Jim Abrahams, spoof-comedy great behind ‘Airplane!’ and ‘Naked Gun’ films, dies at 80

Jim Abrahams, the writer-director who with brothers Jerry and David Zucker popularized the 1980s spoof genre with comedies such as “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun” series, has died. Jerry Zucker, in a statement shared with Rolling Stone, called Abrahams “our third brother.” “Jim brought health, humor and love to so many people’s lives,” Zucker told the outlet. “Afterward the three of us would end up in the rec room, playing pingpong and making each other laugh,” Jerry Zucker wrote in the trio’s 2023 memoir, “Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!” “We bonded over our shared sense of humor.” Later in 1971, while the three were attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison together, they founded the Kentucky Fried Theater in Madison, devising a multimedia show of improvisational sketches and pretaped spoofs of commercials and TV shows. “I do believe that when ‘Airplane!’ is really clicking, it elevates stupidity to an art form,” Abrahams wrote in the trio’s 2023 memoir.