thought was wrong, Howard
would say, "lt'll work itself out.
"Don't do anything."
They'll probably do the screen test
and probably, you know...
The other great piece of advice
from Howard Koch was buy a tuxedo,
'cause you're gonna rent one
so frequently, so buy one now.
Here's one of our rules of comedy.
- What?
- Knocking down the posts.
We thought this was funny because
we were doing satire on a scene
from "Since You Went Away".
And she was chasing along a train.
We thought people would laugh just
because they would connect the train.
Nobody ever laughs at this line,
I thought it was funny.
I... I... always... That made me laugh.
"It's all right, it doesn't work."
It doesn't get a laugh
until she knocks down the posts.
So we had a rule
that you knock down the posts.
So to speak.
But we never made another movie
with a post in it.
We're waiting to apply that rule.
That's Kareem Abdul,
he did this movie for a rug.
- He didn't wanna.
- Six months later he needed it.
It was the greatest line ever
by an agent.
"He's got to have $30,000
because he wants to buy this rug."
It was more than we had
in the budget but we said OK.
We thought it was agenting but we saw
an article in the newspaper.
When Steve Stucker,
who plays the airplane controller,
first saw that miniature
at a screening, he said,
"Oh, it's just hanging there!"
Followed by his cackle.
- "It's just hanging there!"
- It's pretty cheap.
This scene's from "Zero Hour".
We used to run old movies
all the time
and just take serious lines
and scenes and moments,
and tonnes of lines
can be traced back to...
all kinds of different B-movies,
a lot of flying movies that we saw.
- See the Scotch tape? Oh...
- The set's being held together.
- Let's move in.
- Can we freeze-frame that tape?
It's a really low budge.
The picture cost
$3.5 million... in 1980.
Look at all the open luggage racks.
That's right, the old days.
There aren't airplanes
that have three seats on one side
and two on the other,
we just made that up.
- There probably weren't then.
- Yeah.
- I think we're out of stories...
- We're done.
Go back to the regular soundtrack now
and enjoy the movie.
We front-loaded all them stories.
Who's this woman?
And what's she doing in our movie?
She wound up being in a...
She's in a lot of... yeah.
Boy, we're scraping the barrel!
I'll tell a story
about another Kareem thing,
originally the Kareem part
was written for Pete Rose,
and we went to Pete Rose
to try to get him
but we filmed during the summer
and he was playing baseball,
and so our fallback was Kareem
and we re-wrote the part
to make it specific to him.
Who played the part in "Zero Hour"?
- Crazylegs Hirsch...
- That's really true.
The co-pilot was a guy
who really couldn't act.
So Pete Rose turned down the movie,
but bet us $1,000
that the team would win.
And I still have that cheque.
This was the only part
filmed on the Paramount lot.
Everything else
was filmed at Culver Studios.
You can see the pads in their back.
Wait till the guy gets stabbed...
He had a sign saying
"stick the knife here."
Didn't we shoot this in two days?
It's amazing.
- The old days.
- Stage seven at Paramount.
The whole picture shot in 34 days.
- Is that all?
- Yeah, 34 days.
- Couldn't do it again.
- We were tired after that.
I gained 15 pounds.
And a wife.
I lost 15 pounds.
- You look great.
- Thank you.
If you can't really see Jim,
he looks great.
- Muscled, oiled and tanned.
- Like the guy on the right.
It's Bill West
from our theatre in Madison.
Now, this guy who's dancing,
look at his back.
Do you think maybe
he's gonna get a knife?
What's gonna happen?!
We didn't even take it off
for the shots before he got stabbed.
Early homophobia.
There's a hole
where he got it the first take.
That was good.
He conveniently had balsa wood
in his back that day.
As fate would have it, the man
stabbed was wearing balsa