HOT SHOTS

AS JIM ABRAHAMS’ SLAPSTICK CLASSIC TURNS 30 – AND BEFORE TOP GUN TAKES TO THE SKY AGAIN SOON – BUFF JUMPS INTO THE COCKPIT AND FLIES BACK TO 1991 TO FIND OUT HOW TOPPER HARLEY RESTORED THE AIRPLANE! DIRECTOR’S CONFIDENCE…

- SIMON BLAND

There are plenty of movie spoofs out there, but few have had the same impact on pop culture as those co-created by Jim Abrahams. Together with siblings David and Jerry Zucker, these friends turned-filmmakers (collectively known as ZAZ) brought us 1980’s Airplane! - a movie that skewered the comedy genre and forever changed the lives of people named Shirley. Loaded with innuendo and an irresistible mix of the ridiculous and the deadpan, the film’s mile-a-minute humor quickly became the trio’s calling-card feature. However, as the ’90s approached, they were itching to go solo - and while David found similar screwball success with 1984’s The Naked Gun and Jerry garnered Oscar nods with 1990’s supernatural comedy Ghost, Abrahams was finding it trickier to zero in on a film that best encapsulated his own ethos.

“I had made a couple of movies that weren’t parodies and struggled with some of the tones,” admits Abrahams, reflecting on his first two solo-helmed features, 1988’s Big Business, and 1990’s Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael. “That’s when Pat [Proft] called and said ‘Why don’t we try doing Hot Shots!?’ - which was basically a send-up of Top Gun.” While rarely ever occupying the director’s chair, Proft was the screenwriter behind many of ZAZ’s finest comedic moments, so when the idea of parodying Tony Scott’s Tom Cruise-fronted fighter-pilot drama flew past Abrahams, it felt too good to pass up. “We’d been good friends for a while. He worked on The Naked Gun, and with David, Jerry, and me in Kentucky Fried Theatre,” he says, recalling his old sketch comedy troupe. “Plus, there’s no better guy in the world to pitch a script with than him. He’s really funny.”