Clockwise from top left: Peter Graves, Robert Hays (Ted Striker!), and Ross Harris, reunited

Courtesy Ross Harris

​Beloved, fantastically deadpan actor Peter Graves died Sunday of a heart attack at 83, leading cinéastes to marvel at an enormous résumé that includes the Mission: Impossible TV series and films directed by Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, and John Ford. But for me, he'll always be the pervert pilot in 1980's Airplane!, one of the funniest movies ever made, regaling an oblivious 10-year-old boy named Joey with wildly inappropriate questions: "Do you like movies about gladiators?" "You ever hang around the gymnasium?" "You ever seen a grown man naked?"

Now seemed like a good time to interview Joey, a/k/a Ross Harris, who lives in Southern California and spent the intervening 30 years both acting (stints on The Love Boat, CHiPs, TJ Hooker, and so forth) and getting into music via Dust Brothers-affiliated electro-rockers Sukia and vibrant collagists DJ Me DJ You. Plus he directed the video for Elliott Smith's "Miss Misery." Ross was happy to talk about Peter Graves and Airplane; per the photo above, they'd reunited awhile ago. I forgot to ask him if that's the same hat, but I bet not.

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