ARTICLE FROM TOTAL FILM (July 2001)

Q. Top Secret had a bigger budget than Airplane! What was the most expensive gag?

Jim. It was the one that was the least funny - where the scientist turns on the magnet and a huge submarine comes crashing through the wall. We shot it twice and then the joke fell on deaf ears. Man, that was a real straw dummy. As all jokes about submarine attracting devices tend to be.

Q. Are there any gags which didn't make the final cut?

Jim. My memory's not what it was, but I do recall an extension of the love scene where they kiss on a carpet next to a roaring fireplace, roll over and kiss in front of another roaring fireplace and then stand by a window and there in the background is an entire building burning down.

Q. How on earth did Skeet Surfing come about?

Jim: When David, Jerry and I first started doing interviews there's only a limited number of questions you can get asked. So for Airplane! we started a contest to see who could get the biggest lie printed in a magazine. We were in Dusseldorf and some journalist asked us about life in Southern California and we told them about this great new trend where students combined surfing with clay pigeon shooting. Total garbage of course, but it ended up in print. The whole sequence was shot in Newquay, by the way. Those are all British kids.

Q. There's a myth that Val Kilmer turned up at the audition dressed as Elvis?

Jim: We needed somebody who could dance, sing and act and was pretty as hell. The moment he came into the audition, we knew we found our guy. It's true that he did a very convincing Elvis impersonation. But no, I don't recall him dressing up.

Q. Why is it a hidden classic and not a classic?

Jim: You always think much more about the movies that don't work rather than the ones which do work, so we've dissected it quite a bit. The main problem was that it was an amalgamation of Elvis movies and World War II movies as opposed to Airplane!, which had a very specific target - stupid disaster movies. It was a muddy target.

Simon Crook, Total Film, July 2001