Airplane! directors speak out against Winning Time after playing themselves in the first episode

Los Angeles Times

Airplane! writers-directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker made a cameo as themselves in Winning Time's first episode joking in response to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's performance they should've hired O.J. Simpson, whom they later worked with in The Naked Gun movies. In a letter to the Los Angeles Times, the trio write that they agreed to the cameo having never read the script and were surprised when Abdul-Jabbar, played by Solomon Hughes, told the child actor, "F*ck off, kid!" "We had never seen anything like that on the Airplane! set," Zucker, Abrams and Zucker wrote. "In fact, during the Airplane! shoot, and in the years since, we’ve found Kareem to be both professional and kind. When we saw Kareem’s recent article, we contacted Ross Harris, the actor who played the child in Airplane!, for his response. He said, 'It absolutely did not occur,' and went on to say that 'the entire experience with Kareem was positive' and that he 'had never been contacted by Winning Time. We feel compelled to set the record straight both in support of Kareem and because of the potential negative impact this might have on support for his nonprofit Skyhook Foundation, which provides weeklong retreats for inner-city school children to study science while staying in the (Angeles) National Forest."