MovieChat Forums > Airplane! (1980) Discussion > The spear and watermelon joke?

The spear and watermelon joke?

posted 9 years ago by bluekadife
5 replies | jump to latest

Is the joke just that they are random, aka absurd comedy or is there something else that I'm missing?

[–] punkgirly 9 years ago

I was wondering that too. I just read in the trivia that ZAZ were hoping that audiences would get the "watermelon falling on the desk" or "spear" jokes.

I totally don't get why they are supposed to be funny, either!

Someone please explain to us!

[–] snelling 9 years ago

According to the ZAZ guys on the DVD commentary, they figured the audience would be paying more attention to the dialogue and not care about anything in the background. They were making a joke about the serious plot side of a movie.

"'Extremely High Voltage.' Well, I don't need safety gloves, because I'm Homer Sim--" - Frank Grimes

[–] punkgirly 9 years ago

Ok, I guess that makes sense. Thanks!

[–] eyeonyouproductions 9 years ago

It's random, kind of like the picture of Lloyd Bridges behind Lloyd Bridges. Some people might think it's racist, but there is no context anywhere in the scene that would imply that.

[–] Monkeydigital 8 years ago

When Loyd was saying "you have to talk them right down to the ground" and the watermelon smashed, I took it as the producers wanted to visually show us the implications of of a movie like this where everything was taken literally. I still don't get the spear part though lol.