Don't Make a Scene (Redux): Top Secret!

We lost Val Kilmer. This week and next week, a couple of his scenes.

The Story: How often I've repeated the line "It all sounds like some bad movie!"

 

Sometimes even in movie theaters.

 

Top Secret!, the Z-A-Z (Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker) follow-up to their successful parody, Airplane! had a bit of a rocky start and wasn't a huge success at the box-office. It wasn't a send-up of an already existing movie (in the case of Airplane!, it was 1957's Zero Hour!), but a wholly original idea imagining a mash-up of an Elvis Presley movie with a wartime espionage film, with the same exuberance throwing jokes at the film and seeing how much sticks. Quite a lot, it seems. 

 

But, at some point, the film just stops, re-caps the complications and then states the obvious—"it all sounds like some bad movie!" with the actors guiltily breaking the fourth wall and acknowledges that (indeed) it might just be a bad movie.

 

The surprise of the movie was Val Kilmer, who had previously been known for dating Cher, but made an all-singin', all-dancin' comedic debut as the Elvis imitator, Nick Rivers. This film and the next year's Real Genius established Kilmer as a superb comic actor, but it is his subsequent dramatic roles for which he is best known. This Summer his scene with Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick was a nostalgically emotional highlight.

 

The Set-Up: Pop-rock phenom' Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer, in his film debut) is on an extensive European tour, when he is swept up in international intrigue in East Germany surrounding the disappearance of a prominent scientist. There are complications...oh, we'll just let him describe them.

 

Action.

 

HILLARY FLAMMOND Nick...

HILLARY FLAMMOND I want to explain. - 

NICK RIVERS  What's to explain? 

HILLARY FLAMMOND  But I just want to say that...

NICK RIVERS  Look...

NICK RIVERS I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a girl he met in a restaurant, 

NICK RIVERS ...who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist, 

NICK RIVERS ...only to lose her to her childhood lover she'd last seen on a deserted island...

NICK RIVERS ...who, years later, is the leader of the French underground. 

HILLARY FLAMMOND I know it. 

HILLARY FLAMMOND It all sounds like some bad movie. 

NICK RIVERS Forget it.

 

Top Secret!

 

Words by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

 

Pictures by Christopher Challis and Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams

 

Top Secret! is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Paramount Home Video.

Don't Make a Scene: Top Secret!

The Story: How often I've repeated the line "It all sounds like some bad movie!"

 

Sometimes even in movie theaters.

 

Top Secret!, the Z-A-Z (Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker) follow-up to their successful parody, Airplane! had a bit of a rocky start and wasn't a huge success at the box-office. It wasn't a send-up of an already existing movie (in the case of Airplane!, it was 1957's Zero Hour!), but a wholly original idea imagining a mash-up of an Elvis Presley movie with a wartime espionage film, with the same exuberance throwing jokes at the film and seeing how much sticks. Quite a lot, it seems. 

 

But, at some point, the film just stops, re-caps the complications and then states the obvious—"it all sounds like some bad movie!" with the actors guiltily breaking the fourth wall and acknowledges that (indeed) it might just be a bad movie.

 

The surprise of the movie was Val Kilmer, who had previously been known for dating Cher, but made an all-singin', all-dancin' comedic debut as the Elvis imitator, Nick Rivers. This film and the next year's Real Genius established Kilmer as a superb comic actor, but it is his subsequent dramatic roles for which he is best known. This Summer his scene with Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick was a nostalgically emotional highlight.

 

The Set-Up: Pop-rock phenom' Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer, in his film debut) is on an extensive European tour, when he is swept up in international intrigue in East Germany surrounding the disappearance of a prominent scientist. There are complications...oh, we'll just let him describe them.

 

Action.

 

HILLARY FLAMMOND Nick...

HILLARY FLAMMOND I want to explain. - 

NICK RIVERS  What's to explain? 

HILLARY FLAMMOND  But I just want to say that...

NICK RIVERS  Look...

NICK RIVERS I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a girl he met in a restaurant, 

NICK RIVERS ...who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist, 

NICK RIVERS ...only to lose her to her childhood lover she'd last seen on a deserted island...

NICK RIVERS ...who, years later, is the leader of the French underground. 

HILLARY FLAMMOND I know it. 

HILLARY FLAMMOND It all sounds like some bad movie. 

NICK RIVERS Forget it.

 

Top Secret!

 

Words by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

 

Pictures by Christopher Challis and Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams

 

Top Secret! is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Paramount Home Video.

Don't Make a Scene: Airplane!

The Story:  Lots of reasons why I wanted to include this scene from Airplane! when I first presented this some years ago: It had been voted into the National Film Registry at the end of that year; Barbara Billingsley, otherwise known as Mrs. Cleaver from the "Leave it To Beaver" television show, had died at the end of that year, and this scene loomed large in her legend. No doubt, her earlier role figured in her being chosen for this (I can't think of a funnier person, other than the ubiquitous Betty White, to make the line "I speak jive" ring with wholesome comic brilliance), and the Zucker Brothers have a fetish for all things "Beaver;" I love Airplane! in the same way I love Buster Keaton, Chuck Jones and Daffy Duck (especially together), a soupçon of Jerry Lewis, and slapstick. Ardently, and every viewing seems fresh...as opposed to the in-flight meals that start the complications of this whole thing.

You look at the screenplay posted on-line, and what the Jive-Talkers are saying is gibberish, the ZAZ team couldn't speak jive for any reason (they're also referred to as "Black Dudes, but in the on-set transcript they're "Jivemen"), so the dialogue was ad-libbed by the two actors (Norman Alexander Gibbs and Al White) on set. Obviously, they wrote Barbara Billinsley's lines, as well. Some unsung trivia there, for the scene and talk (in it's previous sub-titled conversation) are brilliantly hilarious. 

What's always made this scene funny for me, besides Billingsley's showing up, and the rather nicely rhythmed "jive" being spoken, was the basic joke that understanding a language doesn't always promote understanding. In fact, there is more mis-understanding (it seems) the more you learn; one has to be immersed in the culture to learn the idioms, the slang, the colloguialisms, the provincialisms, the emphases, and vernacular.

And if you look on a color wheel, the opposite of black is Barbara Billingsley.

The Set-Up:  Set-up?  The set-ups only last long enough to deliver the punch-lines. 

Anyone who had "the fish" for dinner on board the flight from Los Angeles to Chicago is getting violently ill, including the entire flight crew, save the stewardesses.

But, that's not important right now....

Action!

INT. PASSENGER CABIN - NIGHT
A Black Dude is holding his stomach in pain.

JIVEMAN 1: Mnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Randy approaches.

RANDY: Can I get you something?

JIVEMAN 1:  S'mo fo butter layin' me to the bone. Jackin' me up. Tightly.
RANDY: I'm sorry. I don't understand.
MRS. SCHIFF, a middle-aged woman, is seated behind the Black Dudes.

JIVEMAN 2: Cutty say he cant hang.

MRS. SCHIFF: Oh, stewardess, I speak jive.
RANDY: Ohhhh, good. 

MRS. SCHIFF: He said he's in great pain and wants to know if you can help him.

RANDY: Would you tell him to just relax and I'll be back as
soon as I can with some medicine.
Randy exits.

MRS. SCHIFF: Jus' hang loose, blood.

MRS. SCHIFF: She goonna catch you up on the`rebound on de med-cide.

BLACK DUDE (indignantly): What it is, big mamma. My mamma didn't raise no dummy, I dug her rap.

MRS. SCHIFF: Cut me some slack, jack!

They engage in an argument in jive talk, with Mrs. Schiff getting the best of it.

MRS. SCHIFF: Chump don' wan' no help, chump don' git no help.

MRS. SCHIFF: Jive-ass dude don' got no brains, anyhow.

Airplane!

Words by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker

Pictures by Joseph F. Biroc and  Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker

Airplane! is available on DVD from Paramount Home Video.