Jerry Zucker Biography

Jerry Zucker, a Milwaukee native, attended Shorewood High School alongside his elder brother, David. The Zuckers began demonstrating the lampoons Mad Magazine-style humor that would mark their later work in student variety performances. Jim Abrahams, a longstanding family friend of the Zuckers, created the Kentucky Fried Theater comedy company while attending the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and by 1978, the theatre had earned enough industry clout to fund the madcap sketch film Kentucky Fried Movie (1978), directed by John Landis. The film established the Zucker standard: outlandish (and endearingly infantile) visual puns, insane parodies of movie genres carried out by an absolutely straight-faced ensemble, looney non-sequitur jokes and running gags dominating each frame, and amusing celebrity appearances The Zucker/Abrahams combination put together their first major picture for Paramount, 1980's Airplane!, a scattershot spoof of the 1957 airline meller Zero Hour, on the basis of Kentucky Fried Movie's 20-million-dollar gross. The Zucker brothers and the Abrahams consented to this project on the condition that the three men be permitted to co-direct the picture, forming a triumvirate that lasted the rest of the 1980s. The Zucker/Abrahams aesthetic would always be hit or miss, but fans would rather treasure the hits.

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