30th Anniversary of Airplane!

Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of one of my favorite movies of all time, Airplane! To celebrate, watch the classic clip above. When we were kids, my brother and I memorized the dialogue in this scene (every scene, actually) and would occasionally perform it. For our parents. Below is a delightful video featuring the film's creators and the two actors reminiscing about the jive talk bit. For more, please see "Oh Stewardess, I speak jive!"

New York Times feature about the film's anniversary: "Surely it's 30 (Don't Call Me Shirley!)"

Airplane! side by side with original 50s flick

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Chris Arkenberg

Kudos Pesco! Definitely one of my fave bits from Airplane. Still holds up too. (Better Off Dead is another one I watched recently with that “well-it-was-funny-when-I-was-14″ hesitance and was pleasantly surprised at how solid the writing is.)
mrhyde

I heard in the German version they were Hungarians.
MadRat

I didn’t see this movie in the theater so finally there’s a movie I don’t have to feel bad about its 30 year release anniversary.
oasisob1

Hitler learns they were speaking Bavarian. Please, Internets, make it so…
- Gilbert Wham
  
  Surely, by this point in the Internet epoch, we can pretty much run a ‘Downfall’ skit about anything directly in our forebrains?
danfan

Does Zucker speak anywhere about how he’s become a humorless right-wing boor?
Halloween Jack

Pootie Tang: Year One.
- Jack
  
  Bing! Sine your pitty on the runny kine.
  
  You know what would be funny? If these guys would have spoken in Bavarian. MY IDEA!
Felton

Roger, Roger. What’s our vector, Victor?
The Mudshark

German dubbers in the 70s and 80s didnÂ´t give a crap about staying true to the original and made many a comedy movie so much better for it, like every Bud Spencer & Terence Hill movie ever. It was the golden age of German movie dubbing.
These days they try to faithfully translate culture-specific jokes and end up with plain unfunny and at times completely nonsensical dubs, the Simpsons being one of the worst offenders.
kevsnafu

I saw the film in Antofagasta, Chile back in ’81, when I was an exchange student. It was “Donde esta el piloto?” and the Spanish subtitles they used clearly didn’t do the humor justice. For many of the jokes, I was the only one in the theater laughing. Good times!
Anonymous

Yeah too bad the creator of this frat boy so-called humor film has turned into a right wing creeper.
arkizzle / Moderator

I can confirm that the first three comments in this thread are, bizarrely, not a triple-post or a login/anon glitch.. that is three commenters from three different regions within the hour (and it wasn’t a knowing pile-on, because the anons were likely not-yet approved when the third named comment came in..

Efficient.
- peterbruells
  
  Efficient.
  
  That’s not surprising with German, is it? :-)
tw15

Re the German multiple posts:
“I just want to tell you both good luck. We’re all counting on you”
Anonymous

In the german dubbed version, the two Bro’s speak… Bavarian!
Anonymous

In the German version, they dubbed the whole Jive scene in a thick Bavarian accent, which kind of reversed the effect when the old woman comes up in the end to translate it for the stewardess…
JulianR

In the German dubbed version of Airplane, which inexplicably was called “The incredible journey in a crazy aeroplane” for its release, those two guys were given heavy Bavarian accents. The fun part is that the German subtitles really were necessary, too, because in the rest of the country, most people don’t get what Bavarians are saying anyway.

The dialog, though, deviates quickly from the original meaning. In German, they talk about a guy having grabbed the buttocks of the right one’s wife for which he hit him, then they talk about what each of them likes in a woman and then agree about preferring to rather get a beer belly from too much beer than a hump from too much work.

Here’s the scenes, after the Jaws intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gcZI74qtac
Phlip

Golly!
sobreiro

Stewardess… I speak jive.
fataltourist

Can’t anyone tell us about the German dubbed version??!
- peterbruells
  
  Ja, mei, die beidn BubN schwÃ¤tzen Beirisch, bittschÃ¶.
Micah

When we were kids, my brother and I memorized the dialogue in this scene (every scene, actually) and would occasionally perform it.

I had a friend in middle school who could recite the whole jive scene word for word as well. I don’t know if he knew the whole movie, though.
Anonymous

How many more people can we get here posting about the GERMAN version of Airplane and the Bavarian accent???
Anonymous

I saw this film in London when it came out. The five Americans in the audience laughed their asses off; the British just didn’t get it all.
- apoxia
  
  Well they must have been lame, because as an adolescent girl living in New Zealand I “got” the Jive scene. Then again I bet we’re flooded with much more American TV than Britain (maybe back then anyway).
- Anonymous
  
  I have to disagree with that – my mum and dad saw it on a double bill in the UK with “Life Of Brian” back in 1980 and they said it was one of the funniest evenings of their lives.
avraamov

i discovered this about airplane quite recently. it’s unspeakably wonderful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BjU-e01zQ4
Variable Rush

Use this to translate this and other pages into Jive: http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/
Anonymous

I’m so glad that there were subtitles in that first video because I could not understand a word of it.
Anonymous

“Can’t anyone tell us about the German dubbed version??!”

I don’t remember where I’m getting this from, but I think I’ve heard that they have the jive guys speaking one of the regional German dialects – maybe Swiss German or Austro-Bavarian?
Boba Fett Diop

Chump don’ want no help, chump don’ get no help…
Manooshi

Dude! I was just remembering recently how although I took “Black English” in college (to meet my linguistics requirement) the only jive I really learned was from the movie “AIRPLANE!” as a kid. Frickin’ LOL!

Cinespia, in Hollywood, is going to show “Airplane!” at the end of this month. Woohoo! Party on the lawn, mofos! Summer is here. :)
dbarak

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Was ist diese Flugzeugfilmleute sprechen?
Znaps

What it is big momma, my momma di’n't raise no dummy, I dug her rap.
Baldhead

am I the only who noticed the jive subbed when the actors were discussing the scene?