Airplane! (1980) on Netflix
Ex-fighter pilot Ted Striker, afraid to fly, boards Elaine Dickinson's flight to win her back. When the fish meal sickens the crew, he is the only pilot aboard.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.7/10292,685 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes97%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ted Striker is an ex-fighter pilot and a traumatized war veteran who drives a taxi. A fear of flying and a drinking problem have cost him responsible work. Elaine Dickinson, his girlfriend from the war, is a flight attendant, and she ends their relationship before boarding her flight from Los Angeles to Chicago. Ted finds her note, reaches the airport, leaves his cab and buys a ticket on the same plane to win her back. Elaine keeps rejecting him, and the fish served during the in-flight meal leaves the crew and several passengers ill.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Airplane! (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The role of Ted Striker was written for David Letterman, who did a screen test in 1979 that ZAZ liked, but he did not want to pursue it; Chevy Chase, Barry Manilow, Bill Murray and Fred Willard were also considered, and Caitlyn Jenner read for the part.
- ZAZ test screened the film in front of college campuses and, based on audience feedback, reduced the runtime from 115 minutes to 87 minutes; among the cut scenes was one featuring José Feliciano as a blind "Air Poland" pilot, which ZAZ later claimed was unfunny.
- Republican politician Howard Jarvis, well known in California for getting his tax policy Proposition 13 passed in 1978, makes a cameo as the patient passenger in Ted Striker's cab, spending the entire movie in an empty cab with the meter running and delivering the final line after the credits.
- ZAZ's script borrowed so much from Zero Hour! that they believed they needed to negotiate the rights to remake it and stay within the allowance for parody within copyright law; they obtained those rights from Warner Bros. and Paramount for about $2,500.
- Universal Pictures filed a complaint against Paramount claiming that the film's parody of the Airport series and the similarity of their titles constituted plagiarism, and after a review by the MPAA arbitration board Paramount agreed to retitle it Flying High! for its international release.
- For the airport announcements the filmmakers sought out and hired the real-life married couple who had recorded the announcement tapes which were then being used at Los Angeles International Airport.
- During one taping process the writers unintentionally recorded the 1957 film Zero Hour!, and while scanning the commercials found it to be a "perfectly classically structured film" according to Jerry Zucker.
