When I was a kid, film was something you put in a camera.
Movies were movies.
Cinema didn’t really exist in my vocabulary.
There were no connotations between these three words.
Film, movie, cinema.
And so this was a movie I grew up on.
On which I grew up.
It was many years before I took Churchill’s admonitions about grammar seriously.
Grammar grammar.
Not film grammar.
And so here we have a very fine, enjoyable film.
Probably not coming to the Criterion Collection (unless it’s April Fool’s).
The milieu is rock and roll.
This film taught me a lot.
[Back in the days when I thought “alot” was a word.]
“Where’s von Stroheim?”
“He’s alot.”
Alas…
I just didn’t know.
I didn’t know sparkling wine from Dom Perignon.
Didn’t know Cantonese from Mandarin.
And lots of other subtle shadings which I’ve since come to appreciate.
This was probably Penelope Spheeris’ shining moment.
Unless you’re a fan of punk rock (and I am).
She did a hell of a job directing this unlikely hit.
Wayne’s World grossed nine-times its budget.
Those are early-Bond numbers.
The sequel (not directed by Spheeris) barely broke even.
Oops…
Kinda like when The Strokes fired Gordon Raphael.
But I guy dress…
Mike Myers was wonderful here.
29 years old.
Looking fit and really nailing his part.
There’s something very natural about the comedy of Wayne’s World.
It’s far less stilted than even the best of the Austin Powers franchise (that being the first installment…FYI).
The immensely-talented Dana Carvey is good as Wayne’s painfully-awkward sidekick Garth Algar. The role doesn’t really make the best use of Carvey’s talents, but sometimes you gotta suck it up for a payday.
[Like the Suck-Kut, for instance.]
Wayne’s World had its own lexicon…patois…parlance. Schwing!
It’s a little racy.
Wonder how Claudia Schiffer felt to be reified thusly?
Guess she should have thought about that when she started hawking jeans.
There’s really no escaping Lara Flynn Boyle recently (thank God!).
She has the worst role of all.
But I suppose Twin Peaks wasn’t exactly the same pay grade as Seinfeld.
She wasn’t selling out, she was buying in.
Indeed, I don’t doubt Morgan Spurlock pulled the kernel of inspiration for his The Greatest Movie Ever Sold from the sequence in which Wayne gobbles Pizza Hut, Doritos, and Pepsi while Garth is pimped out in Reebok gear.
Somebody’s interminable band name list got put to good use…
Crucial Taunt?!?
I must say, that detail escaped me as a kid.
But that was before I had a brief (burn out, not fade away) career as a rock musician.
We didn’t know Queen. We didn’t know Kierkegaard. We didn’t know Hendrix.
It was an exceptional experience on many levels.
As an impressionable youth.
Rob Lowe (a very strong comedic talent) has to play the yuppie prick in this vehicle.
Chris Farley has a memorable (yet all-too-brief) cameo as a security guard.
Farley and director Spheeris would reunite a few years later for Black Sheep.
Brian Doyle-Murray gets the treatment in his interview.
[“This man has no penis.” Must-watch TV.]
Multiple endings…
Remarkable ingenuity.
Can’t say I’m familiar with such Situationist play in even the most erudite of art films.
But of course the gleeful bathos of the Scooby-Doo ending brings us back down to Earth.
Tia Carrere is really charming as the heroine.
Colleen Camp (remember her from Bruce Lee’s “almost” Game of Death?) has a crap role.
At least she helped Cassandra Wong learn English by way of the Police Academy movies.
Meat Loaf as doorman.
Ed O’Neill as murderous donut shop manager.
Donna Dixon as Garth’s dream woman (remember the babe from Spies Like Us? Yeah, that one.).
And Alice Cooper!!!
Some history of Milwaukee and socialist mayors.
You gotta love rock and roll 🙂
-PD
paulydeathwish 