was in New York, and she
had once dated a friend of mine.
How'd that work out?
Evidently not very well because she
was single by the time of this scene.
Peter Graves did this movie
because his wife loved the script.
And she laughed at the...
she was howling at the premiere.
She was hysterical.
We met Peter Graves and he couldn't
understand why we wanted him.
"The script is funny, but why me?"
"Get some comedians."
And we said, "We think you're funny."
Yeah, you're funnier than those guys.
When we were writing this, because
we were basically doing "Zero Hour",
we transcribed "Zero Hour" and I was
the only one who know how to type.
And so I did the typing
when we were writing,
and so when we transcribed "have you
ever been in a cockpit before?"
The kid says "no"
and I put in the line,
"Have you ever sucked
a grown man's cock?"
And David and Jerry said,
"You can't say that."
That was funny in the room
but you can't say that in a movie.
That would have been a deal-breaker.
You put that in to amuse us but then
we thought perhaps we can use this.
Jim, maybe you should explain
what a typewriter is.
- This is 20 years ago.
- That's right.
There's a huge pause
at the end of this scene,
because this got a big laugh
in the theatre,
I don't imagine people at home
laughed that long,
but you'll see
we're just on this kid forever.
When he lets go.
OK.
There's a '70s costume
that slipped through.
Boy, always irritates me to see that.
- It's just hanging there.
- You can see the wires.
It's so cheesy.
Also the prop plane sound
instead of the jet noise.
That's what we did.
We compromised with Eisner.
We put it on a jet
but we made the sound a prop plane.
We showed him, didn't we?
The first time we showed the rough
cut we went to Eisner's house
because that was the tradition
at Paramount in those days.
That was the tradition with movies
under $4 million.
We can't actually
afford a theatre but...
But you could hear his sons,
or son, laughing from the kitchen.
So that's when we knew.
I remember he said afterwards
how much he liked it.
He was always our biggest supporter
and he saw
the potential of the script.
He and Jeffrey.
- Remember how I got the script?
- No.
We sent it to United Artists,
who passed on it,
but a lady at United Artists,
Suzanne Barewall,
was having dinner
with Eisner and said,
"We passed on this picture
at UA and you oughta look at it."
So he immediately called Don Simpson
and said have those guys
in Katzenberg's office.
- John Soley did that painting.
- Did he?
Does that exist somewhere now?
Is that in your living room, Jon?
- No.
- Who knows.
It's amazing this exists still.
That off-camera spit take.
I'm chuckling because I'm thinking
of Marcy Goldman coming up.
Not quite the big laugh we thought.
It must have got a laugh
if it was left in.
The screening process was such
that we would go to universities
and run the picture and every time
people didn't laugh we took it out.
So the picture got cut down to 78
minutes before we added the credits.
- But the television version is...
- There's Jon's voice, listen.
We don't have to listen!
It was actually not Ethel Merman.
Remember Ethel Merman's one request,
that she bring her own hairdresser?
They were surprised.
This was like, God...
She was... We were so delighted
to have her, she was such a delight.
She was wonderful.
Here's more of those bad dissolves.
We paid a good 50 bucks for that!
Each one had to be done nine times.
We should've just stamped
"Dream" on it.
- This is a big commercial.
- That's right.
We still left it in!
We could cut this down to 38 minutes.
The television version
is about 10 minutes longer.
They said there's a lot
of good stuff.
They should put that back.
We didn't cut anything funny.
This is Maureen McGovern.
We couldn't get Helen Reddy.
Originally, we were gonna have her.
- And sing.
- Satire on the Universal