Legendary Director Passes Away At 80

Jim Abrahams, the writer and director behind some of Hollywood’s most iconic comedies including “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun,” has died at 80, the Guardian reported.

Abrahams died of natural causes at his Santa Monica home, his son Joseph told the Hollywood Reporter. His legacy can’t be quantified without the contributions of childhood friends Jerry and David Zucker, who partnered with Abrahams to become the ZAZ team that created both hit movies after launching their careers with the 1977 sketch comedy “The Kentucky Fried Movie.” Directed by John Landis, it became a prelude to “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and helped to elevate the young director toward a career that spanned some of the 1980s’ biggest comedies.

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“We got our start filming stuff on our own and making spoofs of commercials,” Abrahams said in 2023 about “The Kentucky Fried Movie.” “Back then, no one had cell phones, so we were unique – we had a video machine. We could film and edit and show it to other people and get their reactions. That was the school we went to.”

The trio’s penchant for mocking cultural taboos and clichés helped carve out a spot that has since been filled by writer-directors like the Wayans brothers. Ambrahams’ 1980 hit “Airplane!” relied on making a mockery of doomsday films like “Zero Hour” and “Airport 1975.” It grossed $175 million on a budget of just $3.5 million, making it one of the most lucrative low-budget comedies of all time. Guardian media critic Scott Tobias in 2020 said about the film, “It’s weird. It’s unexpected. It’s absurd. And it never pauses for a laugh, because there’s always another one coming.”

“We saw how many things were taken seriously, especially in the media and TV and movies,” Abrahams later said. “Our instincts told us we don’t have to take that seriously.”

“The humor is an ingenious concoction of satire, spoof, burlesque, slapstick, raunchy dialogue and low-comedy sight gags. The jokes are directed at sex, politics, religion and almost everything else. The level of humor is not always consistent, but the filmmakers have thrown almost everything in with a shotgun approach, and the routines work more often than not,” Ron Pennington wrote in his Hollywood Reporter review of the film. “The direction is as wild and wooly as the script, but the team of Abrahams, Zucker and Zucker has a good eye for visual jocularity, and they set the sight gags up for maximum effect.”

Buoyed by their success, Abrahams and the Zuckers created the 1982 television series “Police Squad!” which took aim at procedural issues in police departments and parodied the grizzled ways of veteran detectives. Although poorly rated and lasting just six episodes, the show helped launch the 1988 spinoff “The Naked Gun,” a movie based around Leslie Nielsen’s character from the show. Like “Airplaine!”, “The Naked Gun” was a smashing box office success, earning $152 million on a $12 million budget.

In his private life, Abrahams doted over his son Charlie who suffered from a severe form of epilepsy. Alongside his wife, Abrahams launched The Charlie Foundation to Help Cure Pediatric Epilepsy, a cause which he fundraised for and promoted since retiring from the director’s chair in 1998.

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