I think the implication is that Captain Oveur is a homosexual pedophile, testing the waters – it says nothing about Joey, who seems like an average boy.
Yea I know, but I hear it quoted a lot but no one can ever really articulate what they mean by it, or what it meant in the original movie. I’m leaning toward the Captain is a pedo myself:)
How would you not get that Captain Oveur is a homosexual pedophile and he’s feeling the kid out? It was probably a bit funnier before the whole Joe Patterno thing.
There was a whole progression of questions. Have you ever seen a grown man naked. . . Have you ever been in a Turkish prison. . . Do you like gladiator movies? It’s clear he was testing the kid.
Think of Frank N. Furter in Rocky Horror: “We could take in an old Steve Reeves movie!” It’s the same reference, to the campy sword and sandal epics, usually featuring a muscleman like Reeves, which proliferated in the 1960’s. You can see from the poster in the wiki article why this might appeal to gays.
The trashy movies from that era are mostly forgotten, and Gladiator has one might say restored the genre to respectability. I can see why the line in Airplane might seem odd to young people.
I remember listening to the DVD commentary from the directors, where they talked about initially having the line of dialogue “Joey, have you ever been in a cockpit before?” followed by “Joey, have you ever sucked a grown man’s cock?”