Abrahams, Jim

With the death of Jim Abrahams, one third of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker writing and directing trio, a looks at some of the funniest moments from their key films.It’s almost hard to believe that at one point Leslie Nielsen was thought of as a serious actor who was an odd choice to play a comic role like the deadpan doctor in the disaster movie spoof “Airplane!”But casting the unflappable Nielsen to deliver lines like “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley” in response to the completely reasonable phrase, “Surely you can’t be serious,” was part of the brilliance of Jim Abrahams, who died Tuesday at the age of 80. Along with David and Jerry Zucker, his pals from his youth in Wisconsin, Abrahams was a pioneer of some of the most beloved, gleefully over-the-top comedies in cinema history.Nielsen delivering his “don’t call me Shirley” line in “Airplane!”Paramount Pictures, via Everett CollectionThe Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker movies took their extreme silliness extremely seriously. Their actors, like Nielsen, were as committed to the bit as they were. With a few exceptions — like the kidnapping comedy “Ruthless People” (1986) — the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker mode was parody, taking genres that audiences loved and deliciously skewering them. But their humor was so undeniable that even if you didn’t know what they were making fun of you could lose your breath laughing.When my parents sat me down at a young age to watch “Airplane!,” I had never seen any of the flicks it was riffing on, like “Airport” (1970) or “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), the latter of which also featured Nielsen. Instead, I was captivated by the sheer absurdity and sometimes perplexing strangeness. The quotable lines are legion, but the bizarrely funny images are also why “Airplane!” lingers so large in the cultural memory.For me, it’s the eggs. During the flight where nothing can seem to go right, Nielsen’s Dr. Rumack attends to a woman who is feeling ill. With ominous music in the background he starts gently, but firmly extracting a series of eggs from her mouth. After the third one comes out, he cracks it against the side of a cup. A little bird flies out. The tension that exists in the scene is real and almost frightening, the woman’s face contorting like something out of a horror film, but the end result is just so ridiculous.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More