as mister Mark Begley.
And then we ended up in Fresno. Fresno. No one goes to Fresno anymore.
Also back in the booth is mister Chris Tashue.
How many kids get a chance to live on another planet.
We're returning to some familiar territory that we discussed on our Police Squad in color series with Ken Finkleman's Airplane two of the sequel, known in Spanish as I Piloto.
The film was released in nineteen eighty two December and reunite viewers with Robert Hayes as Ted Striker, Julie Haggerty as Elaine Dickinson, as well as a few other familiar faces like Peter Graves as Captain Over, Lloyd Bridges as Steve McCroskey, Steven Stucker as Jacobs, David Leisure or Leisure as a Jehovah's witness, and a few other passengers that include Al White as a jive talker. Airplane two is set in the near future where space travel is common
for people just like Katie Gary. This time it's up to Ted Striker to try and save an experimental space shuttle on its way to the Moon, and a sequel that's very much in the If you liked it before, you'll like it again, Vade. We'll be discussing that and a whole lot more as we go along, and I guess I should say that we're going to get into some spoilers, but that's not important right now. Mark, when was the first time you saw Airplane Too the sequel? And what did you think?
A don't remember. I don't know if I saw this in the theater. I always thought I did, because I knew that there was a reference to Fresno, which is my hometown where I live currently. In anytime anything mentioned Fresno,
I automatically locked it in my brain. Although knowing that there were four pairs of boobies exposed in this film and I don't remember that at all, leads me to believe that I didn't see this until it was on TV, because I guarantee you it would have been renting the fuck out of this movie knowing that it was PG and I could get away with it and I'd see boobies. So I don't know. I don't know if it was in the theater. I don't know if it was VHS
or TV showing. I don't remember much else other than that Fresnel line, and nothing really struck me as all that nostalgic or anything other than that, and so I have no idea. So going into it, I was like an eighties comedy sequel, it's going to be diminishing returns. And as the jokes flew in that opening segment there, as the credits are rolling, and then a little bit after that, I thought, oh, this is a fucking joke.
A minute, We're sticking with that same formula, and I'm enjoying most of these visual gags and puns and what is it that repeat throughout the film? And I thought, oh, okay, this is going well. I'm okay with this. And can't say what my initial thoughts were of the film, but on watching it this time for the show, I really quite enjoyed it.
And Chris, how about yourself?
I believe I saw this film sometime in the mid two thousands. I owned it on DVD and I received it via trade through a person to person DVD trading service. I can't remember what the name of it was, but it was a really good idea and there was definitely a market for it at the time, for the group of people that were into trading DVDs amongst each other and getting access to things that you would not have
had access to otherwise. I remember having access to those weird versions of Evil Dead because there's six or seven versions of Army of Darkness and Evil Dead that came out on DVD. Because of that, I have most of them, and I would not have any of them otherwise. So I know I got this movie through that peer to peer trading service. I don't remember much about it. I
remember unlike Mark, I remember not like it. So I was worried this time watching it now that this was going to be a slog in the vein of slogs that we have done. You didn't mention the Chevy Chase podcast, but some of the Chevy Chase movies that we've done have been slogs, and some of them have been sequel flogs, like Caddy Shack Too, which, by the way, Caddy Shack Too is so bad?
How bad does it?
It makes this movie look like a masterpiece, And this movie's actually quite good. I actually really enjoyed Airplane Too as much as Mark put it very afterly, like if you liked the first one, this is a joke, A minute fest just like the first one. It is, and in a lot of ways, there are a lot of gags that the first movie does that this movie also does.
But I would also say that this movie does those gags and does interesting things with them that I wouldn't expect this movie to do, or any movie to do. And in a lot of ways, this movie is uniquely suited to do those jokes because it's a sequel to the movie that did those jokes. If any movie is allowed to do this thing that Airplane did, it's Airplane two. And if you liked Airplane one and the jokes and gags of Airplane one, Airplane two is literally more of
the same. In this case, that's not a bad thing. I don't think it's a bad thing. I think this movie has its problems. This movie is not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think anybody who comes onto any one of our shows expects to hear us say like perfect movies, because we rarely run into those films, but we do run into them from time to time. I think this movie is a
perfectly serviceable comedy sequel. And to Mark's initial point, the eighties and comedy sequels that is not a necessarily like peanut butter and jelly combination, at least not in terms of going together or complimentary. And again I would use Caddyshack two as a obvious example of that, though, what about you, Mike.
You know, I don't remember the first time I saw this. I might have seen it the metrically back in eighty two, maybe I would have been ten years old. But this movie is indelibly printed on my brain. There are a lot of jokes in here, and I had to go back to the first airplane and rewatch that just to make sure that it wasn't just a duplicate gag. There are a couple gags where I'm like, oh, I thought that was an airplane, but no, they were actually doing
it themselves. I want to say, the little Breeder gag is one, and that's just something that I thought was an airplane. So there are a lot of gags in Airplane two that were so good that I thought for sure they were in the first one. So even at the mental hospital, like checking the guy's oil and refilling his oil in all this, like behind Striker, because that was the thing I think Finklman really captured very well.
Is we talk about the whole like the cognizant of the background when it comes to Airplane or any of the other zaz movies, right, And Finckelman captures that. There's a lot of stuff that he captures. And I have to say him and Al Jean and Mike Reese who would later go on to produce The Simpsons for years and years, and the three of them, they crafted some amazing jokes. And also the Macho Grande. I thought that all of Macho Grandi was in the first movie. That's how wonderfully written that is.
Oh it's not it's not over. Macho Grande is only in the second.
Interesting. Yeah, I thought they were referencing because I know he cracked up. That's why he was in the mental hospital in the first film. And I thought, oh, they're just referencing pretty consistently throughout the film, the first film. But that's why I exactly the same thing. I thought that Fresno gag was from Airplane because I don't really
remember seeing Airplane too. And I did an episode of my show where I called all these clips of films that referenced Fresno, and so I kept putting an airplane Fresno gag and it's no direct me to this, and I'm like, oh, I obviously saw it at some point because it's one of the characters from Airplane, right. I mean, he's one of what four recurring characters in the two films, Stephen Stucker.
No Leslie Nielsen, because what was Leslie Nielsen doing instead Police Squad in the TV show, Which is wild to think about it and of itself, because that feels like such a logical progression from this And to your point, Mike, the biggest success of this movie is it feels like it was directed by Zias and that is a huge positive because it's not directed by Ball.
I thought it was going to be more like the episodes of Police Squad that they weren't so directly involved in, where you get the pale comparison even that late Joe Dante. And I'm speaking for myself, but I believe we all kind of love or adore Joe Dante. But that second episode that he directed was just one of the worst because it wasn't following those zaz Gag rules of you know, if you've got something going in the background, you don't
have something going on in the foreground. You just have exhibition or whatever happening in the foreground, or not calling attention to the gags, although Robert Hayes does do that
in this film quite a bit. I was surprised. I don't know if it's more than in the first, but the kind of knowing glance, the bugging, either fourth wall breaking or just rolling your eyes at the gag, and that's stuff that seemed to permeate more in the later stuff in Airplane that rarely happens, and even in the early episodes of Police Squad, it's like, you don't call attention to the absurdity of the joke. Somebody's got to play it straight, and Robert Hayes, a striker for the
most part, is our straight man. But the side glances and the things like that seem to play out a lot more in this one, which to me is I don't need to be told that this was funny, Like I'm either going to get it or I'm not. There's a gag when he shows up to the airport where he's in the back of a pickup truck, and if you've never seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers are going to miss that gag, and it's as a kid, I probably would have completely missed it, but here I'm catching it.
They don't call attention to it. That's the whole point of that. You just see these big pods in the back ever so briefly. And I don't know if the name on the truck has anything to do with the movie or which movie it would have. Both of those movies have trucks with pods carrying places around the country. But stuff like that I enjoy, Like I don't call it out to me, let me figure it out myself in multiple viewings, or if I get it on the first take, great, But yeah, the sideline glances bugged me
in this. And that was about it though. And I think Chris, you made a very good point. Is if there's going to be a movie that riffs on itself, this is a perfect way to do that.
Only one that's allowed to and not like allowed it makes sense, It makes the most sense.
Yeah, it does make sense.
Let some other people come in and riff, and that is what this movie feels like. I feel like we're also uniquely suited to have this conversation. It is not Caddyshack too Caddyshack two is a fucking abomination of a film. It's so bad that the director had like issues afterwards because of it. He more or less disavows the movie. Alan Arkish is someone who one of our creative partner's father, Malone, is friends with was on one of the Blu Ray
releases for a movie. But that's like a known thing, is that movie is so bad and was hacked up and taken apart and put back together so poorly that the director of the film disavows it. Nobody's disavowing this movie, not in the way that Alan Arkish is disavowing Caddyshack too. And I see why, because, yeah, maybe this movie, if you watch it after watching Airplane, you go and maybe
I didn't need more of this. But at the same time, if you watch Airplane and then watch Airplane two, like a year later or six months later, or maybe a week later, you'll be like, go, Okay, it's not necessarily the same movie. But it's like jazz riffing. It's doing the same things, playing similar notes, just and maybe in a different key.
Again, it's like poetry, so that they run.
By the way mark, the thing on the side of the truck. It's as Ken's trucking with a maple leaf.
It's actually a reference to Finkleman himself in some of the side gags here too, like obviously we are very much in late nineteen eighty two for some of this, So like one of the first vans we see pull up at the airport is the Iran passenger van and all of the guys coming out and helping the hostages out, Or we see an air Pakistan poster later on when Lain and Ted are talking to each other and yeah, there's this fiery plane in the background.
So yep, all the Middle Eastern characters carrying bazukahs and oozing.
Yep, just walking through security like it's nobody's business. And you can just tell this is before nine to eleven because now it's so to have to get a gun on an airplane. Oh wait, no, they just had that happen recently, So.
Hold on a second. In this film, the gate agent has a gun. My favorite gag in this entire movie. Hey it's blank.
Hey, what the fuck is.
This movie's problem? It is the most mean spirited gag. A child and his parents with a dog are walking through the airport and the Gate agent shows up and goes, oh, you can't bring your dog to the moon, pulls out a gun and shoots the dog. The dog plays dead, and I goes, hey, it's blanks. What it is the funniest gag in the whole movie.
Not just a kid, but Oliver Robbins from Poltergeist fame.
That kid. Also, again to the reference that I made at the beginning of the episode, his dad has one of the funniest back and forth. Again, very mean spirited. They were asking for it, They're always asking for well, yoh. I appreciate the dark humor in this movie. I think this movie is a little darker than the original, which I think also works in its favor. It's a little edgier. I think this movie is a little edgier, and not
like in an embarrassing way. There's a moment where two men kiss in this movie, and the movie doesn't really draw any attention to it.
No, that was hysterical.
That was hysterical.
That the rape stuff with the dad was completely unexpected for me threw me off completely. I'm like, oh my god, we're going there. Kept reminding myself. This is prior to the PG thirteen grading. Because I believe it most definitely would have gotten that a couple of years down the road, just from the newter just.
All the boobs.
Yes, in the first ten minutes of this movie.
Amount of bootage in this movie, I was stunned.
There's animal play like crazy, and we've had a reference to some bestiality in the first movie when.
Who was a Robert stabberda his wife.
And here you've got the girl who just keeps pretending she's a virgin and the last one you see her sleep with us the donkey.
The two men kissing that you mentioned was great. I was totally taken by surprise with that. I'm like, that was classic. They continue their conversation and then see it at home or whatever.
It was perfect, zero fanfare.
Well, you get the little look between David Leisure and his fellow Gate agent from Transcendental Air. They just kind of look at each other. Oh, isn't that nice?
Yeah?
Yeah, I like the edgy your humor only and again, like you've mentioned the beast reality and it's just it feels like a logical extension of the seventies humor of the last movie being a little bit less envelope, pushing more or again more envelope pushing for the time, depending
on how you want to look at it. And now it's again right at the end of the opportunity to be PG, because nineteen eighty three, I believe has been Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Arc essentially makes of Doom is the one no, no, I know, but Raiders the Lost Arc also is PG, and like that movie should not be PG either. And I think it's as much as we talk about it being Temple of Doom, like Raiders of the Loss Arc really is the movie that starts the conversation, because that movie should not be
PG either. There are people's heads exploding and face is melting. And I'm not saying I think it's BPG. I'm saying broadly, at the time it should not have been, Like there was no other rating for it.
Even Grimlins, and there were a bunch of movies in that eighty two to eighty four and before it kicked in that we're pushing that envelope. Even sixteen Candles seemed very close. They had to cut a few cuss words out to get that PG rating. But again you've got nudity, A couple shots of nudity in that you've got cuss words, one F word, and then I believe a couple other
F words were edited out. It was either that or are and this though, I mean, I know it's just bear breasts, but four examples of bear breasts in one movie. I was like, man, this, I'm really surprised by that.
And what's crazy is I quote the fact that airplane has breasts in it so often as that's wild that it's PG. This is crazy for the times you get four times as many, like in Rapid Succession in the same scene, and then we never seen breast.
The just get the one when Striker is doing his painting.
Yeah, so there's three upfront, and then the one pair in the Ronald Reagan the Mental Hospital.
Still before the eleven minute mark. So yeah, definitely way early. I think Bonnie and Clyde might have been rated R, but then you get to things like Jaws and that's rated PG as well. I feel like they just used PG thirteen as more of an excuse, and I feel like PG thirteen is nowhere near as rough as these PG movies were back then. No, I think you get one F word and I don't know how many boobs because Americans can't handle boobs. We can handle violence like crazy, but do not show a bare breast.
How dare you offend my American sensibilities by showing me at nipple.
I'm always surprised that Jaws was PG, and I had created my own Mandela effect in my head, thinking oh, that's the current rating because it was rated R when agad it would been rated R in nineteen seventy five. There's nudity, there's gore, they're swearing. Nope, always been PG.
And what's crazy to Mike's both of your points, like now the PG thirteen is one F bomb, no nudity. Man, This was a simpler time then, wasn't it. I guess people were less offended by breasts back in nineteen eighty two, And I don't know. I wasn't alive then to comment on breast, but I would feel like now we're in a different time. But again, people now are just as bent out of shape, feel like.
Played for laughs And every scene in this movie the nudity, but it's not sexual in any way technically.
But and that's the problem with a rating system to begin with, is the rating system. These rating systems have never really taken context into effect with any of this, breast being shown in a comedic fashion is very different than a breast being shown during a rape scene. The context is very different for the two gags. Even if the second was I even a gag, it is just being used to again lay up a scene, make a
scene more intense. I mean again, I think of something like Possession, where Isabella Johnny is not naked, she is fully clothed, and that scene is horrifying. That scene is so intense and there is no nudity there, and yet you would look at this movie Goals. Movie has breast, so it clearly is the one that needs to be rated R and that movie has no Again, it has nudity, but in those scenes where people again are getting bent
out of shape, no nudity. It's like the context is so important and all PG ratings or our ratings are not created equal, especially at this time during the MPAA's kind of reign of terror.
So the movie plays very similarly to the first one. The whole thing of all right, we start at the airport, we go through introducing all of the characters, and I think we're done introducing pretty much everybody other than Shatner. Shatner and Lloyd Bridges I think are the two hold doubts.
Lloyd Bridges comes in about the middle of the movie, and then Shatner towards the end of the movie, which is my only complaint because Shatner is just so fucking good, But I think using him in spareness is probably a good idea. We'll talk about some of the deleted scenes, and there's some that he is in that I have no idea what they are, but yeah, we'll try to postulate about those. And then, like the Sunny Bono thing, having a terrorist on the plane, it really doesn't come
to very much of anything. He's just another passenger. There's not a whole lot of time spent with him, and once he's taken out of it as a threat, it's basically just, oh, we'll use the bomb to blow up Rock. Who is their version of the Hall nine thousand, which again I think they could have taken a little bit farther, but maybe they did write him out here because I don't feel like I'm missing anything when I watch this.
I was confused about the Sunny Bono thing because he's supposed to be going to des Moine does he plane or the guy's a.
Total idiot because he also buys what was it like, car insurance instead of travel insurance. Yeah, it's like even if he died on that flight, it wouldn't pay off at all for his wife. And I guess he's just in a suicidal mood because of his problem. Oh gosh, I can't talk about that problem on the air. We might get canceled.
It wouldn't be a problem today because he could get his viagra for you know, blue Chee baby covered by his insurance.
Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah, it's funny how I mean, we just talked about Joe's problem recently, which was not impotence. It was sterility, as Mexica was very quick to point out. He was definitely boning a lot of broads on that show, especially prostitutes, but no problem getting it up. It was just actually having a baby. And I think that's probably Sonny Bono's thing here too. I don't think it's that he can't have a baby. I think it's that he is not the cable of getting it up because he's
very sensitive too. When Elaine does that little offer of do you need help getting it up?
Yeah, and rip torn and the other guy know the institute that they're talking about.
We're familiar with it.
That was my other complaint Rip turns under used in this. I saw him and I'm like, wait, is that him? And I thought, oh boy, we're gonna have some crazy shit going on. But he's only in a couple scenes and in an ean.
What would the elevator musaic gag? Did anybody else get the music gag?
It's just louder than it would normally be. It's usually you can barely hear it when you're in an elevator, but for some reason, it was blaringly loud.
Okay.
I was just curious because I was like, is the gag that? There's a lot of gags in this movie that are like intentional, like Rocky thirties six or thirty eight or whatever it is. He's an old man again, like stuff in the background, Like there's a lot of just like things going on in the background that are so intentional. And again it goes back to Mike mentioned
the Simpsons of it all. If you know that the space can be crammed full of everything, make sure you do because people will go back and be able to enjoy your thing multiple times because they're going to see something else different every time they watch it, or at least seem more than they would have seen the first time.
The nurse with the I Love Sanity sorry on the back of her gown.
I'd like the thing when Chuck Connors shows up and they've got the sign that says no smoking, no spitting, and he, like the takes the formerly lit match and throws it. Nothing happens, but then he spits and the whole thing explodes.
Yeah, that was nice.
Yeah, same thing with Chuck Connor's. I thought there'd be more of him as well, and I was just like, oh, yeah, really, this focus is so much on Elaine and Ted that we don't even really get too much of the other guys areding the cockpit, and I was really glad that they didn't go the same way and be like, Okay, who's going to be our sports star that we have sit next to Peter Graves. No, we're not doing that. Instead, we've got James A. Watson Junior. And who's the other
one is that? Kate McCord. That's right, Chad Everett is the one that plays Simon. Yeah, ket McCord, that's nice. Because wasn't he in Battlestar Galactica.
Kenton McCord was on ADAM twelve. He was either on Adam twelve or what was the one with the EMTs emergency. I think it was on Adam twelve. I think you're right, get those two shows mixed up. But speaking of amazing sequels, he was Impredator too, probably one of the best sequels ever made. He was in Galactica nineteen eighty. I don't know if he was in the irregular Battlestar Galactica, but they used that Battlestar Galactica theme more than the Elmer
Bernstein theme in this one. And you've got the love boat theme going on, You've got all kinds of themes going on.
I was surprised we didn't get O. J. Simpson in the cockpit, to be honest with you, that would have been interesting given that were like, what only a couple of years removed from seeing OJ Simpson in as Zaz, thing that I think arguably ends up being the most famous thing he ever does in terms of like movies, to the point where they're referencing it in that upcoming Naked Gun Movies trailer that we know that oj Simpson is a real murderer in real life, which is fucking
crazy to me in and of itself. But yeah, I feel like with some of the background gags in this movie, and again, Mike, you talked about the deleted scenes, sometimes they do swing for the fences in a direction that I don't think they were prepared to really land it. I think they just sometimes and you see this early on in early seasons of The Simpsons. Sometimes they just swing for the fences, and there's nothing wrong with that,
but it doesn't always land. Is the bigger issue. I would say some of the things in this movie that don't land are retreading some of the old movie stuff more or less directly. Like we have him in the hospital and they do the exact same gag from the first movie. I was like, yeah, it was funny the first time, but we don't need to see the layover of his face with the planes again. Some of those things did feel like we're in the scene and we're doing the thing in the scene, but then we are
one step too far. They gild the lily as it were, Like we go to the hospital, we see him doing all those hospital things again, but then it does the one thing where it's and then we do the thing inside the thing again, and I'm like, okay, Like that for me was probably one of those like the joke within the joke within the joke probably goes too far, And that's one of those where I'm like, I don't know, Like they did the Macho Grande thing so well, that kind of sticks out for me, is okay, the Macho
grande stuff serves a purpose, but then you do that one step too far back in the direction of the original thing as opposed to taking it and riffing in the other direction.
That is one of the weaker areas of the script, is that the conflating because we've got that trial that happens as a flashback what midway through the movie, maybe after the first act, and it's conflating the whole thing of Ted saying no, you can't take this. Was it the XR twenty three hundred, Yeah, as opposed to the XR twenty two hundred.
What's wrong they're launching the XR twenty three hundred.
You know what that is, doctor, the.
Muffler bracket for a seventy nine pinto Oh.
That's the XR twenty two hundred to twenty three hundreds the lunar shuttle.
It's kind of stopped.
Don't you understand. They frame me and put me in here to keep me out of the way.
You must understand the first st up on the road to mental hygiene is admitting.
That you're sick.
You're sick, you're sick, you're sick, you're sick, you're sick, you're sick.
This whole thing. If you can't take this XR twenty three hundred out, it's still experimental and blah blah blah. But somehow they take that and comflight that with this guy is a total loon because of what happened over Macho Grande.
And also what happened in the first movie, because you mentioned already and we haven't talked about it, the character of the jive talker from the first movie comes back as a witness to reference what happened in the first movie.
And they also are again, like to Mark's point about Macho Grande, to your point about Mancho Grande, they are conflating what happened in the first movie and what happened before the first movie that they referenced in the first movie with what they're referencing here like mar With like Macho Grande is in the first movie. No, it's all in this movie, which is pretty nuts because it does feel like it almost should have been in the first movie in a way.
Yeah, I know that something happened with him and his former squad, and so I just assume that that's what they were talking about, because when he's in the mental hospital then painting the guy with the leg over his head and all that stuff out of the exploding jeep.
Hey striker, how about a break here, huh?
And he was in the mental hospital in the first movie because of what happened at Macho Grande, But they never explicitly say Macho Grande. Then that's my goof misremembering another Mandela effect.
I just think this movie gets tangled up in itself too much, and I think it retroactively hurts the first movie's gags because I do think that some of the things for the first movie happened in this movie actually, and it's wait a second, and it is retreading old ground in an unnecessary way, because there are plenty of gags in this movie where they retread old ground that
do work. That thing feels like even though the Macho Grande gag is one of the best gags in the movie, that for me is one of the things where I'm like, I feel like this was just too much of the original movie. For me, that was too much of going back to the original movie.
I flew with Striker during the war. I'll never forget the night we bomb Macho Grande. Striker was a squadron leader. He brought us in real low. But he couldn't handle it.
Buddy couldn't handle it.
Was Buddy, one of your crew.
Right, Buddy was the bombedier. But it was Striker who couldn't handle it. And he went to pieces and he went to pieces.
No, Andy was the navigator.
He was all right.
Buddy went to pieces. It was awful.
How he came and glued.
How he came on glued, Oh no, how he.
Was our rock, the best tail gunner in the outfit.
Buddy came on glued.
Andy bailed out.
No, Andy hung tough.
Buddy bailed out. How we survived was a miracle.
And how we survived, oh raid not.
We lost Howie the next day over Macho Grande. No, I don't think I'll ever get over Macho Grande. Those wounds run pretty deep.
Yeah.
Some things about the trial that I do like, though, are Reamond Burr as the judge, and especially when Elaine was talking about the love of a good man.
Can no a very close one.
We had the kind of relationship where we laughed and laughed and laughed all the time.
Do you know what it's like to laugh like that?
Yes, yes I do. Raymond Burr was looking rough there, man. I'm like, man, he didn't look that good. And I don't know if he was still doing Ironside at the time, but yeah.
I'm not sure, because he came back and did a lot of Perry Mason movies. Yeah, but there were some of those I whytn't say there were some movies that he actually wasn't in that they were set up as Harry was that the one where was his name? Paulie from Catalyst took over Paulie from Good Fold, and I thought he came in and was Sorvino was playing. I think he might have been like his partner or something. All right, now, I gotta looking at what I'm talking about.
They did that kind of stuff with the murder, she wrote, where they would have whole episodes where she wasn't even on it. It was like she was writing the story or whatever.
Also played Anthony Caruso in the Perry Mason movie of Perry Mason Mystery The Case of the Wicked Wives in nineteen ninety three. This was after Raymond Burr passed away. Servino's character was a lawyer, and the movie was the first in this series to be filmed after Burr's death.
Including it doesn't say there, whatever you were reading, doesn't mention it. But I'll ask if you want to take a swing at it. Do you want to guess who also played a lawyer? Then in one of those four episodes, it wasn't just Paul Sorvino. It's Stanley Tucci, how Holbrook, which must be fascinating. I want to find that and watch that. Yeah, I'm with you, Mark, my girlfriend and I watch murder, she wrote, from time to time, and those episodes will come on, and man, those episodes stink
on ice face, stink. This is what was happening to my cousin. Nobody cares, Jessica Fletcher. If we want Angela Landsberg.
Without there is nothing appealing about the show at all.
Yeah, not to bespirch friend of the show Grayton Clark or a friend of me, Graydon Clark, but was in the kind of waning years of Raymond Burr before he came back as Perry Mason, like he came back in eighty five, but right before this he did Graydon Clark's The Return, and I remember Graydon telling me about how Raymond Burr refused to learn lines and that he just
insisted on having queue cards everywhere. There's a scene where he's like looking down at this like map or display or something, and Graydon was like, Oh, yeah, he's got que cards all over that whole thing because he just never memorized lines.
That's not uncommon. It's surprising to find it out at certain times, but a lot of people did that.
Marlon Brando was doing it, Johnny Depp was doing it as recently as those last Pirate.
Mitchel getting think the lines lines. The bit that got old for me was the what is it? I don't know how many times they use that in this one, but I was like, come on, it's not that funny again. The sun, what the hospital? Like in the first one, what is it? What's a building?
Murrie?
You go when you're sick.
One of the other gags that sticks out as well, it was so much funnier and worked better in the first movie was the old when they cut back to Striker telling the story and the old woman is like a skeleton. In the first movie, it was so much better. She like lights herself on fire.
Yeah, or the Japanese guy committing Harry Carreys.
You didn't have to do every single gag for the first Some of them do work here. Some of them retreading the old gags and then going left when you think they're gonna go right do work. But then there are some where it's like you don't do enough to warrant retreading this again. They did do it better the first time. There are gags in this movie, like the over macho Grande thing is one of the best gags between both movies. It might even be better than some of the best gags in the first movie.
Yeah, the lady, the hysterical lady.
I gotta get out of here. I've got to get out of here.
Them just redoing, like showing the flashback to the first movie to enter deuce the let's slap her again. In the second movie, it's like, all right, didn't need that.
Yeah, some of it's belaboring the point, but I think for the most part, again, like to return to what I think are the positives of this movie. I think this movie, if every minute there's ten jokes, I think eight out of the ten jokes work in this movie, and an Airplane, it's like a ten out of ten for the most part. If not, it is always a ten out of ten with Airplane. I think Airplane is a perfect comedy in a lot of ways.
I was a huge fan of John Verman, so him showing up as the psychiatrist is great and just he can do that so perfectly. I think he's one of the first actors I ever saw that can do that deadpan so well, but then also just flip it and make it comic, just like Les Nielsen would become known after Airplane is doing that by John Vernon. It was just such a natural for him to do that.
Doctor.
Can you give the court your impression of mister Striker. I'm sorry, I don't do impressions. My training and psychiatry. Of course, to have John Vernon, Canada's own John Vernon and Canada's own William Shatner is two of the bigger players in here. I'm just like, yes, this is great.
He is really one of the funnier characters in this movie, Like you get a lot of mileage out of him as an actor and his comedic like deadpan. I think we've already mentioned it, but every really could have used more Chuck Connors in this movie. As someone who's a huge fan of Where Wolf and wanting more Chuck Connors
in that show. I like the idea of Chuck Connor's spitting gasoline and then Lloyd Bridges comes back, which feels unnecessary, but at the same time I love it because it's like they're just like, just do the same thing all over again, literally, and it feels like of all the things that they retread, it does work. Even though I was convinced it.
Would, I picked her wrong time to go Seni on.
I think it's unfortunate that the deleted scene of his where he is in the mental hospital is cut out, because you don't get the feeling that he's really off kilter without that. I missed that, and then when I watched the deleted scene, I was like, oh, this makes sense because you don't get any of the glue sniffing or drinking. You get some of the drinking, but you don't get that aspect of him that you got in the first film. So it's what's his shtick in this
other than being off? And it just felt like that was missing or I missed the joke. I know they refer to him being unstable, but having him also be in the mental institution to me seems necessary for this. Like I said, I guess I just maybe missed it without that. But because I was expecting the glue sniffing again, I was expecting something like that to happen, and it never does, and I was like, oh, okay, he's just brain addled.
But I feel like they're making another Rigan joke when he says I picked the wrong weak to go senile. And you've got those two very prom shots of the Ronald Reagan Home for the Mentally Ill, and really we only needed one of them, and probably the first one just to show us an establishing shot because when Ted escapes, he does it right by that big sign. I'm like,
that's a little much here, guys. But if you watch the TV version, they caught all that stuff out, or they rename it the Donald Dragan Home for the mentally ill, and we can't make fun of Reagan, can't do that. So I'm like, really, we were debating before the show started as far as when did people know he was not mentally unsound? Was it the whole I don't remember to the Iran Contra.
Affair, or I feel like it came later. I don't remember. I was thirteen when this movie came out, and this was still the middle of his first term, so I really don't remember there being any kind of snippets about him being I'm not even going to say unstable, just forgetful. The joke was that he was an old man, the oldest president that we had so far we can up till then, the kind of oh golly tenor of his
voice and all that was a joke. But I really I was surprised by that and the constant kind of sinility jokes, because I'm thinking to myself, nobody was speculating on that back then, not until much later in his second term. I don't know, but I was a kid, so it's very possible that I missed anything like that
in the news. But they do get they do get a shot about air traffic controllers because that was definitely a real thing, along with shutting down the mental hospitals that we talked about off podcasts, But that whole air traffic control thing was a huge deal back then, and
we traveled. We were flying sometime and around that time trying to get up to Oregon to visit my mom's family, and it took forever layovers and down in southern California to go to go the opposite direction that we were headed, and it just was a nightmare for people.
Thanks Reagan, I remember, and I need to track this down because I remember it was a really good segment on sixty Minutes that they showed and I don't remember what year it was, but it was them basically going through a lot of Reagan's movies, and he would be giving speeches and he would suddenly dip into his own stuff and you're thinking, Okay, yeah, he's just making a reference, but no, he would start to do the speech from the movie as if he were just doing that right
then and there, just oh yeah, and as a famous man told me, and he would go into this speech and are you mixing reality with your movies or what's going on here? So I really wish I could find that segment because I remember that being great. They'll probably scratch the archives pretty soon since I think sixty minutes has said bad things about her. Gloriously.
There you go again.
Some of the magazine jokes that they have in here, especially the anti religious stuff that they have in here. The priest who's played by the governor from Benson, which he's looking at Altar Boy magazine and tilts it on its side. Awful later on when they're like, put your head between your knees, your own knees, father.
At least you wasn't the sity next to the kid when they did that joke.
What about the experience of metabolic change jokes? Speaking of going right after politicians of the time, everybody has a Nixon mask.
Oh yeah, that one flew right over my head.
Man.
I was like, why are they all wearing Nixon masks?
It's Richard Nixon. It's just funny because it's Richard Nixon. There you go, That's all it is.
Yeah. Like I said, I think they could have done a little bit more with the two thousand and one stuff. I'm glad that they had Rock, though I'm not sure what rock is supposed to stand for. I really thought they would go for something a little bit more obvious when it came to that.
Yeah, I was surprised by that too, because it was apparent as soon as it started talking. I'm like, oh, this is a hal gag but roc hal. I mean they couldn't use IBM obviously, but go letters down again.
It goes back to the elevator music gag of it all right, like that's what it was for. It feels like it's rocked just because it comes off as like a human beings. But they didn't want to use Hell this is I don't know, Yeah, maybe that wasn't This is.
One of those movies. When it first started, I thought, oh god, I'm going to be writing down. I'm going to have three pages of just the gags. And I know we're not going to do that on the show. This is the projection booth. We're not going to do a just run through the gag type of episode. But you so easily could because, like you said, Chris, there's in jokes every thirty seconds, and eight of them are going to land and two of them might make it chuckle.
But man, oh man, it was I was thinking this is going to be exhausting because it seems like they were laying it on even thicker than the first film. Just in that opening segment. It does slow down, but I thought, oh my god, this is going to be exhausting.
Oh.
I know one gag I wanted to mention because it's come up on our Chevy Chase stuff and some other comedy episodes we've done. The ubiquitous Japanese man with a bunch of cameras makes an appearance in this lovely eighties comedy. I love that gag in the eighties, didn't we.
Yeah, boy, it's one of my favorites. The fuck movie. Yeah, Long Duck Dong. We're only a couple of years removed from Long Duc Dong.
So and he's got a camera, right, doesn't it.
He's a different kind of stereo hotwell, but I.
Do think he his first appearance on screen, he's taken a picture of her. If I remembering that correctly, I've only watched the movie fifty times, but I could be misremembering it and just putting my own Asian guy with camera spin on it. But yeah, that was one of those just recurring. I'd love to see it YouTube. I'm sure there is one of all of that through the years, Asian man with camera or Asian person with camera, and it's probably forty five minutes long from two hundred different movies.
Well, see, they were doing that in fucking Rush Hour. Yeah, I mean in Los Angeles. It's funny every time, Chris, It's funny every time. Okay, Yeah, because it's true.
When you take a trip somewhere, that's always Asian people with cameras. Only Asian people take pictures. Yes, it's only Asian people that carry cameras.
That's on their interesting.
Yeah, there's types because they're true.
Guys. Come on.
I was just going through the script trying to see if rock is spelled out any place, and I cannot find it spelled any place as far as what it stands for.
So I think that probably in my mind then it's probably meant to rhyme with cock.
Yeah, this is it's great toll thing in the script about Simon taking a bottle of anti fear pills and like how he isn't afraid of anything because he's basically popping pills the whole time. I do remember. It starts off in like a South American country and there's a cross over Ted's bed with a full sized man on the cross. So I guess it's like that, hey, Striker, can I take a break kind of thing, but instead of there being a statue of Jesus, it's a dude
standing up there. I'm like, okay, that would be interesting. But the script is interesting because it does have a ton of these jokes and just one after another, and they make it such that you can just pick up one and move it or just throw it away if you need to, and so it's remarkable what is there and what isn't.
Yeah, they can put that blast back anywhere in the movie, really like the cutaway to him thinking about what happened before. Yet the format and I guess like function of this movie feels rather not interchangeable, but you can definitely move things around because the gags don't necessarily feel hinned in place. The gags are taking place within the scene. The gags aren't the scene themselves, is what it feels like, which I think these Zaz movies are obviously the best version
of that. And then you have a lot of those movies that come afterwards that attempt to do it, but these are the original ones doing it the best. As far as I'm concerned.
The later films, and I think we'd in relation to Airplane or the whole Police Squad deal, where it's just reference after reference, and you get a little bit of that here and a little bit in Airplane, but it's not the modern spook comedies today just refer to other things. So that's the joke. And then if they're referring to things that don't last, like we've got references here to Star Wars, like we had a reference to Jaws and the so we've got the Star Wars crawl in this.
And then it turns on graphic, which I appreciated. You've got a Mission Impossible gag, which I'm surprised they didn't do in the first film. I don't think they did. And you got Peter Graves is sitting right there, and so you've got that. You've got the low boat gag, which today a lot of people aren't going to get any of those. But it's not just that it's not their plane. Too much like Airplane, unless you saw that original film for some reason that was totally straight film,
you wouldn't get. Yes, it's spoofing catastrophe movies. This is more of the same. What does Elane say, I've got the strangest feeling We've been through this exact same thing before. Yeah, but we're going into space, and somehow this shuttle is able to fly however, many millions of miles it is to the Sun in a very short time.
Very little fuel. Like the whole thing of the space shuttle is like so much of it was the fuel to break out of orbit. But yeah, and because they also show that other space shuttle that the kid controls and blows up. So I'm like, how many space shuttles are there at this point? Because they're talking about the may fol Hour one being this experimental shuttle, and I'm like, but wait, there's this other shuttle right now?
Yeah, I think, yeah, that's the continuity here.
Cinema, cinema.
What kind of podcast did I wander into everything wrong with airplane two in fifteen minutes?
Well, I'll tell you two things that are right with airplane two. One is the appearance of mister George went for a brief second, and the other one is Pat Sajack as well. Hell yeah, that was great when he shows up as the Buffalo fourteen news reporter.
Yeah, crazy, you're young, like twelve years old. Man, Oh yeah, and the original Jeopardy host gets a gets a little appearance there.
That's one of my favorite gags in the entire movies. The crew is in jeopardy or the passengers are in jeopardy and then it shows yeah and it shows oh my god. Some of those are like, the best gags of this movie are just h and there you go, and we're just moving on. Don't sit and linger. I appreciate that the movie doesn't linger because the mugging becomes too much later on.
The literalism isn't over the top in this as well, though, like some of the later Police Squad episodes and the Naked Gun films where we get that literalism is the gag repeatedly. If like the what is it gag, it's the same. It's like, I you don't need fifteen examples of that in the film, give me something new.
I like the use of the slow mo when Scraps is saving the day, but especially the guy who breaks and looks at his watch and then goes back to it.
That's pretty good tricks for the dog. He's a boy dog too, and we don't get too much of that repeated, and I was expecting it, and I'm like, oh, the Poldergey's kid is in the cockpit, so we're gonna get some overgag here. And of course the over younger done.
Which I thought that was nice.
Repeated but different names so it works.
And I'd like to see when Peter Graves is like and he's just like trying to figure it all out.
Yeah, that was good. That's how you do the repeat joke is throwing something new where even he's confused now. And of course there's more of that in one of the deleted scenes as well, with the over Yes, the.
Eggs over, et cetera. I'm sorry we don't do eggs over. Talking of dumb jokes, but I really like the whole thing that's going on with Chuck Connors and Lloyd Bridges with the cigarette cigarette coffee thing. It's so simple and so stupid, but I think they really pulled it off. And to see those two actors going at it together, I'm just like, yeah, I really like. Because that's the thing I like about these movies too. It's like to see the older actors where you're not used to seeing
them play comedy. Of course, now after not now and not twenty twenty five, but back in nineteen ninety five, it'd be like, oh, yeah, Lloyd Bridges, he plays the President, he plays in all of these movies. Now he's just he was Leslie Nielsen as Leslie Nielsen was just starting to lessen Nielsen.
I would say Lloyd Bridges was more like the parody guy in a lot of ways, because if you think about it's Airplane one, Airplane two, then it's top Gun or not top Gun, hot Shots, hot Shots, Pardue, where he's in both of those movies, and then he's also in Jane Austen's Moth where he plays Vincenzo ARMANI Winbreaker Cortino, which is a hell of a name. I think Leslie Nielsen's stuff that ends up being not good are his like parody things like later parody, things like Dracula Dead
and Loving It, that Exorcist movie, Repossessed Man. Leslie Nielson should have said to those movies, those movies are rough.
And yeah, like I said, it's just the saddest thing to me that Shatner doesn't show up until one hour and eight minutes in the movie, and he's just so freaking good and he's again, he's slaying that Robert Stack. Oh yeah, I know, Striker. He cracked up, and he's even doing the same thing at the end. I think that Stack does where he's like still giving the instructions to Striker after the vehicle is landed kind of thing.
And I guess there's just atmosphere on the moon. We're not going to go into all that stuff our way.
Sure, but we're not cinema sins, guys.
But I just love when Chattner is just like the blinking and the lighting.
We've all got to switches lights and knobs a deal with Striker. I mean down here there are literally one hundreds and thousands. I'm blinking, beating and flashing lights, blinking and beating and flashing, flashing and the beating.
I can't stand on him hard.
I'm blinking and maybe I'm already I'm all right.
He's just unhinged. And this is really the first time we get to see Schattner playing this level of comedy like we've seen him in things since then. Isn't he in one of those parody movies.
Chitta ampoons Loaded Weapon won Loaded Weapon? Because he's got the fish in his mouth, right he bites the Piranha.
We know he can do it, but this is still nineteen eighty two. This is the same year that Wrath of Kind is coming out.
I thought, oh, SHOT's gonna be phoning it in, but no, he was like, zing, he's funny, and he's really funny in this movie. I have to admit that gag of him thinking the audience thinking that he's on screen and he's just behind a door got me good. I lolled as the kids say at that one.
That is what the kids say. Every single one of them says that too.
I've heard in whispered tones through the pine that is, in fact what the children are saying these days. What are you, Seymour Skinner?
Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children whoever wrong?
I love sandel Bergen shows up as one of the officers there, the one holding ted Strikers four hundred Polka favorites.
Wish she had more to do.
It's worse than we ever imagined.
I've only seen her. I've only seen her in a couple of things, Conan and all that Jazz, and I love her in both, and so I wanted more.
Yeah, I really feel like she probably had a lot more to do in this because yeah, I guess was shot after the break.
Yeah, yeah, I'm whatever those deleted scenes were, I could have handled seen her like that, So whatever movie thinks a lot.
Yeah, that's the thing that there's a real mystery when it comes to these deleted scenes, because yeah, there's some that are known and some that I still cannot track down. So I'm very excited to talk about that. So I guess with that one, we should go ahead and take a break, and we are going to hear back from eight of people here. First, we're going to hear from
writer director Ken Finkleman. We're going to hear from writers Al Jean and Mike Reese, and actors James A. Watson and Robert Hayes himself, and we'll be back with all of that right after these brief messages.
Hello everyone, this is Malcolm McDowell. I just want to say that this is a request to listeners of the Projection Booth podcast to become patrons of the show via Patreon dot com, p A t R e O N dot com slash Projection Booth.
That's pretty simple.
I think you can do that.
It's a great show and Mike. He provides hours of great entertainment. So now it's time to give back my little drovies. Settle down and take a listen and have a sip of the old Molocco, and then you'll be ready for a little of the.
Old in Out, in Out Real Horror Show.
Bye Bye.
Welcome to the interview portion of the show. First up, we're going to hear from writer director Ken Finkleman. Please be warned that I recorded this all the way back in twenty eleven for a book project that I'll talk about a little bit later. So this was a little bit more conversational than I usually like, and the audio quality is definitely like that i'd like to present these days. Also note that the late PJ. Torokvey, i believe is
how you pronounced it, was formerly Peter Torocvey. It was under this name that she wrote most of her work, including Caddyshack two.
It was your first directing gig, right, Oh, it was a very unusual job. Wait, but I got that job. But there's one thing I do want to say about this, because when I look at at my girlfriend, this is a re that she she runs the effect what they call it anwfactual television neives reality in a big company here, and William Shatner is doing all these shows now, she's like everywhere. He's eighty, right, but he looks like sixty. And he's made a career out of out of satirizing himself.
And he even wrote a biography in all it, and he never mentioned a biography. I was the first one in Airplane two to get him to do it the very first time he ever satirized his over the top Shakespearean Captain Kirk Pausing style too, and I gotten to do it for Airplane two, and he hadn't done it before, And he made an industry of it afterward, and never gave me credit because I don't think you ever liked I don't think we got along very well when we were doing it, but that was just my view of it.
But that was the beginning of it. So he developed an industry out of that character.
How did you get this job?
I was putting in New York at the time, and I had done a CBC radio show a couple of years before this time that I was in New York, and a couple of voices that I used were characters from Second city in Toronto, and she gets a phone call while I'm sitting there talking to her, and it's from these two guys. And I think one of them is anyway, was a guy that I had used him as a I did a TV pilot for the CBC and he was a character on it. And lo and behold.
These two guys are from Toronto, are Steve Campman and the Peter Torky were their names. Were working on a project in la which was a sequel to the Airplane movie, because the lookers didn't want to do a sequel, and Paramount then signed up three different teams of writers to write scripts and see what one would be the best
for the sequel. Now to do this and put teams to writers in a race with each other, frowned upon by the Writers Guild of America and let you notify the writing parties, so everyone knew that they were in a bit of a horse race here, okay. And these two guys were one of the teams going for it. And they had gotten nowhere and then the phone rings in there and this woman's office, I'm there and she he said, oh, I got from the else in Toronto my office on and they cook me on the phone
and say, oh yeah. We start chatting and they say what are you doing? And I say what are you doing? And they're doing this and they haven't made much headway. Would I work with them? They get the approval paramount to ship Neil Taile. So I go to LA and I start working with them at I think it was Peter Truckley's house by the pool, and we worked for a couple of weeks. We at nowhere, and so I said, well, I'll go go home and I'll start working on this thing,
and you guys work here. And so I went back to Toronto and pecked away at get this a selectric. And then I get a phone call a couple of weeks later that from this one of them saying, my partner wants to bail. I think that. Were you right to stop and all? And I said, I was, I'm not that familiar with the industry in Los Angeles, but
I wasn't born yesterday. Let me think about this. So I immediately phoned the executive in charge of the project after that phone call, who was Jeff Katzenberg, and I said, I came in late on this. I don't know what quite what to do, except I don't. I'm not going to get fucked over anyone, and I will continue on this if I continue on my own. And he said, okay, hang up, and then I hung up, and then look ten minutes of the re phone back, he said, okay,
both those guys are gone. Send me what you've got and I said that son, I said, it's only cotton pasted. Now, this was the time of true cotton pasting, where you cut the paper and you took the transparent scotch tape and you tape one scene you organize to them, and I said, I should haven't know what I said anything notes the movie. I said, I got fifty pages of jokes.
He said, just tennd it to aesthetics. So I sent it to them, and then a couple of days later I get a call they said, come to La finish it. When I led through the gate at Paramount to finish that script, I said, you're over the wall and it'll take all the King's horses and then to get you out. And that's when I knew I was in and I was in the movie business because I'm an ambitious character by nature, and I knew I was in nothing's going
to get me out. And so I finished the script and then and then rewrite it, to rewrite and crazy and writing jokes. And then one day Michael Eifner comes into an office and I'm sitting there with another executive the name as Larry Marks, and I just scupped a script and and I'd done that, and at that time,
the officer the office of Paramount are very small. They're in an old building from the old days, and all the executive the executives were first one the junior executives, then Caxenberg, who was still a junior executive, and then Don Simpson do you remember Don Simpson's since farmer fame? And then Simpson was president in production, and then Eisner was above him another office, and then Diller was at the end of the hall. That was what it was. That's what it looked like that and I said, and
I'm tuning this office. And Eisler watched with who can you get to do the script? And look this guy, Larry Marks to him, think about and he's a reader tonight. So I read the script and it was a script that they wanted to do for John Belushi, and it was a joy effects and it was shitty, horrible, stupid, right. And so the next day I'm supposed to come to his office and I came an hour and a half late, and he was pressed off. But I didn't. I didn't what is I I was from? I was out of
the sixties, seventies. I was a read doctor, baby, I was. I was. I didn't have any respect for authority of out of Winnipeg. I didn't give a fuck about these guys, right and how and but he was the secretary called what are you? What do I care? And so I moved into his office and he says to me, and I'm not being flip about this. I'd really had that attitude. I really did not. It was really a very defining thing for me in my mind, not to suck up
to these guys, right. And the funny thing is, at the end of the day, you end up in the same position, whether you suck up to them or not. So I just didn't. And he said will you do this? And I said, I'm rewriting this. He didn't know. Will you directed? And I said what? And he said, Larry said that you could direct. I said direct. I said,
I don't know. One of the camera from another. He said, you're not going to do this, and I said, no, I can't do this is crazy, so I kind of less so now in his mind this is I figured this whole narrative out later. I'm a director who's passed on him. So when Airplane two is finished, she says, see if I can get thinklem in and do it. So I did it. I get a screen like a cast of a couple of scenes which was pointing the camera who was talking basically, and then they said okay,
do it. So then I did it, and I hated every second of it. I was shooting a picture on the Paramount lock and every day I wanted to walk. Every time I walked to the cam, which was outside the studio, there was like toilets outside to take a leak. I just want to keep walking. I just hated every decond. I don't think I was ever more insane in my whole life, being feeling the pressure. Every morning Castenberg calls me, there's off seven thirty to beat me up about the dailies.
And I don't think I ever had felt so much pressure over something. It wouldn't have bothered me if it was important, but it was so trite. That's what drove me insane, the fact that it was meaningless. It was less than meaningless, and it drove me not. I hated every moment of it. I'd come from a left wing political background. I'm raised, go to school and university with all these guys kids, guys that are all We're all from Winnipeg, which is a hotbed of North American socialism.
We're all opposed to the system. I'm right at the fucking belly of it, and it's driving me nuts. So it was a trying experience. But the thing is, I have this quirk, and it's a quirk. I guess a lot of that draws a lot of guys to Hollywood.
I could write jokes, just the quirky thing.
Somebody could say, write pen jokes about a glass of water. I can do it.
Did you know going in, who is going to be back? Did you say, okay, for sure? Robert Hayes and Julie Haggerty, Right, they're back.
Yeah, And what's his name? Peter Graves, yeah, Richesihun and Lloyd Bridges yeah, Lloyd Bridges.
Yeah.
But then there's suggests.
Briefly, Leslie Nielsen makes an appearance in here.
No, I don't think he does. He's not in the movie. He didn't want to do the movie the sequel because the Zucker Brothers didn't do it. But he was a bit of a prick. I think.
I didn't think I had a run in with him, but I got the understanding that he was an asshole, where his brother was a supreme asshole. He was the assistant prime minister to the prime minister, and you know the Canadians Lessie Nilsen and his brother was this real hard nose political creep.
Yeah.
You just had him in here for two lines and that was it. Yeah, maybe I don't know. Yeah, he gives someone some water and that the controller says, what is a doctor? He says, two parts of oxygen, one part high.
Yeah. Those all I know of going after the jokes that they did for the first one and that whoa, this is what. Oh. Now, I remember with the writers. I'm sitting at their pool and we were trying to write the strict and they want to do something completely different. And I said, you guys, I don't know anything about the movie business, but I think when they're doing a sequel, they want to come very quote to what was done before. I want something different, I said. And I'm this is
my ultimate cynicism coming into play here. They want the same thing.
Had they already had the shuttle idea?
Or was that your idea? And I think that was a network as a studio. Yeah, that was a studio idea. She went to the fucking idea. That's terribly true, but it was their idea. What am I going to do? They're paying me money. I got a door open to being in Hollywood. And a number of years later, many years later, my wife we will go to law school together and then she becomes a judge here. And I used to say, I'm looking at my job in Hollywood. And that's why I got out of Hollywood.
I said.
My wife trying to decide here as a judge to put a young guy in jail or not. And I'm trying to decide whether dress to dress the guy in the bear costume or the gorilla costume. And I said, I got to get out of Hollywood. Gotta get out.
I gotta get out of here. I've got to get out of here.
You don't ask questions in Hollywood, you don't argue in Hollywood. In writers me, You don't. You just gnawd your head. They're paying you a shipload of money to do something that you don't have any connection to it all. You don't feel any pride in, you don't feel any connection, and you just do what they say. It doesn't make any sense to aren't you. I always said, if I'm going to be there, I'm never going to write anything that I will be in a position that I have
to defend because I will lose the fight. And I won't do that. I will write stupid, silly stuff and take the money and run.
I have to say, though, I've found myself laughing out loud at this script.
That's great, I appreciate. Yeah. I just finished a show and I'm just waiting for my We've done ten episodes and I've seen the attende the first one. I'm waiting for the second one tonight to screen it in about five minutes. Oh nice, for ten minutes. Yeah, and people are laughing at that them, which makes you feel good.
How did stuff change from the script until the final product. Did you have control all the way through or did you.
I had control of nothing. I got two writers that come from the East were working for the Harvard Lamprun and they came and they stayed at my house in LA and they helped me with the script, but actually I did never use any of the mature One was that and then we became good friends, we lived together, and it was and that It was their first job in Hollywood. It was Mike Greece and Al Jean who became the producers of the Simpson.
The one thing that I find fascinating too about the whole Airplane two story is how it changed from the theatrical version to the TV version. And apparently they have changed all of the references to Ronald reg all the references to Ronald Reagan have been taken out, or the way the gohead.
Oh you mean to mean just for playing?
Are you serious?
Yeah?
Yeah? Are you serious? Because he's so worshiped in the US, isn't it because he was, say he won first election nineteen eighty Yeah.
And yeah, you already had the jokes going in there, and then you had a good Gerald Ford joke in hair as well too.
I don't remember that, but anyway, is that amazing? So I but I know the residuals are still good, so I guess they sell it around the Worldstone do.
You had the one mental hospital for the mentally feeble, and then you had the Ronald Reagan Institute of Supply Side Economics and hospital for the criminally insane.
Oh god, supply side economics, Oh god. Remember that guy that was Stockman, the kind of the guru of supply side economics. Yeah, and I'll tell you I remember being with eyes there once where I said, why can't we put that joke in because I don't want it? And it was I think that they were doing a poll that when the thing was about the crash, the flight attendants were pulling what the people wanted, and then one of the questions was the mayor get out of Nicaragua,
and she said, I don't want that joke. So I had all these political jokes that came out of nowhere, and they were very extremely Kaptinberg violently right wing. The other thing that makes me said is that apparently there are a bunch of scenes that were shot and.
They're not available anymore. Maybe they got shown on the television version and maybe they.
Didn't like they roll.
Yeah, the whole intro to Lloyd Bridges' character because you had him at the actually maybe that was where the gerald Ford home for the senile was. You've got him in his Sea Hunt outfit and stuff. Really yeah, and he's and then his line looks like a pick wrong.
We to go to circle and Senile and then the other one is some Texan And you've got a recurring joke going on to the screen planet and they say that when it shows on television that there is part of the joke of he asked for something to read and the stewardess brings over like the entire Torah and he reads the Torah on the flight and becomes a acidic Jew as the flight was going along.
I don't remember.
And you've got him into to fill in and all that stuff.
Wait, but Philin, are you Jewish?
No?
But you had that in the How did you ask.
A good pronunciation of filling or a guy who's not a Jew? Holy Christ? And there's not in the film.
That's not in the film.
No, And then where do you find They showed it that way on Comedy Central and.
I happened and.
You found out what did you just a YouTube do?
No?
I looked all around and I finally I had to pay some guy twenty bucks who had a copy of it, and he sent it over to me. Then what I did yesterday was I went through and I took a video editor, and I opened up the theatrical or at least the DVD version of it, and then the TV version of it. And I went through and I compared the two and I made it that's where all the
differences were. And I actually I cut all those TV scenes out and I put those as a just one file out on YouTube so that I could have it for myself so I can look at what was different.
Even in the preview.
There's a trailer out there for the original movie, and even in that, there's a couple of scenes that aren't in there, Like you had a like this Carl Maldon impersonator doing the American Express commercial thing, and that didn't make it in there. And that's where I'm running into some issues, because there's a couple names in there that of people that are in the film that never made it into it, including Aldo Ray.
I think he was singing although new York, New York or something as well. Back then. I must the thought of him as a kind of guy that was like like.
Crup like like she can play in the the American films, that the a guy would be what with p like he would like the bull jerk in the Second World War movie. I think he was so bad in the movie that he cut him out.
How was it actually directing your first film? How was it working with the actors?
I don't remember what's channel.
I seem to remember baby, remember having a sense that I knew what I was doing in that area. Just let people do what they did. And I really have to change that much. Even dre deal about Jersey and do something completely wrong, trying to help him a lot,
But you generally stuck people. I never Drewie Hagerty been very nervous, and and I was a complete novice, and I didn't involved in the pits costs in there, and and Bran had to choked around with her by faking of getting Babbage her on the fip and grabbing her and mining flapping her in the face, and she thought that was funny. And then I broke the eye because it was like something that I really didn't really have the right to do because she'd already been in the
first movie and everything else. But but I never bring back and broke the eyes. And I remember that particular incident, but she's him to be a nice person.
I will tell you. Robert Hayes had nothing but great things to say about you. He was just lavishing praise on you. When I talked to him.
That it's pretty funny because somebody ran into him recently and he said to say hello and gotten old kind But where that was, but that's very nice to him. Ether life guy. He also talked about.
A scene that you shot where he was in the French Foreign Legion and he's then you guys shot it down at La X and he's going through the sand and all this kind of stuff in a net fluin Oficello shows up and I'm like, this sounds like a fever dream. The way that he was talking about.
He said, no, I swear to god it was shot. We shot that thing. I don't know why it's not in the bok. Yeah like that, I can't what was I don't think shot that shot that it could be I don't know.
He was saying that there were some sand dunes at the foot of Lax, but then he did talk about yes, yeah, there were, that's right, yeah, because and then I was like, Okay, I believe you. It's just as Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, I think now how much interaction did you have with Howard Kotch on that?
Well, I didn't really gone wrong with him.
Yeah, I didn't like it, so I started to happens with it possible.
Hayes was saying that you were having a hard time with all the big wigs there and stuff. Do you remember that He told me a story about how you came into the office one day and you said that getting the deal is like getting the girl to sleep with you.
We were getting the deal with like the orgasm of the orgasm, and the refluent direction was like trying to get her out of the department once you'd finished. He remember that line, he remembers it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He says that he used to sit in the in the office with you while you were writing that some of the drafts of the screenplay, and he would just be there laughing as you were writing stuff. So yeah, he's got really fond memories of it.
Writing the screenclip hurry pint too, Yeah, yeah, oh wow. Yeah.
He said that you invited him in just to I don't know, run lines or do something like that, and he said that he was having a great time. I have one more question for you. Some of them views that I've been reading, I've gone back to the old New York Times, and some of these reviews, they all make mention that they received a letter from the Zucker Brothers right before the movie came out to distance themselves from Airplane Too. Do you remember that.
They didn't want to make it so that they didn't want to do with Pequel and they were opposed to the studio bad.
But I didn't get along back with the recruits.
I meant that they asked me to plot them up being a writer on them on a TV show was called called Naked Done without being the oh.
With police Squad, Yeah yeah, police Yeah. I think that they agreed, but they were just opposed to making the movie. Yeah. I knew about that.
They had a number of writers doing the whole thing. And when they did the first one, and I think there were a number, they were like three or four writers, and they this is material that they had packed it out on their Kentucky by Peter and everything else, and they get it over a number of years. I came in and I wrote he wrote it in about a number in about two months by myself. Yet one of
the bad moment. They worked for the book their Baby, and that was there, and the studio wanted to make it, and I was being a hack writer doing work for the studio, and I think that I stood their issue with it. But at that time I was, although quite ambitious, and I be the gig, and I think that I remember having a certain qualms about it. But on balance, I think I took the job and accepted that the fact that they had an.
Issue with.
You made decisions in your life, and that was one that I operated my own self interest in that at that particular time.
Yeah, how was it.
Doing the voice of the computer of Rock nine thousand?
Well, even though I played the character on TV, I'm always felt that I was a shitty actor. I slightly in very effect that.
Up next, we're going to hear from actor Robert Hayes, who talks about his role as Ted Striker, as well as an incredible cut scene that I've since found a photo proof for. So this thing definitely happened. Not to say that mister Hayes would be fibbing at all, but this sounds incredible. So buckle up. How did you get cass in airplane? I mean, were you always known to be funny or how did that happen?
My agent, Arnie Solaway, had a woman named Beth Voyq that just it's a weird name. V I think at v o I ku BOYQ. And she had come to work for him just pretty recently, and she had worked for Howard Koch, who was the exec producer and on both of them, And so she called him up and they'd already been all over the place. They'd been in New York and Minneapolis and Seattle and La Dallas and everywhere from what I understand, and they couldn't find their
Ted Striker. And she called him up and said, Hey, I got your Ted Striker and he said, great, bring him over. So I went over a net with him and with the boys, and we all got along. And then I read for him and they liked my reading, and then they had me screen test, and I screen tested with Julie, fortunately for me, and then they liked the screen test and they said that's it. He's the one that was how I got it. And then of course I was already Ted Striker by the time when
we did the second one. Ken was really fun. He was a bit hyper at times, and I think he was probably under a lot of pressure. I remember he came into the office one day when we were working on before we started the film, and he looked very flustered and very like he'd been through just the ringer. He put his briefcase down and they looked at me, and I said it was the matter, and he says, finally, I think I figured out a definition of making a film in Hollywood. He said, making the deal is like
having sex with the girl. Making the movie is like trying to get her out of your apartment. So that was ken. When we were doing the second, he would ask me to come in and help him out when he was writing it, because I already had the experience of the first one and just to help him with his getting the second one all in shape. So I'd go over there to the studio and then the offices and we'd sit around and I'd laugh my butt off, and he was a very funny guy, and I think
he did a good job. I think it was really tough for him because the first one was so incredibly tight, is so good, and they had five years of writing and rewriting and polishing, and it was just and their sense of comedy is just perfect. It's just incredible. So it had broken the records everywhere it played, and because it was such a huge hit, that was a hard thing to follow. But there were some people that saw it that had never seen the first one, and they
just loved it. And then they saw the first one second and they liked the second one because they'd seen it first, knowing only you know, just very few occasions. I can only think of two letters a fan that I got. There might have been a couple of other people that told me, but out of the thousands and thousands of letters I've gotten over the years, a couple.
But it was fun. I wish they'd re release the second one with outtakes deleted scenes, like they did that with the first one, but I wish they'd do that with the second one. I wish they'd make a box set, actually, but I think having been two different writer director teams, that would probably make that difficult. But if that's too hard, I wish they would release the second Airplane with the deleted scenes. I think they'd probably sell a lot.
I've read about a few deleted scenes, but it's very hard to track down what was actually shot versus what wasn't well.
There was an entire scene that was shot when I was having my flashbacks, and there was one where I was, as usual, boring people to death, and I was telling them about when I had after all of the stuff happened in the first one, I told him that Julie and I are Elaine and I had gotten married, and I was just too antsy and I couldn't handle it, and finally I left, and I went off and joined the French Foreign Legion, and because of my prior experience
being a command and meaning an officer, I was made an officer and put in command of a bunch of guys. And then it started doing that time rippy effect, and then it goes back to us going across the sand dunes.
We filmed it at the foot of Lax, all the sand dunes down there, and it shows me out leading everybody with our French Foreign Legion outfits on, and everyone behind me, a long line of guys, and we're tramping along and I hold my hand up and we all stop, hold up my binoculars and I see a fort and a little small fort in the distance with palm trees, and I say, okay, come on, let's go signal with my arm. We all keep marching, and as we get closer and closer, we get right up next to it.
And it's a little small fort. It's just totally about eight inches tall, and I stare at it. I'd i'd pick up my binoculars and look at it, and yeah, that's the one I saw. And though then we just keep marching, and then we have a run in and with the Bedouins or whoever it is. And because of my trier experience of coming in too low, you're too low, Striker, you're too low. So this time I swore I wouldn't
come in too low. So I say charge, and we all you know, they have stock footage of all the Bedouin tribes fighting on horseback, and we all descend down down the side of the sand dune. And then I came in too high, and then I come crawling back up over the sand dune and I'm the only one. I lost. Everybody donkeys too, I mean everyone, And so then it's just me and I'm walking along and you see my face getting sunburned and parched, and all the
crinkles on my lips and everything. And then it cut the sun burning with that sun sound, and then it's got pictures of my boot tramping and trample through the sand, all my boots, and then you see my rifle butt dragging in the sand. And they were filming this from about high mid thigh down. And then the rifle fell, and then the ammo belt falls, and now I'm defenseless, so it's really getting bad. And then you see the canteen fall and then you know, oh man, I'm really shot.
And then an egg beater falls in a bowl falls, and then rolling pin falls. Somebody was taking stills on the set and there was me with an armload of stuff, and I was dropping things bit by bit, and then finally I collapse in the sand. And I get up to a watering hole and I collapse and it's all dried. And on the far side there's a Texas longhorn steer, which I'm wondering, what the hell's that doing in the middle of Soudan, And it's a steer skull down next
to the water hole. And then I look up and there's a water jug, an office water thing, you know, and there are two skeletons dressed in tree piece suits with cups and they're all the water jugs bull of sand and the cups are full of sand, and they're
standing there just like they're having a little conversation. And so I roll over on my back, like, oh god, this is it, this is the end, and the sun is beaming down with all that You're about to die from dehydration music, and I hear something and it was one of my favorite gots. It was shot up through my feet. The camera was down below my feet, and my head pops up between my What the hell is that? Love bet shot? And then I crawl over to the edge of the sand dune and there's the Pacific Ocean,
there's the beach. There's a band, there's a combination. They look like the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and they're playing music electrified instruments. Where the hell does all that comes from? And there's everybody dancing then having a great time at the beach party. And there's Elaine in a big one piece bathing suit. And we had Annette Funicello, the real Annette Funicello, in one of those huge, old,
big wide bikinis. You know, the bottoms are about a foot wide and the tops are about ten inches wide. And she's holding a big beach ball. And you go running up to Elaine and I say, Elne, I missed you. I was so wrong for leaving you. And then I suddenly realized. I said, what the hell are you doing in the middle of the Sudan And she says, oh, Tad, you're so square. She makes a big rectangle with her fingers. You know, you're so square. And then someone in the background.
Now you can see in the background, just like the beach blanket Bingo movies, and see that there are maybe six inch waves, maybe one foot. You hear someone in the background yell surfs up, and all these people go running by her with surfboards and she puts her hands up to her face like and throws her hands up
and goes running off. And I'm standing there in my stringy, ragged French foreign legion outfit that just shredded, and Annette Funicello comes up next to me and start singing one of those real sappy songs, like a beach blanket bingo song, but it was an original song. She starts singing, if you want her to go and get her And I'm looking at I look out of the lane, I look back at her, and I get this resolve in my face and with one hand, I grab my uniform and
tear it off. It's all velcrode, so I tear it off, and I've got a bathing suit underneath, and I go out and the next thing you know is that there she is. Now we are in the studios, in the big tank with a projection behind us, and all of a sudden you cut out there and they're these big waves, all these guys taken off. I'm like, maka ha, twenty
your thirty foot days. So you cut out to her and it's a close uh waist high shot and she's surfing on a wave and suddenly I stand up next to her like I'm on a board surfing on the wave, and she looks at me like tad, and all of a sudden I fall and there's a big splash of water and she's oh. And then suddenly I stand up again like I may have fallen, but I'm not out of the wave, and it was just like oh, my ted And then it all kind of dissolves from that,
and that whole thing was shot, the whole thing. I guess it just didn't fit her. It was too long or something. But I think if they put scenes like that back in you know her little you know, look at deleted scenes kind of a thing, it's really insane. It was really fun. It was really fun.
Are any others any others?
I can't even think of any other ones. I know we had other ones. They even put a gag reel together, scenes of outtakes and stuff, but it was I love gagreels. I wish they a gag reel together and put that in there too. It was so much fun.
It must have been so hard not to burst out laughing on the set of those movies when you're delivering some of those lines.
You know, Oh yeah, I came off theater. I was fairly fresh out of theater, fairly fresh ten ten years or a little less than ten years out of theater. But still I was still fairly trained, and I could keep a straight face. And we used to do that on stage. And you got a show that's running. I know it's very unprofessional, but when you're doing a show, you're doing three shows sometimes a day, nine shows a week, you have one day off and three shows in repertory,
and you're just going nuts. And after a while, people will start pulling pranks on stage. The audience doesn't know what's going on, but you know, and it's trying to crack you up. I really learned how to keep a straight face, so that really wasn't the problem. But it sure was enjoyable because everybody else was laughing, so it was really fun. Were like the camera people and all the folks on set. Oh yeah, oh yeah. If I did get the crew to crack up, then that was good.
I felt that I'd really accomplished something. And of course they'd messed the takeout, they'd screw up the take but still that was okay because we do it again. It was fine. But it was great fun. And all the people, the crew and the cast, they were all just really so wonderful. And Ken was funny. He's just got a real, really good, plenty sense of humor.
It must have been so strange working on some of those films, because I mean, it's it's such a big cast and everything, but you're probably pretty limited to just working with a handful of folks really, you know, like you and Julie Haggerty of course have so many scenes together, but then you know, did you even see like shatting or bridges or some of these.
They were all on other sets and we were just talking. Supposedly, you'd have the script supervisor reading the lines to you. I used to go over to when they were shooting that stuff. I would go over and read the lines off camera. I always like to have the actor there, and so I figured that they would appreciate having the actor there too, So I would just go into that. But we had the whole, the whole passengers, all that the crowd, so there were a lot of folks around, and.
You got to work with Sonny Bono too.
Sonny I knew Sonny. He was a great guy. He really was a fun guy, great sense of humor and just a real character. He was a lot of fun. I'd like a candy bar, that magazine and the third bomb on the left. Yeah, yeah, And did you notice the poster behind him.
Rocky thirty eight or something.
Yeah, it's very good Rocky thirty eight with the old guy with a bald old guy. And if you notice, really it's really hard to tell, but if you were able to see very closely the credit have, it's everything's inverted. So do you figure the lowliest guy on the crew is usually the craft service person. And we had an old time guy who wasn't fancy. He just made coffee and threw out donuts. And his name was Klondike Jones, and he was just take it or leave it, and
he was so funny. But he was like an institution, and Howard hired him and had him on the show. If you look it closely at the credits on Rocky thirty eight, you'll see the executive producer is Klondike Jones, and then it goes just on from there. The lesser jobs are all at the top as pro exec producers, writers, directors, all that, and then the lowliest one, the craft service to be Howard cut great all the little details.
So were you ever afraid at any point that you were going to get typecast as like a Ted Striker kind of a person.
Or oh yeah, I did. The press used to when I would go to this opening of a film or some event or something, they'd all be around, Hey, turn this way, and they say, hey, Robert airplane. Heyes, you think you'll ever do anything deside the airplane? Are you gonna be a real actor or you're just gonna They were rootless because back then it was. It was frowned upon to do sequels. Nowadays they call it a franchise. Now they looked for that, but back then it was
really frowned upon. So that's why I turned down Airplane three because I was just being hounded by that. I wish I would have done. It had been fun to have the three of them. I don't know what it would have turned out like, but it would have been fun to do that anyway.
So there really was talk of an Airplane three.
Yeah, they had that's gripped and everything. There was just you know, but I wonder who would have been behind that one, because it doesn't sound like Ken was ready to come back and do another rule. Yeah. No, they would have had a new person.
You made the sequel and you didn't get type cast, and then losing Nielsen isn't in the sequel and he ends up in all those movies.
That's what he really I guess he really loved it, just being a looney.
Was there any animosity between the Zucker Abram Zucker guys and the whole making of the sequel.
I don't know if they didn't want to do it, but they told me, they said, you're gonna you can make the money. Because I didn't get paid. I got chicken feed for the airplane. When Airplane came.
Out, I mean, there was no expectation that it was going to do the kind of business that it eventually did, was there, or I mean, did you guys know why you're doing this that you had because to run away wasn't it.
If you knew you'd control the world. But actually, as things went along, I thought, maybe this will be it'll have a cult following colleges maybe or something like that, and then started thinking, wow, we all were thinking maybe it'll be a little more than I don't know, but we just got a feeling about that. But nobody talked about it because that would put the heck on it. And then somebody came up one day, someone came up that was just doing a little one day bit bart
and he's all, hey, this is great. That thing's really gonna be a yet huh, And everyone turned and walked away from him. It was so fun. Gosh, it was fun. And then having it do what it did, just explode the way it did that was great, and all the people were just wonderful. Bob Stack, he was so great. We'd work together once before, and he was so great, and Lloyd was trying to he was a little uncertain, and the beginning on the first one and Peter Peter Grace.
Peter told me that he read it, threw it down. What a pile of crap? What the hell is this? In his Asian colleague said, Peter, please take another look at it. I'd really want you to consider this because I think it's going to be something. So he did it without realizing, Okay, what's going on. Then he really
figured out. He did his difficult, great job, and then who else read Lloyd and Bob and Peter and then Leslie, and Leslie said they opened the door for him to step into this kind of insanity and then they gave
him a nudge, your gentle nudge threw the door. And once they did that, then he just took off when he was just the insane Leslie that we all came to know and love, either all the Naked Guns and Police Squad first about six episodes I think a police Squad, then all of the Naked Gun movies and then other things after that. It was just him being that goofy character.
He became a franchise, you know, speaking of franchises. So, how many people ever come up to you and ask you if you have a drinking problem?
Oh, yeah, it happens still now, it still happen. I do a lot of golf charity golf tournaments, and they're very hesitant. They're worried to not overstepped anything. But that's what they always want to ask. If it's not a drinking problem, or you over macho grande or those different things. Yeah, it's fine though, It's really fun get a kick out of them.
I'm next, we're going to hear from actor James A. Watson Junior about his role as Lieutenant Done. Now, this is just an excerpt from a longer interview we did which is now available. Definitely check that out. He's got some great stories. I did want to ask you, what was your experience like working on airplane too, especially working with Ken Finkleman.
Bob Hayes was I got that opportunity because my agent also represented him, so the catching people saw me as well. And there again there was a group of people that didn't know me initially, and but I went in and I was cast in the role and we got to the point and that was probably one of the most fun experience because it was a little bit like the Love of American style. It was a little not quite a silly, but it was a very stylish kind of point of view of humor.
Ken was very open.
He would he'd said he wrote a script, we'd shoot what he wrote, and then he would say, let's do another take, and if anybody got anything, if they want to bring into it or do, let's throw it in. So invariably I found some instinctive stick to do or do something, and it ended up in the film.
He was very open to that.
I don't know if you're here.
There's a scene where I'm sitting in the cock that is the navigator and a guy comes in like he's cleaning the plane and he's vacuuming, and I'm looking at the command center and as he comes in, he's a black guy, and as he comes in, he's I do the high five.
That was I put that in and I just did that, and I did that.
Instinctively, and it was It's fun. It is fun, especially when they let you loose and having a theater background, in stage background, working with those people, you learn your craft. And I always young actors come and they ask me, and I tell them two things. Never give up number one and number two, be prepared, because so you never know when your opportunity will come, and you don't know,
you got to be ready for it. When it does come, it's inably going to be something unlike what you expected, So you had to be able to stay in your toes and dance. Ken was an easy going guy. He made it very comfortable for all the actors. So we were like a stilly ensemble family of people that because they were all known as straight actors doing this stick, which was the whole joke. They too had backgrounds that
made it work. On the contrasts of our styles and all that and the written word that they had worked out.
And it was good.
It was a fun experience. The only thing there's this at the end, and I extually seeing the Coppie and I. They had a problem the fire and we ended up going out in the outer space to find out what happened and ended up drifting into the atmosphere some place. So they put us on a belts and lifted us up in the ceiling on the studio. That was a little uncomfortable. They pinged on certain areas but we're all laughting and making the best of it.
But kN was good.
Ken was a nice guy, and the film obviously was over seen.
It's such a different style of humor where you're having to play it serious, but then at the same time you have to be goofy just to find that right balance.
Comedy is, yeah, Comedy is, as they say, is the hardest thing because it's about timing and you have to have an instinctive thing. And I've had opportunities to do some of the roles I've talked about that are broad, like that one and a couple of other things, but they rely on you having an understanding and a sense of timing so that you can make those things work. And I normally was considered a straight man, and people would play off in man that too. I was the
fact when I did The Love American Style. One of my Ted Lange and I are woke from the Bay Area, and Ted and I were good friends, and the director was a guy named Norman Abbott, who was I think a cousin or something from lou Abbing Abbot and Costello.
And he called us to his house one Saturday and said, I have this notion that you and Ted could be the next Martin and Lewis and I could get I have contacts in Vegas, and I think we could put together an act and take you guys to Vegas and make some serious money.
And that started with me.
I was a young man with a young family land, but I was game. Ted had other things going and he didn't want to do it, so it didn't happen. But I was surprised from the beginning when I started my career that I had too much success doing comedy stuff as I did doing dramatic stuff. And it was very a lot of those things where I remember with great fondness because I was having fun, but the timing was there, the things, the instincts were there and it worked.
But again going back to training and whatever gift, you might have to shape it. But it's hard knowing, not strictly. There's different types of comedy, different levels of.
It, and you can't.
You have to know where the boundaries are and what your instincts are telling you about what they want me to do. In the big picture, you can't.
You have to fit in.
You can't do some big thing or some broad thing that's going to end up on the cutting room floor, because it's not consistent with the big picture.
You're only part of the picture.
And I think when I was doing the Organization, Sydney had just for fen the shooting Bucket the Preacher with Harry Bella Fonte and Ruby d and he invited me to he was editing the film. He invited me to come and watch him edit the film, and I was really bitten when I saw how you could take pieces and put pieces together. That really helped me with my acting too, because then I understood better what was going
to be usable and what wasn't. And I did an episode of a show TV show and the editor and the director came up to me at one point and said, we really appreciate when because when I'm not having my own lines, I'm still at my stage background. You don't quit acting, even if I'm off camera. You stay in character. And if it's a broad a wide take, I keep working. And he said, we always can cut to you for a reaction because you're still in the scene.
You keep yourself in the scene.
So I learned how to do that too, and sometimes I would insinuate myself cleverly into a scene that on paper wasn't going to be established that way, but I was again a way of finding how to support the story and whatever was happening at that moment.
And finally we're going to hear from writers Al Jean and Mike Reese all about their experience on airplane to the sequel. I know that Al grew up in Detroit. How about yourself, where did you grow up at?
I grew up in Bristol, Connecticut, right outside of Hartford, Connecticut, and it was just a it was a blue collar factory town.
And then you went to Harvard.
Yes, I went to Harvard. I went to Harvard specifically to join the Harvard Lampoon. I just had read about a humor magazine there. I didn't really know much about it, and at the time, it was not considered this pathway to show business or entertainment. It was just a fun club out of college. And so that was why I went to Harvard. And I met Al Jean freshman week.
Oh wow, so you guys have known each other for a while.
From the beginning. Yeah, I always tell this. I told the story so much I don't know if it's true anymore. Which was I was sitting in my dorm room and Al was passing by. Al was sixteen when he got into college. I was a very brilliant guy, and he's all. We had a rocking chair in the room, and he said, can I rock in your chair? And I said okay, And it seemed a little weird, but he came in and just rocked in this chair. And I learned over the years Al loves a rocking chair, and he'll rock
in a straight back chair. He likes the rock And for one of his birthdays, I got him a big bentwood rocking chair and I think he rocked.
It to pieces within two or three months.
But that's how we met, and we became very good friends. And I joined the Harvard Lampoon and he saw I was just having fun there, and I guess I told him you meet a lot of girls on the lampoon, which was not true at all. But so then he joined the lampoon and he'd been a very quiet guy, and then he just came in with this, you compete to get on the lampoon.
You're right, a series of six.
Pieces over eight weeks, and most people I don't get on the first time they try out.
I didn't get on the first time.
You have to do it multiple times and they take about seven people out of every hundred who compete. But I'll just he went in there, he got on right away. He was a slam dunk.
And then that was it.
From sophomore year on, we were roommates, and then we went to work together in New York and shared an apartment. And that's it's funny. It's a career that went from our partnership, that went from nineteen seventy eight to Last Friday.
Which was my last stay at the Simpsons.
So have you written comedy before you got to Lampun? He must have had some interest in that.
Yeah.
I always liked writing, and I didn't I never intended to be a comedy writer.
I didn't know anyone in that business.
But I just liked writing funny stories and I would write them and put them in my drawer. It would drive my mom crazy, and I guess I wrote humorous pieces for the school news paper, and the school also had a the local paper would print a high school page every month, and I would always have a humorous piece in that. So, yeah, I liked writing jokes and comedy. I really never thought of it as a profession. The closest I could imagine was I thought I might go into advertising.
I thought that's what people with what we're creative do.
For a job.
What were some of your pieces for the Lampoon, Like the Harvard Lampoon.
I wasn't great. I was really I really wasn't the best writer. There was one that was very popular. It was that it was called Samuel Johnson's Party Jokes, and it was a parody of Playboy's Party Jokes as if written by Samuel Johnson, and so they were written in eighteenth century pros but they were really dirty.
That's the only one I can think.
Oh, we did a big Mad Magazine parody when we were there that I oversaw.
We did.
We have at Harvard there is a pretentious literary magazine called The Advocate. So we did something called The Advocate, which was just a mashup of Mad Magazine and this pretentious literary magazine. And we did a kind of more Drucker parody of the Seventh.
Seal and that kind of thing.
It was good.
I think it was really good.
Al and I wrote a piece together called Spooky Magic. We wrote it was it was a parody of magic books you get when you're a kid, and in fact, we just I think we just stole the title. I think the book we had both read as kids was Spooky Magic, and it's the first thing we ever wrote together, and it got printed in the magazine, and a junior year of college, were contacted by National Lampoon, the National humor magazine, and they said, we love your work, but we want to bring you out here.
And they took us and brought us to New York.
And we were freelance right earning money as writers for a National Lampoon while we were still in college, and then we graduated right into the job. We just walked out of college and moved to New York and wrote for National Lampoon for a year.
There's no struggle to it. We've been very lucky. And that was it in both of us.
Once we started working, we never stopped. There was really, I think maybe six weeks and forty five years where we were out of work.
I'm always fascinated by writing duos, like how do you split up the work? Who comes up with the ideas? How do you do what you do?
In our case, we do it a word at a time and a line at a time.
I know people work in different way, but we just we throw out different ideas, and once we both like an idea, we just start writing it.
And pitch jokes to each other.
And a lot of people think, oh, a comedy writing team, you should be you should compliment each other. And one guy good at this and one guy's good at that, and Alan I think eighty to ninety percent exactly the same, and if one of us pitches a joke, the other one goes.
I was just thinking that.
So we're just so we're like a man with two heads. We're just we can think twice as much, but we're always thinking the same things. It was a strange way to work, but completely effortless, and we never fought, and it worked out. When there's two of you writing, you're always a draft ahead. Our first drafts would read like other people's second drafts, and that kind of thing.
Did you have similar comedy backgrounds to be able to bounce stuff off of each other so well?
I was really immersed in comedy and I just loved it just.
As a hobby.
I knew the Marx Brothers inside out, and Woody Allen I knew inside in college, I had a big Woody Allen poster in the dorm room.
And Al he this was not his career path.
He was a math major, he was a pre med student. He probably would have gone on to be some brilliant medical scientists. And I brought him down the path a comedy. I got him into it.
He's just so smart.
Anything he would have set his mind to, he would have become the best at it. And it just happened to be comedy writing.
You're working for a national lampoon for a year and then what happens.
Okay, So here's the deal. There's these two guys named Max Prost's and Tom Gamble. They were two years ahead of us at Harvard Lampoon like Alan me. They were president and vice president of lampoon. And everybody loves these guys. They're wonderful writers and there's so much fun to be around and they're so funny, and so Alan I built a career taking jobs that they turned down. So our first show biz job was writing a movie for meat Loaf,
the rockstar called Fatmin in Outer Space. Because Max and Tom turned down the job and recommended us, and years later they were offered the job on the Simpsons before it came on, and they turned that down and recommended us. And in between was Airplane two. They had worked with Ken Finkleman, the writer director at Saturday Night Live, and when he was doing Airplane two, he went to them first and they didn't want to do that, and they recommended us. And I think Ken read our articles in
National Lampoon. We had never written anything like a script or anything professional, and he liked our articles. We would write stuff from New York like we'd work all day at National Lampoon and at night we would write him jokes for his Airplane two script. He had written a very funny script, and we'd send him jokes and then he brought us out for a week. We snuck away from our jobs and just spent a week in Hollywood
writing jokes with Ken for the movie. And then finally about ten months into our National Lampoon job, where they really liked us. This is a terrible thing we did, but we get the call from Airplane two saying we need you out here tomorrow. We're shooting the movie. We want you on the set tomorrow, and Al and I walked into the office the next day and quit our jobs and we ran out on the lease and we flew to LA and if the call came Sunday night, we were on the set Tuesday morning.
Yeah, did you tell him that earlier? We had worked for a week and they each had to make an alibi why we were going to La.
Our whole career goes is based on this, and it's a real bad thing to do.
They really liked us at National Lampoon, and I felt bad about it, but they forgave us, and we'd wind up quitting another job and they forgave us.
And just one more quick story, which was we.
Had a lease.
We had to furnished the part in New York, and we just ran and we said, look, we'll keep paying rent and that kind of thing. And the woman said, no, don't worry about it.
Just go.
I'll ship all your stuff out to you. So we moved to LA.
We're working on airplane two. The stuff never comes, it never comes. Finally she sent one box and it was full of winter coats that we did not need in LA. And then final we go, where's our other stuff? And she said I boxed it and put it in the
hallway and it all got stolen. So we had nothing, and that is that one last thing I wanted to see if al remembers this, which was we were working so hard and so long on airplane two and just just we each had one suitcase full of stuff to get us through that, and.
We had no time even to do laundry.
So I remember going to We're at Paramount, going to the company store to buy socks and underwear because I didn't have time to do laundry.
I remember our Tatch loan toes, each one hundred dollars, and then like after week, he was like, here was my one hundred dollars.
Albo, do you remember this?
We were in the company store of Paramount buying socks and Jim Brooks, James L. Brooks and Albert Brooks come in and they start cutting up. I just I'm watching them douche stick in the company store, having no idea that about ten years later less than that, we'd be working for one guy and writing for the other guy.
And ironically, I'm recording Albert for a show tomorrow with Jim. Jim had done a taxi beer and then in terms of endearment, yeah, he was huge.
Then when does the Fat Guy and Outer Space come in is that after Airplane Tour?
Is that before Oh Fatmin and Outer Space? That the meat lop thing that was earlier. That was literally the first show biz thing we ever wrote, and it was a It was just a treatment based on a children's book.
What was it like working with with Ken Finkleman and what were your responsibilities.
The funniest joke in the movie, by all accounts, is the one where Shatner is behind the screen and then he just walks and it's the door that was Ken's that It's a great example of Ken's humor. And then I wanted also mentioned that the whole run about Buddy couldn't take it over Michell Grande. That was all pitched by Mike at one point, and I thought he had written down or something he couldn't believe. He just said, that's the two things I want to get on the record.
Did the Jeopardy joke which was so popular? We were a lot of jokes, I think, by my estimate, Alan I.
Wrote about a third of the movie. Third of the jokes.
Yeah, I mean it was mostly Ken. But the writer of Gil had a policy that he didn't had a little bit in the original writer would get the credit unless you really have had a lot. And so went to Ken, who's very funny and what was a blast to be with. The Only thing was we were with him all the time, like we moved so fast, like we were and he said, oh, you boys can't live in this apartment that where they.
Have to notify your next of kidd if.
So he moved us into his house. And then I remember we were falling asleep and he goes, okay, now, think of some jokes before the morning. In other words, pitch in your sleep. But he's a really funny guy. Yeah he is.
He is a libertarian or a communist or a socialist. He's Canadian.
He had extreme left wing opinions, and yet he was a slave driver. He worked us so hard and was unbelievable. But on the flip side, and this is something that just occurred to me the other day, al was he brought us onto this movie. He introduced us to everyone. We were really aties on the set with the stars and the cameramen and friends with the producers. He brought us to meet the heads of the studio. Any Hollywood party he went to, he'd bring us. We met more
big shots. It's not how you what you generally do with uncredited punch up people. So he really just opened every door for us, which he didn't.
Have to do. The credit thing was weird.
It was, as they say, it was like a writer's guild policy that I didn't understand in I have more understanding of it now, but I still think there should be a way that people get their names on them. But we did thanks to Ken.
He put the special thanks credit in.
So that was it so al and I we quit our job. We fly out to LA the next day. They were not only on set we are in. They put us in a wooden shed on stage. It was this windowless wooden shed with a typewriter in it, and they had us writing jokes on the set. They would just they'd be filming, and if they'd hit a spot, they said, all right, we need more of this.
It couldn't be more pressure.
It was so crazy, and I believe the very first thing we did on set it was again it was a sequel joke and this movie Peter Graves is.
Hitting on a little boy.
In the second movie he's hitting on a dog, and they go, we need more jokes for Peter Graves hitting on a dog, and it was so low.
And vulgar or welcome to Hollywood.
I remember there was a lot of stuff we wrote that wasn't used for the computer on the Ship Party in two thousand and one, and I think Ken wound up being the voice of the computer, which is funny because the original Hell was voiced by a Canadian. Wow, these Canadian computers that are taking over the world.
There was a time limit on this, right the release date was set, so that's why there was so much pressure to get everything out.
Yeah, Christmas, what year, eighty three, eighty two, eighty two, Christmas eighty two, same year as TOTSI, and we're going to do whatever. It was ten weeks and they're like, oh, two more weeks, two more weeks. You know, the movie was coming out in three weeks, so it's okay, that's it.
It was.
It was a real gamble we took with witting a steady job we liked for I think two months employment, but then we wound up being six or nine months work.
They just kept bringing us back.
Yeah, and it was really fun.
It's so weird when you're screenwriting, and honestly, the only other movie I've worked more on it was Simpsons movie, and you don't usually see like the Styers and the production first.
It really takes years to get to that point. So we entered show business backwards.
In I'm gonna say nineteen eighty Alan, I are at Harvard and there were posters up come see a free movie, and we a free movie, shure, and we go, and the movie that they're showing is this incredibly rough cut of Airplane. The movie I remember had no ending. It was hilarious, and we were on the Harvard Lampoon. A bunch of other lampoon people came and we shanghaied those guys.
We brought Zucker and Zucker and Abraham's and just dragged them over to the Harvard Lampoon building and gave them a tour, and they were very nice, but they were a little baffled why they were there. So there we are just pawning over these amazing guys, and I would never guess, oh, two years that would become the biggest.
Comedy of all time.
And three years later we're on the set making the sequel.
It's all crazy, and we were pretty sure they didn't want this sequel to be made, which I understand because they had worked on the first one a long time, but he'd sold the rights, so it was a weird thing going from like they were our heroes to now they're madadis.
Yeah, it was funny.
They put out a press release, which again in hindsight makes perfect sense, but they put out a press release saying, we have nothing to do with Airplane two. And then I think that summer Top Secret came out and it's an amazing movie, but it bombed, and so we were going to put out a press release saying we have nothing to do with Top Secret. But they were a little antagonistic. And then two of them, Abraham's and David Zucker, both came to the office separately, just the wish as well.
Very kind.
I understand completely. It wasn't like you did sequels to comedy so much back then, so you know, things are like a one shot and they clearly was lifetime. Think Openawi said they had years to make that movie, although he did say one funny thing, you go there were three of them.
There were three of them, and Ken, we're here with you. That's three what are we invisible?
And that was it's just to put it in historical context. They weren't making a ton of sequels anyhow. A few years before had been Godfather, to which was people going, Wow, a sequel to a big movie. That's weird, and one right one. They were they would make sequels, but it's not a de facto thing. And I mentioned that all the movies of that era that were so big didn't have sequels. There's no Et two and there's no Animal House too.
And I would say in the movie too that whatever the number Rocky thirty eight poster, that that's Ken's joke got a huge lass. It was you didn't think there were gonna be four more Rockies, And the idea of it was really funny.
Sequels were a new thing, and Al, I don't know if you know this. The Zuckers, they did pitch an Airplane two which was called Airplane two the Godfather and was gonna have Robert.
Hayes and Julie Haggarty.
In a big Godfather parody, and Paramount turned that down and they just wanted the same movie all over again and again, how do you parody a movie that's all jokes, And so they said, just do the same jokes again but a little different and bring back the same extra as you had. They didn't know what the formula was, but they just took as much from the first movie as they could to put into the second movie.
Charlie bluehorn Man tear them out then and was always trying to get a Godfather three made, which he eventually did. I bet that's one reason they didn't do the Zuckers idea.
I think that's absolutely I think that's what they say in the book.
Yeah.
Yeah, were there any jokes that you guys were really trying to get in there that just didn't fit.
A lot of times? This was true Kara Shanling too. It was more like convincing Ken that stuff that was there. His stuff was great. He was always like worrying, is this not good?
Is that not good?
And I don't think the movie is great because obviously it's derivative. But there was stuff that it was really funny that you kind of had to just remind him, No, this was funny when you first saw it.
It's still funny. It was funny.
He didn't want to shoot the not fun stuff. I remember there's a scene where they have to they go into the.
Back of the ship to blow up the computer core, and he just didn't want to film it. He was a hard thing to make funny. And I saw some cameras weren't even pointing in the right direction, and.
Alan, Alan are just going, Ken, you gotta do this. There is the whole thing, too, the idea that here's the greatest comedy ever has come out. And and for the sequel they hire a guy, a writer who's never directed, and two twenty one year old kids who haven't done anything. So I guess the miracle is that it came out okay.
Talking about the first one, a story I heard is that Doug Kenny, the lampun genius who co wrote Animal House and the Aarbook, payer, I mean, when he saw Airplane he was ashen. He was like, oh my god, we'll never be able to do this good.
Yeah.
Fortunately he was passed away so it couldn't cheer him up. But by the way, I've always thought, I wish someone could have told that Kenny how loved Kaddy Shack would be, because he didn't know. And it's one of the people's favored comedies. Now it's really it's nuts.
Notice there's no Airplane three.
There was one.
There were They were going to hire us to work on one, and there was a script. But yeah, you know, I think it made money because I think it was. Ken was very good with the budget. So it only costs seven and a half million. I think it grossed maybe thirty Yeah, which after Reynolds taken out. It made my money and it's played a long time. It definitely wasn't profit.
A strange cheap thing about the movie is it didn't have a score. Nobody scored it. I think they just recut the score of the first movie for this one. Little strange things about the movie, I should say too.
Ken went on to become the Canadian Ricky Gervais. He did The Newsroom, which was this fantastic show before The Office that was a lot like The Office, and he's won numerous award. I mean, he's really a comedy hero, especially in Canada.
He also played Grease Too, which again was just a major flop and disappointment that same summer, and now that is beloved and there are Grease Too sing alongs and that kind of thing.
Paramount they made that and they said, oh, got it failed because we didn't have the start. So with the Airplane Too, they turned and then they put in stuff that ken and we all got went at the end. Oh God, just making us do the same jokes at certain points that were in the first one, which I hit. My brother said airplane too much like the first one, and he was fine, I understand that I'm playing completely.
Robert Hayes told me a story about a whole sequence that he swears was shot and just never happened.
Was it in the desert?
Yeah, and it became like a beach movie almost.
Boo yep, I want to By the way, both Robert and Julie were wonderful to work with, really nice, funny, great.
Almost everybody that we worked with was really nice. Those two in particular couldn't have been better.
They were really and Steven Stucker also it was very fresh to us.
Yeah.
Even the big venerable stars were mostly very crazy.
It's really nice.
Yeah, Raze Lloyd Bridge.
Is very nice.
So it's sunny. Bono's in the movie, and he wanted.
To hire us.
He wanted to hire us.
He said, I want to do a Sicilian Cluseau, which would have been a nice thing for him.
Sunning Bone an interesting.
Character because the joke figure in Hollywood who somehow achieved so much and wound up in Congress. And when you met him, he was the most magnetic man I ever met in my life. He just was so sweet and charming that it suddenly all made sense.
He had worked for Phil Spectors too, And when I said Phil was a genius and Sonny had handle a lot of that amazing stuff in the early sixties, but really brilliant, you didn't answered your question. Yeah, we did shoot that thing. We had Annet Flinicello, we met her, and then it was another case where Finkelman, maybe correctly, just said I'm suddenly too nervous of veering too fire from the original, and the whole thing got cut.
I'll say this.
Al doesn't have to agree with me on this because they just watched the movie again and after thirty years, I go, oh, this is edited so badly. And Alan Ten was very kind bringing us to editing. We were very friendly with the editor, who was a charming character. He's an Oscar nominated editor for The Hunt for Red October, which was not a comedy.
But I watched the movie. The timing is so bad. The jokes.
You know, there's running jokes that go a beat too much where it just jumps out of you. I think there's a much better movie in there that you could copple together from footage in about three weeks.
Well, the editor was Dennis Burkler, and I agree with you, but I would say that the final edit was gone by the studio, you know, in their notes. In my opinion, Dennis said this really funny thing where he put the word fucking me before everything. You go again, you want to fucking cookie in one of the the ways can we do be snecky in Kennonis and we tape like you know, fucking editing machine, fucking coffee cup labels on every thing in Dennis's office. It was a lot of fun.
It feels like the movie did a lot for you guys. But your next gig was that nine to five, the TV show?
Was it there?
Not necessarily the news, not necessarily the news first, but by the way, Ken it had brought us out for Airplane two and got us a movie assignment too, so we had a backup job and we did that afterwards, and then I even turned that script into a TV pilot, so he kept parceling out the work to us.
He was very good that way.
But here's the big deal.
We're working on Airplane two, and I'm excited, and I remember one night we're out to dinner and I'm telling people Airplane two is gonna be funnier than Airplane. And now just afterwards said I don't think you should be telling people that, and he was right.
In the movie just fizzled.
It came out.
It was okay.
If it had been another hit, and especially we'd gotten writing credit, I think we'd be movie writer right now.
Instead of TV guys. But it just didn't give us.
The career boost that could have, and we wound up in TV, which has been just fine.
I just remember I thought then and still think Airplane is really one of the funniest movies. I always think nothing I do will match up what else I can say. There was a writer's assistant, lydd Oblinger, who was really funny and creative. She became a producer once she went to work on the movie. Don Simpson, the head of Paramount If she was his assistant, and he said, you'll
never work again, But she's worked plenty. She was really fun and that was back when An would do these rewrites with us all night, and then he would she would tape it in type and cut and paste, and then we would go to I think it was called Barbara's Script Service to something in Hollywood. They would come back with the script completely done, ready for the morning shoot at eight am.
Sounds like you guys were running a marathon.
Is exhausted as I've ever been, as hard as we ever worked, and we've had some pretty tough jobs.
But it was fun. It was really weird.
It was exhilarating. And then the thing where the big comedy that that winter was Tootsi and the big paramount hit was shooting at the same time. It was forty eight hours and it was funny. His rumors about it were, Oh, they don't know this movie, isn't it? Is it a comedy of the drama, And of course Eddie Murphy was fantastic, so you just never know. I read much later Bob Fossy had a great piece of advice, which is always
getting your next job before the movie comes out. Has he learned that with Sweet Charity, which is a great movie but it didn't do well.
Eddie was supposed to do a cameo in Airplane Too. Is he shooting forty eight hours right next door and at the last minute he sent his friend. It was another black comedian. It's the guy hustling shovel tickets in the airport. So he's in the movie watching it again. George went from Cheers is in the first five minutes of the movie. There's a couple of name actors and very small roles in the.
Movie, as well as General burk Alter from Hogan's Here.
Yeah, and.
You know the long scene shot with in the White House with rip Torn playing Ronald Reagan. Courses Ripped Torn another big star in the movie, playing whatever, the head of NASA or something. But he also did this extended Reagan imitation and I met him years later and he was so mad they had cut all that stuff.
I think because they didn't want to do the political jokes. I think it started where he was holding the hands of two black guys and then you widen and it was just shake hands. Did he There was no dated dish and I think that they were like, oh, no, this is gonna ruffle feathers, and yeah, it's amazing for a seven and a half million dollar movie.
How much was cut?
And I think what I saw on Amazon, which the cut that's out there, is not what was in theaters, but I can't put my finger on it.
It would be really hard to remember because stuff went in very late, like when they put in the scene with people slapping the woman on the plane or to get her from stop her from panicking. I think that's in my memory of the movie was it was not in for most of the time.
We cut and finished the movie and then went back for I think a week of reshoots when we did extra jokes and Hervey villages wound up in the.
Movie, things like that the little breather, yeah breather joke.
By the way, it actually they did it in an airplane. The first one too, the cup we saw at Harvard, which was fantastic. When I saw it in the theater it was even better, I think, like the Israel Airlines joke, and the first one was added after we saw it. It couldn't believe that it's as good as it was. They made it better, Like when we saw it, you were really laughing and then you peed it out a little towards the end, but they fixed that.
When they finally released it. It was great.
Yeah, it was funny.
It did with a half baked parody of the Wizard of Oz and that changed because they ended with Auto the Autopilot, but then Top Secret ended with parody of Wizard, the Wizard of Oz. They always knew, Oh, I guess that's how we're gonna end something, which.
Was also in a Kentucky Fry movie, The Fistful of Yen.
That's right, du Yeah, that's right.
It's funny because when you're working on the Simpsons movie, what Jim Brooks always said is it can't just be like you laugh and you laugh. There's got to be a point that it makes, or some emotional conclusion that comes to. And it's true, like Top Secret was really funny, but it didn't quite have that ending that the Airplane did.
Yeah, even the Jim Abraham said that it's just it's not about anything, and that's what her because Wow, the jokes, it's so worth another watch because the jokes are so they're like jokes you've never seen before, jokes from another planet.
I really right.
The other thing, too, is has always pointed out Airplane was based on the serious movie Zero Hour, and that had a great story. The whole thing about a guy as going on a plane, you know, is really compelling. So you gotta have that at the bottom, I think.
Yeah, you can see it on YouTube.
They cut the two movies together, and it's just how literal, how faithfully they followed this old movie nobody's ever seen, almost seen for see and line for line. It's always been like a kind of Miss three science theater vibe to it, where they were clearly watching the movie and then shouting the jokes at it.
Yeah.
I thought that was a little unfair that you guys didn't have that framework to hang your jokes on, other than your framework was the first movie correct exactly.
What happened and the tragic flaw. Yeah, but when you're making something called Airplane too to see it be so.
What I can tell you that we can gossip a little about the cass I remember Lloyd Bridge. I can say this because everybody's dead. Every movie is dead.
That Robert and Julie thanks exceptely.
But Lloyd Bridges, who was again very kind to us, was very tantankerous. It's a lot of people, you know, were serious actors who were in a comedy and suddenly think they're really funny.
So Lloyd had a bunch of jokes he wanted to do, and they weren't good and.
It got very antagonistic with Ken Finkleman, and at one point it looked like they were gonna fight. They were gonna fight on the set and Ken is thirty eight and Lloyd was probably twice his age, but it looked like it.
Was gonna be a pretty good fist fight.
And John Vernon was so great an animal house is in the movie, and that guy was a jerk, and he had a lot of bad comedy ideas.
I remember like he looked at us and said, you writers. Anyway, he wanted to pitch some stuff, but it really was like, oh, it's Dean, He's gonna double suspend me.
And Chad Everett also he seemed like a really nice guy who somehow and just didn't like him, didn't like him, didn't want to film him. And we I thought he was really funny and it's good in the movie. And he again had a bunch of joke pitches that didn't really go anywhere. It was nice, it was nice, everyone's making an effort. There's a couple of bloopers fans can
watch for all the way through. Again, Al was almost always right on things like this where they're doing some technical stuff and Ken said to the actors just say some technical jargon, and one of the actors is going technical jargon, technical bullshit and out there. I don't think he should do that, and I said, don't worry, it'll never.
Be in the movie.
And of course it's in the movie. And there's also some lots for where Peter Graves cut himself in the middle of the shooting. I think on the cockpit equipment. He has a band aid that pops on and off of his hand during a couple of scenes, so you can watch that.
One joke I did fight for was the Jeopardy joke, and then when it stayed in ken Mad it'd be like, Okay, you got it, good for you.
So I was happy.
And Mike, you wrote the whole Overnacho Grande stuff just off the top of your head.
I think I had worked it out in my head. I love that kind of stuff, and Al's nice about it. It never gonna laugh. It never gonna laugh at readings or at screenings, but I'm hoping people like it.
It's clever. It's clever, it's not funny, and I hope people.
I've seen it pop up as a meme on Twitter, so I guess people like that bit well enough.
The entrance of William Shatner, that is a definite meme.
I've seen that pop up on lists of best sight gags of all time, and that it was Ken Fingleman's joke. It was the three day job Alan I and Ken we're just working on it for days. There are certain things we put a lot of work into, including the opening joke with the Star Wars crawl.
We worked so.
Hard and Shatner we only had for three days. That was cool that we got him, but he would shoot for three days and he showed up with a mustache and we're like, but now he doesn't look like Captain Kirk and he'd actually just a fake mustache. He said, sure, I'll take it off. But he was also shatnery. There was a thing where he has the scripts advisor. How was that Senior just shot and like because it was good? No, it was perfect, It was good.
It was perfect. He was as Shatonery as you'd like.
And the joke where he looks through the scope and sees the enterprise, he didn't know we put that in that we were first to do any Star Trek references, but can put that editing so that got a huge laugh.
I guess it doesn't exactly get credit. There's a couple of great calls they made in cast things, Shatner.
Being one of them.
He'd never done any comedy, and now since then, I would say he's made a great second career.
Her parent zone, Oh he's super funny.
Yeah, absolutely, by the way, I think because Alan I he was difficult on the movie and so we never loved him.
But watching the movie thirty years later, I go, oh, he's great.
He's so funny at the film. And the other one is Raymond Burr, who again had never done comedy, and it just tickled Pink to be there and be doing this movie.
He's so happy.
And that's my other favorite joke of Ken's in the movie is where Julie goes. He used to laugh and laugh all the time.
Do you know what that's like? And remember Gouse, Yes I do, and.
That was it. He would do a scene like that and then we would break and he was just got was it funny? Was it funny? Was it good? Did you like it?
Lanzel and I had one last little story about how great Ken was. My family comes to this set, I go, oh God, please don't do anything. And I leave to go in a little room with Mike and right and I come back and Ken is so accommodated. He's got my five year old brother looking through the lens. It's just so so nice and such a He gave us our start, Ken and I've always appreciated it.
It's an amazing thing.
Both our parents showed up on the set. And I lived in southern California. My parents we're in LA My parents are two hours away. That's the only time they ever came to visit me was when they that and my mother just couldn't control herself.
Richard Jacob is in the movie, who was a hard crop to her.
When she was young, and she's touching him like it's an object and he's just taking it.
I didn't mentione that. And my brother's had some of the best scenes. It was really fun. It was great. I wish the movie had done a little better, but it was an experienced that you couldn't matche well.
Very famously, Quinton Tarantino as a fan of the movie on this podcast where He's Going. I was working a movie there and I would watch Airplane two and I loved it. And the host of the podcast keeps going, you mean airplane and he goes, no, I mean airplane too.
And if anybody knows this too, it's Quentin Tarranteeth.
Thank you so much, guys, Thank you so great, and I hope we can do it again sometime.
My pleasure. Thanks Mike A. Putt.
That's why we're back. And we're talking about Airplane two, the sequel, and we're talking about the deleted scenes, and there are a onun for this movie. Did you guys have any particular favorites from the ones that you were able to see.
I watched the ones that you provided us, and then I clicked on the link in the notes to the YouTube, and that water Coool of Films guy, I've seen a lot of his stuff before, where he's doing the compare and contrast and showing the difference between basically the TV version and the original version, and or the extended and or deleted scenes which I've sum probably appeared in the TV version. I'm assuming I think most of those in that YouTube video appeared on TV.
The stuff that didn't. So in the trailer, there's a sequence where this guy who looks like Carl Malden is there and this couple comes up and they're like, we lost our travelers checks and he says, well, did you have American excess or something like that. We even made it to the poster to the quad poster for Airplane two, so the British poster of it has that Carl Malden
guy on there. It's interesting because there's a newspaper from the San Francisco Chronicle December fifth, nineteen eighty two Nancy Mills, and she writes about a scene where Aldo Ray shows up as a sergeant major who during an emergency, leads the passengers and songs such as pack up your troubles
in your old bag. She also references the clothesline joke, which is in those deleted scenes where I think it's McCord is trying to come back through the door because he's been jettisoned by Rock and I can't remember the name of the one the poor Testa, thank you for Testa gets really her role gets cut the hell yeah, So with Testa, she grabs onto the sleeve and starts pulling and it becomes this whole clothesline thing and no person at the end of it. So that was in
whatever screening. Nancy Mills saw, but I've never seen that. Although ra scene whatsoever.
There wasn't anything that seemed completely necessary. You get a fairly extended scene of Sonny Bono with his spouse, and I couldn't place the actress's name, and I didn't. I was like, oh, I know her from something, but I had I doubt she's in the movie credits for this, so that was rying me crazy. But anyway, you get more of his impotence, and it's funny. She's pawing the guy next to her. She's saying, it's okay all that stuff.
And we haven't had sex and five years and just as all pawing on that guy.
Uh, he's just throwing his tie and everything.
I don't know what I've done to deserve this, but I'm very excited.
So the whole thing with this movie then becomes what we will never know. What version of the movie was seen by some of the people who was screened for early.
Was it Airplane or was it Naked Gun where they took it to like UCLA and showed it to I think that was Naked Gun and monitored the gag popularity that way. Let's not take it to a screening let's take it to college kids and show them and gauge it that way. And again there's, like we've said multiple times, there is a gag a second in this and you can probably toss a good number of them. And the couple of bits that are funny is the guy making the donation to the heart charity, the cardiac thing and
the guy having an heart attack. Is it really necessary? No, because there are so many gags at that opening of people entering the airport, some of the deleted stuff that they're showing in that is odd to like with family, the priest and.
The oh yeah, the little priest and the little nun.
Is that the gag that they were I guess they have kids that are part of the church.
Yes, I guess I had a priest and anne children or something.
Yeah, yeah, babies that are just like them.
There is a four K coming out of Airplane really from Keno Larber. It was announced last month.
Yeah, they didn't contact me to do the audio commentary, that's for sure.
It was announced to March ninth of last month. Keno Larbert are preparing a four K release of Ken Finckelman's Airplane two.
Maybe we'll finally get to see the I mentioned the William Shatner stuff because there's pictures that you share of William Shatner and the two gals that are on the moon base in completely different outfits.
Yeah, they're dressed up. It's almost like a native kind of thing. And Shatner's Vuana sitting in between them. I'm like, where the hell is this? And then another shot of him in a dentist's chair. I guess it is. He looks very intense, like he's about to start spitting, and you can see the dentist next to him. I'm like, where is this stuff coming from?
And they were doing Marvel Cinematic Universe shit before Marvel was doing And.
Then I don't know if you guys had a chance to listen to the Robert Hayes story, but he tells this whole story about how there was this surfing dream slash flashback where he's going through the desert and he's wearing his French foreign legion type outfit and he thinks that he sees this oasis up ahead, but then it turns out to just be like super tiny, just there
was a force perspective thing. But then he keeps going and he sees this beach and all of these surfers and a lane is out surfing, and Annette Funicello was actually in the movie, and he has lines within net Funicello and it's like, where the hell's that? And the way he described I'm like, you shot that?
This is real?
Like you And he's, oh, yeah, no, we shot this thing. I'm like, what that hell, man, that's a huge number that you're doing. And they just cut it out altogether.
In my mind, when I heard that story, it reminded me of what would have happened in the first movie if they cut the discos. That scene is such a memorable scene in the first movie that it's like, why second, guess yourself? I guess is what I don't understand about Airplane two. And this movie has a reputation for a reason, like this movie's reputation does precede it, and it's because of the deleted scenes and the possibility that there was a version of this movie that is more than just
eleven minutes longer. There's a version of this movie that is seemingly like possibly fifteen to twenty minutes longer, because that scene is not just two or three minutes there's no way, not with the amount of what he is talking about, possibly and again having clearly been shot, because he's speaking about it like it exists.
So and it's a short film. The theatrical release is under ninety minutes correct, right, so it's like you didn't really have to take a hatchet to it. It's a tight eighty four minutes or whatever, and it moves at a great pace. But you probably could have kept a couple of those gags.
I don't know.
The flashback that happens when he's talking with the old woman who is in the first movie, she's the one that hangs herself, but in this one she says, oh, I've got an iron stomach, and then when he starts talking, she starts reaching for the airsickness bag and starts vomiting. Right after that, or like in the middle of that discussion,
it says, production number Grease parody to come. So apparently we're supposed to have Grease parody at some point in this movie, and that's all it says, and then it just goes from it says, flashback starts, production number, flashback ends atier cabin, him saying anyway, I don't want to go on forever, and then it's her and Gray. She's covered with cobwebs and his comatose, so it's like the
skeleton gag that we get. That's okay, yeah, there's And then was that a grease parody because there is some surfing stuff in there with Sandy?
I don't know.
Second guessing yourselves is a weird thing with comedies, because you know, when you watch The Eliteeds, you're like, oh, these kind of worked with this movie, they kind of work, And with the movie being as short as it is, it's like, why did we have to come in under ninety minutes? Was that a requirement from somebody?
Like?
Why ninety minutes? That's fairly a goddamn feature length film.
I'm not gonna argue against keeping it short, but yeah, I think you probably could have squeezed a couple of those deleted scenes and maybe they were no not if they were traditional.
Even the conditioned Green thing would have been interesting in that little shot of Earl Bowen though that was originally supposed to be Leslie Nielsen, when they just had that one little short flashback when they're like conditioned green and then they cut over to the guy and his face is all green and it's ket Roll Bowen, the guy that plays a psychiatrist from the Terminator movies. Take two of these and call me in the morning kind of thing, and I was like, Wow, that was nice to see
him show up. But that's it. By the way, I think that the wife is Lee Percell because there's also those credits. There are let's see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight characters that are completely cut out according to the end credits, because our end credits on the real movie stop at smoking man played by Ronald House and then it goes into Lee Percell wife. Yeah, and then a
few more people after that. No aldough Ray though, And I'm sad about this four k of Airplane two because then I'm just like, who the hell's doing the commentary for this night?
Not Mike White, which is the biggest shame because the amount of the amount of legwork that you've done. I want to keep a little bit of praise on you, Mike, like you are the reason that we are doing this episode, and you masked all of this kind of as we've been doing these comedy things the last couple of years. Because when we did the Airplane episode, was a year and a half ago.
I did this article about Airplane two. I don't even
know how many years ago. I was asked by Ben Omard over at bear Manner Media, our friend's Bear Manner, Yeah, and he asked me to write about a few films that have never been At that time, they were never released with extras, and so he was like, oh, can you do something about it was a ninety seven six Evil Too, Airplane two North Avenue of regulars, and then he wanted me to do Halloween three, but then that came out with a shit ton of extras, Thank goodness.
The other ones never have except maybe now Airplane two will fingers crossed. I did these interviews with the Finkleman and as forever ago, so that's one reason why they sound kind of shoddy. Hopefully people will be able to get through those without a problem. But yes, So those interviews were just sitting there and I was like, I really want to revisit this, and that's when I started looking for other folks to talk to and being able
to talk with Alan, Mike and then mister Watson. That was fantastic.
Again, I'm impressed by the amount of leg work that you've done, and once again, I think if anyone is listening to this episode, this is probably the definitive singular thing about Airplane two that you need to listen to, especially given the amount of interviews that you know you got for this episode. So I hope we get to see something more with that four K, but Jesus it would be nice, But they haven't announced what's going to be on the Kenolorber four K yet, so that's the
only kind of question. Maybe it'll be nothing again.
I just looked down on my notes and I saw something I circled. What's proper spelling of war.
If you don't want to get if you don't want to speed tuned by Roddenberry?
Have you? O?
Yes?
Okay?
Is that why?
I would imagine?
So?
I think warp is actually a copywritten word from Paramount Pictures.
It's not a science term. I don't think, so swarp speed that's Star Trek related Star Trek Okay, Okay, that makes sense then, because I'm like, why and the fuck is it misspelled in this?
I don't know.
I've heard other people say warp speed before.
I've heard people say ludicrous speed, but they might have just spelled it weird.
I don't know.
It could be one of those Canadian spellings.
Have you ever even been to Canada?
It's pronounced Canada and no, I haven't. It looks like Mike, You're right, it looks like Star Trek. It would be the warp phrase. Is where that originated from?
Here you go?
Well, thanks pop culture for destroying my brain and thinking that was a scientific.
Turn real quick. The other person who I didn't have a chance to interview but who was very nice to me, was getting at Tavy Dad. She was married to russ Meyer, right, rus Meyer. Yeah, while yeah, it's her that's in the T shirt that says Moral Majority. Oh, I shouldn't know how I found out about that, and I reached out to her because we were friends on Facebook, and she
was like, oh, yeah, that was me. And then she like even sent me a hi res image behind the scenes of her in the Moral Majority T shirt with somebody sitting next to her. And I'm not sure if I was a producer or who that was, but I was just like, that's awesome. So if you buy that. The book that my Airplane two Pieces in is called and I hit this title, get that cat out of here and he spelt it oh U t A and I'm like, no, it's out.
I read that book. Read that book back in the day, and for this episode, Mike. And by the way, so warp was popularized by Star Trek. It was invented like a couple of years before. But it's a Star Trek thing, like you could talk about John W. Campbell's book, But warp is a Star Trek thing.
Yet Shanner in the movie, they couldn't ask him for permission.
And then yeah, the only other person that I would shout out that I recognized from those deleted scenes was John Paragon in the No Girl's Airline sequence where he's good and he's like pushing all those people out. So another he was a part of the Groundlings, wasn't he?
I didn't recognize him. Oh he's Johnbie from Peewey's Playhouse. Oh okay, yeah interesting, Yeah that makes sense.
Then he was also, wasn't he also in uhf.
Ah you hf stage many This is an embarrassment on a space?
What do you saying? Cards Fightcher Senior would be saying, if he were alive today, help let me into this box.
I can't breathe in here.
Help let me out.
I liked that scene the discount airline, Like, to me, that was a successful gag too, and didn't take up too much time, and they could have actually edited it down a little bit so we don't have to see five people getting jettisoned off.
One of which is the stewardes who doesn't have a parachute.
After her getting pushed off, that could be the end of the joke, but we still have a few more people to go.
The thing I liked the most was the Texas guy who's like, you got anything to read? And she goes through all the magazines and says, we have the Talmud, the ancient text of Jewish thoughts. Let me try that tall mood. And then apparently later on in the script they cut back to him and he got the locks and the hat and fill in, like he's covered interfillin and stuff and he's just has converted completely. I'm like, oh, that's so good.
Yeah, that's a good callback.
And then that nice appearance too. You mentioned Rip Torn actually playing a double role also as President Reagan, and I love that he's got those fake black hands and it's one more for the NAACP and he's just got that stupid look on his face and then he puts the fake hands down, like I couldn't touch black people in real life.
No good stuff.
Yeah, that was very good, a little bit more pointed than what we ended up getting in the actual.
Move, especially since they're trying to cut all of those Reagan things out, and that we were talking before we serve recording that it was Alexander Agig on that Psycho magazine that Sonny Bono's reading.
And again they have the Nixon metabolic joke as well.
Yeah, and that was all coming from the Canadian who was making fun of us quite a bit. And I think ken Finkleman, one of his earliest gags was on like a news program, so I think it probably got a lot of practice there.
I think this movie is better than its reputation gives it any credit for it. And if you enjoy The First Airplane, this movie is definitely worth checking out. And maybe when you hear this episode you'll be able to go and find a Keno Lrber four K that features the things that we've talked about that you have not
been seen before. That might be unrealistic, but who knows. Hey, I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I remember enjoying it, and again in comparison to something we recently watched like Caddie Scheck too, this movie is wow, height and day.
Yeah, I quite enjoyed it and was wasn't least surprised by that I broke it up into pieces because you just don't know, and I just basically watched each act. I made it to twenty five minutes the first time, and like you said, Mike, right when the trial starts, it's the twenty five minute mark, and that's basically an exact third of the film almost, and was not hesitant
about moving forward. I did it more for time and work schedule, but I was like, ooh, I get to watch the next twenty or thirty tomorrow and then I'll finish it up the last day and easily could watch it in one fell swoop. It's a quick joke, a minute more of the same stuff, but the same stuff was so good.
Why not it worked the first time working the second time.
Well, I'm really glad that you guys liked this. I had a horrible feeling that you'd be like, oh, geez, it just re tries the first one. It's okay, I'm glad that you found something a merit from this one, because yeah, this is still a favorite of mine. When Ben asked me all those years ago to write about it, I was like, Fuck, yeah, let's do it, because I remember this movie very fondly, didn't remember it being better
than the first one. I don't think anybody in the right mind would ever say it's better, but I think that it actually can hold the candle to it, and I think they really managed to capture a lot of that zaz magic when so many people can't get anywhere near it. I feel like they didn't crack the formula. They had something that was really close. It's like the mister Pib to their doctor Pepper.
And honest to God, what fucking comedy needs a sequel to begin with? And how many comedy sequels are good? Anchorman two not great? Super Troopers to actually somehow good? Let's see trying to think of there are any other Wilfarell movies that have sequels. Caddy Shack too not great.
All right, We're going to take another break and play a preview for next week's show. Right after these brief messages, he.
Married the girl of his dreams she's great, She's the best.
And that's when his Nike nail began.
How many people you've brutally murdered?
Love this evil?
I can't, oh, Mike Myer, So I Married an Axe murder premire Friday at eight on Cinemax.
We'll be back next week with so I'm Married an axe Murderer. Until then, I want to thank my co host Mark and Chris. So, Chris, what is the latest with you, sir?
It's working on podcasts over the Culture Cast, where I'm back in the swing of things finally, which is nice. So yeah, if you want to listen to me talk about movies that are not specifically one thing at the moment, that's where you would go to find that. If not that, everything over at weirding Way Media is pretty great and worth checking out, including Mark Begley's show Cambridge Ed, Wake Up Heavy, or eighties TV Ladies or Twisted and Uncorked,
or the Projection Booth. What did you show you're listening to now? Or the one thing you can't find which is over at Patreon, My patreon or Mike's Patreon, which is ranking on bond. We're once a month with our friend Richard Adam, we talk about James Bond, and we are careening towards the end of that podcast. They're going to have to start thinking about what we're going to do next, because we'll be done sooner rather than later
because we're coming up on the James Bond. A lot of people my age no which are the Timothy Dolton and Pierce Bras in the films. So that's where you can find the stuff that I work on. What about you, Mark Begley.
You can find my two shows Cambridge and Wishawan and Wickup Heavy over on weirdenwaymedia dot com and you can listen to Chris and I talk about Midsummer over at the Culture Cast.
Thank you so much guys for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. Like you guys said, they are all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
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