David Zucker: Why Can’t Hollywood Take A Joke Anymore? | Stories of Us

we get the question could you do airplane today the first thing I could think of was sure just without the jokes my name is David Zucker and this is my story I'm a writer a director a producer filmmaker a father and a pedestrian I was born in Milwaukee Wisconsin when I was seven I said I'm going to be a businessman because that was what my dad was and then in high school I thought well I like to make jokes so maybe I could be an advertising executive slash filmmaker I was not a nightmare in my classes I mean not that I remember I mean at least not for my classmates but because they they got the jokes the teachers didn't always get the jokes I remember Mr Kenny in math class he made me write 500 sentences I will not talk out of turn in Mr Kenny's class and then the next morning he said well as you remember I I made David Zucker write 500 sentences and here in on about the fourth page kind of disguised in the middle of all police sentences is I bet Mr Kenny doesn't read these and so and the class laughs and and he says well I bet I do Dave 500 more sentences so I was willing to risk anything to get a laugh and this was my training in high school by the early 70s uh Film Production it pretty much dried up in southeastern Wisconsin so we decided to move to Hollywood La was pretty different than um LAX had only one level it was it was almost like a little sleepy Town compared to what it is now we started Kentucky Fried theater and we we ran a show called my nose uh why because so our weekly listing in the LA Times Calendar section would read my nose runs continuously we did spoofs on TV commercials and the the best commercials were the late night commercials so we would leave our video tape recorder on all night and then in the morning we cleared off and see what we got but one morning we were more interested in the movie that was playing than in in the commercials so and that movie was called zero hour and it was a very serious black and white movie where where a airplane goes up and there's food poisoning and a passenger has to fly it on the plane so we thought this was a great movie to spoof so that's when we started riding airplane we went around took airplane to all the studios it was turned down by every Studio except the last one we went to was Paramount and uh the president whose name was Michael Eisner liked the script and so we we were in the movie business then the theater served as a laboratory for our our humor we you know we got instant reactions and we could be as offensive as we liked and we went where the last were and it we never thought that we were offending anybody but if we were offending people we knew we were on the right track and you know as time went on it it got to be the 90s and the 2000s then you know it did change I mean we'd never worried about any of this stuff with the naked guns or even the scary movies my current writing partner Pat Croft and I uh you know wrote a parody on James Bond at Mission Impossible one female executive said well you know this joke is getting pretty risque here you know it was a just a very mild joke about uh the the lead female character uh because she had uh you know come up through the police department and through the FBI said she needed a breast reduction to fit into the Kevlar vest it was pure oatmeal so mild it's not not one of our funniest thing but this was like too much and I thought gee if this was the criteria for it we're in big trouble you know they're they're they're destroying comedy because of nine percent of the people who don't have a sense of humor when we would do screenings of airplane we get the question could you do airplane today and the first thing I could think of was sure just without the jokes I never even thought about any any other way of looking at politics out of Milwaukee inside a a really blue State as long as I knew it was the air we breathed was liberal I actually met Dennis in around 1984. I met him as a friend and I didn't really see him as a conservative and me as a liberal I realized that he didn't bite and he had you know as good a sense of humor about life and himself as I did and so we could we could just laugh about it and then what happened to me was uh with 911 Clinton who I voted for twice said what have we done to deserve this and I said what and then but the Republicans were saying this is evil and Republicans actually use the e word and Democrats don't and so I'm saying why am I still voting for these people if I don't really They Don't Really share my values you know most of my friends are liberals and so I I I don't want to see anyone cut off I don't want to lose my friends from Milwaukee or my uh my relatives and so we joke about it but I won't change how I am I I'm not in their faces about it after the LA riots of about it was in the early 90s I I just keep things what can I do about stuff I want to be able to do something about it and we thought why don't we do a a video about goodness but not preaching it's got to be funny I I seem to find my way into These Foolish situations I recruited O.J Simpson to be in it so here I was directing O.J Simpson in a video about goodness it was going to be shown on PBS and that was when this whole murder thing broke I mean I think the video has done a lot of good and in fact I'm thinking that we should probably do an another one but really the same thing but updated I I try not to give advice because you know the great basketball coach uh of UCLA John Wooden said uh he doesn't give advice he gives opinions one of the best pieces of advice came from my mom who said uh always tell the truth but don't always be telling it I get asked when I'm doing a q a after a screening what advice would you get give to a young person just starting out wanting to make it in the entertainment industry and I always say quit now you'll never make it and so it gets a big laugh and I realize what a jerk thing to say and so I say but if you can ignore that advice you'll be halfway there comedy is in trouble of course but I think it's going to come back I just think there's a pendulum the pendulum will will swing back I would like to see comedy filmmakers do comedies without fear and without I mean we always used to do whatever we wanted and then try it out in front of audiences if something was really offensive you just get a gigantic sucking sound out of the audience and that's not good we we don't want to make a point we don't want to try to educate we just want to make people laugh thanks for watching to keep prageru videos free please consider making a tax deductible contribution I know I haven't would they use that