Picked the wrong year.
Monday, April 20th, 2020
Lloyd Bridges in Airplane, 1980, directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker
I know that I went to see the movie with some Turner colleagues in, y’know, an actual movie theater, probably the LeFont Tara or The Screening Room. I know at least some of my moviegoing companions were high when we saw it, and although I’d like to pretend I was wasted as everyone else, I probably wasn’t. I may have had a social toke, but really, it was never my thing.
Happy 4/20!
This movie was by turns excrementally bad and side-splittingly funny, and to this day just thinking about some of the scenes just causes spasms of laughter or repressed giggles. It’s like when I watch MST3K with Sammy anywhere around and stifle a giggle…she says “hee hee! hee hee!” because I think it delights her to see me laughing like an 8 year old.
But Airplane was in several moments…in a lot of moments, my kind of humor.
My kind of humor is when the posse in Blazing Saddles, accompanied by rich orchestral music, rides by an entire orchestra in the desert, playing the music we’re hearing.
And my kind of humor is when Robert Stack orders “Steve, I want every light you can get poured onto that field” and the next shot we see is a dump truck of lamps and bulbs being poured out onto the airstrip.
And my kind of humor is when Bridges jams a cigarette in his mouth after asking “where the hell is Kramer” and the camera pulls back to include a portrait of him in that exact same pose…in front of a picture on the wall of him in that exact same pose…in front of a picture on the wall of him in that exact same pose.
Which is, I guess, stoner humor, or literal humor, or old guy humor, or just…funny.
I just want to say good luck, I’m counting on all of us.
