[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: David, when you were 22 years old you drove to Chicago and you saw a comedy show entitled Void Where Prohibited by Law. What do you remember about this show?
David Zucker, Director/Writer/Producer: At the time back in 1971, I was working for my dad as a construction expediter. He was building office buildings, commercial buildings. He had some videotape equipment. I mean, he didn’t have it but a friend of his had some early Sony video decks which had reel-to-reel tapes.
He said his friend would be willing to lend me this equipment. I said What would I do with video? I’m a film guy and because I just graduated from college in film.
He said Well you could do video. You can do film for industrial films for some of the Milwaukee manufacturing plants.
This did not did not excite me at all.
I happened to drive down to Chicago. I had a date with a girl there and we were wondering what we could do. Her roommate suggested this show called Void Where Prohibited By Law and it’s in New Town and it’s in a loft.
I had no idea what it was but we went because that was how we were going to spend the evening. I remember we went up some stairs. We paid probably a dollar.
It was a big room with a huge water bed filling the room and a video monitor (25-in monitor) at one end and a Coke machine at the other.
We watched this show and it was probably 70 or 75 minutes I guess. I don’t remember what was in it but it was scatological humor. I thought it was funny. I don’t think my date thought it was funny at all.
I thought This is amazing. People paid money to see a video show. That’s when I…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
MASTERCRASH: A Crash Course In Spoof Comedy
BUY THE BOOK – Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!
About:
Born on October 16, 1947 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, director/writer/producer David Zucker, along with brother Jerry (Ghost, 1990) Zucker and longtime friend, Jim (Hot Shots, 1991) Abrahams, has established himself among Hollywood’s (or at least Wisconsin’s) most successful filmmakers. Starting out after college, with a borrowed video tape deck and camera, the soon to be legendary trio created the Kentucky Fried Theater, on the UW Madison campus, and moved to California in 1972, quickly becoming the most successful small theater group. in Los Angeles history.
After parlaying this success into The Kentucky Fried Movie, the three conceived the idea that would create a whole new film genre. Airplane! (1980) broke all conventions, featuring dramatic actors like Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen performing zany jokes with straight-laced sincerity. The spoof became the surprise hit of 1980, beginning a streak of hilarious movies including Top Secret! (1984) and Ruthless People (1986), after which David branched out on his own to direct The Naked Guns (1988, 1991, 1994), BASEketball (1998), Scary Movies 3 (2003), and 4 (2006), and others.
David also found time to produce the successful, but somewhat less hilarious A Walk in The Clouds (1995) and Phone Booth (2002), and recently completed a feature script, The Star of Malta, a comedy set in the Film Noir era, and an international spy thriller, “Counter Intellijence!”.
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New book from Film Courage! – See it on Payhip here
New book from Film Courage! – See it on Payhip here
