Robert Hays! Julie Hagerty! And in the middle, Leon is getting laaaarger!
Dateline: Friday, May 15, 2026 — Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife Anne and I do stuff for each other’s birthdays! Usually it’s a road trip somewhere outside our hometown of Indianapolis. This year for my birthday, we attended something completely different: the very same weekend, Indy would be the first stop on a repertory roadshow tour for Airplane!, that 1980 parody classic from the young directing team of Jerry and David Zucker and Jim Abrahams. I trust it needs no introduction regarding the incessant goofiness and wall-to-wall gags that cemented its legacy as a critical comedic ancestor to The Simpsons and all the works it influenced in turn, to say nothing of its mythic status as a touchstone to today’s retro Dad-Joke culture.
I rarely see old films in theaters — as I recall, the only other time I’ve done so in this blog’s 14-year existence was the 4K re-release of Die Hard — but this event sweetened the pot: following the screening would be a Q&A with stars Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty, who so wondrously brought to life the roles of disgraced war pilot Ted Striker and sweet-natured stewardess Elaine Dickinson. We said to each other, “Surely they can’t be serious.”
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 