The application of that lesson became possible after John Landis came to see their show one night and enjoyed what he saw. Well, uncomfortable as it was, it was a very valuable experience, because it taught us that if you're going to write comedy and perform comedy, you'd better have control of where the cameras are pointing.' What happened was that we'd never had the opportunity to rehearse our jokes with the cameras, so that all the funny stuff was happening off-screen, no one could see it. We couldn't have been any worse, no one laughed. 'Even today, when I go back to Milwaukee, I still find myself apologising to people who stayed up late that night to watch us. Before long, the Kentucky Fried Theatre was a hot ticket, and the invitation to the Tonight show was theirs. With a couple of fellow performers in tow, they set off for the West Coast and actually built their own little venue (the Zuckers' years in construction were paying off). The master plan was to go to Los Angeles, make enough of a splash to be noticed by talent scouts from Johnny Carson's Tonight show, and become famous overnight. People would pay a dollar to get in, and they laughed too, so we said to ourselves, let's go on to another city.' It was really just for our own amusement, but eventually we showed it to some of our friends, and they laughed, so we decided to take it to the University of Wisconsin. So we started to videotape spoofs of TV commercials, and scenes from Love Story. 'One day I ran into David Zucker, who was working in construction, and he said 'We have this video equipment, do you want to come and play around with it?' This would be in about 1970, when video was a real novelty. It was not until Jim Abrahams was in his late twenties that the Zucker boys became his friends. Quite a decent track record for a man who spent his first few years after college working contentedly for an insurance company in his home town of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where his father ran a real estate company with a Mr Zucker, whose sons were just a little too young to be suitable playmates for Jim. Apart from the first Hot Shots], he also made a more conventional comedy, Big Business, with Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, and the Winona Ryder vehicle Welcome Home, Roxy Charmichael he also continues to be involved in the writing and production of the Naked Gun movies. Part Deux] is the fourth movie Abrahams has directed since the ZAZ partnership diversified into solo projects. (What on earth could have prompted that gag?) There are certainly plenty of moments in Hot Shots: Part Deux] that merit sniffiness, not least the scene in which Lloyd Bridges, as a cerebrally challenged President of the United States, vomits copiously on his Japanese dinner companion. The Part Deux] subtitle is a low shot at the more po-faced critics who wheel out such adjectives as asinine, vulgar, sophomoric, cretinous or simply dumb whenever faced with reviewing these cheerfully shameless genre spoofs by Abrahams and / or his sometime collaborators the Zucker bothers, Jerry and David (as in The Naked Gun 2 1/2: Un film de David Zucker). Cut to wide shot of father and son leaping to the sides of their respective patrol boats and yelling in unison 'I loved you in Wall Street]' Surely you recognise the comic trademark? Correct: it's a scene from the latest offering of the Airplane / Naked Gun school - Hot Shots: Part Deux], directed by Jim Abrahams. Cut to close-up on Martin Sheen, sweaty and tense in combat gear, musing about his ever-narrowing proximity to the demented Colonel Kurtz.
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