The fart machine that got Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen kicked off a flight: “He was relentless”
Leslie Nielsen has one of the most unique career trajectories of anyone in Hollywood history, beginning as a prolific character actor in his youth, the Canadian quickly established himself as a leading dramatic performer.
However, as the years went on, the work dried up, and suddenly, nobody was interested in hiring him for straight roles anymore, until a little film came around called Airplane!
Once the world realised that Nielsen could not only do comedy but do it well, the middle-aged idol entered his second career act, following up Airplane! with the Naked Gun series as the hapless Frank Drebin, the silver-haired hero brought audiences to their knees in fits of laughter, with each new scene firing off killer jokes at an astonishing rate.
This portion of his life is what came to define him, and when he sadly passed away in 2010, the world remembered him as a comedic genius who delivered a deadpan one-liner like nobody else.
As well as playing some of the great comedy characters of his age, Nielsen was an intensely funny man in real life too. He loved a practical joke, often at the expensive of his co-stars or TV interviewers, and while these pranks were mostly harmless, sometimes they could go a bit too far; just ask Ted Danson.
Another grey-haired comedian who also dabbled with serious acting, Danson got to witness his magnificent madness up close when they worked together on Creepshow. Directed by George A Romero and written by Stephen King (how’s that for a duo), this horror-comedy movie was split up into several segments. Danson and Nielsen were paired up for a section called ‘Something to Tide You Over’, which also featured Richard Gere in an uncredited cameo, and since they were the main stars of the piece, they spent a lot of time together. This is where the former Cheers star witnessed one of Nielsen’s more infamous habits: carrying a fart sound effect maker around with him wherever he went.
“He was relentless!” Danson told AV Club. “Most people would do something like that, get a few laughs, and put it away. He…would not. We literally got asked to get off an aeroplane because we were in first class, and when we sat down, he was on one side of the aisle, and I was on the other side, and every third person who would walk by, he would do his fart machine. Restaurants would ask us to leave. He was relentlessly in love with his machine, with no sense of shame.”
When I say that Nielsen took the fart machine everywhere, believe me when I say that means everywhere. The little black device was never far from his person, ready to be deployed on an unsuspecting victim at a moment’s notice. He loved the gag so much that even his gravestone is etched with a fart joke, marking him out as a true funnyman to the very end.
Danson might not have appreciated getting chucked off a plane, but even he can see the funny side of Nielsen’s antics. How could you not love an old man taking great pleasure from something so simple and childish? It really is quite beautiful.
