There are a lot of important things going on in the world right now. WikiLeaks reared its ugly head back into the national spotlight with the release of diplomatic cables and a lot of juicy gossip.
North Korea is putting on the political and military equivalent of a toddler’s temper tantrum, the Senate just passed food safety regulations, the Pentagon’s review of “don’t ask, don’t tell” was released Tuesday and there’s a climate summit going on in Cancún.
There are nuclear talks with Iran, Comcast is fighting over Netflix usage, there’s a problem with the Prius, home prices are slowly rising, CBS’ “The Early Show” is being restructured and a weekend of NFL and college football to talk about is all in the air as we embrace the beginning of December.
But there’s one piece of news that hit me straight in the chest when I heard it this week, one piece that affected me more than all the other stories pulsing the newswire.
Leslie Nielsen had died in his sleep of complications from pneumonia Sunday.
For some, this might have been just a bummer. For others, it was just another nameless celebrity they never knew. For me, one of my comedic heroes had moved out of town — for good.
Recently, Nielsen’s been featured in films like “Scary Movie 3” and “Scary Movie 4” in addition to “Spy Hard,” “Mr. Magoo” and “Superhero Movie.” If one wasn’t to know Nielsen, he/she would sound like a terrible judge of movie merit. Nielsen was so much more than that.
My first exposure to Nielsen was the 1980 film “Airplane!”which I watch regularly and plan to watch again in the next few days as a memorial to Leslie’s life. Nielsen played Dr. Rumack, who had a knack for witty puns based on the paranoia of interim pilot Ted Striker. “Airplane!” was the movie that defined my middle school film watching; it was my after- school special. It was the thing I’d come home to watch and something that always guaranteed me to be on the floor laughing even if it was the 11th or 12th time I’ve watched it. My parents didn’t care there’s a brief scene of nudity because they knew how much the movie meant to me. I’d try to convert my friends too, so someone would get my references when I walked around school screaming Dr. Rumack’s lines. “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley!”
I don’t know what it was about “Airplane!” or what it was about Leslie Nielsen that drew me to this comedy over the Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler movies at the time, but I felt it was a bit more intellectual than the fart jokes in the modern comedies at the time.
Leslie started out as a serious actor, but that role in “Airplane!” changed him. He was featured in the TV series “Police Squad,” and then moved on to the Police Squad films that were aptly titled “The Naked Gun.” These films, the first two made by the same directorial team as “Airplane!” took an absurd twist on detective movies and enhanced Nielsen’s stock even further.
Nielsen’s name is now synonymous with spoof films, and he’s one star Hollywood will truly miss.
Sean Quinn is a first-year political science student. His column appears every Wednesday.
