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.
