‘Sex, Frank?’ ‘Uh...no, not right now, Ed.’ ‘Don’t call me Shirley’ and 'I'll alert the media'...altogether

The Naked Gun reboot opened Friday, and it’s getting great reviews; however, for me, it's rekindling a lot of memories I have of the original and movies from that era.

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My all-time favorite movies are from the 1980s: Arthur, The Naked Gun and The Naked Gun 2 ½ , and Airplane! I’m not sure what that says about me. Is it that I like silly and ridiculous films with corny lines that never get old?

In Arthur’s case, the movie is one of the reasons that I ended up living in New York City. And in the case of the others, they have stood the test of time, and no matter how many times you see them, you still laugh.

It’s a testament to the Zucker brothers, David and Jerry, along with Jim Abrams, who were the creative forces behind The Naked Gun and Airplane! You really have to hand it to them, which leads into what I think about every time I hear the word “hand.”

And that’s this gem from a scene in Arthur, with Dudley Moore and Jill Eikenberry as Susan:

Susan: “Arthur, will you take my hand?”

Arthur: “That would leave you with one!”

I grew up chuckling at the plethora of comedic lines and slapstick from those films. I quote these films often, and think of scenes from them at times when I need a laugh. I’ll even go to Youtube, and watch the scenes that come to mind.

In some instances, the dialogue and action would probably not be suitable today.

There’s another moment, in The Naked Gun, that I’m reminded about whenever I see reruns of Modern Family, and watch Cam saying things that sound bad, but are completely innocent.

I have seen all these movies so many times that I know every line. But when the films came out, you had no idea what was coming next, and in some cases, when the lines were delivered, you had to think about them.

Like in Airplane!, when Ted Striker explains that while he’s a pilot, he’s not capable of flying a commercial plane to Leslie Nielsen’s character Dr. Rumack and a flight attendant:

Ted: “It's an entirely different kind of flying...altogether.”

Rumak & Flight Attendant simultaneously: “It’s an entirely different kind of flying.”

It takes you a minute, but then you figure out that they're taking the word “altogether” literally. There are so many of these instances, from all of the films. Literalisms delivered with panache.

And that was the secret to these movies. The set-up line included a word or phrase that the recipient took literally and replied with the punch line. Most famously perhaps from Airplane! When I was growing up, my best friend’s mother was named Shirley.

Do I even need to tell you what line comes to mind from Airplane! every time I hear her name?

Or cheese. For the last 40 some years, I can’t cut cheese without thinking of an innocent line from Arthur, when a drunken Arthur confesses in front of his would-be father-in-law, Burt Johnson, of loving another woman that's not Burt's daughter. He's lying on the floor with that other woman, Liza Minnelli’s Linda, and Burt grows furious:

(Burt grabs a knife out of a hunk of cheese.)

Arthur: “He’s taking the knife out of the cheese. Do you think he wants some cheese?”

When I worked for my local congressman in our district office in southwestern Pennsylvania, I drove among the different counties where our offices were located, and one of those was Beaver County. Each time I saw the sign, “Welcome to Beaver County,” I laughed out loud thinking of Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun looking up at a Priscilla Presley's Jane on a ladder:

Frank: “Nice beaver!”

Jane: (Hands down a taxidermy mount of a beaver) “Thank you. I just had it stuffed.”

And just when you thought the gag, or the jokes would take a pause, then bingo, another one cropped up, such as a scene from The Naked Gun:

Frank Drebin: (Searching drawers of a desk for clues, opens a drawer) “Bingo!” (He pulls out a bingo card)

Talk about "bingo," I’ll never forget the line in Airplane! that hit a bull's-eye at one of the LGBTQ+ community’s cruelest detractors:

Dr. Rumbak: (Taking notice of all the chaos from food poisoning that was happening among the passengers on the doomed plane) “I haven't seen anything like this since the Anita Bryant concert.”

While many of the one-liners had nothing to do with the plot of the film, some did have relevance. The Naked Gun was ostensibly about solving crimes, and I cannot watch a police show or a crime movie that refers to an attribute of a suspect, without thinking of a discussion between Frank and Jane in The Naked Gun:

Frank: “Now, Jane, what can you tell us about the man you saw last night?”

Jane: “He's Caucasian.”

Frank: “Caucasian?”

Jane: “Yeah, you know, a white guy. A mustache. About six foot three.”

Frank: "That's an awfully big mustache."

In the case of Arthur, his excessive drinking would be a problem today. But in the 1980s, it was still a joke. I was drinking and cavorting like Arthur, and I loved Arthur so much because of his tour de force of fun in New York City. After watching the film for the first time, I knew that I wanted to go live and play in Manhattan just like Arthur..

And I did. I drank and caroused the bars and nightspots for 30 years, albeit on a much tighter budget than the excessively wealthy Arthur:

Arthur: "All I can tell you is I wish I had a dime for every dime I have.”

For those 30-plus years in New York, I worked as a PR professional and a journalist, I have been immersed in the world of media, and there again, when I encounter that word, “media” I can only think of one scene from Arthur.

It’s a conversation between Hobson, Arthur’s butler, played by the brilliant John Gielgud (he won an Oscar for that role), and Arthur:

Arthur: “I’m going to take a bath.”

Hobson: “I’ll alert the media.”

Over the years, I wish I had a dime for how many times I alerted the media in my profession. I’ve lived as a Caucasian male with two hands, and I’ve been hollowed out by love and Drano, and I surely mean it. And throughout it all these films still matter.

I kept the fun of these films, their one-liners, and their uproarious scenes, always top of my mind, altogether.

I kept the fun of these films, their one-liners and their uproarious scenes, always top of mind.

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