Photo: Paramount Pictures

Destroy Comedy? Surely, You Can’t Be Serious

I’m not serious. And don’t call me Shirley

John DeVore
Published in
6 min readOct 18, 2021

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David Zucker, one of the co-directors of the classic 1980 disaster movie sendup Airplane!, recently wrote in a viral essay that the republic is in a “comedy emergency.” No, seriously. He did.

The title of Zucker’s polemic, before being republished with a clicker headline by the excitable right-wingers at The New York Post, was simply “Destroying Comedy.

Which is a little over-the-top if you ask me, but Zucker writes with the urgency of someone who truly believes that comedy is currently being destroyed. It survived the fall of Rome, the Black Death, and World War II, but it’s on its last legs now, thanks to a bunch of smartypants juvenile delinquents who are good at computers.

These hoodlums are ruining the country with their opinions; honestly, they should be locked up for refusing to laugh at jokes from the Carter administration. Or jokes that mock people who want, you know, equal rights.

Zucker’s first and primary piece of evidence that laughter itself is in jeopardy is an anecdote from a 40th anniversary Q&A in Hollywood where he, his co-director brother Jerry and a few stars from Airplane! were being celebrated. During the talkback, an audience member allegedly asked Zucker if he could make…

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John DeVore

My memoir 'Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway' is now available. jdv.lol