One of the funniest movies ever made came from the brains of three "boys" from Shorewood, Wisconsin. Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers, David and Jerry, gave us "Airplane!" way back in 1980.
Next month, that classic film will be on the big screen at the Pabst Theater. Two of its stars, Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty, will tell stories and take questions.
TMJ4 News anchor Steve Chamraz got a chance to talk to Hays about what makes "Airplane!" a classic and how he thinks the movie holds up 45 years later.
"[It holds up] ridiculously well. I have no idea why. Well, I do. I mean… it's… the boys… to me, the boys are just geniuses. And I think a lot of people thought they were the Coen brothers, I think it is. So many people have said that about them, and I think it's absolutely true," Hays said.
When asked if the movie on the screen was exactly as the creators wrote it or if the actors improvised, Hays said they stuck to the script.
"It's the script. It's word for word. It's… except a few… a few… Like, Norm Gann and Al White, the black dudes," Hays said.
However, Hays did have to write some of his own dialogue for a scene where his character bores people to death.
"So he comes up and he says, we've got a scene that we're shooting tomorrow, you gotta write some extra dialogue into that. I'm not a writer! What the… jeez! And then when I was able to grab hold of the anxiety, I thought to myself, okay. I bore people to death. I can be boring," Hays said.
"Okay, so then I wrote a whole bunch of stuff, and that's in the film, but… everything that you hear, basically the entire film, except for that, Steve Stucker's lines were Steve's," Hays said.
As for whether Otto the autopilot will make an appearance at the Pabst Theater, Hays joked about his co-star's habits.
"Well, he's flying us, you know, between gigs. I don't know, he's usually out at a bar, so it's hard to know if… is he gonna show up, you know. It'd be a little difficult for...He's usually drunk, so, it's hard for him to walk," Hays said.
"Airplane!" will play at the Pabst Theater on Saturday, May 16. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. A link to ticket information is here.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
