I absolutely love his performance in Airplane, the facial expressions are perfect and the way he looks around after “the hell I don’t” shows he really has great comedic timing and movement.

Incidentally, for anyone that didn’t know, the film Airplane was an almost shot for shot remake of a film called Zero Hour [1] and the copilot in the original film was a famous NFL player (Elroy ‘Crazy Legs’ Hirsch), hence why they’ve got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to play the copilot in Airplane.

We have clearance Clarence. Roger, Roger. What's our vector Victor?

[1] https://youtu.be/8-v2BHNBVCs?feature=shared

Airplane! was just on The Rewatchables, one of The Ringer podcasts, and the co-pilot role was originally written for Pete Rose but he couldn't do it because they filmed during baseball season.

https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/the-rewatchables/2025/09/...

https://www.mlb.com/cut4/kareem-abdul-jabbars-role-in-airpla...

I am learning some of these facts in my adulthood, and I never thought it possible that film could get any funnier.

There is so many layers of jokes!