Steve McCroskey and the 10x Lie
In Airplane! (1980), Lloyd Bridges plays Steve McCroskey, an air-traffic controller running a disaster on the ground while a single pilot with food poisoning tries not to kill everyone on the plane above. McCroskey is on two phones at once. He’s barking at his wife. He’s pivoting to a subordinate mid-sentence. He’s drinking coffee, then cigarettes, then amphetamines, then glue, in that order. Every fifteen minutes or so, the camera cuts back to him and he delivers the same line with a slightly different noun: ...