Jokes in reverse, kinda

[berberry]

The concept occurred to me not long ago after I saw the old movie "˜Zero Hour' for the first time. I found myself laughing hysterically at some very serious dialogue, because several times I have seen the parody version of this same movie, "˜Airplane!' I never knew they used entire scenes of dialogue without any changes, except in the way the lines were performed, and the realization of how Airplane!'s script came to be hit me very suddenly and had me laughing all the way through ZH.

If you're like I am, or like I was until recently and you've seen "˜Airplane!' but not ZH, trust me when I advise you to go and watch ZH. It was never meant to be funny, but it is.

Have you ever had an experience like that, realizing something you already thought was hilarious was even funnier than you ever knew, based on new information about it?

[jeffandnicole]

The concept occurred to me not long ago after I saw the old movie ‘Zero Hour’ for the first time. I found myself laughing hysterically at some very serious dialogue, because several times I have seen the parody version of this same movie, ‘Airplane!’ I never knew they used entire scenes of dialogue without any changes, except in the way the lines were performed, and the realization of how Airplane!’s script came to be hit me very suddenly and had me laughing all the way through ZH.

If you’re like I am, or like I was until recently and you’ve seen ‘Airplane!’ but not ZH, trust me when I advise you to go and watch ZH. It was never meant to be funny, but it is.

Have you ever had an experience like that, realizing something you already thought was hilarious was even funnier than you ever knew, based on new information about it?

Happens to me with a lot of TV shows, because they often reference movie lines or other show's lines.  Being I'm not a huge movie buff, I often don't get the joke until I have watched the movie...then view the TV show again.

[allniter89]

Drew Carey on "The Price Is Right" & "Whose Line Is It Anyway" often references dialog from movies, lyrics from rock n roll songs  & others I dont understand, sorta like an inside joke.

[roadman]

The concept occurred to me not long ago after I saw the old movie "˜Zero Hour' for the first time. I found myself laughing hysterically at some very serious dialogue, because several times I have seen the parody version of this same movie, "˜Airplane!' I never knew they used entire scenes of dialogue without any changes, except in the way the lines were performed, and the realization of how Airplane!'s script came to be hit me very suddenly and had me laughing all the way through ZH.

If you're like I am, or like I was until recently and you've seen "˜Airplane!' but not ZH, trust me when I advise you to go and watch ZH. It was never meant to be funny, but it is.

Have you ever had an experience like that, realizing something you already thought was hilarious was even funnier than you ever knew, based on new information about it?

Zero Hour was one of the first films of the "airliner in peril" genre.  It was Paramount Pictures' response to Warner Brother's The High and the Mighty, which is generally considered by film critics and historians to be the gold standard for the genre.  The Zero Hour screenplay was written by Arthur Hailey (author of Airport), and was the basis for his later book Runway Zero-Eight.  Didn't see Zero Hour for many years after I first saw Airplane! , but I had read Runway Zero-Eight a few years prior and picked up on the references almost immediately.

If you watch Airplane! closely enough, you'll discover not only references to many airliner disaster-themed movies and TV shows besides Zero Hour, but some actual air disasters as well (such as the Turkish Air poster in one of the terminal scenes that shows a DC-10 crashing - a reference to the 1973 crash outside of Paris).  And the in-flight movie showing the plane crashing was actual NASA footage of a test crash demonstrating the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of a proposed fire suppression system.