Ted Lasso's Brett Goldstein Knows Why Airplane! Remains A Comedy Classic Decades Later [Exclusive]
Brett Goldstein has been rightfully riding the "Ted Lasso" wave, as the series has become one of the pillars of AppleTV+. While it's not exactly his first foray in the industry, the show has certainly boosted his career, along with two back-to-back Emmy wins for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. In the midst of playing the temperamental Roy Kent, Goldstein has also been working on a number of projects, with one of them being another series for Apple with "Ted Lasso" co-creator Bill Lawrence called "Shrinking." It stars Jason Segel as a grief-stricken therapist who adopts a new form of communication with his clients by forgoing the profession's ethical niceties and telling them exactly what's on his mind.
Comedy can be a tricky ground to walk on, especially if you're doing so through a series that places equal weight on its drama. You don't want one to overshadow one aspect of the story in favor of another. While promoting the new series in an exclusive interview with /Film's Jack Giroux, Goldstein talked about how important it was to him that the emotional weight of a comedy shines through:
"I don't think there's any point in telling a story if you don't have an emotional connection to it. If you don't feel invested and moved by it, it sort of just doesn't last. It becomes meaningless. It's frivolous. We were even talking yesterday about one of the reasons 'Airplane!,' which you think of as such a silly film with 100 jokes a minute and is hilarious, why it's lasted."
On the surface, "Shrinking" and "Airplane!" may seem very different approaches to comedy, but Goldstein went on to make an excellent point.
'You care the airplane lands'
"Airplane!" is often regarded as one of the greatest comedies ever made, and for good reason. Even though I've seen it a number of times in my life, I always find a slew of background jokes I missed beforehand. But while the gag-a-minute pace is what gave the film its charm, Brett Goldstein believes that the film's success lies in something much more meaningful (via /Film):
"You care the airplane lands, you care about this romance in it, you want them to succeed. You're invested in these characters, as ridiculous as that film is. It's quite an extreme example, but it still has heart, that film. It still has emotion in it. I think without that, I don't want to watch it. I don't want to make it."
I can't imagine what "Airplane!" would be without the "don't call me Shirley" bit, or the s*** hitting the fan gag, but without its story, you don't really have much of a movie. The film mostly derived from taking everything from the melodramatic thriller "Zero Hour!," and playing it straight while incorporating the Zuckers' brand of humor. "Airplane!" operates by its own internal dream logic where anything could happen, but it still matters to see these characters through.
We've seen what happens when parodies like "Meet the Spartans" lose sight of the bigger picture in favor of telling lazy and distasteful jokes for the sake of hoping something will just get a laugh. Given that comedies require sustained patience, it helps to have some kind of narrative guiding your laughs.
"Shrinking" is currently streaming on AppleTV+, while "Airplane!" can be found on HBO Max.