Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's cameo performance in the 1980 Zucker brothers comedy Airplane! is rightfully considered one of the greatest sports cameos in movie history. But a new oral history of the film indicates that it was only blind kismet that it came about in the first place.
Speaking to The AV Club, the movie's creators Jim Abrahams and David & Jerry Zucker say that it was actually Pete Rose who they wanted to appear in the film's famous scene. However, scheduling conflicts derailed that desire.
"I’m not sure if Pete Rose actually accepted the role or not, or if we’d even gotten the green light from Paramount to use him," Abrahams said. "We may never have even sent him the script. I just know that we ended up having to film in August, so he was still in the middle of baseball season."
Jerry Zucker also offered a fantastic anecdote about their contract negotiations with Kareem:
"When we offered the role [of Murdock] to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I think we offered him $30,000, and then the agent asked for $35,000 because that’s how much this rug cost that Kareem wanted to buy. It was an oriental rug—an art piece, not one to walk on, I don’t think—so our initial reaction was, “That’s got to be the best line we’ve ever heard from an agent.” It was like, “Boy, this guy’s really creative!” But then a couple of weeks later, there’s an article in Time with a picture of Kareem standing in front of the oriental rug that he’d bought for $35,000 after we’d paid him."
Relive Abdul Jabbar's famous Airplane! scene below:
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