A storytelling lesson from Airplane! and Zero Hour!

Today’s post is late because we saw Swan Lake last night.  I spent much of the ballet thinking about what led the evil sorcerer to turn Odette and friends into swans in the first place, and what parts of the story would have to change to tell it from his perspective. 
 
Which reminded me I’d meant to talk about Zero Hour! My brother discovered this movie and brought a DVD over while I was home for Christmas. Zero Hour! is a 1957 disaster movie in which food poisoning strikes the  crew of an aircraft.  Passenger and former military pilot Ted Stryker has to overcome his PTSD and land the plane safely in time to get everyone to the hospital. 

Sound familiar?
 
The guys who made Airplane! bought the rights to Zero Hour! Not only is the plot the same, but they kept many of the same lines of dialog (“A hospital! What is it?”). The result is that Zero Hour!, a completely serious film, is now hilarious. Sort of like a karaoke version of Airplane! where you fill in the jokes yourself. (Actor: “I am serious.” My family: “And don’t call me Shirley!”)
 
It was really interesting to see the changes that were made to turn it from drama to comedy. Some of it is delivery, some of it is the addition of the jokes (“I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue” was not in Zero Hour!), some of it is context (aside from clunkiness, there’s nothing funny about “our only hope us to find someone who can not only fly this plane, but who didn’t have the fish for dinner” in Zero Hour!, but in Airplane!, I’m already primed to find things funny).

I enjoy the exercise of figuring out how to take one story and turn it into another. And I’m now writing a story abut swans…