Airplane! writer and director David Zucker says film could never be made today

The director of iconic movie ‘Airplane!’ has hit out at cancel culture and what he calls the ‘joyless Twitter 9 percent’ ruining comedy. 

David Zucker, who wrote and directed comedy classics like ‘Airplane!’ and the ‘Naked Gun’ series, bemoans today’s market where many of his indelible one liners would be blasted online.  

And he acknowledges that he would struggle to get the film made today because studio executives are scared of a backlash over controversial jokes. 

‘Although people tell me that they love ‘Airplane!’ and it seems to be included on just about every Top Five movie-comedy list, there was talk at Paramount of withholding the rerelease over feared backlash for scenes that today would be deemed ‘insensitive,” Zucker wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Post. 

He added: ‘We live in the most outrageous period in our recent history, when the need for humor is greatest, and yet we seem to be losing our ability to laugh at ourselves and our world.’ 

Zucker points out specific scenes that he doesn’t think would fly today. 

David Zucker, who wrote and directed comedy classics like ‘Airplane!’ and the ‘Naked Gun’ series, bemoans today’s market where many of his indelible one liners couldn’t fly

Airplane! made over $170 million at US box offices in 1978

In one scene in Airplane!, two black characters speak entirely in a dialect so unintelligible that it has to be subtitled. 

‘I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said to me, ‘You couldn’t do that scene today,” he wrote in the New York Post.

‘But I always wonder, why not? Half the gags in that joke were aimed at white people, given that the translation for “s- -t” is “golly” — and the whole gag is topped off by the whitest lady on the planet, the actress who played the mom on “Leave It to Beaver,” translating. 

‘The bit was evenhanded because we made fun of both points of view,’ he added. ‘No one ended up being offended by that scene, and all audiences loved it. They still do.’

He also cites some of the movie’s jokes involving children, including one in which an 8-year-old girl says ‘I like my coffee black, like my men,’ or when an airline pilot asks a boy if he’s ever been a Turkish prison. He says studios wouldn’t return his calls with those jokes today.   

He credits producer Michael Eisner with having faith in him to deliver the movie in his vision. 

‘Eisner somehow knew that comedy requires a certain amount of recklessness and that comedy writers and directors need to experiment until they hit that perfect note where a joke can illuminate uncomfortable subjects by giving us permission to laugh at them.’

He remembers one scene in which two black characters speak entirely in a dialect so unintelligible that it has to be subtitled that he thinks couldn’t be done today

Some of the other humor that Zucker feels wouldn’t get made today involves jokes told by and to children

‘I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said to me, ‘You couldn’t do that scene today,’ he said.

And he claims that the fear studio execs have of causing offense means that comedians are not moving to ‘serious projects’ instead, citing how ‘Hangover’ creators Todd Phillips and Craig Mazin have recently made gritty supervillain film  ‘Joker’ and harrowing historical drama ‘Chernobyl’. 

 Zucker says there are about ’30 million people on Twitter’ who are ‘killing joy for everyone.’ 

He points out that just nine percent of America’s population is on twitter, but that studios live in fear of their reaction. 

And he says the type of person that will complain has always existed, but they’re now emboldened by social media. 

‘In all fairness, 9-Percenters are not a new segment of society; they’ve always lived among us. The difference now is that social media amplifies the voices of even the smallest subgroups while the anonymity of the Internet removes all consequences.’ 

Ultimately, Zucker believes comedy ‘needs to come out of hiding,’ and has a humorous, albeit impractical way to do it.   

‘Being a typical, angry comedy guy, my immediate instinct is to kill the 9-Percenters one by one,’ he quipped. ‘More practically, though, we can weaponize our sense of humor and laugh so hard that we shake awake the soul of our country and realize that we are all one human race, united in laughter.

Ultimately, Zucker believes comedy ‘needs to come out of hiding,’ and has a humorous, albeit impractical way to do it

‘Being a typical, angry comedy guy, my immediate instinct is to kill the 9-Percenters one by one,’ he quipped

Zucker cites other recent attempts at censorship of comedy and even family programming, like a content warning placed before ‘Blazing Saddles.’ 

Programs like Looney Tunes and ‘The Muppet Show’ have had their own content warnings placed before the decades-old programs. 

More recently, comedian Dave Chappelle drew the ire of social media and transgender activists for material in his new special, ‘The Closer.’  

The special has scored 96 per cent positive reviews from regular viewers on Rotten Tomatoes – but just 43 per cent from woke critics, many of whom have accused Chappelle of transphobia.

Rotten Tomatoes, which collates reviews from critics and regular viewers for movies and TV shows, has attracted more than 2,500 notices from TV fans who’ve watched the special. Around 96 out of every 100 regular viewers has given it a near-perfect score. Many also wrote glowing reviews to accompany their ratings.

Conversely, the seven professional critics’ reviews analyzed by Rotten Tomatoes average out at just 43/100, with many of the journalists behind those pieces openly hostile to Chappelle for his perceived bigotry towards transgender people.

More recently, comedian Dave Chappelle drew the ire of social media and transgender activists for material in his new special, ‘The Closer’

The special has scored 96 per cent positive reviews from regular viewers on Rotten Tomatoes – but just 43 per cent from woke critics, many of whom have accused Chappelle of transphobia