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
Jefferson Airplane known to the band—she had attended the Airplane's debut gig at the Matrix in 1965 and her previous group, the Great Society, had often supported the Airplane in concert. Slick's recruitment proved pivotal to the Airplane's commercial breakthrough—she possessed a powerful and supple contralto voice that complemented Balin's and was well-suited to the group's amplified psychedelic music, and, a former model, her good looks and stage presence greatly enhanced the group's live impact. "White Rabbit" was written by Grace Slick while she was still with The Great Society. The first album Slick recorded with Jefferson Airplane was "Surrealistic Pillow", and