Name: Dave Letterman's "Airplane Audition" | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-09-27T22:03:17.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dave Letterman's "Airplane Audition" | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dave Letterman's "Airplane Audition" | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-27. Transcript available.

This is an exciting night for us. This, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong,
is the first time
we've ever had three chairs out here, ladies and gentlemen.
Can you remember a time, Paul, when we had the three?
I was trying to think earlier. I can't think of it. This is the first time.
It is. Well, I for one am mighty excited. There's a reason for us having three
chairs out here,
and I'm going to tell you what it is right now.
Hi, and welcome to the show. The 1980 movie, Airplane, was one of the
spectacular successes ever
to come out of Hollywood, California, which is just west of Arizona. It was
conceived, written,
and directed by three young men from Milwaukee, which I guess is just west of,
where is it?
It's just west of Lake Michigan, isn't it? Yeah. These gentlemen defied the
experts and made a film
that is already gross. Now, listen to this. $170 million.
Please welcome the trio of satirists, Jim Abrams, David Zucker, and his brother,
Jerry Zucker.
Nice to see you.
Boy, oh boy. You have those little things on your face, don't you?
Yeah, we go to the same doctor.
Yeah, nice of you gentlemen to be here.
Thanks for you to have us here.
Thank you very much.
And it's great to be back.
Yeah, no, you've never been here before.
No, it's a new show.
Yeah, it's nice of you to be here.
Now, you have a little, that's not an actual mustache, is it?
I guess you blew the joke.
Oh, there's a joke connected?
That was going to be a big joke, but those aren't actual sores either.
Oh, they are?
Yeah, it's fake.
It didn't really happen.
This is just not, yeah.
Well, you demonstrated remarkable courage coming out here with those a second
time.
Let's talk about your motion picture.
$170 million, can this be true?
Yes, it is true, but the studio keeps most of that, so, I mean, by the time it
filters down
to us, it's no more than five or six million.
It's not what people think.
Yeah, so it's not like you're wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.
Was the idea for this motion picture a well-planned, a well-thought-out vehicle
or something more
accidental in nature?
It was completely by accident, and Jerry will explain why it was.
We just happened to be there at the studio, and there it was, and so we filmed
it.
We were the luckiest three guys, just to have that work out.
We all watched a movie on late-night television called Zero Hour, and that
actually was lucky
because it was essentially, well, at least a very similar plot to what Airplane
is, and
we thought, gee, but it was a real serious flying movie, and we thought, this
is funny as it is,
and if we just do a little bit of writing, we can make it into an actual comedy,
and so we did that.
So it was a solid grade B movie, Zero Hour?
Yes, yes, solid B.
Yeah, and did you have to pay for the rights to that?
Yes, yes, we paid.
So you actually purchased the movie?
We actually have.
Now, this thing, $170 million, can I ask what it cost to produce?
Yes.
Yes, you can ask that.
All right.
Can either, any of you gentlemen tell me about what it cost to produce this
movie?
The budget, the budget was $3.5 million.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Good heavens.
See, what would that be in New York?
That's right, that's what it was.
$26 million.
That's a lot of money.
Uh, what had you done prior to this, this motion picture airplane?
Well, I think we were out for dinner, and...
Yeah, Jim was a private investigator, and I was a construction expediter, and
Jerry was a student teacher.
But enough about us.
It just so happens that when we cast Airplane, we had a particular actor in
mind to play the lead in Airplane.
This is the truth.
And we actually screen tested that actor, and that actor is with us tonight,
sitting on our left.
Is his first name Klaus?
And coincidentally, we brought the screen test.
Now, I know this is going to be fun for everybody but me.
But before we do this, we're going to pause, and we'll be right back, and maybe
we'll have time to take a look at that.
Welcome back.
Jim Abrams and Jerry Zucker and David Zucker are now with us, and we were
discussing the motion picture airplane, which made so much money, but you're
now involved with another project.
Is that correct?
Yes, but enough about us.
We actually brought with us the screen test, the screen test of David Letterman.
Right.
For airplane.
Yeah.
Now, let me, just before, before we get into this, and I guess there's no way
to prevent this.
This is a bit of a film that I have not seen, and it was made when?
This is the usual disclaimer, I assume.
I have not seen this, and I had no real interest in seeing it.
I guess it's obvious that I didn't get the part.
It was close.
It was close, huh?
It was a photo finish.
It was done in 1979.
79.
Yeah.
And this is me testing for this?
For the role.
Yes.
For the lead role in airplane.
All right.
And I guess we have that?
I guess we have it.
That's here, and we could.
Okay.
It's a big surprise.
Okay.
I have not seen this.
I'm not eager to see this.
We'll have fun.
Ted, you got a telegram this morning from headquarters.
Headquarters.
What is it?
It's a big building where the officers meet, but that's not important right now.
You taking all the blame for what happened on that raid was a pretty courageous
thing to do.
Was it?
Because of my mistake, six men didn't come back from that raid.
Seven.
Lieutenant Zip died this morning.
But Dr. Chandler says you'll be out in a week.
Isn't that wonderful?
I wish I could say the same thing for George Zip.
Ted, be patient.
No one expects you to get over this immediately.
I found a wonderful little apartment for us.
It has a brick fireplace and a cute little bedroom with mirrors on the ceiling.
What's wrong with him?
It's Lieutenant Hurwitz.
Severe shell shock.
He thinks he's Ethel Merman.
You'll be swell.
You'll be great.
You're gonna have the whole world.
You know, maybe if I'd have gotten the part, that movie would have made some
money.
All right, enough of that nonsense.
This is an unbelievable success.
Now, before the film, again, you actually participated in another movie project
that was also quite successful, wasn't it?
Yes.
Yes, called Kentucky Friedman.
Yeah, yeah.
What was that?
Mm-hmm.
What was that?
What was that?
Back to your screen test.
It was, I think there's a lot of potential there.
In the screen test?
Yeah.
What's your reaction?
It was embarrassing.
It was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but I know that the screen
test took about eight hours, and what we saw there was about 30 seconds.
And so I'm assuming that there's seven hours and 30 seconds of really
embarrassing stuff somewhere.
Your agent, the only thing I really remember about that day is that your agent,
who was on the set and hovering around at the time, he was there, and I came up
to him somewhere, you know, three-quarters of the way through, and I said,
you know, I think David's going to be a great actor, and your agent just looked
at me and said, fat chance.
That's true.
Always going to bad for you.
That's just the one person who's supposed to represent you, and it was a lie
for you if necessary.
It was very interesting, because as I recall, and this is such a stupid story,
but I'll tell my side of it.
You said, why don't you screen test for it?
And I said, I just don't act.
And you said, no, no, screen test, and you were both very nice, and Howard Koch
was there, and everybody was very nice, and I said, I don't want to do it.
And they said, just try it, and I said, I don't act.
And then a couple of days after it was completed, you called back and said, you
were right.
Yeah, but it was very nice of you, nonetheless.
Now, this movie was unusual in that you actually took it around to various
colleges and tested it before the final version aired, or was released, huh?
Which one?
Which college?
Airplane, yeah, the topic is airplane now, yeah.
We tested it in front of about six or seven colleges to see what was funny and
what wasn't, and we just cut out anything that wasn't funny.
What seemed to be the single biggest laugh getter in the film?
Not counting the screen test.
Yes, without the screen test.
There was some stuff that hit a fan that got a big laugh.
Yeah, do you gentlemen have a favorite part of the film?
Yeah, I personally, I don't know how these guys feel, but I love to read the
profit statements.
Yes, anything else?
Yeah.
Okay, we'll let them think that over.
Can we have a minute on here?
Sure, we'll give you a minute.
We're going to pause here in this excitement.
We'll be right back in a minute or two.
Now, did you gentlemen take turns directing this thing?
Did you direct it as a trio, or how did that work?
Well, the thing is, in order for three guys to actually have an action,
otherwise it can become very confusing.
Yeah, yeah, it would be tough.
I can certainly see that.
Yeah.
Now, you've got another, oh, now, wait a minute.
There's a sequel to this motion picture, correct?
Are you involved with that, Airplane 2?
Unfortunately, there is a sequel, and no, we're not involved.
You say, unfortunately.
Yeah, well, no, man, it might be fortunate.
It won't be for us.
I mean, we have nothing to do with it.
We don't, someone else is writing and directing it, and we have no creative
input or profit participation.
Now, how can that happen, that you do the original but are not involved in the
sequel?
Well, it turns out that when you make a deal to make a movie, what we were
primarily interested in when we made Airplane
was the ability to direct it and control it.
And after that, we really paid not a great deal of attention to all these ancillary
rights and whatnot.
And among those is sequel rights.
And evidently, unless you really have an enormous amount of clout in the movie
business, you don't get sequel rights.
Yeah.
And we didn't, and we were primarily interested in directing.
And so, we really paid no attention.
So, Paramount really owns the rights to Airplane.
Yeah.
And they did offer us the chance to do it first, but we just declined.
And right now, you're doing another project called Police Squad, which we're
going to take a pause here for station identification
and come back and discuss this one.
Thank you very much, Shane.
Welcome back to the show.
We're still talking with David and Jerry Zucker and also Jim Abrams.
And now, I had brought up the topic of Police Squad.
Tell us of the origin of this, if you will.
Police Squad is a, it's a satire of all cop shows that is appearing now on ABC
on Thursday nights,
depending on the area of the country that we have done, and it's a comedy.
Comedy.
Yes.
Did this have the same origin as Airplane?
No.
Yes, we were all sitting around watching Zero Hour, and we thought, we each
have a different story for this one.
And, okay, let's hear yours now.
Well, my story is that we were in Deauville, France.
Mm-hmm.
And we were at the film festival, and Airplane was being shown,
and we were being interviewed by an Austrian journalist.
And at the time, we were in a competition among the three of us of who could
get the biggest lie printed
in any special newspaper.
So, we had just told the guy that the new sport in America was, on the West
Coast, was skeet surfing,
where the surfers would go in and shoot skeet.
And, you know, they were very anxious to hear about all that was new in America.
And, uh, I don't know what this has to do with this.
That's, uh...
Until you finish the story.
Then that's the story behind Police Squad.
Anyway, we thought, because we were lying to foreign journalists, we ought to
do a cop show comedy.
Mm-hmm.
Now...
And that seemed very logical to us.
Now, was there ever a show called Police Squad, or there was one called Felony
Squad, wasn't there?
There was Felony Squad, and there's a movie now called Vice Squad.
There was an old show called...
M Squad.
M Squad, yes.
Now, are there any relationship to the one you've done?
You didn't buy up the rights to one of these?
No.
No.
So, it's cheaper not to buy the rights.
Yeah, yeah.
Is the show doing...
If we can get away with it, I mean, we'll see.
It's doing pretty well, I would guess, right?
Sure.
Yes.
I hope so.
Yeah.
It's just started, so if everyone that watches this show watches Police Squad,
that won't help.
Yeah, it won't help.
But...
But perhaps we could, um...
Boy.
Now, we have a bit of film of this.
This is from Police Squad.
Yes.
And this is...
Not many people realize this, but there's somebody with us today who actually
screen tested for Police Squad.
And didn't get the glass.
Let's show the clip.
Yeah.
Okay, now what are we going to see here in addition to, uh...
This is where Leslie is questioned...
Leslie Nielsen is the star, and he's questioning a witness to a robbery of a
credit union where two people were killed.
And he comes in with Alan North, who plays his immediate superior, and they're
questioning Catherine Lee Scott.
Okay.
Everybody in the studio audience should, uh, run home so you can see this on TV.
Okay, this...
And this was from the first episode, wasn't it?
Yes, which you can no longer see.
Okay, here we go.
Uh...
A look at the first episode of Police Squad.
I'm Captain Frank Drebin.
I understand you've had a pretty rough time.
Yeah, it was pretty bad.
Cigarette?
Yes, I know.
Well, do you feel like I do any questions?
I'll try.
Where were you when all this happened?
I was right here at my desk working.
And when was the first time you noticed something was wrong?
Well, when I first heard the shot, and as I turned, Jim fell.
Yeah, he's the teller, Frank.
But Jim fell's the teller?
No, Jim Johnson.
Who's Jim Fell?
Well, he's the auditor, Frank.
He had the flu, so Jim filled in.
Filled who?
Filled in.
He's the night watchman, Frank.
Now, wait a minute.
Let me get this straight.
Twice came in and shot the teller and Jim Fell.
No, he only shot the teller, Jim Johnson.
Fell is ill.
Okay, then after he shot the teller, you shot twice.
No, I only shot once.
Twice is the hold-up, man.
Then I guess I did shoot twice.
Well, so now you're changing your story.
No, I shot twice after Jim Fell.
You shot twice and Jim Fell?
No, Jim Fell first, and then I shot twice once.
Once.
He's the owner of the tire company, Frank.
Okay.
Once is the owner of the tire company, and he fired twice.
Then twice, you're out the teller once.
Twice.
And Jim Fell, and then you fired twice.
Once.
Okay.
All right, that'll be all for now, Miss Decker.
I'm really going to make a formal statement down at the station.
Oh, of course.
You've been very helpful.
Do you think we know how he did it?
Oh, how he couldn't have done it.
He hasn't been in for once.
Very funny.
Briefly, is there anything you gentlemen would like to mention that you're
working on,
or is you tied up with police squad now?
Well, we're trying to start a small religious school at Yavina.
Well, good luck to you, gentlemen.
Thank you very much for being here, and thanks for bringing that rare footage
of the screen test.
The Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrams, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you.

Dave Letterman's "Airplane Audition" | Letterman

This is an exciting night for us. This, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong,
is the first time
we've ever had three chairs out here, ladies and gentlemen.
Can you remember a time, Paul, when we had the three?
I was trying to think earlier. I can't think of it. This is the first time.
It is. Well, I for one am mighty excited. There's a reason for us having three
chairs out here,
and I'm going to tell you what it is right now.
Hi, and welcome to the show. The 1980 movie, Airplane, was one of the
spectacular successes ever
to come out of Hollywood, California, which is just west of Arizona. It was
conceived, written,
and directed by three young men from Milwaukee, which I guess is just west of,
where is it?
It's just west of Lake Michigan, isn't it? Yeah. These gentlemen defied the
experts and made a film
that is already gross. Now, listen to this. $170 million.
Please welcome the trio of satirists, Jim Abrams, David Zucker, and his brother,
Jerry Zucker.
Nice to see you.
Boy, oh boy. You have those little things on your face, don't you?
Yeah, we go to the same doctor.
Yeah, nice of you gentlemen to be here.
Thanks for you to have us here.
Thank you very much.
And it's great to be back.
Yeah, no, you've never been here before.
No, it's a new show.
Yeah, it's nice of you to be here.
Now, you have a little, that's not an actual mustache, is it?
I guess you blew the joke.
Oh, there's a joke connected?
That was going to be a big joke, but those aren't actual sores either.
Oh, they are?
Yeah, it's fake.
It didn't really happen.
This is just not, yeah.
Well, you demonstrated remarkable courage coming out here with those a second
time.
Let's talk about your motion picture.
$170 million, can this be true?
Yes, it is true, but the studio keeps most of that, so, I mean, by the time it
filters down
to us, it's no more than five or six million.
It's not what people think.
Yeah, so it's not like you're wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.
Was the idea for this motion picture a well-planned, a well-thought-out vehicle
or something more
accidental in nature?
It was completely by accident, and Jerry will explain why it was.
We just happened to be there at the studio, and there it was, and so we filmed
it.
We were the luckiest three guys, just to have that work out.
We all watched a movie on late-night television called Zero Hour, and that
actually was lucky
because it was essentially, well, at least a very similar plot to what Airplane
is, and
we thought, gee, but it was a real serious flying movie, and we thought, this
is funny as it is,
and if we just do a little bit of writing, we can make it into an actual comedy,
and so we did that.
So it was a solid grade B movie, Zero Hour?
Yes, yes, solid B.
Yeah, and did you have to pay for the rights to that?
Yes, yes, we paid.
So you actually purchased the movie?
We actually have.
Now, this thing, $170 million, can I ask what it cost to produce?
Yes.
Yes, you can ask that.
All right.
Can either, any of you gentlemen tell me about what it cost to produce this
movie?
The budget, the budget was $3.5 million.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Good heavens.
See, what would that be in New York?
That's right, that's what it was.
$26 million.
That's a lot of money.
Uh, what had you done prior to this, this motion picture airplane?
Well, I think we were out for dinner, and...
Yeah, Jim was a private investigator, and I was a construction expediter, and
Jerry was a student teacher.
But enough about us.
It just so happens that when we cast Airplane, we had a particular actor in
mind to play the lead in Airplane.
This is the truth.
And we actually screen tested that actor, and that actor is with us tonight,
sitting on our left.
Is his first name Klaus?
And coincidentally, we brought the screen test.
Now, I know this is going to be fun for everybody but me.
But before we do this, we're going to pause, and we'll be right back, and maybe
we'll have time to take a look at that.
Welcome back.
Jim Abrams and Jerry Zucker and David Zucker are now with us, and we were
discussing the motion picture airplane, which made so much money, but you're
now involved with another project.
Is that correct?
Yes, but enough about us.
We actually brought with us the screen test, the screen test of David Letterman.
Right.
For airplane.
Yeah.
Now, let me, just before, before we get into this, and I guess there's no way
to prevent this.
This is a bit of a film that I have not seen, and it was made when?
This is the usual disclaimer, I assume.
I have not seen this, and I had no real interest in seeing it.
I guess it's obvious that I didn't get the part.
It was close.
It was close, huh?
It was a photo finish.
It was done in 1979.
79.
Yeah.
And this is me testing for this?
For the role.
Yes.
For the lead role in airplane.
All right.
And I guess we have that?
I guess we have it.
That's here, and we could.
Okay.
It's a big surprise.
Okay.
I have not seen this.
I'm not eager to see this.
We'll have fun.
Ted, you got a telegram this morning from headquarters.
Headquarters.
What is it?
It's a big building where the officers meet, but that's not important right now.
You taking all the blame for what happened on that raid was a pretty courageous
thing to do.
Was it?
Because of my mistake, six men didn't come back from that raid.
Seven.
Lieutenant Zip died this morning.
But Dr. Chandler says you'll be out in a week.
Isn't that wonderful?
I wish I could say the same thing for George Zip.
Ted, be patient.
No one expects you to get over this immediately.
I found a wonderful little apartment for us.
It has a brick fireplace and a cute little bedroom with mirrors on the ceiling.
What's wrong with him?
It's Lieutenant Hurwitz.
Severe shell shock.
He thinks he's Ethel Merman.
You'll be swell.
You'll be great.
You're gonna have the whole world.
You know, maybe if I'd have gotten the part, that movie would have made some
money.
All right, enough of that nonsense.
This is an unbelievable success.
Now, before the film, again, you actually participated in another movie project
that was also quite successful, wasn't it?
Yes.
Yes, called Kentucky Friedman.
Yeah, yeah.
What was that?
Mm-hmm.
What was that?
What was that?
Back to your screen test.
It was, I think there's a lot of potential there.
In the screen test?
Yeah.
What's your reaction?
It was embarrassing.
It was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but I know that the screen
test took about eight hours, and what we saw there was about 30 seconds.
And so I'm assuming that there's seven hours and 30 seconds of really
embarrassing stuff somewhere.
Your agent, the only thing I really remember about that day is that your agent,
who was on the set and hovering around at the time, he was there, and I came up
to him somewhere, you know, three-quarters of the way through, and I said,
you know, I think David's going to be a great actor, and your agent just looked
at me and said, fat chance.
That's true.
Always going to bad for you.
That's just the one person who's supposed to represent you, and it was a lie
for you if necessary.
It was very interesting, because as I recall, and this is such a stupid story,
but I'll tell my side of it.
You said, why don't you screen test for it?
And I said, I just don't act.
And you said, no, no, screen test, and you were both very nice, and Howard Koch
was there, and everybody was very nice, and I said, I don't want to do it.
And they said, just try it, and I said, I don't act.
And then a couple of days after it was completed, you called back and said, you
were right.
Yeah, but it was very nice of you, nonetheless.
Now, this movie was unusual in that you actually took it around to various
colleges and tested it before the final version aired, or was released, huh?
Which one?
Which college?
Airplane, yeah, the topic is airplane now, yeah.
We tested it in front of about six or seven colleges to see what was funny and
what wasn't, and we just cut out anything that wasn't funny.
What seemed to be the single biggest laugh getter in the film?
Not counting the screen test.
Yes, without the screen test.
There was some stuff that hit a fan that got a big laugh.
Yeah, do you gentlemen have a favorite part of the film?
Yeah, I personally, I don't know how these guys feel, but I love to read the
profit statements.
Yes, anything else?
Yeah.
Okay, we'll let them think that over.
Can we have a minute on here?
Sure, we'll give you a minute.
We're going to pause here in this excitement.
We'll be right back in a minute or two.
Now, did you gentlemen take turns directing this thing?
Did you direct it as a trio, or how did that work?
Well, the thing is, in order for three guys to actually have an action,
otherwise it can become very confusing.
Yeah, yeah, it would be tough.
I can certainly see that.
Yeah.
Now, you've got another, oh, now, wait a minute.
There's a sequel to this motion picture, correct?
Are you involved with that, Airplane 2?
Unfortunately, there is a sequel, and no, we're not involved.
You say, unfortunately.
Yeah, well, no, man, it might be fortunate.
It won't be for us.
I mean, we have nothing to do with it.
We don't, someone else is writing and directing it, and we have no creative
input or profit participation.
Now, how can that happen, that you do the original but are not involved in the
sequel?
Well, it turns out that when you make a deal to make a movie, what we were
primarily interested in when we made Airplane
was the ability to direct it and control it.
And after that, we really paid not a great deal of attention to all these ancillary
rights and whatnot.
And among those is sequel rights.
And evidently, unless you really have an enormous amount of clout in the movie
business, you don't get sequel rights.
Yeah.
And we didn't, and we were primarily interested in directing.
And so, we really paid no attention.
So, Paramount really owns the rights to Airplane.
Yeah.
And they did offer us the chance to do it first, but we just declined.
And right now, you're doing another project called Police Squad, which we're
going to take a pause here for station identification
and come back and discuss this one.
Thank you very much, Shane.
Welcome back to the show.
We're still talking with David and Jerry Zucker and also Jim Abrams.
And now, I had brought up the topic of Police Squad.
Tell us of the origin of this, if you will.
Police Squad is a, it's a satire of all cop shows that is appearing now on ABC
on Thursday nights,
depending on the area of the country that we have done, and it's a comedy.
Comedy.
Yes.
Did this have the same origin as Airplane?
No.
Yes, we were all sitting around watching Zero Hour, and we thought, we each
have a different story for this one.
And, okay, let's hear yours now.
Well, my story is that we were in Deauville, France.
Mm-hmm.
And we were at the film festival, and Airplane was being shown,
and we were being interviewed by an Austrian journalist.
And at the time, we were in a competition among the three of us of who could
get the biggest lie printed
in any special newspaper.
So, we had just told the guy that the new sport in America was, on the West
Coast, was skeet surfing,
where the surfers would go in and shoot skeet.
And, you know, they were very anxious to hear about all that was new in America.
And, uh, I don't know what this has to do with this.
That's, uh...
Until you finish the story.
Then that's the story behind Police Squad.
Anyway, we thought, because we were lying to foreign journalists, we ought to
do a cop show comedy.
Mm-hmm.
Now...
And that seemed very logical to us.
Now, was there ever a show called Police Squad, or there was one called Felony
Squad, wasn't there?
There was Felony Squad, and there's a movie now called Vice Squad.
There was an old show called...
M Squad.
M Squad, yes.
Now, are there any relationship to the one you've done?
You didn't buy up the rights to one of these?
No.
No.
So, it's cheaper not to buy the rights.
Yeah, yeah.
Is the show doing...
If we can get away with it, I mea