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July 18, 2025 • 13 mins
Writer and Director of 'Airplane' and 'Top Secret' David Zucker joins the show.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming up this Sunday is going to be a fun
event at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills starting
at two o'clock, and there'll be a gentleman there.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
By the name of David Zucker.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Now you may not know his name right off the bat,
but when I talk, I tell you about the movies that.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
He and his brother have done.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Well, Airplane, Naked Gun, Top Secret, and on Sundays the
double feature of Airplane and Top Secret. And Jerry and
David will be there and it's four hours of fun movies.
So David, thanks for joining us. Always fun.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hi. Yeah, you forgot to mention basketball.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Oh and basically that's right, that too.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
I mean, I am so I'm so fascinated by the
stuff that you do. I mean it is crazy, off
the wall, insane stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
And it's just everybody who's seen those movies.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
I mean, I just I have to hold my gut
in a iel so hard, but conservatively when well it's true,
but when you're going to studio the suits, how do
you get something like this sold and get the money
for this?

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Oh well it was I guess it was easier forty
years ago. Now I can't get in the door. So,
I mean, as you can see, you know they're doing
there's there's a naked gun coming out that I have
nothing to do with that. We wrote a script, wrote
a script with Pat Proft, and so they just rejected
it and somebody else swooped in and took over the franchise.

(01:31):
So it's that's that's Hollywood. Well how did you how
do you not?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
How did you not own the franchise that was your film?

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Oh well, you know you have to when you make
these deals. They take everything. I think I even leased
my grandmother for a month to them. And it's so
egregious the way that the studios do things. But they
they take all rights in perpetuity in all universes, and
you know, just in case any thing is discovered on Mars,

(02:01):
they will be able to, you know, put that franchise
with you know, with probably a bad sequel on Mars.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
So that's part of the filmmaking process. So when you
go hat in hand and beg for money to make
a film, part of it is you give up every
right to everything subsequent to that film.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Right, it was easy. You know, we begged on airplane
and then after that, you know, we went in Jerry
and Jim and I went in to Paramount and pitch, well,
we'd like to do a movie franchise out of a
failed television series and that was Police Squad. And the
guy says, oh, okay, sure, yeah, go ahead and do it.

(02:45):
That's a good idea. That that was the studios. Then
now you know, it's pretty much only franchises. We makes
big stars Tom Cruise movies, and I love Tom Cruise
movies by the way.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, Mission, Predictable, all of those films.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
I really enjoy going to see Tom Cruise movies. You know,
if you want to laugh, watch Impractical Jokers or Self Park.
You know, those guys are original and they're they're doing
funny stuff and they're not doing uh, you know, they're
not doing sequels and remakes. So I just like anything original.
How long are you?

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Go ahead?

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Go ahead? Even if I want a movie opening, there's
a movie opening I think August first, called The Short Game,
which is, you know, just an original movie. It's not
a haha comedy. But you know, I also recommend Freaky
of Friday, which is opening August first. I mean, there's

(03:46):
there are good movies out there.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
But the problem is you're dealing with the studios.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Also want to talk to talk about budgets because I
remember the first one hundred million dollar budget.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
When I read about.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
It, I go, how can you possibly we spend that
much money on a film? I mean, how do you
just do it? And of course today one hundred million
dollar movie is sort of middle of the road.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
You know. Yeah, so we did, we did. We did
Airplane for three point two million, and then Naked Gun
was fourteen million, and then as they went on they
were a little more, but they were they weren't more
than twenty or twenty five. So you know, the budgets
now are crazy, Yeah one of them.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
You know, we're interrupting each other.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, they But Bill, I want you to know that
I'm more important, okay, can.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, Well for buy a long shot? Yeah, you didn't
even have to say it.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
But you know, we we you know, we we just
we don't like to spend a lot of money. You know,
part of doing spoof is not doing not having a
big start, you know, not spending a lot of money.
And we have these rules. So you know, we we
over the course of all our years of doing movie
and kind of we invented this kind of spoof this

(05:03):
particular genre that we did, and we were able to
do it well. We evolved fifteen rules, and one of
the rules it's called technical dizazz and basically it don't
spend a lot of money on it. So big budget,
big star spoofs are kind of counterproductive.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, yeah, you would think you can't. Yeah, you can't
do that. I mean that's impossible. You need you need
a action film.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
David Zucker, who he with his brother created films Airplane,
Naked Gun, and just a whole slew of others, is
with es basically spoofed movies. And on Sunday, Jerry and
David are going to be at the Fine Arts Theater
in Beverly Hills at two o'clock and it's a double
feature and it's going to be four hours of film

(05:49):
and them talking. So David, back we go and talking
about for example, Airplane. Let's start with you and your brother,
how did you get into this business and film business,
and who comes up with those crazy ideas that to
this date, for example, the Leslie Nielsen fart scene in

(06:09):
the in the restroom. My god, that's one of the
funniest things I've ever to this day.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
I laughed that just thinking about it.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
You know, we like to come up with these ideas
that we actually have a label for them, and we
call them driving instructors. Because in The Naked Gun, if
you remember, there was a scene where Leslie Neilson is
chasing eye jumps in a car and it's this girl
taking driving lessons from John Houseman. And so if you
if you can think of a great situation like that,

(06:41):
then the jokes kind of right themselves. And that's really
what happened in that scene where Leslie, you know, had
the radio mic on and he's peeing in the back,
and you know, a lot of those a lot of
those jokes. And we don't remember who came up with him,
but you know, we all sit in the room, you know,
Jerry and I and our partner Jim Abrams and Pat Proft,

(07:03):
who we've been writing with forever, and you know, when
Leslie Nielsen died, they came they started quoting all these
great Leslie Nielsen lines, like like a midget at a year
and I had to stand my toes and you know,
and all those lines were written by Pat Proft, who
just comes up. I don't know how he comes up

(07:25):
with those, but otherwise, other than that, we don't remember
who wrote what. And you know, we started out just
you know, with a small theater we had. It was
called Kentucky Fried Theater and we ran it on Pico
Boulevard in West LA and we did that for five
years before we did Kentucky Fried movie. And like our

(07:47):
first and we had no publicity budget, so we called
our first show my Nose's just so our weekly La
Times calendar listing would read my Nose runs continuously, and
you know, and that was you know, that pretty much
passed for humor in the in the early seventies. So
we just had so much fun with it. And then

(08:08):
we got into movies.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Let me ask this, when you write a film, and
particularly when you're talking about humor, humor can fall flat.
That's difficult to do because drama it's good, it's bad,
but you don't make a complete ass out of yourself.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Humor, if it isn't funny, it gets to be terrible.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Do you know what's gonna work and what's not gonna
work when you write a.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
Movie, Well, we we do. I mean, nobody bats a
thousand and we know pretty well what's going to work
because we had this experience in the theater, you know,
beven close to audiences. And then what happens with it's
your best guess, and we use these rules that we
have about doing our brand of spoof comedy, and you know,

(08:55):
we come out with a movie that's about one hundred
minutes long, and we preview it and not everything works.
So you know, we don't know everything, and the audience
tells us, you know what, what's funny, and sometimes things
just completely fall flat. But generally, you know, hopefully you know,
we've done a good enough job so that you know,

(09:17):
we come out with eighty minutes of a great movie
and then but there's a lot more to it, like
you need a good story. The movie has to be
grounded in reality, all these rules. In fact, I'm doing
an online course in you know, doing this kind of
spoof comedy. It's called Mastercrash dot com and in it

(09:38):
I'm describing I just really say, you know, how the
sausage is made, and it really is a pretty pretty
interesting look behind the scenes as to how we do it.
And there is a trick to it. You can't just
you can't just see it. It looks easy and like
you know, the guy, the guy my dry cleaner is

(09:59):
a big fan of naked gun and airplane and top secret.
But he can't do it. So a lot of people
think that they can. But it's it's not just a
bunch of puns, that's all I can say.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, and you're and you're probably not very good at
dry cleaning, So I can see.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
How Noll say he's an expert at that, like some
producers are good at, you know, an animated show every week,
and that's fine, that's I admire that.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
An airplane, Yeah, an airplane. Let me let me ask
this because only on a couple of minutes left. Leslie
Nielsen was a pretty serious actor before Airplane.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Wasn't he?

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Absolutely? And how did you yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
How did you know he was going to be this funny?
Why did you choose him? Because this is just straight comedy.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, because we saw the Poseidon Adventure, We saw you know,
a dozen of his television movies and and bit parts
that he would do, and he appeared to have no
sense of humor at all, And so that's why we
cast him because we thought he and also Robert Stack
seemed like he had no sense of humor. All these guys.

(11:11):
It turns out they're regular humans. They laughed. Leslie had
a wonderful sense of humor. So did Graves and Bridges
and Stack and you know, just but they loved making
fun of themselves. And also they weren't you know, the
thing is, they weren't Oscar quality actors. They were you know,
journeymen actors. They were in B movies, and so that's

(11:37):
part of what goes into casting. So they were cheating
and they were cheap.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yes, no, they were cheap.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, yeah, they were cheap to get right, so is oj.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, well so yeah, I know that was hilarious. Yeah,
that is.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Hey, and those big names that you did get to
do the cameos, I'm assumed that after your first movies
there was no problem getting these people just to show
up on those filmis.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
It maybe even work for scale.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
That's right. You know, somebody somebody wants to ask me,
just recently, how did you get josh A Gabor And
you know, I just kind of said, well, our agent
called up her agent, and everybody wants to be in
a movie, and you can really get anybody. I mean,
so I worked with James Earl Jones and I worked
you know, with a lot of great people, and they

(12:29):
were all nice people. I don't think I ever worked
with anybody that I didn't like. So yeah, like you know,
Mike Michael Mapson had had a reputation as being a
tough guy, and somebody said, oh, he's going to eat
you up alive. And he came in the first table
reading and I never stopped insulting him and telling him
what a terrible actor he was, and he loved it.

(12:50):
And so that's that's was our relationship. I love. There's
just a way. There's a way to deal with everybody.
So I hope I've dealt with you the right way.
Yeah you have.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
I mean you've given me some inside baseball and some
of the stuff it's just fine. I mean some of
the stuff that you did is some of the is
the funniest stuff I've ever seen in my entire life,
and I've been around for a while. Okay, real quickly,
you are let me let tell people where you are going.
You and your brother are going to be at the
Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills at two o'clock. It's
a double feature. It's airplane and top secret, and you're

(13:25):
gonna be there to answer questions and just.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Make your yeah. Any if anybody brings a book. We
wrote a book called Shirley. You can't be serious. That
the true story of airplane. We'll be glad to sign
those books for people love it, you know, yeah, because
we're desperate for attention.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
Good for you, all right, yeah, like you haven't gotten enough, David,
Thank you much. We'll catch you over the weekend on Sunday,
all right. David Zucker very very very funny man, to
say the least.
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