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
Scary Movie 5 at the bottom of the comedy barrel, where the slimy gray algae-like stuff lives: That’s where this script came from. If you must go to "Scary Movie 5", be sure to bring an iPad with you. That way you can watch a better movie on it." Joe Neumaier of "The New York Daily News" gave the film one star saying, "Like so much of this whole series – hatched in 2000 by the Wayans brothers and intermittently directed by "Airplane!" veteran David Zucker, though newcomer Malcolm D. Lee takes over here – the mere mention of a familiar pop culture