TheQueen
06-29-2010, 01:48 PM
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/06/27/arts/27airplane-span/27airplane-span-articleLarge.jpg
From left, Julie Hagerty, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (lying down), Leslie Nielsen and Peter Graves in “Airplane!” (1980), written and directed by Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker.
WHEN the creators of “Airplane!” were lining up actors for their rollicking parody three decades ago, some of the straight-arrow character actors that ended up in the cast worried about the harm it might do to their careers. One of the most skittish participants: Peter Graves, the taciturn “Mission: Impossible” star who played the movie’s pilot, a kindly veteran who welcomes a little boy named Billy into the cockpit and asks questions like “Ever seen a grown man naked?”
“His agent got him the script, and he was totally turned off by it,” Jerry Zucker, who wrote and directed the film with his brother, David Zucker, and their lifelong friend Jim Abrahams, said recently during a phone interview with his erstwhile partners. “He thought it was tasteless trash.”
Mr. Abrahams interjected, his voice perfectly deadpan: “I don’t understand. What did he think was tasteless about pedophilia?”
CONTINUE READING (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/movies/27airplane.html?8dpc)
From left, Julie Hagerty, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (lying down), Leslie Nielsen and Peter Graves in “Airplane!” (1980), written and directed by Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker.
WHEN the creators of “Airplane!” were lining up actors for their rollicking parody three decades ago, some of the straight-arrow character actors that ended up in the cast worried about the harm it might do to their careers. One of the most skittish participants: Peter Graves, the taciturn “Mission: Impossible” star who played the movie’s pilot, a kindly veteran who welcomes a little boy named Billy into the cockpit and asks questions like “Ever seen a grown man naked?”
“His agent got him the script, and he was totally turned off by it,” Jerry Zucker, who wrote and directed the film with his brother, David Zucker, and their lifelong friend Jim Abrahams, said recently during a phone interview with his erstwhile partners. “He thought it was tasteless trash.”
Mr. Abrahams interjected, his voice perfectly deadpan: “I don’t understand. What did he think was tasteless about pedophilia?”
CONTINUE READING (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/movies/27airplane.html?8dpc)