Unbuckle your seatbelts…we’re going to have a bellyful of laughs tonight. This is how the story could begin Land as you can, the film that, in 1980, changed American comedy forever. The takeoff of the factory (David) Zucker, (Jim) Abrahams and (Jerry) Zucker, the trio that restored dignity to parody.
In reality, those who became known by the stage name (and almost Scandinavian airline) of ZAZ They bought their ticket into the comedy revolution in 1974. At the time, the trio had a stage show in Los Angeles. It was a complete success and, as they say, it was the basis on which the mythical Saturday Night Live. The source of humor came from an infallible method: they recorded the late-night shows, with their delirious seventies teleshopping, and, the next day, they scripted parodies of those contents.
One night, however, something more than ads for potato peelers, frying pans, and penis extenders slipped onto the tape. A film titled Suspense… zero hour (Hall Bartlett, 1957). Starring by Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell and Sterling Hayden, It told the story of a traumatized war pilot who must take over the controls of the plane after his pilots become ill.
The ZAZ saw gold: it would be the basis of a parody of the successful disaster films that dominated the decade, such as those produced by Irwin Allen, the king of disaster, or the saga Airport. They took over the rights to the novel, but paramount I didn’t quite see it clearly. ZAZ then embarked on a more modest goal: compiling their stage sketches into a film. It was titled Made in USA (1977) and was directed by none other than an unknown John Landis.
Made in USA It cost very little but its scatological and absurd humor, a vulgar variation (in the best of the senses) of the Monty Python raised considerable money. They had passed the security check and Hollywood was already looking at them with different eyes. Especially celebrated was the segment of the film entitled yen fist (indefensible Spanish dubbing, of what should have been For a handful of yen), a parody of the movies Bruce Lee. If that had worked so well, the same could happen with the disaster genre.
Waiting for runway for takeoff
They were lucky because, being rookies as they were, Paramount advised them and took them through the best navigation chart, convincing them to forget their riskiest decisions. For example, his obsession with Suspense… zero hour was such that they intended to shoot in black and white and place the action in a small twin-engine, until Michael Eisner, legendary Hollywood shark who would end up resurrecting Disney, put it out of his mind, as Jerry Zucker acknowledged in AV Club: “He told us that if we did it at Paramount, it would be on a commercial airplane and in color. “Those were his limits.”
He also advised them to eliminate the parodies of advertisements that had worked so well in the theater and in their debut film. In exchange, he suggested inserting flashbacks, with which the trio gave free rein to some of their favorite films, from here to eternity to Saturday night fever, anticipating the eternal date that his later imitators would become (did anyone say Scary Movie?).
But ZAZ also had the instinct to understand that the film’s secret ingredient would lie in its cast. In this they were intransigent and refused to hire the stars suggested by the studio, such as Chevy Chase either Bill Murray. They wanted respected and respectable television actors, as far away from comedy as possible, who acted without grimaces or fuss to, paradoxically, produce that comic effect.
Crew on board
Peter Graves (Commander Cambion who liked gladiator movies so much) had become famous with Mission: Impossible; Lloyd Bridges (the McCroskey who chose a bad day to quit smoking, drinking… and sniffing glue), from the adventure series Sea Hunt; Robert Stack (the pessimistic Captain Kramer), from The untouchables. And of course Leslie Nielsen the immortal Dr. Rumack, was not at that time an icon of comedy, but the protagonist of forbidden planet and of The adventure of Poseidon.
According to David Zucker, the most difficult to convince was Graves: “He took one look at the script and threw it in the trash. You can’t blame him: he plays a pedophile and each of his responses is creepy.” It seems that, despite that, the “Billy, have you ever seen a naked man?” was funny. In an interview with a media outlet in his native Wisconsin, Abrahams recently assessed the success of his strategy: “There is something very endearing about seeing those four actors, with long careers, parodying themselves in the film.”
With the Fantastic Four of the cana embarked, it was the turn of the protagonist couple. The role of the sweaty Ted Striker was presented by a teleshopping star as Bruce Jenner (today Caitlyn) and that of the dedicated purser Elaine, a young Sigourney Weaver. They chose Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty.
The icing on the cake was put by an NBA star like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The Lakers legend accepted, but not without haggling first, according to Jerry Zucker: “We offered him $30,000, but his agent asked us for $35,000. because that was what a Persian rug that they wanted to buy cost. We thought it was the best phrase we had ever heard in a negotiation. Two weeks later, he took a photo in Time with the $35,000 rug.”
Except Hays, who had to run from the set of the film to the set of his series Angie, The rest of the cast had a great time. Especially Leslie Nielsen. For David: “In person, Leslie was a natural prankster, as I think everyone knows. He had a fart machine and every time he was interviewed on television – but also in real life – he would talk to you all seriously while he made it work.” He also liked to do it while the others were rolling, making life impossible for Hays dying of laughter.
Good takeoff, better landing
The film was ready to begin its descent into theaters, but before ZAZ did screenings and more screenings in universities. They tested to exhaustion which jokes worked and which didn’t among the younger audience.
The film thus went from 115 to 88 minutes. An hour and a half in which laughter followed one another at a speed never seen in the cinema. It is estimated that there is a joke every 2.6 seconds. From the beginning with the parody of Shark, at the end with the post-credits scene and even in those same titles with the inclusion of Charles Dickens as a collaborator.
Land as you can is a constant flurry of all kinds of occurrences: racist, sexual, about illegal substances, metafictional… In the Spanish translation some of the most celebrated remain (“Joey, do you like gladiator movies”, “Joey, have you ever been to a Turkish prison?”), although other myths are lost such as African American slang or the misunderstanding about Shirley/Surely. What does not change are the most physical and absurd ones, which continue to have a universal scope, from the beating of the anxious traveler, the sick girl’s drip and, of course, the rubber autopilot, the great Otto.
The film cost 3.5 million dollars and earned 83 million, ranking fourth at the box office of the year. They turned Leslie Nielsen into the most unlikely comedy star in film history (they nicknamed him ‘the Laurence Olivier of parody’) and revolutionized the history of comedy…
Or not so much, as a humble Jerry Zucker declared to the NYT for the 30th anniversary: “The truth is that we are only following in the footsteps of a long tradition that goes from the Marx Brothers to Fatty and Skinny to The Goon Show. We are just a small note in that long story.” A memorable note, in any case, signed during an unforgettable trip. ZAZ definitely chose a good day to record late night TV.
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