Very few people can honestly claim to have changed the direction of comedy, but Jim Abrahams – who died this week – is one of them. Thanks to the procession of spoof movies he made, both alone and with his fellow writer-directors David and Jerry Zucker, Abrahams helped to carve out a brand new genre of comedy, equal parts straight-faced and scattergun.
The most enduring Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker (ZAZ) film remains Airplane! After leveraging the show they honed at University of Wisconsin–Madison into the entertaining if directionless sketch film The Kentucky Fried Movie, the trio came across the 1957 aviation thriller Zero Hour! on television. They were so taken by the silly plot and wooden acting that they decided to parody the whole thing, by hewing so closely to the original that they ended up buying the rights to avoid a lawsuit.
But what followed was an instant classic. It was a commercial juggernaut, making its budget back 50 times over. It was critically acclaimed. It was so funny that IMDb’s quotes page for the film is essentially every line from the script. Most of all, though, it was profoundly influential. The reason for this was ZAZ’s resolute insistence on playing it straight. The studio, it is said, kept throwing potential stars at the trio – everyone from Bill Murray to Dom DeLuise to Barry Manilow – but they held firm, demanding that the roles be filled by dramatic actors who would deliver their nonsense lines without so much as a wink. High among their picks was Leslie Nielsen, a workhorse journeyman actor with dozens of small dramatic roles stretching back to the 50s. Airplane! gave him the opportunity to explore a newer, goofier career path. It is safe to say that he ran with it.
After the less fondly remembered (but still wonderful) Top Secret! in 1984, ZAZ re-enlisted with Nielsen for The Naked Gun, which did for detective films what Airplane! did for disasters. Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker had fractured a little by then – Abrahams wrote but did not direct the film – but that did not stop The Naked Gun from expanding on Airplane!’s formula, flinging such a relentless volley of puns, non-sequiturs, sight gags and slapstick at the audience that you’d often find yourself laughing so hard at one punchline that you’d miss the next three.
Abrahams did not return for the two Naked Gun sequels, but three years later he wrote and directed Hot Shots! without his collaborators. This time a Top Gun spoof, Hot Shots! found another deadpan maestro in Charlie Sheen and similarly went on to earn much more than it cost. It was followed by 1993’s Hot Shots! Part Deux, which this time took the Rambo movies in its sights and boasted an all-time great cameo from Martin Sheen, who interrupts a Willardesque riverboat monologue so that father and son can shout “I loved you in Wall Street!” at each other in unison.
Soon after, though, Abrahams would become a victim of his own creation. Thanks to the success of Airplane! and The Naked Gun, Hollywood became flooded with spoof movies that lacked both the focus and the rigour of those shepherded by Abrahams. By the time he released Mafia!, his 1998 Godfather parody, people had been exhausted by films like Spy Hard and Fatal Instinct and Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. The film made money, just not in the quantities of his past work.
Abrahams’s final writing credit was on 2006’s best-forgotten Scary Movie 4, a film that got lost in the dismal haze of noughties spoofs like Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans and Vampires Suck. Indeed, pickings were so thin during this time that the spoof genre never really recovered. But Jim Abrahams was there at the beginning, and his work was never bettered.
