Legendary Comedy Director Jim Abrahams Gave Us Jokes That Will Work ‘For All Eternity’

The world would have been a far less funny place without Jim Abrahams, who passed away today at the age of 80.

Abrahams is likely best remembered for his iconic collaborations with brothers David and Jerry Zucker. The trio’s live “Kentucky Fried Theater” shows eventually paved the way for their first film as screenwriters: The Kentucky Fried Movie. As directors, the ZAZ comedy team that gave us all-time classics like Airplane! and Top Secret!, and they later penned the David Zucker-directed The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! 

When it came to comedies with exclamation points in the titles, they really couldn't be beat.

Speaking of emphatic punctuation, Abrahams continued the absurd, rapid-fire comedic style he pioneered with the Zuckers in his solo directorial effort Hot Shots!, which was quickly followed by Hot Shots! Part Deux.

While the first movie began as a parody of Top Gun, for those of us who grew up in the ‘90s, and hadn’t seen the Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster/gratuitous propaganda film, the Hot Shots! films also worked as thrilling adventures in their own right, even if they occasionally incorporated poultry-related fatalities.

It should be said that Abrahams’ cinematic output wasn’t limited to broad slapstick farces, he also helmed more grounded comedies like the Bette Midler-Lily Tomlin vehicle Big Business, and the Winona Ryder-starring Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael. But what undoubtedly made Abrahams a legend is the way he crafted jokes that play just as well today as they did decades ago. Which isn’t to say that every joke has aged well (a lot of Kentucky Fried Movie is basically unwatchable today), but they’re arguably outnumbered by the jokes that remain universally hilarious. 

As Abrahams once told Cracked, one of the funniest jokes that hasn’t “timed out” in The Naked Gun is the moment in which Frank Drebin says, while reflecting on a recent breakup: “Everywhere I look, something reminds me of her” while driving past a well-endowed power plant. “People are going to get that joke for all eternity, I think,” Abrahams speculated. 

Perhaps that was Abrahams’ real gift. Despite the fact that so many of his movies were ostensibly parodies of now dated pop-culture relics, the jokes ended up transcending their source material, which is no easy feat. For example, Airplane! was a send-up of the Airport disaster movies (and specifically patterned off of 1957’s Zero Hour). But while hardly anybody remembers Airport these days, “Don’t call me Shirley” will no doubt live on forever. 

Even Top Secret!, which was an inspired Frankenstein of a satire, lampooning both war movies and goofy Elvis musicals, has subsequently been embraced as a cult hit after disappointing at the box office in 1984. Some of the more brilliant sight gags from that film have taken on a new life in the social media age, again, outliving its satirical targets. 

It’s difficult to properly sum up the career of someone whose work has been a constant source of joy and inspiration for so many people. Let’s just say that we hope his funeral goes better than the one held for Pete “Dead Meat” Thompson.