Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker

Episode notes

(Photo: St. Martin’s Press)

The legendary comedy writers on ‘Airplane!,’ ‘The Naked Gun’ and more

David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker – together they created some truly classic comedies: The Kentucky Fried Movie, Top Secret, Ruthless People, and The Naked Gun. 

And of course, there’s Airplane!. The jokes in that film are basically perfect. Profoundly dumb, in almost every case, but perfect. Nobody else has been able to replicate that combination of unhinged silliness and dead dry sincerity. It’s a Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker original.

Together they recently wrote a book. It’s called Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!. It’s not strictly a book about that iconic comedy. 

It’s a book about a collaboration that’s lasted almost half a century. It’s a book about Z-A-Z’s triumphs and disappointments. It’s a book about how to make something funny for TV and film. There’s even a handy list of comedy rules. 

We’ve got David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker on the latest episodes to talk about the book. They dive into why they cast Leslie Nielsen in their projects and what it was like to work with him. They also share one weird trick to write good comedy for TV and movies. Actually, it’s many tricks, an entire list!