Jim Abrahams, Spoof Comedy Legend Behind ‘Airplane’ and ‘Hot Shots,’ Dead at 80

Jim Abrahams, one of the writers and directors behind some of the greatest and most quotable spoof and slapstick comedies of the 20th century — including Airplane!, The Naked Gun, and Hot Shots! — died Tuesday, Nov. 26, Variety reports. He was 80.

Abrahams’ son, Joseph, confirmed his death. No cause of death was given. 

Abrahams spent the bulk of his career working alongside his two childhood friends, brothers David and Jerry Zucker. The trio of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker began their work in sketch comedy, founding the Kentucky Fried Theater while still students at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. 

Their work there provided the foundation for their 1977 film debut, The Kentucky Fried Movie, which the trio wrote and John Landis directed. Kentucky Fried Movie comprised a chaotic cavalcade of sketches, many of them highly satirical film parodies, creating a kind of template for ZAZ’s forthcoming breakthrough and future successes. 

Speaking with NPR last year, Abrahams explained the group’s early process during the Kentucky Fried Theater days. “The way we used to get material for our theater was: We would leave a video recorder on all night,” he explained. “We did spoofs of commercials and TV shows and movies from that era, so we would leave the videotape machine all night because that’s when the stupidest commercials and TV shows and whatnot were on.”

It was through this process that the trio stumbled upon a 1957 melodrama called Zero Hour about, as Abrahams explained, “a guy with PTSD who takes off in a plane and has to overcome his demons to land the plane in the woods.” The trio took that basic plot and turned it into Airplane!, their seminal 1980 disaster comedy, which marked the first comedic role for Leslie Nielsen. (Not only did they borrow the Zero Hour plot, but the original film’s actual dialog provided inspiration or set-ups for many of Airplane!’s greatest punchlines, including “I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.”)

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ZAZ followed the success of Airplane! with tow more hits: 1984’s Top Secret! — which spoofed Cold War spy flicks and Elvis musicals — and 1984’s Ruthless People. They also created the cop parody TV series Police Squad!, again starring Nielsen. While the show lasted just six episodes, it spawned the celebrated Naked Gun trilogy, which debuted in 1988 with From the Files of Police Squad! 

That movie, however, would also be the last official ZAZ collaboration. The group split for a mix of creative and financial reasons, the latter exacerbated by the fact that all three had been sharing a single director’s salary for their films. And as David Zucker put it in a 1988 interview with Premiere (via The AV Club), “After a while, it became too many guys sitting in the same chair.”

Also in 1988, Abrahams directed his first project outside ZAZ, Big Business, starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin. He followed that with the box office disappointment, 1990’s Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, but the following year scored a massive hit with Hot Shots! — a Top Gun-style parody starring Charlie Sheen that saw him dipping back into the kind of film spoofs ZAZ always excelled at. (While the Zuckers weren’t involved, Abrahams did write the script with frequent ZAZ collaborator Pat Proft.) 

Abrahams directed just two more feature films after Hot Shots!: the film’s 1993 sequel, Hot Shorts! Part Deux (also a huge success) and 1998’s crime comedy, Mafia! In 2006, he co-wrote the script for Scary Movie 4, which marked a reunion of sorts with David Zucker, who directed the film. 

In that NPR interview, Abrahams distilled the comedic philosophy that fueled so much of his work, both with ZAZ and without. “I’ve always taken the position that we don’t aim for anything higher than: you don’t have to take this seriously,” he said. “There’s no political meaning. It’s not Dr. Strangelove. And I think this is a good message for all of us forever, that there are things we don’t have to take seriously.”