471: David Zucker—Thanks for the Parking Spot
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
4.9 • 40.8K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2026
⏱️ 97 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mike talks with comedy legend David Zucker, the creative force behind the movie Airplane! Zucker shares what it took to make Airplane!—pitching a spoof no one quite understood, casting serious actors to deliver absurd lines with a straight face, and why making his co-writers laugh was the secret sauce to pleasing the audience. He also discusses his new "Master Crash" course, where Zucker teaches the dos and don'ts of spoof comedy writing. Along the way, we learn how John Landis landed National Lampoon's Animal House, helping ignite a new era of irreverent filmmaking. It's a fast, funny conversation about risk, rebellion, and earning your parking space the hard way.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Chuck. |
| 0:04.6 | Yes. |
| 0:05.5 | Did you know Variety Magazine says that David Zucker's The Naked Gun is the number one comedy of all time? |
| 0:16.1 | No. |
| 0:16.8 | I did not know that. |
| 0:18.3 | I didn't either. |
| 0:18.9 | You can fill a book with what we don't know, folks. |
| 0:22.0 | This is the way I heard it on Mike Roe. |
| 0:23.8 | My guest today is David Zucker. |
| 0:27.1 | Yeah, he gave us the naked gun. |
| 0:28.2 | He gave us airplane. |
| 0:32.1 | He gave us police squad. |
| 0:32.9 | Police squad. |
| 0:36.9 | Naked gun two and a half, the smell of fear. |
| 0:40.7 | Naked gun 33 and a third, the final insult. |
| 0:42.0 | Scary movie. |
| 0:47.1 | I mean, the guy is just, he just left. |
| 0:54.0 | I just spent over an hour talking with him, and I just realized, you know, what an impact his work had on me and I hadn't really |
| 0:57.4 | thought about it, really, until today. No, so much of our humor comes from seeing those movies. |
| 1:03.3 | It just all came up again. And let me just say, he is super sharp. I don't know what his age is, |
| 1:08.6 | but he's 104. Well, you know what? He seems a little |
| 1:11.4 | slow for 104. But he just was really sharp, really funny. And again, it was like a time machine |
... |
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