Remembering Jim Abrahams

My recollections of the man who put the "A" in ZAZ and helped give the world The Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane! and so much more

It’s not exactly breaking news that the internet and social media have together turned this into a very, very small world, one that has provided fans with an opportunity to forge relationships - and in some cases friendships - with the individuals who’ve created the pop culture that made them who they are today. But as part of a generation that grew up without being tied together in such a fashion, I’m still able to view it as a little bit surreal that I found out about the passing of Jim Abrahams - who put the “A” in the comedy writing/directing team of ZAZ, with the two Zs being brothers David Zucker and Jerry Zucker - as a result of being Facebook friends with Pat Proft, a man whose name I first saw as one of the names in the credits of Police Squad!

If you had told 11-year-old me that someday I’d have even a passing acquaintanceship with Pat Proft, I wouldn’t have believed it.

If you’d told me that I’d get a chance to tell David, Jim, and Jerry about how I used to call my buddy Chris Johnson after every episode (that aired) of Police Squad! to discuss our favorite jokes, I’m sure I wouldn’t have believed you about that, either.

And if you’d told me that I’d get to tell ZAZ this anecdote while in the midst of collaborating with them on a book about the movie that transformed them into mainstream comedy legends, well, I’m pretty sure my goddamned head would’ve exploded, which I think most would deem to be an appropriate reaction from someone who saw the movie in question in the theater when he was all of nine years old.

My history with Jim Abrahams dates back to 2015, when Sean O’Neal asked me if I’d be up for tackling an oral history of Airplane! for the A.V. Club. It was an assignment that popped up in the wake of my having done an oral history of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s UHF for The Dissolve, after which I discovered that Sean had also been working on an oral history of UHF for the A.V. Club, and somehow Shout Factory – whose Blu-ray release of the film had spurred the idea for both outlets – had failed to mention to either of us that we’d both had the same idea. In the end, everything worked out fine, the A.V. Club ran theirs a bit later down the line, and if I’m being honest, Sean’s oral history was arguably better, if only because he managed to secure an interview with Michael Richards and I didn’t.

But I digress, when my only real reason for bringing up this story at all is because Sean wanted me to know that not only were there no hard feelings, but he’d be happy to have me do oral histories for the A.V. Club as well. Indeed, he proved as much not long afterwards, when he pitched me on the idea of doing the Airplane! oral history and I giddily agreed.

The piece was instigated by David and Jerry Zucker doing an appearance at Nashville’s Wild West Comedy Festival, where they were screening Airplane! for the film’s 35th anniversary, so it was relatively easy to get both of them on the phone, but I decided that if I was going to talk to 2/3 of ZAZ, then I was going to talk to the “A” of the group as well. That was my first conversation with Jim, and – as with the ones I had with David and Jerry – it went great.

In fact, it went so great that about a year later, I got an email from David with the subject line “Possible freelance work?” and a request for me to give him a call. I did, and that’s when he told me that he, Jerry, and Jim had been talking about the idea of doing a book for awhile but that it hadn’t come to fruition...or, more specifically, none of them had gotten off of their asses to try and make it happen. But when they’d gotten together to watch a Packers game, one of them suggested that since they’d all liked the A.V. Club oral history, maybe the guy who’d done that would be interested in helping them with such a book.

I was extremely interested, of course, and with that assurance having been provided, we soon had our first Zoom call together. It was clear that all three guys were extremely excited about the idea of doing a book, even if there were certainly plenty of occasions where it was just as clear that they weren’t necessarily all on the same page about what the book was going to look like. But my recollection of Jim is that he was pretty much game for anything. That’s not to say that he wouldn’t express his opinion if he was uncertain about something, but if I’m being honest, I really can’t recall a single occasion where he was anything other than completely enthusiastic about how things were going, who I was managing to get on the phone, how the interviews were turning out, and so forth.

I knew that Jim was not well. He wasn’t terribly well before we started on the book, and his health continued to be less than optimal throughout the proceedings, but he was almost always available for a Zoom call when we needed to do one, and if he wasn’t, then he was available via email and would get right back with me. And we stayed in touch after my work on the book was finished. He was so excited that we’d made it happen, perhaps because there was a little while there where none of us knew if it ever would happen.

David Zucker’s Instagram post about the passing of Jim Abrhams

What you have to understand is that there was no book deal when we started working on the book. The boys – as they have been called pretty much since they started working together – contracted me to work with them on conducting and transcribing the interviews for the book, and we also hashed out an agreement about what would go down when the book was actually sold to a publisher. It all worked out as we’d agreed upon…and, yes, that includes my credit of “interviews by” rather than a credit as one of the authors. (I never asked for that, and they never promised it, only assuring me that I would receive a prominent credit for my work, which I most definitely received, along with a wonderful thank-you in the acknowledgements.

In putting together this piece, I went through the many emails I traded with Jim, David, and Jerry. One thing I discovered is that virtually all of them were very short, which makes sense, since they generally tended to involve me either telling the boys I’d set up an interview with someone, telling them about how the conversation went, or asking them to clarify something they’d said in one of our conversations as I was transcribing it. Remember what I said about Jim being enthusiastic? Even his short replies bear this out.

“Fabulous!”

“Wonderful!”

“Excellent!”

“Very cool!”

You get the idea.

In one conversation, I mentioned just before wrapping up that I was going to be meeting up with Robert Hays in Richmond for an in-person conversation, and without missing a beat, Jim said, “Bring a noose.” In fact, he said it so fast that I didn’t realize what he’d said until after I’d gotten off the call, so I sent him a message afterwards to tell him how hard I’d laughed. He wrote back, “I must say I marvel at how patient you are with David and Jerry and me laughing at our own jokes.”

At one point, I wrote the guys and said, “It's funny, every time I tell my wife I've talked to one or more of you guys, she always asks the same question, ‘And they still like what you're doing, right?’ I keep assuring her that I'm hearing a lot of adjectives that you guys aren't obligated to throw my way, so my presumption is that, yes, they still like what I'm doing! I should add that this is not surprise on her part, it's more a case of needing the verbal equivalent of being pinched just to make sure this is all this really happening.”

Jim wrote back with one word: “PINCH!”

I also found an anecdote from John Landis about Stephen Stucker that I sent to the boys, but I don’t think it ended up in the book, since it wasn’t actually ZAZ-related. Since Jim replied that it was a “wonderful story,” however, I’ll share it here, because I agree with him.

So Stucker called [Landis] in '83 and told him he needed a job, and Landis said, "Well, as it happens, I'm getting ready to head to film Trading Places, I'll find a role for you in there." And he did, of course, although he said Stucker actually asked if he could get a little more money, which Landis didn't mind doing.

And then some months later he got another call from Stucker saying that he needed a job and asking if he could help him out again, and Landis said, "Well, actually, I can't this time, but only because I'm about to heard to Europe to work on Spies Like Us." And that's when Stucker told him that he had AIDS and that the reason he needed a job was to keep up his SAG medical insurance. So Landis told Stucker, "Don't worry, I'll figure something out."

And what Landis did was hire Stucker for Spies Like Us...but he's not actually in the movie. And then he hired him for Three Amigos...but he's not in that movie, either.

But the post-script is that a couple of years after that, Landis was in his office on the lot, and his assistant says, "There are some people here to see you." And he's, like, "People? What people?" And it's Stucker's parents. They were on the tour, they knew he had an office there, and they wanted to come by and thank him personally for what he'd done for their son.

I barely talked to ZAZ during the pandemic, only because they had all of my interviews in hand and were in the process of trying to sell the book. In 2022, however, the book deal was finally done, which led us to have to set up a call between David, Jim and I. (No Jerry, however, as he was otherwise occupied at the time.)

I found this email from Jim:

Hi Will and Dave-

(Will FYI: in the old days it used to annoy the shit out of Dave when I’d call him Dave so I kind got in the habit.)

Yeah this is really exciting. I’m free any time after 11:00 a.m. West Coast time on Monday.

How about you Dave?

David’s response:

Hey Jimmie Bimmie- sure 11am is good.

Photo courtesy of David Zucker

One of the last exchanges of note that Jim and I had was in August 2023 when the boys were in the process of putting together the audio book. I didn’t exactly have a hand in putting that together, but what’s funny is that they clearly had a meeting with the publisher about contacting the people who’d been interviewed for the book and asking them if they’d be willing to do something for the audio book as well. As near as I can figure, they must’ve split the list of people into thirds, each taking a number of names to contact…and I’m guessing it must’ve been pretty much right after that meeting that I got individual emails from David, Jim, and Jerry, each asking, “Do you still have the contact information for these people?” You have to respect them for taking the easiest possible way out.

Anyway, when Jim wrote me, I took the opportunity to briefly play catch-up, since David tended to be the one who ran point on all book-related matters.

First of all, I sent him this picture:

I said, “My sister has been in town, so I was over at my parents' house the other night, and while I was there I happened upon a box of stuff that I hadn't looked through in 20+ years. In the mix was this photo. Little did I know that I'd eventually be collaborating on a book with the director of a movie whose poster was once on my wall. Confession: I did not have it on my wall because it was a Jim Abrahams picture. I hope you still respect me anyway.”

That got a “Wow!”

Also, my daughter was just about to head off to college, and I told him so, since he’d literally been following along with her exploits since 2015.

He replied, “I remember dropping my oldest kid off at college. Everybody had told me how fast things had gone, but I thought it had been interminable. We stayed in a hotel room the night before. Just channel surfing we came across Cider House Rules. Somewhere in the middle there’s a shot of Michael Caine peering out a window as Toby Maguire goes off into the real world. I literally lost it.”

I won’t say that I literally lost it when I heard the news that Jim had died, since - as noted - his health hadn’t even been great when we started working on the book, and I knew it had only declined since. but I did tear up. I teared up because he was a great guy, someone with whom my interactions had been uniformly positive, but also because even though we’d done those dozens of Zoom calls and looked each other in the eye on a regular basis, I never actually had the opportunity to meet him in person. But at least I’ve got those audio recordings…including one labeled “ZAZ - Just Jim,” which is, I believe, the only time that he and I did an interview where it was just the two of us. I have to figure out where I’ve got it stored, but once I find it, maybe I can upload a couple of clips, just so you can hear how much fun it was to talk to him.

He truly was a joy. As a collaborator, yes, but just as a person.

I will miss Jim very much…and to paraphrase a line from Police Squad! to bring this full circle, I would’ve mourned him sooner, but he wasn’t dead yet.