Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
There’s something magical about casino movies that keeps us glued to the screen. Maybe it’s the way the roulette wheel spins with our hearts racing, or how a poker player’s blank face hides a world of strategy. These films transport us to a world where fortunes change with a single card flip, where ordinary people become high-rolling risk-takers, and where the line between smart play and dangerous obsession blurs beautifully. Online casino movies aren’t just about gambling – they’re about human nature, everyone’s dreams of easy money, and the thrilling dance between luck and skill. Here’s why we can’t look away from these cinematic gems, along with three recent films that mastered the art of the gamble
You will experience the excitement of gambling without losing our shirts. You can cheer when someone puts everything on a poker bet or hold our breath as dice roll across a table, secure in the fact that our money is still in our pockets. It’s a rush – like riding a rollercoaster from the safety of our own chair.
From Monte Carlo’s glittering chandeliers to Vegas’ lights, casino films ignite dream realms we are irresistibly attracted to. Designer tuxedos, champagne coupes clicking together, high- stakes suspense make us imagine members of an elite club in which we all stylishly roll dice.
Aside from the cards and chips, casino movies are all about dramatic narratives of greed, addiction, and redemption. When a bettor puts everything on one hand, we aren’t looking at a bet – we are looking at what people do when they are desperate or determined.
Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut tells the true story of Molly Bloom, who ran Hollywood’s most exclusive underground poker games. Jessica Chastain delivers a career-best performance as the Olympic skier turned poker entrepreneur. The film stands out for:
Adam Sandler shocked critics with his portrayal of Howard Ratner, a jewelry dealer and gambling addict spiraling out of control. The Safdie brothers direct this stress-inducing masterpiece featuring:
Paul Schrader’s haunting film follows William Tell (Oscar Isaac), a former military interrogator who channels his trauma into poker. Unlike typical casino movies, this focuses on:
Casino movies work because they tap into our deepest fantasies and fears about risk-taking. They let us imagine what we’d do with a lucky streak or how we’d handle devastating losses when dealing with real online casino all from the safety of our seats. These three modern classics show how the genre continues to evolve, offering everything from pulse-pounding tension to deep character studies. So next time you want to feel the rush of the casino without leaving home, these films are your perfect bet.
Directors Bethany Rooney and Mary Lou Belli first teamed up 15 years ago to share their experiences in the moviemaking guide Directors Tell the Story: Master the Craft of Television and Film Directing. And while many things have stayed the same since then, plenty has changed — from streaming standards to the rise of intimacy coordinators to changes in the number of opportunities.
This month, they release the third edition of the book, which is packed with practical gems and updated advice on how to make it as a working director. The directors, whose credits include Elsbeth, Tracker, Criminal Minds: Evolution, The Ms. Pat Show, Chicago Med, and many more, shared some thoughts with MovieMaker about the book and their prolific careers.
We talked with them about starting out, letting the best idea win, and making room for new talent.
MovieMaker: One section of the book details how directors got their first jobs. Can you tell us about your first directing jobs?
Bethany Rooney: I started in the business as secretary to Bruce Paltrow and Mark Tinker on The White Shadow, then became the associate producer of St. Elsewhere, and then Bruce gave me my shot four years in. He believed in giving people their opportunity to direct — and I am forever grateful to him!
Mary Lou Belli: I was an acting coach on the series Charles in Charge and shadowed the director, Phil Ramuno, who was generous enough to let me into both of his shot listing sessions on the aforementioned show and the editing room on another. The EP, Al Burton, gave opportunities to three other desiring women on that same series.
MovieMaker: We have a regular feature called Things I’ve Learned as a MovieMaker. What would be one crucial thing you’ve learned making movies or television over the years?
Bethany Rooney: I believe it’s a three-part process before you even shoot. First you imagine your story. Then you prep it: block and shot list or storyboard it. Then you communicate it. You tell your production designer, your first assistant director, your director of photography, your whole crew, “This is how I see it, this is what I’d like to achieve.” You get them on board with your concepts, hopefully, they’re wildly enthusiastic, just as you are. Then you get to do the really fun part: shoot it. Now you’re getting the actors on board. Now you’re making a movie!
Mary Lou Belli: This is a people business. Your reputation depends on the impression you make and that is critical. It is important to be prepared so you are perceived as an artist who takes the craft seriously. Then it is vital to treat everyone with respect, knowing that they are your collaborators. And finally always give credit when someone has made a contribution.
MovieMaker: What is one problem you’ve solved on a project that you made you particularly proud?
Bethany Rooney: I keep having to learn this same lesson over and over. When I get behind in my schedule for the day, I need to take a look at what is left to shoot and figure out a way to accomplish it more quickly while still telling the story and maintaining the show’s style. The crazy thing is, those scenes are always my favorites! I think it’s because in that pressurized moment, my creativity becomes the driving force. I see the scenes differently, and allow myself to abandon standard coverage.
Mary Lou Belli: During Covid, I had an actor sent home because she had tested positive. The part this actor was playing was pivotal to the scene. She would die by the end of it. I had already shot the master but had yet to finish coverage that would include her close up while she was pummeled with bullets.
I had a suggestion from a camera operator who said that with a handheld camera, he could become the POV of that character watching her love interest, who was also dodging fire. That other character gave a magnificent performance — the camera operator “collapsed to the floor” while watching it.
This scene was based on a true life event of the death of Breonna Taylor.… It turned out to be so much better because this alternate way to tell the story humanized her death through the eyes of the man who loved her. I give credit to the camera operator for suggesting this, and I learned that the best idea wins.
MovieMaker: What recent trends do you see in film or television? Are they here to stay?
Bethany Rooney: Streamers have a different paradigm: They get all the scripts written before they begin shooting. This means that they can cross-board the shooting schedules, which further means that directors are hired usually for a block of two episodes. So now there are four directors for eight episodes. And four other directors are without those jobs. It’s part of the contraction of the industry – and I hope that trend doesn’t stay.
Mary Lou Belli: I see shorter orders and a general contraction in the industry. Where I was used to a TV season offering more opportunities for up-and-coming talented directors, there are just way less chances now. I hope this trend changes, I fear it might not. But it becomes more important for those lucky enough to be working to know that there will be less work, and if we want to ensure that up and coming talent gets a shot, we all have to be satisfied with less work.
MovieMaker: What makes the latest edition of your book special?
Bethany Rooney: Besides the fact that there’s a new chapter on Augmented Reality and Visual Effects, there’s a lot of updates on other areas of television production that have evolved in the past few years, especially as it was affected by the pandemic. Apps for directors, casting, intimacy coordinators, post-production, Zoom… We walk the reader through these new methods.
Mary Lou Belli: All our new and updated info is presented with the spirit in which the 1st and 2nd edition were written: with an eye toward giving inside information through practical application. We don’t hold back about the knowledge we have acquired while we’ve been in the trenches or in some cases prepping to get in the trenches.
For example, a director must study the show they are about to direct or would like to direct. By that keen observation, one figures out the style, tone and look of the show. We take the reader through that process and many more by sharing how we do it or things we have observed.
MovieMaker: Why should every director have your book?
Bethany Rooney: We have learned a lot by directing hundreds of episodes. We’ve also learned a lot by teaching the craft. It’s all practical, detailed, and road-tested. Both of us truly love directing television, and it shows on every page.
Mary Lou Belli: It’s a handbook. It is reference tool. And hopefully it is path toward a dream.
MovieMaker: What are you working on now?
Bethany Rooney: An episode of Criminal Minds – season 19 (!) on Paramount Plus.
Mary Lou Bell: I am wrapping the fifth season of The Ms. Pat Show where I direct as well as executive produce. I am returning in the fall to direct on another season of Elsbeth.
Directors Tell the Story: Master the Craft of Television and Film Directing is available on pre-sale now. Get 20% off with code 25ESA1
Here are 12 films about the adult entertainment industry that don’t sugarcoat a thing.
Of course, it’s hard to generalize about a multibillion-dollar industry that has existed nearly as long as film itself, headquartered for decades in the San Fernando Valley over the Hollywood Hills from the mainstream Hollywood studios.
When Hollywood looks to its Valley neighbors, it often does so by sugarcoating things — treating the industry as silly and amusing — or playing it for horror, with the implication that the adult entertainment business leads inevitably to violence.
The following films are noteworthy for their blunt presentation of the industry. For the most part, they present it as an underground, unregulated economy where some people get along just fine — but others find themselves disappointed or worse. If you are looking for adult content, you may explore the best milf onlyfans pages.
Hardcore — recently part of a Paul Schrader retrospective on the Criterion Channel — is a fascinating but not completely successful film. George C. Scott plays Jake Van Dorn, a very religious Midwestern dad who has to travel to seedy Los Angeles when he learns his daughter, Kristen (Ilah Davis) has entered the adult entertainment industry.
The film is a fascinating look at how the adult entertainment business functioned in the late 1970s. But Scott’s transformation from everyman to shrewd undercover avenger isn’t totally convincing. And it feels a bit melodramatic that Kristen descends so quickly into very violent films.
Still, Season Hubley is excellent as Niki, Jake’s guide into the seedy underworld. it’s fun to imagine an older and more accomplished Schrader remaking this film with someone like Liam Neeson, the master of dad-on-a-rampage movies.
David Cronenberg’s 1983 film fairly brilliantly presages the rise of the internet and our willingness to surrender some of our humanity in the service of technology, but it starts with a journey into old-fashioned adult entertainment.
Max Renn (James Woods), president of a small UHF station, stumbles upon a broadcast signal of very alarming videos. This leads him to Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry) an explicit radio host with dark predilections.
Max’s investigation of her disappearance leads to him having a Betamax cassette inserted into his torso, and his eventual effort to transcend our sick sad world and “leave the old flesh.” It’s all very metaphorical, but feels especially relevant in the age of artificial intelligence.
You knew this would be here. For about the first half of Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterful second film, Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg, in his best role) finds a chosen family under the tutelage of Valley filmmaker Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). Jack’s partner Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) and rising starlet Rollergirl (Heather Graham) even have kind of a mother-daughter dynamic.
But as drugs and — gasp! — video take hold, Dirk descends into darker and darker stuff, and it quickly becomes apparent that the romanticized good times of the ’70s aren’t sustainable in the ’80s.
Lots of people would love to live Dirk’s high-flying ’70s life, but no one would want his wretched existence in the ’80s.
This French neo-noir corporate drama by Oliver Assayas stars Connie Nielsen as a sneaky, ice-cold executive involved in a French company’s acquisition of a Japanese company that makes very gross anime.
The film is surprisingly frank in its presentation of said anime, but all the executives involved in the negotiations seem to see the material merely as a product, not a thing to be judged. There’s a great metaphor here about transactional relationships.
As is often the case in dramatic portrayals of the industry, the more mainstream films portrayed in Demonlover (we use the phrase “mainstream” very loosely here) are a gateway into violent content in which people really get hurt. Or worse.
Documentarian Bryce Waggoner released three volumes of this excellent series with a simple but arresting concept: Adult entertainment performers simply explain what they’ve been doing since leaving the industry. (Waggoner directed the first two, and the third was directed by former adult performer Brittany Andrews.)
The series removes artifice and fantasy to reveal the people of the industry as just people — some of whom are thriving, and some of whom are mightily struggling.
It raises questions about stigma, exploitation and reinvention, without telling anyone how to think or feel.
Amanda Seyfried (above) is excellent as Linda Lovelace, one of the most contentious figures in the history of the adult entertainment industry.
She became a sex symbol for starring in what became one of the most mainstream and profitable of all adult films. But years later she wrote in her memoir, Ordeal, that she was violently forced into the business and all sorts of animalistic degradations.
Lovelace handles her story sensitively and sympathetically, never crossing the line into the kind of exploitation the real Linda Lovelace tried to escape.
One of the most common criticisms of the industry is that it exploits women. King Cobra is all about gay adult product, so the gender component is removed.
But that brings into more stark relief other potential forms of exploitation: namely older people exploiting younger people, and people with money exploiting those without it. (These are also problems, of course, in supposedly respectable fields.)
King Cobra is based on a true story — the source material is the book Cobra Killer by Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway, about the the life and early career of former adult actor Sean Paul Lockhart (Garrett Clayton, above).
Written and directed by Justin Kelly, it’s a little-seen but captivating film with a top-notch cast that also includes Christian Slater, Molly Ringwald and James Franco, who is also a producer on King Cobra.
Journalism doesn’t get more serious than PBS’s Frontline, and in 2002 the Oscar and Emmy winning documentary program investigated the business of adult entertainment, charting its rise and the reason for the demand.
If Hardcore provides a fascinating but melodramatic look at the industry in the late 1970s, this Frontline doc is a fascinating investigation of the state of the industry in the early 2000s, when the internet was radically shifting the dynamics of the business and making adult product more accessible than ever before.
You can watch the entire documentary — and every episode of Frontline — for free online via your local PBS station.
One of the best films on this list, Sean Baker’s Red Rocket is a judgment-free portrait of Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) an adult semi-star forced to return to his Texas hometown while on the outs from the industry.
Mikey believes he can wheedle his way back in by convincing Raylee (Suzanna Son), a 17-year-old donut shop employee who goes by the name Strawberry, to join him. He also strings along his ex, Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her mom Lil (Brenda Deiss), so he can live with them while he gets back on his feet.
Packed with excellent first-time actors, the film feel visceral and alive, adroitly blending comedy and sadness. It avoids moralizing, yet you’ll probably come to hold some strong opinions about Mikey.
Baker is one of our greatest filmmakers, who uses stories about sex work to make broader points about hard work in general. His latest, Anora, is up for six Oscars, including Best Picture.
Almost every Sean Baker film involves some element of investigating sex work, always empathetically and evenhandedly.
Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch came up with the concept for the Mikey Saber character in Red Rocket while doing research for Starlet, when they realized how many male actors live off of female talent.
Starlet follows Jane (Dree Hemingway), a 21-year-old rising star who strikes up an unlikely friendship with 85-year-old Sadie (Besedka Johnson).
Director Suzanne Hillinger’s documentary about one of the most prominent websites for adults isn’t interested in anything salacious. It just sets out to normalize — and humanize — the people who just happen to make adult content for a living.
“To me, it was really important the way that we shot the interviews, for example — that the environment around each interview subject is very much a part of the frame, that these are people in their homes, with details and lives and plants and pets and shoes in the background,” Hillinger told MovieMaker.
Again, about the dashes — we know there’s nothing wrong with the word “shot,” but algorithms don’t, particularly when it’s paired with the word “money,” and we want people to be able to see these articles rather than having them buried by robots.
A Sundance darling that gained lots of initial attention for its blunt depictions, director Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure is the story of Linnéa, a small-town Swede played by Sofia Kappel (pictured) who travels to Los Angeles to try to break into the industry.
The film is notable for its multifaceted presentation of the adult world. Some of Linnéa’s experiences are good, but others are horrible, including a scene in which she technically consents to a violent scenario but does so only under considerable coercion and pressure. She soon finds herself contributing to the abuses.
All three films in Ti West’s X trilogy — the other two are 2022’s Pearl and 2024’s Maxxxine — seek to demystify the adult entertainment industry while exploring the stigma around both sex and violence.
X is the most blunt about it. The film takes place on a very DIY adult film location — a Texas farm — where the older couple who own the place seem to disapprove of the young people’s shenanigans. But things are more complex than they seem.
In all three X films, the main protagonist is a young woman — always played by Mia Goth — trying to use her sex appeal to get ahead. It doesn’t usually work out as she planned.
You may also like this list of movies about the world’s oldest profession that sugarcoat things quite a bit.
Main image: Sofia Kappel as Bella Cherry in Pleasure, from writer-director Ninja Thyberg. SF-Produktion
Here are the seven sexiest movies about the Amish.
Yes, we know what you’re thinking: How can anyone narrow it down to just seven? We did our best, and came up with the following.
Try as we might, we can’t find a better movie title than that of the ripped-from-the-headlines Lifetime film Amish Stud, which is drawn from the screen name that Eli Weaver (Luke Macfarlane) used to meet women in chatrooms.
The film follows the wayward Eli as he plots with his mistress to murder his wife, to the horror of his conservative Amish community, which is strongly opposed to using the internet, and more specifically using the internet for online dating, and especially to using the internet for online dating that leads to the murder of one’s spouse.
The movie has its sexy moments before the killing.
Sex Drive seems like one of those Old Hollywood classics in which they thought of the title first and built the movie around it. And what a movie.
The plot concerns a young man named Ian (Josh Zuckerman) who meets a woman online (don’t worry, he’s not Amish, no rules are broken yet) and embarks on a long road trip to meet her. He’s joined by his best friends Lance (Clark Duke) and Felicia (Amanda Crew, a perfect Cute Brunette Friend in an ’80s Movie, except in a 2000s movie.)
The sexy Amish stuff comes into play when the gang has car trouble, and a sarcastic Amish guy named Ezekiel (Seth Green, great as always) provides some help. Lance soon meets an Amish girl named Mary (Alice Greczyn).
But here’s the twist: When Lance learns that his dalliance with Mary could lead to her being shunned, Lance chooses to stay with her, and they marry. Lance sports an Amish beard at the end, strongly suggesting that he has adopted Mary’s way of life. And so this sex drive turns out to be a love drive.
It’s not only one of the sexiest movies about the Amish, but also one of the most pro-Amish.
Not content to rest on the laurels of Amish Stud, Lifetime delved back into the Amish erotic thriller subgenre with another ripped-from-the-headlines bodice ripper, Amish Affair.
The film tracks the passionate barnyard trysts between Hannah (Mackenzie Cardwell) and Amish also-stud Aaron (Ryan McPartlin) after he welcomes her into his home to help with his ailing (and inconvenient) wife.
Lines are crossed, questions are raised, and, as so often happens in these situations, rat poison is dispensed.
This Lifetime original received a mostly positive reception, though one YouTube user commented, “OMG! We Amish are so not like this! LOL.” It was probably Eli Weaver.
We know, we know: Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing, as everyone remembers, isn’t technically about the Amish. It’s about the Hittites, a very Amish-like sect. (WesCraven.com notes that the film “is set in Amish Country, at a local farm, where a woman’s husband is mysteriously killed by his own tractor!”)
But the Hittite stuff feels like a fig leaf covering up the fact that the sect is intended as an obvious stand-in for the Amish. This slasher film, which landed between the early mayhem of Craven classics like Last House on the Left and the commercial success of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, relies heavily on the appeal of its scantily clad actresses (including Sharon Stone in an early role) as they deal with an evil incubus. (Though really, is there any other kind?)
There’s lots of Biblical imagery, including an icky scene with a snake in a bathtub. It combines titillation and terror, in classic slasher tradition, but with some religious extremism thrown in. We can understand why the Amish probably wouldn’t want to be connected with it, and its ickier aspects explain why it’s only fourth on this list.
Also: Stone grew up in a part of Pennsylvania not far from Amish country, which makes us like Deadly Blessing more.
Though it’s set in the 1920s, you can really feel the ’60s swinging through The Night They Raided Minsky’s, one of many films that had fun with the changing sexual mores of the year that followed the Summer of Love. Minsky’s was also one of the first films to pit the plain Amish against the constant temptations of the outside world.
A pure romp, the film follows Britt Eckland as Rachel Schpitendavel, a young Amish woman hoping to make it in New York City with dance numbers inspired by the Bible. Through a series of complicated events, she ends up performing her chaste numbers at a burlesque show. When her furious Amish father tries to drag her offstage, ripping her clothes, she accidentally invents a new kind of entertainment.
The people involved in The Night They Raided Minsky’s are A-list all the way, and include producer Norman Mailer, director William Friedkin (who would go on to direct The Exorcist), and actors Jason Robards, Elliott Gould and Denholm Elliott. The latter would go on to appear in two Indiana Jones films with a gentleman who stars in the next film on our list.
A basically perfect movie, Witness is rather chaste by the standards of the sexiest movies about the Amish. Of course it wasn’t the first film to juxtapose the plain lifestyle of the Amish with the sultriness of the big city, but it is one of the first to do it with respect.
There’s a passionate, beautifully shot makeout scene between Rachel (Kelly McGillis) and Philadelphia cop John Book (Harrison Ford) before the big fight with the English who come to invade Rachel’s idyllic community to get her son, Samuel (Lucas Haas), who has witnessed a murder. The scene is as effective as it is because of the restraint leading up to it: John and Rachel’s silent assignation is naturalistic, cathartic and entirely convincing.
Witness follows a lot of Hollywood tropes — the fish out of water, the mismatched lovers — and yet it works completely because everyone, from Ford to McGillis to director Peter Weir, commits and tries to give the Amish depth and dignity, instead of just treating them as comic foils.
But this isn’t a list of the best movies about the Amish — it’s a list of the sexiest movies about the Amish. Which brings us to No. 1 on our list.
For our money, Kingpin is one of the funniest Farrelly brothers films, and has a proud spot on our list of ’90s Comedies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended.
It follows bowling burnout Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson) as he attempts to exploit Amish bowling savant Ishmael Boorg (Randy Quaid). But he must compete with Claudia (Vanessa Angel) who uses her considerable wiles to both corrupt and liberate the naive Ishmael. Some of the most memorable scenes in Kingpin come when Claudia uses the aforementioned wiles to help her boys on the bowling circuit by distracting their opponents.
What makes Kingpin so satisfying is how all three main characters, despite their intense differences and flaws, ultimately uplift one another. As in many Farrelly brothers films, the tawdrier parts of life lead to wholesome outcomes.
Did we miss one of your favorite sexiest movies about the Amish? Please let us know in the comments.
You may also like this list of 11 Shameless Movies That Glamorize the Devil, including Bedazzled, above, which somehow manages to be one of the sexiest movies around, despite lacking any Amish.
Main image: The Night They Raided Minsky’s. United Artists.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Here are some Airplane behind the scenes stories we think you’ll enjoy.
Airplane! almost didn’t take off. Studios didn’t initially see the potential of the the script for a disaster movie takeoff, which played the comedy completely straight in a way you had to see to understand. It was also crucial to cast Ted Hays and Julie Hagerty as romantic leads the audience would stay invested in despite the absurdity all around them.
But after brother Jerry and David Zucker and their friend Jim Abrahams proved their comic chops with the cult classic Kentucky Fried Movie, they got the runway to make Airplane!, one of the most beloved comedies of all.
And now… the Airplane! behind the scenes stories.
Airplane! writers-directors David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams — aka ZAZ — always wanted their actors to play it straight — and to cast stars known for drama. But Paramount Pictures, understandably, thought that since the 1980 release was a comedy, it should feature some of the biggest comedy stars of the day.
“The requests kept coming in from the studio that we have this or that actor in to read,” David Zucker said in ZAZ’s excellent 2023 book Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane. “Comedians like Bill Murray and Chevy Chase.”
Chase and Murray, of course, ended up in another huge 1980 comedy, Caddyshack (above).
Leslie Nielsen, known before Airplane! for dramatic roles, was also known for carrying around a machine that made rude noises.
“I think that the little fart machine he always carried with him might have been his way of coping with a career filled with heavy drama,” Jerry Zucker said in Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!
“A friend of his made them for him. I do remember he was selling them on the set. After a while the whole crew had them and all you’d hear was constant farting sounds. I could never get mine to work right, but Leslie… played it like a virtuoso.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recalled that Nielsen loved to press the button “whenever we were doing dialogue. At first, I thought he just had some sort of intestinal problem.”
ZAZ couldn’t find the right actors to read the lines from the feuding PA announcers, so they tracked down the people who did the real airport PA recordings. It turned out to be a married couple who had sold the PA system to the airport.
“So we asked them to come in and give it a try. They did it perfectly,” Jerry Zucker said in Surely You Can’t Be Serious.
Jim Abrahams and brothers Jerry and David Zucker grew up together, and their dads were business partners in a real estate company.
In their 2023 book Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!, Jerrry Zucker explained that they spent hours, growing up, watching serious TV shows like The Untouchables, Sea Hunt, and Mission: Impossible — “shows where the characters just took themselves so seriously, and we’d blurt out ridiculous lines for them to say.”
And in Airplane, “we actually got those same tough-guy actors to say the lines we always wished they would have said.” They included Untouchables star Robert Stack, Sea Hunt star Lloyd Bridges, and Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves.
That was the origin of their approach to comedy — play it totally straight, and totally absurd.
Surely You Can’t Be Serious includes a letter that Jim Abrahams, 25 at the time, wrote to his local newspaper, The Milwaukee Sentinel, complaining about its overly harsh coverage of Abdul-Jabbar, who was then known as Lew Alcindor. (Abdul-Jabbar played for the Milwaukee Bucks from 1969-75.)
Years later, of course, ZAZ cast Abdul-Jabbar in Airplane! to make fun of the practice of action movies casting sports stars.
In Airplane!, of course, Abdul-Jabbar pretends he’s just co-pilot Roger Murdoch, not Abdul-Jabbar, even as a 10-year-old boy calls him out.
As young men, ZAZ founded a comedy theater in Madison, Wisconsin with their friend Dick Chudnow. They named it Kentucky Fried Theater after the fast food chain.
A young Willem Dafoe was among those who saw an early Kentucky Fried Theater Show in the early 1970s, when his older sister Dee Dee took him to see one at the University of Wisconsin.
“That really made me think, I could be doing this,” he told Esquire in a 2018 profile “You don’t have to be a card-carrying industry person.”
Soon the team moved to Los Angeles and started a new theater.
Also Read: The 15 Funniest Comedy Movies We’ve Ever Seen
Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker started out writing Airplane! as a parody of all disaster movies, but based it especially on the 1957 airplane drama Zero Hour.
They used the concept — a romance in mid-air, as our heroes struggle to land the plane safely — but packed it with jokes.
When ZAZ started out on their Zero Hour parody in the 1970s, they weren’t sure how to start. Then they saw John Landis on The Tonight Show in 1973, talking about his low-budget monster movie tribute Schlock, of which Johnny Carson was a fan. Landis had made the film at 21.
Zucker called him up and invited them to a performance of their comedy show at the Kentucky Fried Theater, where ZAZ told Landis about their movie idea. But they didn’t know anything about writing a screenplay, so he gave them a copy of his own An American Werewolf in London, which he would finally get to make into a movie in 1981.
ZAZ used it as a template as they wrote Airplane. But when they couldn’t find backing for Airplane, they decided to make a film based on their live comedy sketches — which became Kentucky Fried Movie.
In the Saturday Night Fever sequence, Robert Hays had the idea for one of the best jokes — he stalks onto the dance floor and dramatically throws off his jacket… only to have someone throw it back at him,
“That was my idea! I actually came up with something!” he self-effacingly said in Surely You Can’t Be Serious.
It’s a great throwaway joke — pun very much intended — but for our money the funniest moment in the Airplane disco scene may be when Elaine picks Ted up, loosely grips his legs (then just his shoes) and swings him around the dance floor.
The classic comedy and ultra-serious Martin Scorsese drama both shot at Culver City Studios.
“So once in a while, we could walk over to their stage and watch Martin Scorses direct Robert De Niro in boxing scenes,” Jim Abrahams said in Surely You Can’t Be Serious.
Airplane! wrapped shooting on August 8, 1979. Its final shot was the 747 crashing through the glass, into the terminal.
Because it involved a fake plane nose on a flatbed 10-ton truck, tempered glass that was essential for safety, 100 extras and 50 stuntmen, it was a huge production. Howard Koch, who was in charge of the production for Paramount and was known for being laid-back and supportive, was shocked at the expense.
“That was one of the few times we saw Howard furious,” David Zucker said in Surely You Can’t Be Serious.
But the shot was worth it: Besides getting a huge laugh in the film, it was used in the trailer and promotion , and provided the backdrop for cast and crew photos.
Lee Bryant plays the hysterical woman who is battered by fellow passengers. The script called for her to be shaken, but Bryant has the idea that Lorna Patterson, as the flight attendant, should shake her very hard, and that a man should then take over, shaking her even harder, then slapping her.
After that, Leslie Nielsen’s doctor slaps her — twice — and then a nun takes over. Soon we see a long line of passengers lining up — one in boxing gloves, one holding a knife, one holding a gun.
“Leslie was the only one who actually slapped me,” Bryant later said. “He even threw in an extra one. I guess he was improvising.”
David and Jerry Zucker cast their mom, Charlotte Zucker, as the woman putting on makeup during turbulence. Jim Abrahams mom, Louise Abrahams Yaffe, is the character who introduces Leslie Nielsen’s character in the film by saying, “”Oh stewardess? I think the man next to me is a doctor.” (He is wearing a stethoscope at the time.)
The moms also posed for a picture with TV mom Barbara Billingsley.
Leave it to Beaver, the squeaky clean black-and-white family sitcom that aired from 1957-63, was a staple of the Zucker household.
It starred Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver, Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver, Tony Dow as his their teenage son Wally, and Jerry Mathers as the Beaver, aka Theodore.
Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker were huge fans of the show that they even cast one of Tony Dow in their first film, 1977’sThe Kentucky Fried Movie. In a courtroom scene, he played his Leave it to Beaver character, Wally, while Jerry Zucker played Theodore. Then, of course, they cast Barbara Billingsley in Airplane!
Jim Abrahams, who wrote and directed Airplane with brothers Jerry Zucker and David Zucker, explained in an Airplane behind-the-scenes commentary that “the whole notion for jive dialogue originated from when we went on saw Shaft,” referring to Gordon Parks’ 1971 blaxploitation-action classic, starring Richard Roundtree (above).
“We went and saw it and didn’t understand what they were saying,” Abrahams said.
They decided to include some jokes in Airplane about slang that would befuddle white people: “So we did our best as three nice Jewish boys from Milwaukee writing jive talk in the script,” Abrahams said.
David Zucker explained that when Norman Alexander Gibbs and Al White auditioned for their roles, “they came in and they had prepared this entire run of jive talking and we were just hysterically laughing the whole time.”
Al White explained in Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker’s excellent 2023 book Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane, that when he read the script, “I couldn’t make hide nor hair of the actual verbiage… they wanted jive as a language, which it is not.”
He and Gibbs agreed to work on it. So White consulted two books on language, one of which was by J.L. Dillard, a linguist known for his expertise on African-American vernacular, and then took the meaning of the writers’ script and tried to “jive it down, using actual words.” He explained: “It’s not a bunch of gibberish. It does mean something.”
Here’s an example of Al White’s contributions, which illustrates how much he finessed the jive dialogue.
At one point, White’s Second Jive Dude tells Gibbs’ First Jive Dude, aka Arthur: “That gray matter back, lotta performers down, not take TCB-in’, man!”
White explains in Surely You Can’t Be Serious how he came up with the phrase: “I needed a word to jive down the word ‘remember,’ but I didn’t find it in either of the books, so I said, ‘Well, let me see — gray matter. That’s the thinking part of the brain, and ‘back’ for remember back. I can say ‘Gray matter back.’
“And from there I’m just saying that a lot of performers stayed down and weren’t taking care of business on the technical side… man!”
The film translates all this jive as “Each of us faces a clear moral choice.”
“Just the thought of June Cleaver in that role made us laugh,” David Zucker said in Surely You Can’t Be Serious. “She was simply the whitest white lady on the planet.”
Billingsley said in an interview for the Archive of American Television, “I was sent the script, and I thought it was the craziest script I’d ever read. My husband said, ‘I think it’s funny!’ Well, my part wasn’t written, really. It just said I talked jive. So I went to see the producers and I said I would do it.”
Jerry Zucker said meeting her “was like we had been put up for adoption, and now we were finally getting to meet our real mom.”
“These fellas were wonderful, and they taught me,” Billingley said in her Archive of American Television interview. “They could rattle off jive like you have no idea. I could never get a clue as to how it was done. … Maybe they were good teachers!”
She also said she had done some research into the history of jive, and that no one knew if it was “street talk” or if enslaved Black people had invented it because “they didn’t want whitey to know what they were talking about.”
Al White explained in the book, “I ended up writing Barbara Billingley’s jive dialogue and instructing her in the proper elocution. She was very intent on getting it right.”
White’s mother was a Leave it to Beaver fan, and White asked Billingsley if she would mind talking with her on the phone. “I called my mother, and I said, ‘Mom, I have Barbara Billingsley here, and she’d actually like to speak with you. She was so excited, and Barbara was so gracious,” White said in the book.
Airplane! also includes a ridiculous bar fight involving girl scounts. ZAZ loved jokes about girl scouts.
When they ran the Kentucky Fried Theater, the program included a page entitled, “Things to do after the show.” They included: Visit a dairy and see how milk is handled and prepared for delivery; plan a series of window displays on home safety; help start a library; discuss with your dentist what you can do to make your teeth more attractive.”
All those suggestions are from The Girl Scout Handbook.
You might also this list of Every Mel Brooks Movie, Ranked or these Blazing Saddles Behind the Scenes Stories.
Main image: Airplane!, of course. Paramount
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
