Airplane! watch as "Otto" takes control of the plane, inflates a female companion, and takes off. Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker (collectively known as Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, or ZAZ), wrote "Airplane!" while they were performing with the Kentucky Fried Theatre, a small theatre they had founded in 1971. To obtain material for comedy routines, they routinely recorded late night television and reviewed the tapes later primarily to pull the commercials, a process Abrahams compared to "seining for fish". During one such taping process, they unintentionally recorded the 1957 film "Zero Hour!", and while scanning the commercials, found that
Airplane! "Airplane!" as number ten on its list of the 100 funniest American films. In the same year, readers of "Total Film" voted it the second greatest comedy film of all time. It also came second in the British 50 Greatest Comedy Films poll on Channel 4, beaten by "Monty Python's The Life of Brian". "Entertainment Weekly" voted the film the "Funniest movie on video" in their list of the 100 funniest movies on video. Several actors were cast to spoof their established images: prior to their roles in "Airplane!", Nielsen, Stack, and Bridges were known for portraying adventurous, no-nonsense tough-guy