Injustice can be….pretty unjust.
.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one:
The flight-crew and passengers of a commercial airliner are stricken with food poisoning, and the only hope of a safe landing lies in the hands of a former fighter pilot who hasn’t flown in ten years, after a traumatic war-time experience…
.
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#1 by Mr. Rational on July 25, 2010 - 10:25 am
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I always love reading your stuff, Liz. You make such a good effort to really trace through the history of the people, the story, the tropes…it’s great fun. I played a game with the pictures you selected, seeing if I could guess which caption you would use. (Only got it right twice, but that was just part of the fun!)
In late-50’s Canada, I think the word “football” would most likely have referenced the Canadian gridiron game. What would eventually become the Canadian Football League had already been around in one form or another for over sixty years. At the time this movie was set, it existed as the Canadian Football Council, a professional nationwide alliance between two smaller leagues which played a game that was already strikingly similar American football. (It would rebrand itself as the CFL in 1958.)
The word “soccer,” meanwhile, had already been in use in Canada for over thirty years — not least because the National Soccer League (now the Canadian Soccer League) began play in 1926 with an ever-shifting array of teams spread across the nation, meaning the word would have gained wide recognition. So it’s a safe bet that if the passengers said “football,” they meant the gridiron and not the association variety, even by 1957.
#2 by The Beeerman on July 25, 2010 - 2:42 pm
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God I love this movie. Hilarious as always.
#3 by The Beeerman on July 25, 2010 - 2:43 pm
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…And don’t call me Shirley.
#4 by Ed on July 25, 2010 - 3:11 pm
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Great stuff, Liz.
#5 by Christian Brimo on July 25, 2010 - 10:17 pm
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So Australia doesn’t have airplanes… what should i call the big flying things that are always going above my apartment (‘flat’)?
#6 by lyzard on July 26, 2010 - 2:29 am
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The last time I checked, they were called “aeroplanes”.
Be cognisant that the infelicitous solicitation of my espousal of the infantilisation of the language may lead to consequences incommensurate with the tenets of codified etiquette.
#7 by Baron Scarpia on July 26, 2010 - 11:42 am
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We British also have aeroplanes. But, in a gesture of unprecedented comradeship with our transatlantic cousins, we called it Airplane! as well.
(The Australians didn’t? I thought we were meant to be the uptight ones…)
#8 by Rel on July 26, 2010 - 2:50 pm
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The quality of Lyz’s english is clearly beyond doubt. Look at that title – FOUR asterisks. The Queen would surely approve.
#9 by lyzard on July 26, 2010 - 4:22 pm
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To be honest, Baron, we always figured here that the change in title was less about correct usage and more about slipping in a drug reference.
You mean, four rather than three, Rel? **** and *** don’t mean the same thing. It’s an entirely different crudity – altogether!
Thank you for the football information, Mr R. Having just lived through the World Cup, with all our commentators constantly starting to say “soccer” and then feeling compelled to correct themselves, I didn’t feel I could assume anything; particularly with Arthur Hailey being English. Oddly, after the event I came across a discussion of these films that said the football fans were going to the Grey Cup. That detail isn’t into either Zero Hour or the novelisation, so I wonder if it was in the original Flight Into Danger and then got left out.
#10 by Mr. Rational on July 26, 2010 - 7:13 pm
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Could be. I really wish we could scare up a copy and find out. That’d be kind of neat to know.
You’re welcome for the info, by the way, Glad to know that all the time I spent engrossed in following competitive sports around the globe made me useful for something. 🙂
#11 by Read MacGuirtose on July 26, 2010 - 9:25 pm
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Eh, I probably would have when I was a kid. I’ve never been fond of lamb chops, but I’ve always liked fish. Then again, I suppose it’s debatable whether I was ever really a “normal” kid.
#12 by lyzard on July 26, 2010 - 9:33 pm
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The signifier is there for a reason. 🙂
If it makes you feel any better, when *I* was a kid I ate all my vegetables without protest and demanded more.
Probably would have picked lamb chops, tho’…
#13 by lyzard on July 27, 2010 - 2:34 am
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…aaaaand I’ve just had a lovely e-mail from a gentleman in Argentina informing me that they call them aeroplanos or aviones, according to the size and number of occupants, and that Airplane!/Flying High! was released there as ¿Y Donde está el Piloto? (And Where Is The Pilot?). 🙂
[Edited to add: and three e-mails about Canadian football!]
#14 by JigerX on July 28, 2010 - 11:55 am
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Oh! Oh! An aero-plane! Oooh! Aren’t we grand? Pardon me, muvvah, no more buttered scones for me, I’m off to play the grand piano! And then fly an aeroplane!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1oMhMwUbgc
#15 by lyzard on July 28, 2010 - 4:30 pm
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The clip isn’t need, I assure you: “I’m off to play the grahnd piaahhno” has been a line in my household for years and years. 🙂
#16 by Jen S on July 28, 2010 - 3:36 pm
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Lyz, I can finally ask a question that’s been bugging for years–what kind of food poisoning would take out so many so fast and so furiously? I assume it would be a form of e. coli, but I’m just guessing. Anything in extistance in the real world that would be so, well… dramatic?
#17 by lyzard on July 28, 2010 - 4:38 pm
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It’s got to be botulism. You can get symptoms from that as early as two hours after ingestion, although I doubt they start as severely as depicted. One of the early signs is pupil dilation, which is why Dr Baird checks the eyes. Botulism poisoning can lead to respiratory failure due to paralysis if it isn’t counteracted quickly, which is part of the need for urgent treatment, along with the severe dehydration from the vomiting.
So basically, it’s all correct but a bit exaggerated.
(P.S. Remember all this the next time you go for Botox, people!)
#18 by supersonic on July 28, 2010 - 8:03 pm
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Type your comment here
Shouldn’t that be “arsterisks”?
#19 by lyzard on July 30, 2010 - 6:11 pm
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In that vein, I heartily recommend Private Lives (1931) and The Divorce Of Lady X (1937), both of which call someone “an ass”, but use the other pronunciation. It’s…rather startling.
#20 by Mark Hawley on July 29, 2010 - 10:33 pm
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This review made me curious about the original production of “Flight into Danger” so I did a search on youtube and found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRjEuOuTdUE&feature=PlayList&p=17196A70DD369A7C&playnext=1&index=7
It’s not much, but shows that a copy, or at least excerpts, of the James Doohan-starring version exist somewhere in the CBC archives, or at least did in 2002.
#21 by lyzard on July 30, 2010 - 6:08 pm
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Oooh…tantalising, and rather painful. That is obviously from a program about what it was like to do live television, not about Jimmy Doohan or Flight Into Danger. It makes me worry that they took the bits they wanted and chucked the rest; or that that’s all there was to start with. Really, you’d think if that did still exist complete, even if they felt it wasn’t of good enough quality to release on its own, that it would have shown up by now as an extra on something.
STILL – that’s as close as I’ve managed to get – so thank you very much for that, Mark.
I do feel compelled to point out that during the landing, James Doohan clearly says aeroplane – vindication! 🙂
#22 by MatthewF on July 31, 2010 - 3:00 am
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If it’s an air-plane, is it a mo-car?