Legendary writer and director Jim Abrahams has died at the age of 80.
Abrahams – those iconic parody films Airplane! wrote and directed. (1980) and The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) died of natural causes on Tuesday at his home in Santa Monica, his son Joseph confirmed THR.
Abrahams was married to his wife Nancy (née Cocuzzo) and is survived by three children.
He is best known for his collaboration with brothers Jerry Zucker and David Zucker on comedy films Airplane! – which earned him a BAFTA Award nod for Best Screenplay and The Naked Gun series. The trio was known as ZAZ.
The film starring Leslie Nielsen – with classic one-liners like “I am serious….and don’t call me Shirley” – was a huge hit, grossing $83.5 million from a $3.5 million budget and became the third most successful comedy of all time at the time.
The slapstick comedy is regularly cited as one of the funniest films of all time and won a 1981 Writer’s Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium.
Legendary writer and director Jim Abrahams has died at the age of 80
Together with childhood friends Jerry and David Zucker, Abrahams directed and wrote the iconic slapstick comedy Airplane! starring Leslie Nielsen (1980)
He also directed the 1988 film Big Business, starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, and Hot Shots! from 1991! with Charlie Sheen and Cary Elwes.
He directed the sequel Hot Shots! Part Deux from 1993.
His last writing credit was in 2006’s Scary Movie 4.
Abrahams was born in Shorewood, Wisconsin, where he befriended the Zucker brothers as a child.
Abrahams attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In 1971, the trio founded the Kentucky Fried Theater to present their sketch comedies. Material for their first film, The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977).
After failing to impress Hollywood executives, they produced the film independently, raised $650,000 in investors, and released the film – which grossed $7.1 million in domestic rentals.
ZAZ was inspired by comedian Mel Brooks and Airplane! broke barriers when it came to comedy, with his clever jokes and deadpan portrayals of previously “serious” actors like Nielsen.
Abrahams said, “One day we were looking at what was on our video machine, and there was a movie called Zero Hour! which is a melodrama from 1957. So you have this script full of jokes, but you get actors who are not known for telling jokes, who are not comedians.’
He is best known for his collaboration with brothers Jerry Zucker and David Zucker on comedy films Airplane! – which earned him a BAFTA Award nod for Best Screenplay and The Naked Gun series. The trio was known as ZAZ – pictured in 2009