Page 7 - Pop History: Wayne's World

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

Party time, excellent! We explore the making of the SNL sketch turned cult classic movie, "Wayne's World". Even more Page 7? Schwing! Support us on Patreon and get weekly bonus episodes. Patreon.com/Page7Podcast Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello Stacy. Uh-oh, well, Natalie is going to desperately try to not just sit and quote the movie the entire time, because this is welcome. Natalie, when I think of Wayne's World, I think of you completely. Thank you. You are very welcome. So is this your favorite movie of all time? I mean, it's definitely going to be in the top ten contender. Absolutely.

I get it. What's your jams? Why? I think because I was obsessed with us and L. a kid. Okay. I also was just, I don't know, naturally led towards metal and punk. I think, I don't know why, maybe because of my father. Oh, oh, society. Yep. And I don't know. We had, I distinctly remember my mom purchasing the Wayne's World VHS from McDonald's because it was a promo deal. Hell yeah. And we would just watch it over and over and over again until I learned the

whole movie. And growing up, then realizing that this woman who, directed it, Penelope Sphiris, was somebody who I was obsessed with in other ways. And she made a, she basically, um, is the representative of like punk music in the, um, film industry because she made a movie called Suburbia. And then she did the, the, the documentary series decline of a Western civilization. And so, also just generally bad fucking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, we'll talk about her. But yeah, so I just kept coming back to this movie over and over again. And I wanted to be Tia Carrera. And I still want to. wear all of her outfits right now.

Her outfits are outstanding. Yeah. And apparently a lot of the outfits were just kind of cobbled together from different like thrift store finds and stuff like that. Even that red dress at the end? That, well, we will talk about that red dress later. Well, this is a story of a film that was cobbled together by a largely indie filmmaker. And I think that is why it has so much charm.

Also, this is before the heyday of S&L movies. And there was no real blueprint for how to make a movie. like this, S&L didn't have a film since the Blues Brothers. Yeah, so this is only the second S&L movie at this point in time. And I think still one of the highest grossing SNL movies. It is the highest. Yeah, they've never been able to recapture what magic was contained in this film. And I get it.

You watch that movie. It's so rewatchable. And it's really a movie just filled with moments and quotes. I think that's why people are drawn to it so much. And I think that they realize that and tried to rewatchable. recapture that in so many comedy films after that point where it's like that's what we need. We need these like characters people can get tied to, these moments that everybody remembers in quotes. And for me personally, it was also tied to Paramount's Carowans.

And I at one point was going to Paramount's Carowans. We got a season pass. Wait, what is that? That is the theme part. That's like my six flags. And it was a Paramount. It was a Paramount theme park. And it had fucking.

The ride. That's where the ride is. Wait a second. It had Wayne's World. It had Stan McKedas donuts. That was where we'd go eat lunch. It had a rock shop that had a no stairway sign on it. And you would go in there and that's where I bought a lighter with a weed leaf on it because I was that cool.

What are you saying to me? And it also had the hurler. And that was the ride. You are making this up. I know, right? It was unbelievable. It had like the rotating Stan McKita on top of the. And there was really more where I would go get burgers and cheese fries.

That's where we'd always eat lunch. And the hurler was amazing. Natalie, you would love this. And one of the reasons why I love the hurler so much, the first time I got to ride a ride where even being in line was fun because they had TV monitors the whole way down the line and they would just show you all the best clips from Wayne's World.

So like, you just... I think that Natalie has died. She's not moving. I think that she has died. Where's... She sits... We're talking about Paramount's character. Is this still open?

I don't know if Wayne's World still exists in it. I also remember when you walk into it on the street and a huge paint was away and then no way. Like as you walked over that to walk into it. I went there like, dude, there was a summer. We had a season past and we had somebody's mom would just take us almost every single day. I like lived at Wayne's Worlds for like an entire summer

and I loved it. And it just added so much to the film for. me because again, much like you guys loved that movie, big fan from the beginning. And I think a lot of it now I'm realizing, and I'll stop gushing here in a second, as they weren't doing as much of that fourth wall breaking, uh, self-referential referring to like commercials and stuff. That whole moment with the, with the sponsorship stuff. All of that stuff was really novel at the time, I think. And something that you didn't see a lot in comedy movies that just really set it apart from Everything else.

Plus just the whole hair metal culture was just so fun to joke around about it. You cannot get away from this yet. I know for somebody who loves theme parks, like, obsessed with Harry Potter World. I am obsessed with theme parks, and this is one of my favorite movies, and I have never heard about this. You're lying to me. Well, it's still, we're looking it up right now, and it does exist. Is it still there?

I don't know. There's no way they still have Wayne's World land. I feel like they've replaced it by this point. I have not been. But the hurler, by the way, was a wooden roller coaster. Fuck off. Yes, it was very much like the cyclone, but like times eight. And was so much fun to ride.

One of my favorite rides in the park. Well, the hurler still exists. The hurler is still at the park. That's awesome. So I think that we at least need to go to carowans. Let's make it a big trip together. But unfortunately this episode is not about this theme park. But maybe we could do one on the theme park someday.

How dare we were just there for your wedding holding? You didn't tell me that this park was there with the Wayne's World? I know, I should have said something. Well, again, I don't think. Have another wedding hold in me because we want to go to Wayne's World. It was, it really was so much fun. And yeah, so just weirdly attached the whole movie experience with this park. Of course you did.

Yeah, I mean, that makes complete sense. I wish that I was going to Wayne's world. I mean, I think as a kid, I only knew anything I knew about Batman. It was because of the Batman ride. The reality. Ersum Ser. The reality that I thought I knew has just been shattered for me. Well, I will say the reality of what I knew about Mike Myers has been shattered.

A little bit. Yeah. I'm not shocked, though. No, I've heard tale. It makes sense, but as someone that I've never really looked into Mike Myers before, I didn't really know he was this much of a stick up the ass diva to the point that, you know, You know what it is too? And I know that so many,

the hundreds of thousands of people feel this way, I feel like Dana Carvey is someone that I want to protect. He is someone that is such a huge inspiration to me. I love. Chop and broccoli. Chop and broccoli. I feel like Henry or I still says chop and broccoli at least once a month. Almost every time I drop broccoli,

I think about that. Dana Carvey to me is such a huge comedic inspiration. We are definitely going to do an episode on him at some point. Hell yeah. And to learn of the strife that he was going through while making, not only this movie, but just with working with Mike Myers in general and then having to be tethered to him because of Wayne's World. When he really was, it was just a sketch that he was asked to do. Like the movie was being played out in real life.

Whoa. Except for the fact that Dana Carvey doesn't worship Mike Myers in real life, which is the only note he got about the character Garth in the beginning. All he needed to know was that he worshipped Mike Myers, and that's it. Well, Wayne, he worshipped Wayne. Wayne, he worshipped Wayne. And I mean, it fits the character. I love Garth, Algar, so much.

I definitely, I, well, I'm not going to go down that road. But I think that. Whoa. You want to kiss on him? Oh, no, I definitely want to kiss on. I was thinking of a Halloween where I remember having an evening with someone that I didn't know because they were dressed as Garth. Oh, right? We don't even get in that.

It doesn't even. It was just a, it was a romance. It was a shortened romance. What were you dressed? It was not like a bad romance. Yes, absolutely. I was dressed as Cher from, um, witches of Eastwick.

Oh, sounds very saucy. Yes. What a love affair. I'd watch that porn. What a love affair. If that is a word to describe it. I, I now,

I can appreciate Wayne's world so much more than I did as a kid because honestly, I was way more, I watched Airheads a lot more to get my heavy... I get that. I've seen airheads a hundred thousand times. And I think it's maybe just because it was on more and also because, Brendan Fesha,

and Steve Bishamie, I'll take. Sure, Steve Bishammy, sexy. But I really do, now as an adult, I have such an appreciation for Wayne's World and especially for Tia Carrera. Good Lord. She still looks fucking great, by the way. She looks amazing.

And just to see how green they all were, and remembering how sketch comedy on television is very different than being in a feature film. Oh, yeah. And you can tell with them, because also, can you imagine how difficult it is? All right, you make a couple jokes. It's a five-minute sketch.

But to turn it into a 90-minute movie, it was something like you said, Holden, it was something that they were still trying to figure out what is the formula of this? How do we make it so that it is entertaining the entire time? I think definitely you keep it to at least an hour and a half or under. Oh, God.

If you do it over that, just quit. You can't make a movie about a sketch longer than an hour and 25 minutes. And I think that there are a good amount of unfortunate sketches turned into movies that are way too long. Night of the Rocksbury should have been 15 minutes. What? I've heard that the final 20 minutes of Night of the Roxbury is some of the funniest shit ever, but you have to slog through the entire first whole part of the movie to get there. But I did have the soundtrack.

and I did have the Waynes World soundtrack as well because the Wayne's World soundtrack is amazing. Great. And so was the Night of the Roxbury soundtrack if you're into that. I don't remember what's... Well, I know that song. No, no, we know. Zero interest, Jackie. What's other songs in it? Uh-oh. Yeah, there's some LaBouche on there. Oh, the boosh. So shall we get into it the story of Wayne's World? We're not worthy. We're not worthy. We're not worthy. We're scum. And I think I would say it starts off with Mike Myers. And we'll do a brief rundown. The man himself. There's so many things to cover here.

And I want to spend really extra more time on Penelope's Ferris. But let's start with Mike Myers and then S&L and all that good stuff before we bring in our director. Mike Myers started out acting in commercials at just two years old. And when he was 10, he got to be in a commercial for a Canadian electric company with Gilda Radner as his mother. Flashback to another episode. She died. Can't. Don't!

There's no crying this week. It's supposed to be a fun one. Different episodes, sadder episode. Mike Weyer said, I've wanted to be on S&L since I was 11, and I believe that to be true for sure. His TV debut would be at just 12 years old on a show called King of Kensington. Now, I think it really makes a lot of sense that as we unfold how he actually. on stage that Mike Myers had a lot of problems with himself and still does and is very open about his low self-esteem and his aversion to being touched or hugged and being drawn

toward characters who are ugly or awkward. He says even in an interview in 1999 he was looking at himself on a screen and he says, I see a guy with a really thick Canadian accent and acne scars. That's about it. And Andrew Adamson, who directed Myers in the first two Shrek film, says a lot of comedy comes from self-depreciation, from looking inside and representing things in a way that we haven't seen them. That can be a painful process, which is part of where I think Mike Myers

in being upset not only at himself to push and be better, also, unfortunately, he takes out on the people around him. Yeah. Fair. I believe it. Fair.

All right. Deemed fair. But it's so crazy for someone with such a low self-esteem to have such brassy confidence in these other ways because like I wouldn't be able to do this. Literally the day after he graduated high school, he auditions for the Second City,

Canadian touring company and gets it. And I think that's completely crazy to me in terms of like my own personal trajectory. He then moves to the UK. He founds an improv group called the Comedy Store Players and London's Comedy Store. And in the mid-80s, however, he ends up going back to Toronto

to join Second City's main stage show cast and did that for a little bit. moves to Chicago. So he's literally just doing the thing one does in Canada to just move slide all the way into S&L home base. It's called the Canadian slip and slide. Yep, slip slide right into Saturday Night Live. But I think that there's also in bolstering this confidence and the going back and forth. Now in this interim time, see, this is actually where he started doing the character of Wayne Campbell. Yes. So when he went back to Toronto, he was actually working on a Canadian sketch all-night music video show called The City Limits. So the series originally featured a cross-genre mix of interviews, music news, comedy sketches, and music videos,

but it only showed from midnight to 6 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. It was written and hosted by Christopher Ward, who would put a lot of effort into making 12 hours of content every week. And so he was friends with Mike Myers and a VJ on Canada's MTV. called Much Music. So this is the beginning of Canada's MTV. Such a Canadian name. Much music. Yeah, much music.

He was doing this character that he would come on that he pretended to be Christopher Ward's cousin. He said the premise was that Wayne was Christopher's annoying cousin from the not so prestigious suburb of Toronto called Scarborough. According to Myers, Scarborough is the New Jersey of Toronto. And in the depths of winter,

it can get so bleak that locals call it Scarberia. He says, I wore a cheap, long-haired woman's wig underneath a baseball cap covering my short, punky haircut. Wayne would often interrupt the show unannounced. Rumor had it that because of Wayne's quote-unquote unannounced appearances on the show, City TV received viewer complaints for letting Scarborough Ruffians into the studio.

He says, I still cherish that as my greatest review. There was never a script for Wayne's appearances. Christopher just believed in me, gave me the ball, and let me run. So this is the first inference of what Wayne Campbell would be. He says it never really changed from the first time I did it. That's kind of how everybody in my neighborhood dressed. Originally, it was a cat hat because at the time in the mid-70s,

cat hats were super popular, which you remember. You know the cat hat where it's like the, uh, the ship, what is that, what are they, farm? Farm equipment. What? Farm equipment, cat hats. Like the, uh, the, uh, the cat hats like the cat company. Like a hard hat, like a hard hat. Like a, uh, what are they farm.

Art hat? No, the cat company. Oh, okay, yeah. But they do the big machines that go, wow, wrong, wrong, right. I look up a picture of cat hats and it's just a bunch of cats wearing cats. Of course. I got it.

I'm going to post that on Instagram. It's cats were cats. So Mike Myers ends up modeling this character after himself and his friends in high school. I love this quote. He said, there were 12 wanes in my class. Wayne is everybody, including myself, who I used to hang out with. I was always a student who liked to hang out with guys who partied and get my homework done. People just thought I was an idiot who liked to party.

People always underestimate Wayne's intellect. And so, yeah, and even the Bohemian Rhapsody moment in the movie is modeled after him in the car singing and arguing over who would do what part during the song even back in the day. Well, that part works because of Penelope's Ferris. And we will absolutely get to that. Oh, a thousand percent. Mike Myers was bad about it. We'll get to that. So it's cool, though, because he was creating this character for so long

that it also, not to defend Mike Myers at this point in time, that it has to be difficult to bring in a partner. This was a solo character that he did. He obviously didn't even really think that he needed a partner. You mean as in Garth? Correct. Until SNL comes along. So he gets cast as a feature player on SNL in 1989.

And while there, he wants to reformat the sketch structure for Wayne and have him hosting a public access cable show, which is something he discovered upon arriving in America, that that sort of thing existed. So that's when he taps Dana Carvey. Now, which you have to realize at the time, which we, I don't think, mentioned yet, Dana Carvey is a huge hit on SNL.

Mike Myers, not yet at all. No, because he just starts SNL and Dana Carvey already had the church lady, he's already going to kill it. I always forget that. I always think of them coming at the same time. Which is why Mike Myers was so put off by having him as his partner because he didn't

want to be seen as not as good as Dana Carvey. But it's also why it is kind of smart that Lorne Michaels forces them to work together. Well, yeah. He is, oh God, I'm going to yell about him more in this episode. But Lord Michael's is, he's a brilliant

evil. This is, And it makes sense of why Dana Carvey originally made a Dr. Evil. That sounds exactly like out of Lorne Michaels. Well, but also Dana Carvey was doing a Lauren Michael's impression that it's largely believed that Mike Myers stole from Dana Carvey. Yeah, that's why it makes sense. Like, because Lord Michaels is a Dr. Evil over all of this. And you'll see this again and again.

And everything that he has, he has to have his fingers in all these different pies. And he has to make sure that he controls the temperatures at the point. pies come out. And the temperatures of the pies will still be. You don't want anybody's fingers in a pie. Get out of my pie, Lauren Michaels. And Mike Myers even at one point had a quote about being like, I don't care anymore. You can quote me if you want. He always wanted people on eggshells. He always wanted people feeling like combative and competitive against each other and all that stuff. Hold on it, Neely. Loves his friend Michael Chea. Loves Saturday Night Live. Greatly would still like to write for it. I will definitely be submitting a packet this year. We'll see what happens. Um,

Shout out. Wow. We will see what happens. But also, so Christopher Ward, who originally was working on this character with Mike Myers, was actually originally nervous that the Wayne character wouldn't translate to American audiences. He says, I remember I thought, is Wayne going to play? Isn't this a suburban Toronto character? And when I saw it on S&L, I realized, no, this character is absolutely universal.

There's a guy just like this outside McKipsey, outside Bakersfield. There's a kid that talks like that and probably looks like that. And I think it's actually, I think it's wonderful because I don't even ever really think about something not translating from Canada to American television culture. And it makes sense that he would think that like, oh, we don't know anything about like farm life guys that are just bored as fuck that are playing hockey in the middle of the street.

I think that was everybody I was friends with from 1997 until now. I always wanted them to kiss me and they never had any desire. You don't want them to kiss you. Eventually they're just going to knock you up and then. I know. But then we'll have a baby that they can't pay for. So going back to Dana Carvey, yeah, the one note that Mike Myers gave to Dana Carvey for the character was Garth loves Wayne. But it was really Dana Carvey that brought in that whole part about him being a shy savant and that is actually very skilled at drumming.

And even Dana Carvey says literally all Mike told me about the part of Garth when I took it is that he worships Wayne. That's my main thing. is to be the guy who worships him. So he took on the role of Garth as a favor originally because Mike Myers came to him after Lorne Michael's like, you really should get Dana Carvey to be a part of this because he tinker, tinker, tinker tapes. And then so Mike Myers went to Dana Carvey,

asked me to be Garth. And Garth was fine with it because essentially he's just supposed to, and if you watch the SNL version of Wayne and Garth, he is just kind of his hype man that laughs at what he says and kind of supports and kind of like holds. up the boards. Yeah. It was more really for the film, but a lot of that character came from

Dana Carvey's older brother, Brad, who was an engineer that developed hardware for the at the time incredibly popular editing program video toaster and could, quote, fix the dryer with a butter knife, as Dana Carvey put it, and when everyone around him was astounded by these things, he'd just give out

a tight lip dinks. The tight mouth feature ended up being extremely painful for Dana Carvey during the filming because he didn't realize during a five-minute sketch, it's fine, but shooting a movie was going to be way, way worse. But I will say... He ended up with TMJ after filming the movie

because he had to hold his mouth so tight. Worth it. I will say, too, though, that, like, that is one of my favorite moments in the first movie is when he does the drum solo and the guy comes up and he was like, that was amazing. He's like, thanks.

I'd like to play. And also, Dana Carvey actually did that drum solo. Oh, yeah. That he is a known musician. Yeah, he does remember, it's the piano. Chopper broccoli, piano. And I think that it was kind of, but even in looking at it, you could see where people would think that he didn't do that drum solo.

It looks like they're trying to hide his hands. But no, he actually does it. Good for him. Go for him. And a lot of the nerdiness, too, was based on himself. He said, I'm pretty paranoid. I didn't go to the high school dance or have a girlfriend. So I hear you, buddy.

I didn't kiss one. I didn't give my lips on a woman to love him. was 19. I do. And I was reading this interview with him. And he was just talking about how he would have to like psych himself up. Sike himself up. He's going to ask a girl out.

He's going to ask a girl out. And then you walk up to her and just be like, hey. And then walk away. And then he's like, I'd go home. And I'd try to be going to sleep at night and be like, stupid, stupid. Tomorrow. Tomorrow we're going to go. We're going to ask her out tomorrow.

And that that was so much of his high school experience. I love it. So cute. So the first sketch. they did debuts on February 18th, 1989, and was the final sketch to air that night. I actually love to tell the story in sketch writing classes because Murder Fist, we always considered ourselves a group

that only did 10 to 1 sketches. What I mean by 10 to 1 sketch is literally 10 minutes until 1 a.m. They would put on the final sketch of the night on SNL. And it's always, and this is still true. It's always usually like a really weird one-off, just kind of strange sketch that just barely made it on to the show. In its own world. Yeah.

And I love those sketches. I would always try to stay up to the very end because I knew that that sketch would come. And it always was my favorite sketch of the night. And I think it had a great influence on what I would do with sketch comedy later on in my life. But I think also people get confused. They think it's 10 to 1, like 10 to 1 odds, which does make sense. But it's actually just the fact that every. 10 to 1 a.m.

That the 10 minutes to 1 a.m. sketch is always just going to be this oddity, which I super, super loved. And Wayne's World, one of those sketches, the rare 10 to 1 sketch that ended up being this massive franchise. And it just did so well for the audience. And it just got such a big reaction that the whole thing turned into a reoccurring character sketch. And of course, recurring character sketch, you've got so many on SNL. I'm blanking on all of them right now. But there's just what is my least favorite one was the Chris Catan one.

Are you talking about a corky Romano? No. Sorry, Corka Romano keeps coming up on my list. No, the superstar. No, the dancer one, right? Yeah. Oh, you're talking about a specific one. Yeah, the Chris Cittance.

Mango. Mango. Is he named Mango? I was thinking tango. Yeah, God, I hated Mango. So much. See, that was my lost years of S&L where I kind of just fell off because I was finding me. I was finding me for the first time.

I was finding Will Farrell and I loved him. So I stopped watching. Me, too. Because he was so good on it. Molly Shannon. But either way, I was never a big fan of recurring characters sketches. That's why I fucking hated Mad TV because they just repurposed the same character in the same sketch every single week. It made me insane.

But this was actually a really good one. I loved all the Wayne's World sketches. Like, the rare... I think the talk show sketches work better because they always bring in a new character. So there's always like a new fun dynamic to it. And it's not just them in a different environment. It's at the environment stays the same. And then characters within it changes.

And I think that's what it is. it's creating the world within a sketch that the characters come into the world rather than the characters going into another world. And reformatting segments on the sketch, like the lists that they would do and the different, the dream sequences, like they really played with the form. And I think that's how you keep a reoccurring character sketch alive and well

and not just eye-roly, at least for a young Holden. Every time the sketch came on, and that's why I hated Mango because it was just literally the same through line beat for beat every single week just with a new a different awkward male celebrity it was just like not it just no yeah it's so boring to me yes but i will say the goths i did love how were you feeling today for lord i had to work a double shifted sinabond today that was sort of like a precursor for portlandia yeah such a fucking wonderful show uh data carvey said i remember i always thought aren't we just doing Bill and Ted. I thought we'd be nailed as doing a Bill and Ted ripoff. But I think Mike's a

clever writer and he put his own stamp on excellent and way, no way. Bill and Ted did proceed us, but I guess it didn't matter. Nah, they're different. I didn't even think about that connection. Nah, I didn't either. They're just, because they are so different. Yeah, for sure. And a big part of their success, of course, we just noted this, but I'll say it again, was creating those incredibly quotable taglines. Party on Wayne, Schwing, we're not worthy. There's a million ways to quote a Wayne's World sketch and the movie.

Yeah, monkeys fly on my butt. Which it was funny. I was reading through how difficult it was for them to translate this movie into other languages because of their own language that they essentially put into it. And so I think, I forget if it was

some country that was trying to say when monkeys fly up my butt and it changed it to, yes, when the judgment day inevitably comes. It's like, whoa. That's not fun at all. How would you translate the asphincter says what? Asphincter says what?

How would you translate that? Also, Brian Dorrell Murray, in this movie and Scrooge combined is my father. And I was struggling. So good. So they, I know, I actually like feel bad for that character in Wade's role. He's just trying his best. I think that was me grown up. Now I feel sad for him.

He's trying to be hip. So it ended up doing the sketch 21 times together, most recently for the 40th anniversary special in 2015, and had special guests, which really put him on the map with Aerosmith, Madonna, Heather Locklear, all of this, all of this sort of stuff. And that is what leads Mike Myers and husband and wife team, Bonnie and Terry Turner, to write a script. So Mike Myers says one of the biggest influences on the film was Peewee's big adventure, which makes a lot of sense. Check out our Peewey Herman episode.

He says, where you had a fully grown man playing a teenager in the 80s, but there was a strange 50s overlay. It was a heightened reality. We were trying to go for a heightened reality version of the suburban heavy metal experience, because this is a more cartoonish look at what these characters and what metal heads. So, to me, it has a theatrical, like, the lighting is very theatrical, but the characters are super grounded. And, like, I think with Penelope's Fier's coming in, the metal scene felt legitimate, felt real.

It felt very much like million bars and parties that I had been to. Right. And this is also the beginning of a lot of a lot more strife than they had even experienced while doing the SNL skits as well. And turning it into a movie was where Dana Carvey really started to have a lot of problems with, Mike Myers. So Mike Myers felt threatened by Dana Carvey. We knew this before he even started working with him as Garth. And apparently, Mike didn't want Dana Carvey in the movie at all because he felt insecure that someone who had his own creative ideas would get in the way. Now, Dana Carvey does say that this notion is ridiculous. And Lorne Michaels, who produced the film, says it's overstated,

but adds, this isn't to say that they're not both comedians and that occasionally, there's not some disagreement over who should be speaking what, which is just a bullshitter's way of saying, of course, they're both great and they both want to be the funniest part of this script. But this will lead Dana Carvey to quitting while writing the script. And he was never going to do Garth in the movie and never do Garth again. Wow.

And he actually quit and he came in with a lot of things that Mike Myers needed to do to hold up his end of the bargain so that he could be a part of it because he was trying desperately to get parts of Garth into the movie because essentially when Mike Myers wrote it with the husband and wife

writing team Bonnie and Terry Turner they had written Garth almost completely out so Dana Carvey came in with a bunch of ideas that's stupid like Bonnie and Terry Turner are like prolific they're amazing writers why would they write out the character

that brings them all heart to the movie. I will say, if you do remember, though, Garth wasn't really that as much in the sketches. Right. Yeah, but I think, I mean, maybe just because I can see it in retrospect, but I think Mike Myers on his own carrying that movie, it wouldn't have been charming at all. No, and even Dana Garvey says, obviously in the show, it was fine. And then once we got into feature film territory, defining the roles was a little harder. That's as delicately as I can put it. When it was just a sketch, I would just be reactive and laugh really hard and support him. Right.

And so in the movie, he says, you learn things about Garth. That he's actually pretty technically brilliant and can make things and such. He says, I was like Garth in high school, which is why he wanted to bring more of these aspects of him as a person into the character, and which is why they didn't believe him when he said he was going to walk. And he did walk unless he was able to come back in and add lib on set, as well as add his own parts of Garth and Mike Myers allowed him to do it but we'll see

what he tries to do after the movie is still. And also I mean not only that but the movie itself to me is much more of a love story between Wayne and Garth than like Wayne and Cassandra. That's almost Cassandra is almost a side plot to like what's going on with Wayne and Garth through the movie. Totally and I mean I couldn't imagine it without the moments when he freaks out when Wayne

walks off the set during the probably he's just like I'm having a good Time. Not. And Foxy Lady is so funny. When he like starts like thrusting his pelvis and then he like realize, the character realizes he's thrusting his pelvis and he's like looks down and he's like, yeah. He's like into his whatever his body's doing.

Which also is kind of fun because that part wasn't even supposed to be in the movie. And on set he was having such a bad time with Mike Myers that day that he was just supposed to turn on Foxy Lady and look over. But he danced so hard and kept ad libby. to the point that Penel B. Sierras was like, keep it in, this is way too funny, and Mike Myers was so fucking pissed about that dance. That's so funny.

Makes sense. Also really quick about Bonnie and Terry Turner. They co-wrote on Coneheads, Tommy Boy, and the Brady Bunch movie, which I love the Brady Bunch movie. I adore that movie. It was super fun. Also created one of my favorite shows that I would watch growing up

with my fam. Third Rock from The Sun. I love that show. John Lithgow is so good Jane Curtin. I love that show. I would love to do that. That'd be fun. I love Third Rock.

It was such a surprise, amazing show. Like, so underappreciated, I feel like. Yes. Yeah, Britney Spears had this to say about the script. I have to tell you. Do you say Britney Spears? Spheres. Penelope Spears.

Britney Spears had this to say about not having worked on the movie. I do pop music. I don't work on comedy movies. Why are you... Get out of here! What's Wainzworld, y'all? No, Penelope's fear has said this to say about the script. I have to tell you, I felt a little bit of a challenge to turn a five-minute sketch

into a 90-minute movie. But all of us had that fear. There were so many rewrites on the script. It was unbelievable. You do some rewrites, and the script supervisor gives you different colored pages. There's like 10 colors, and we went through all 10 colors three times. So it was a lot of rewriting as we went along, which made. makes sense though, I will say, knowing the SNL process where you were changing those scripts

right up until the showtime. And I think they just, that's their process for sure. So, but yeah, let's talk about her. Penelope's Fieris. Oh my God. This woman is so badass. So cool. She's been like, I don't want to brag, but she's been like a hero of mine. Oh my God. I don't want to brag, but do you want to look at these pictures of cats with hats. Oh my God, they've got so many hats. Kittins on parade. The kittens on parade.

Penelope Spira said, I love those kitties on parade. Put them in a hat. Put them in shoes. I will watch them for a million hours. Those cats are very upset. They do not like it. She also said, I believe each of us is born with certain characteristics that we genetically inherit.

some of which are good, some not so good. My mother was extremely compassionate. My father more of a barbarian. My father was passionately ambitious where my mother was not. The most significant traits I learned from my parents were a strong sense of survival and unfaltering tenacity. The father was literally a barbarian. He was totally a, like a, what I would call it, side show strong man. He was also, he also owned the carnival.

Yes, Magic Empire Shows. So Penelope would end up traveling around a lot in her early childhood through the American South and Midwest until her father was shot and killed by a man in Troy, Alabama. So basically a black man had come onto the circus circuit with them. And a woman, and I learned this, by the way, you can listen to a really great interview with Penelope on WTF. I hope someday to talk to her myself personally. But so there was a woman working in the carnival. It was sprained her ankle.

And they asked this young man to go get some ice. And so to get some ice, he walked up to the ice cream stand, which he had to step in front of a white man in line. The white man did not care for that. And so he hit him over the head with a cane. And so he went back to Penelope's father and told him. And Penelope's father confronted this white guy. And the white guy pulled a gun out and shot him dead. And because it was in Alabama in the 60s, the man did not go to prison for one single day.

because it was to say basically the charge was he shouldn't have been defending a black was what they said. So this is a fun way for her to start her life. So her dad, yeah, her dad died in that altercation and then the carnival had to disband. Yeah, of course.

And she moves with her mother and her three siblings to California. If you could imagine that situation for her mother, They would mostly live in trailer parks as the mom ran through a series of stepfathers. After high school, she went to Long Beach State College to major in art and then studied psychology at the University of California, Irvine. She ends up putting herself through film school at UCLA while working as a waitress at IHop and Denny's to make Innsmeat. I do want to say a fun story about how she met Richard Pryor, which I know that we're going to, I'd like to talk further about Penelope's Fierrez, but I thought this was just a fun story. So she was walking with her at the time, her boyfriend at the time.

And they were both at UCLA. And her boyfriend stopped her and said, oh my God, Richard Pryor's in front of her. She goes, who's Richard Pryor? So he doesn't care. He's like, the funniest person alive. So he stops him to say hello. And Penelope B. Sphiris says, and Richard Pryor said he was looking for a couple of film students to help him do a movie. And I said, well, you just found them.

She says, I'm not really religious, but I think God threw people like Richard in my path because I had such a difficult upbringing. I think he wanted me to laugh a little. So I spent my first two years of actually making money, even though it was cash laid on the table next to a plate of Coke. That was my first real gig. I really think I got a lot of sense of comedy from Richard Pryor. She said, I had my first daughter during that time. I remember because we were shooting and I fainted on the set. And when I woke up, Richard was standing, pointing down at me going,

this bitch is pregnant. And I said, there's no way I'm pregnant. But he was right. That's so funny. So, yeah, she ends up breaking into the biz by producing short films for comedian Albert Brooks, which were aired in the first season of Saturday Night Live. She was even talking about how she was hang out to her. I think Lorne Michaels was with a friend of hers.

That's how they met. And he was literally like hanging out in her living room one day. day. It was just like, yeah, I'm going to New York to try to get this show off the ground, this like live television show. You know what I mean? Like it was like that. And he's like, and he's like, you should come with me and help me make stuff. And she's like, I just had this kid. I can't really go. I got to stay here. But they's kept in touch, which is how she ended up getting Wayne's World. Yes, of course, right? And it was through this, this gig that they would end up, he would see her work and whatnot. Now, we've got to get into it briefly, I'll be it, the decline of

Western Civilization. I just want to say right now, one of my favorite documentaries of all time. I think Natalie would definitely agree with me on this one. Decline of Western Civilization, Part 2, The Metal Years. Go back and watch the first one. It's about punk rock. It's amazing. The punk scene in California. But oh my God,

this is one of those like, this if I was like, hey, this is a essentially a this is spinal tap. It's like a mockumentary. People, I'm sure people would believe me. By the way, she was offered to direct this is spinal tap. Yes. Yes. Totally. but like it is so real and yet so insane and so funny and so over the top and just delves into the excesses of what the metal scene was in L.A. at the time.

It's still kind of like that over on Sunset Strip. It's not that different there now. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the same clubs are still open. Just the characters in that movie. I mean, and there's a big names. I would love to do a whole one on it. We should talk about it when we do a whole episode on it. It is that documentary that I constantly try to convince people to watch. It's like the same street of documentaries for me. Like I'm always trying to get people to watch it.

No one ever watches it. I'm like, this is the greatest documentary about music I've ever seen and one of the best documentaries ever. Just the complete excesses. Yeah. If you like punk or metal or even find it interesting, this is like required watching. I'm down. Incredible. It is like, oh, these people really existed.

This wasn't just a fabrication on MTV. These are real people. And especially my favorite people. who didn't make it and watching them act like they're going to be this amazing giant star. The decline too kind of lends itself to the Wayne's World environment basically. Usually. It's all of the characters I feel like you see in Wayne's World, you get from that. Either way, the decline of Western Civilization Part 1 was released in 1981.

And that is about the LA punk scene. Like we said, it has bands like Black Flag, the germs, X, and Fear, among others. And then you have the whole trilogy while the trilogy is going on by the the way, she is working as a writer on Roseanne for a few seasons. One of the best sitcoms of all time. And then she ends up doing a movie. You mentioned before, which I've never seen Suburbia about suburban punk kids. So again, tapping into the suburb scene specifically, which again is going to really connect to Wayne's World. Yeah, definitely, a much darker version of it. And Flea before Red Out Chili Peppers is one of the actors. You probably wouldn't watch it unless you were into punk

because it's really just about like squatters. Right, right. But it, but it, was like biblical to me as a 14 year old. Hell yeah. Then she ends up getting the Wayne's World gig, calling it a lucky shot that she got based off of having known Lorne Michaels from back when he did the S&L shorts. Sphiris said, I had been just struggling as a female director in this business for many years.

I was 45 years old when I got the job. I just kept hanging in there. And Wayne's World happened and it sort of flipped my life around. So she was in the process. of working on this documentary for PBS that was about psychotic killers in the Patton State Hospital for the criminally insane which also I want to watch that please

she says I was scouting locations for a PBS special called Asylum and I dialed my agent from a payphone so she's in the hospital in the mental institution she says since my contract was not signed yet for the PBS special I had to decide make a movie about a group of poor lost souls and try to make sense of insanity or do a studio comedy.

Not a hard decision. She said I immediately found myself with a parking space and an office at Paramount Pictures. I was required to join the DGA for which I am grateful as it provides lifelong residuals. I even had health insurance

for the first time in my life. Wayne's World was my seventh movie. I was 45 years old. She is such an inspiration. Bye, bye, legitness. I am selling out. Fuck yourself. But it is crazy that, like, the entire, all of Wayne's World, that the entire plot

rolls around the idea of quote unquote selling out, which is technically what the director also felt that she was doing at the time. Right, by being paid for her work. By being paid for what you do. By being paid for working hard, which it's funny in watching Wayne's World now in such a different time period where the idea of selling out is so different now. It doesn't mean that you get to, that you give up your hard roots. It doesn't mean that you're any less of an artist.

Well, nowadays with social media and the ability to get your work out on your own, there aren't as many middlemen. But in the 90s, there was all of these like sort of vipers that would come in and be like, I'm going to make these deals for you and I'm going to take all your money and I'm going to own all your intellectual property forever. And you'd be like, all right, because they give you a check for, we got $5,000. We got $5,000. But to that point, one of the secrets of this movie's success, which is a secret to success I've covered so much in pop history and in Wizard of the Bruiser, is that because it was this small side thing, she got away with having a big, a big-ish budget studio movie, while also having the executives not give a shit about it because it is this tiny thing. They didn't pay attention to her whatsoever.

Which is why it's good. She said, I guess the studio didn't really care because it was a $14 million movie in an age. of $63 million average. So they just went, okay, we will just let her do it even though she's never done a studio movie before. I just think it was a lucky moment in my life and was able just manage. And it was also like, I mean, this is getting into the filming of it.

I mean, this was done in a month. This was done. Like literally, they got on a limo and were taken to a plane and flown directly to Saturday Night Live to continue working on the show. Yes, to go get them. Yes. And even Lorne Michael said that she was chosen

specifically because he knew that she could work quickly. Lord Michael said she worked with comedians, so I thought in terms of sensibility and style, because she could move quickly, which is what we were also sort of hoping to do. She was a run-and-gunner, which is like a benefit that sometimes studio directors don't have if they've always had huge budgets.

They don't know how to run-in-gun. And I think that that's why also Wayne's world worked in such a slipshod way when you were talking about how the script was changing up until the moment that they would get it on film, that it was even changing during filming that she was able to be so dynamic with such an asset to this movie because the movie would not be anywhere near as good

if they were working with someone that didn't know how to move on their feet and think quickly with what they were doing. And not to mention, there were like three female directors at that time. I mean, there was none. There was like Penny Marshall. I don't know. I'm sure there were more than three, but it was extremely rare. Well, and even I think it's kind of adorable that even Penelope Svira says, people, especially young women filmmakers,

come to me and say, how did you do it? How did you do it? She says, I was 45 years old when I did Wayne's World. I had been virtually broke up until that time. And so I became a multi-millionaire overnight. They gave me a righteous percentage of the box office. They didn't know it would be that successful. So this is the thing, too.

Oh, they gave her a percentage. Oh, hell, yeah. They gave her a percentage of the box office because the fucking male bigwigs thought that it wasn't gonna do well. So they didn't have to pay her as much up front. Yes, and then she fucking... And then she got a bunch of points on it. Oh, baby.

Oh, shit. So we've got Wayne, we've got Garth, we've got Penelope. Let's meet a few of the other members of the cast. I know you ladies are excited to talk about her. Tia Carrera, rocking the house as Cassandra Wong, the lead vocalist and bassist of the band,

Crucial Tant, and Wayne's love interest. I can't do that noise. Oh, oh. What was that flam? No, I'm trying to do that. I'm trying to do that. I can't do it. Oh, God, what's wrong with you guys?

I don't think I can do it. But I can tell you this. Tia Carrera was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is of Chinese, Filipino, and Spanish ancestry, which leads to that perfect combination, I feel. of just... I guess so. Because she is... Abraham Lincoln.

She went to an all-girls school and dreamed of being a singer through childhood, but those dreams were temporarily dashed when she was eliminated in the first round of Star Search in 1985 at just 17 years old. However, while shopping at a grocery store in Hawaii, a local producer spotted her and put her in the movie Aloha Summer,

which proved to be enough of a success to get her to move to Los Angeles and pursue modeling and acting. Now, she bright, Before she got Wain's World, she was actually almost the love interest for David Hasselhoff in Baywatch. She was supposed to be a marine biologist. They were toying with the idea of this character, but then she went in for the audition for Wayne's World and the producers really liked me.

And then she went into audition for the next audition for Baywatch, and then those producers really liked me. But then for Baywatch, they wanted her to do a swimming test. And this was all happening during. the Wayne's World casting and I think that she chose that Wayne's World was essentially not only going to be exactly what she wanted, but probably a little bit easier than I'm going to swim. That the actual role that Tia Carrera went in for, that the description was a girl from Hong Kong who speaks with a heavy Hong Kong accent, but when she sings, she rocks like Pat Benatar.

And she says, I remember going, oh my God, this is the part that can change my life. And I can think of no one else that can do the acting and the singing and the rocking, but I can. And even Tia Carrera said when she went into the audition, she went in three, four times and read like everybody else. And it was great, she says, because the final time I went in, director Penelope Sviris and Mike Myers were there. I was sitting in the waiting area and Mike came up to me. He said, you're my choice. And I really want you to get this. So just keep doing what you're doing.

That just made me feel so confident. So I really went in there and gave it my all. I wasn't so nervous anymore because I did feel like someone was on my side. And it just so happened to be the lead guy. So that was a really nice thing he did for me, which also I'm going to go ahead and assume, he wanted to kiss her. Oh, yeah, sure. But you also have to remember, too, at this point in time, and even now, all this time later,

it was rare to see an Asian-American leading lady in a hit movie. And she even says that's due to Mike Myers' vision. He thought it was funny that you could see this rocking band and then they get off stage and they could barely speak English, which was essentially what her role was supposed to be originally, that she barely spoke English, that it was supposed to be a gag in the film. But thank God he wrote it that way, she says.

Otherwise, it would have been another blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in the lead. It got me in the door and it changed the game for me. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. Put me in a position to get true lies. Yeah, and man, she sells that part so hard. one of the biggest pet peeves I have with like, you know, rock bands and movies and shit is when you put somebody in the lead who doesn't know anything about music, who doesn't give a shit about the part, just makes it phony as hell. And she doesn't. Like you feel like this chick is bad ass, bitch the whole time.

Because she is singing, she's actually singing all that music. And I mean, her voice is amazing. Yes. And she actually, funny enough, there's a fun little factoid that she's one more. Grammys than any of the musicians that were in the film because she does Hawaiian music. Oh, wow. Oh, shit. Wow. Really? Yeah, that's fun. Now, I know Jackie is dying to talk about Roblo.

Of course, the villain of the film. Y'all, cancel culture, I know, and I don't, you know, it's like, that's not something we usually get into. I had no idea about Roblo. I didn't know. I didn't know that right before this, he had, so S&L producer Lorne Michaels told Sviris that she could hire Rob Lowe to play TV producer Benjamin Oliver,

but why? Two years prior, video had surfaced of the then-24-year-old actor having sex with a 16-year-old girl in a hotel room in Atlanta during the 1988 Democratic National Convention. To avoid charges related to sexual exploitation of a minor, the actor signed an agreement to enter a pre-trial, diversion program that required him to complete 20 hours of community service, he must have been changed after that.

But what I do think is very funny is that what Penel B. Spiris remembers, she said, oh, my God, Lauren, we can't cast Roblo, and he was just caught in bed with an underage girl. And Lauren said, oh, yes, but we can probably get him for very cheap. And he was right. Because they had such a little budget that they needed star power and they needed cheap. And he's a slimy villain. And he's disgusting. I think he works in this, in this context, oddly enough.

Oh, yeah. He's slimy and he's yucky, yuck. Yeah. If he was like a good guy, I think this would be a different situation a little bit. But I will say Natalie probably is actually, actually dying to talk about Laura Flynn Boyle. Fantastic of this film. Of course, got her big break on Twin Peaks. David Lynch really launched her career.

she was definitely struggling up until that point. And man, is she great in this movie? I forgot how good she is in this movie. It's a gun rack. A gun rack. Let alone many to necessitate an entire rack. What would I do with a gun rack? And I think it's unfortunate that I still actually would want to be in a relationship with her

because she is beautiful and there's something about her energy in this movie that I'm like, I date her. Oh, God. Man. You are very lucky to have Lexi. And there are so many other cameos in this film. Chris Farley as the security guard, Alice Cooper, of course. Meatloaf is the doorman at the Gasworks, the club Garth and Wade off in precliff.

Ed O'Neill. I love Ed O'Neill. So amazing. The best. I do think it's kind of fun that Chris Farley, apparently this was his first feature film. And it was on the recommendation of Lorne Michaels that Spiris give the budding SNL star a little part as a security guard. And Michaels warned her that Farley was scared to be on camera. He said those weird jerky movements that he's doing when he's telling Wayne and Garth which way to go,

I think that was the result of his nervousness. So it wasn't just a choice. I also thought that this was pretty great, that the band members of Crucial Taunt, who Tia Carrera is the head of the band, that they were all actual metal heads. They were one of the best fictional rocker acts next to the Lone Rangers and Spinal Tap. Crucial Taunts members include Mark Ferrari, who played with acts like keel, cold sweat, and even guessed it on a Pantera album. Anthony Fox of Beautiful

Creatures also played with Alice Cooper and George Foster of Reckless, who also works with rock school in California. And I think that because Penelope Spheres knew what she was doing. She's like, are she like, all right, if I'm going to make a band, then they have to be actual rockers. They need to know

because she was aware of the fact that this is a play on being you know, metalheads because Garth and Wayne aren't really the middle heads that she was used to working. No, definitely not. But she brought the legitimacy to the scene.

Yes. Especially because Wayne, Jesus, Mike Myers didn't really have any experience with music. Didn't really know anything about it. No. I do love too that Alice Cooper had no idea he was going to have dialogue, much less like five pages of it. He thought he was just going to be singing the song. But he ends up

totally nailing it. Like too much much to their surprise. He kills that scene. Yeah. Well, and also what's awesome too is that Mike Myers was aware of the fact that he is a huge history buff, which is why he made the Alice Cooper jokes that he did and why Alice Cooper was able to jump right in because he was like, oh, you know what I like and you know the kind of person that I would actually have that conversation with, which is why he gave him like the respect of like, all right, I'll learn it. Okay, give it to me. So good. Which is awesome. Shoutouts again, though, to Ed O'Neill, who might be my favorite character in the entire.

In both movies, because honestly, my favorite line of his is in Wayne's World too, which is, why did they come to me to die? Why did they come to me to die? I think that's what makes the movie work so well, is they really swing for the fences with insane bits like that. Like, that is such an out of nowhere, like him just being a total psychotic,

saying this, like, cryptic, horrendous stuff, like the steam rising out of the body when you stab a person in the cold. And it's just so good It's like It's so insane And like not in a line with like anything else in the movie And I think like

It's just constantly surprising the audience They even talk about that How they were always just trying to divert And surprise and never give you What you thought you were going to get Again like the sponsorship Moment to the advertising moment So yeah let's talk about fun

Filming facts Shall we So with the filming I just have a few fun moments. I think one of the biggest one is like the last shoot shot is them on the hood of that car. And the reason why they are so giddy. That's what they shot last.

Yeah. You mean in filming? Yes. Yes. Yes. The last shot that they filmed. Yeah. The fighter, the fun part. Because there's two different hood of the fun part. With Babe Graham Lincoln, it's all improvised. See that to me all like right there, that scene speaks to the fact the fact that it is

more about their romance than Right. Totally. But even in the end when he's with his buddy that's like, I love you, man. It's like, he's just, you know, it's brotherly love. It's brotherly. And I think that that is really what this movie is also. It centers around their brotherly love. And also, unfortunately, centers around the divadum of Mike Myers on set.

Says one executive who had a rocky relationship with Myers, I honestly root against him. Penelope Sviris said, maybe he could open like a children's hospital to clean up his rep. she jokes darkly he's got to do something pretty quick because my so myers and Myers insists that while he can be demanding it's always in the service of producing the best work possible and that he's always the hardest on himself so even j roach who directed austin power film said i've never understood where the lore about mike comes from i just know he's very passionate about his work and he wants it to be great and pushes hard for that but once the lore begins there's not much you can do about it but then there's

things like the day on set that he was infuriated because there was no margarine for his bagel and only butter. Which also yuck. You know and Penelope's fear said she found herself struggling to prop up

Mike Myers' often dark moods. So Myers who according to several sources said he suffered from hypoglycemia stormed off the set. Now Myers rep denies he is hypoglycemic. She says he was emotionally needy and got more difficult as the shoot went along.

You should have heard him bitching when I was trying to do that Bohemian Rhapsody scene. So there's a lot around the Bohemian Rhapsody scene. Of course, one of the iconic parts of this movie and he was screaming about, I can't move my neck like that. Like headbanging. Why do this so many times? No one is going to laugh at that.

This is also after. He had completely fought to use Bohemian Rhapsody in the first place. Right. Right. Which is so crazy. He was the one who wanted it in, which was a fucking brilliant idea, especially for somebody who doesn't know anything about music.

Because it introduced us to Queen. I didn't know anything about that band until that movie, of course. And I fell in love with Queen from it. But her directing that scene is like one of the pivotal, most important parts of the movie. And he didn't think it was going to work. He was like, I don't think it's going to be funny. You know, trying to get it shut down, trying to get, you know, and kept complaining about needing Advil for his head herding and all this stuff.

Oh my God. So apparently Lorne Michaels and the producer wanted to use guns and roses. And in fact, Lorne Michaels said, you'll forgive me if I want to make this movie a hit to Mike Myers about using guns and roses over Queen. Which I mean, I also would have been fine with you. I thought about you Natalie when I read that. But I still think I could, I still don't think it would have been nearly as strong. No, definitely not. Bopsy is so expressive and so dynamic and just express. It's an unexpected, yeah, and it's an unexpected choice for that part. And I think that's what makes it stand out.

Yes. And even Mike Myers said, Queen at that point, not by me and not by hardcore fans, but the public had sort of forgotten about them. Freddie Mercury had gotten sick. The last time we had seen them was on live aid. And there were a few albums after where they were sort of straying away from their arena rock roots.

But I always loved Bohemian Rhapsody. I thought it was a masterpiece. piece, so I fought really hard for it. And at one point, I said, well, I'm out. I don't want to make this movie if it's not Bohemian Rhapsody. So he almost walked from the set. And on top of it, which I think is really beautiful, it turns out that before Wayne's World was released,

Myers sent a tape of the Bohemian Rhapsody scene to Queen Guitarist Brian May, who showed it to Freddie Mercury. It was right before Freddie Mercury died. Brian May said, Mike Myers gave me a tape, which I took around to Freddie, and played to him. Freddie loved it. He just laughed and thought it was great, this little video. The funny thing was, we always regarded the song as tongue-in-cheek ourselves.

If it would come on the radio, we would all be head-banging when it came to the heavy bit as well, us as a group. It was very close to our sense of humor, which I think is really awesome. I love Freddie. Mercury got to see it before he died and know that, like, it did. And Bohemian Rhapsody went back on the Billboard charts 17 years after its initial release for the first time since because of this movie. And then remember Mike Myers did the little cameo

in the biopic. That's right. Yes. Yes. And also Dana Carvey apparently didn't learn the lyrics to the song before shooting the scene. And now if you go back and look, you can tell that he doesn't know the words. Because they do that close up of him

doing the end of the song. Clearly not knowing the words. And it just works so well. That's so funny. Yeah. I know Myers too was very relieved that Queen appreciated it is he was worried that he was quote pissing on a Picasso. Yes. But it's such, obviously, it's a bit.

And I think it actually makes more sense that Garth would be, you know, because he's a silly, he's a silly head. No, I thought that it was a very, I thought that was an intentional choice, honestly. And this is even fun that down to that Mike Myers wanted everything his exact way, right, down to the fact that, you know, he walks out of. the house that he lives in with his mother. And he and Penelope Sphiris had to look at about, apparently, 50 houses before picking the right one that Mike Myers was happy enough with that he could use.

And even Penelope Speris says, you know how in the beginning he goes, hi, I'm Wayne, and he walks out and gets in the basement, right? If you look at that house, it looks like every fucking house in the valley. So, so true. Yeah. And also, David Carvey had a lot. of specific opinions too. One big one being that licorice dispenser in the car. So great.

It's a big point that he needed to have that. They were like, you're kidding, right? That's something they show after they get their money. So I don't know if that was supposed to be a purchase afterwards, but I like the idea that when he gets $5,000, that's the first thing he presented. You know why. It's because Mike Myers wanted the cassette player or like the player in the car. And he's like, well, then I'm going to get something in the car too. Right. Yeah. Because it was a part of their competition. And it it makes so much sense of their competition because that's how Lorne Michaels likes to keep his actors upset and competing. Now about Myers and Carvey's relationship, Penelope's sphere says,

it's not like they butted heads or argued a lot or anything, but I'll tell you what they did. And Lorne teaches all of his people to do this, and that is compete with each other. Lauren loves, I don't care if you quote me, I'm getting too old for this shit, to have people argue and try and please him and compete with each other to the point when someone is in tears. And that's this whole movie came about of the two of them trying to one up each other. Well, I will say to a lot of these quotes from Penelope are older. In her 2015 interview, she had really kind of talked about how she actually, they water under the bridge.

She likes Mike. Now she understands it was first movie. She really learned a lot. and like she doesn't want to keep a hold on all this anger. Yeah, they did a big reunion panel actually. I think Lord and Michael's hosted it. And yeah, they really buried the hatchet, I think, in a big way during that. And so, yeah, these are all.

I kind of love how angry these quotes are. No, this is at the prime of right after when she was so fucking this about all of it. Yeah. Because she doesn't get to direct Wayne's World too, which we're going to get into. I think now, do you have anything else about the production or can we move into post-production? It's a cool movie. No, it's a great movie. I just wanted to talk about the red dress

in the end that Tia Carrera wears. So, Dia Carrera, of course, was just as obsessed with all of her outfits. And apparently the red stretch lace dress is from Trashy Laundrae, a great store in L.A., which also we should go to Trashy Laundrae. She says, I still have it.

It's in my closet hermetically sealed. I was very shy about my body. I felt like my hips and thighs were too big. Oh, it's so gross. Which is ridiculous now that I see the movie. Yeah, I used the model. So I was worried about looking fat, which is so dumb because I was so skinny. Yeah, I don't know if you recall that scene where she's wearing the best bikini of all time, the blue sequel one.

And I remember as a kid just being like, oh, this is what a lady looks like. I wonder. A wonder, do look like a lady? I wonder if I will ever. And part of their distinguishing factors, of course, Wayne always has the hat on. He always has the black shirt on. And Garth always wears a variety of band shirts. In the movie, they include two Van Halen shirts, including their 1988 album, OU812,

a motley crew, Dr. Fieldgood Top, and an Aerosmith, Arrow Force One fan club t-shirt. And I did want to talk real quick about the soundtrack of the movie. Of course. Because it was so outstanding. It peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 chart in 1992 and was certified double platinum by the RIAA in 1990. So this was the first time since Prince's Batman album in August of 1989 that a movie soundtrack landed the number one spot on the billboard charts. You go back and listen to it. The album is absolutely amazing.

You know, the ballroom blitz that Tia Carrera actually sings on it is so amazing. And Tia Carrera sang all of her own vocals on the song she performed in the film. Like the fact that she did that is so cool. And she says, despite ever playing bass guitar before, she had to learn four songs on the instrument in just three weeks. She says, I was dreadful. But at least my fingers moved in the right way. I never played bass again.

I had so much respect for staying after that. As somebody who doesn't really know, bass, I bought it. I don't know if somebody who is a bass player would agree, but it looked like she was playing to me. I mean, I thought that it looked good. And also, apparently Mike Myers was very upset that after the movie, Penelope Spiris directed

a new Bohemian Rhapsody video featuring music from their featuring footage from the movie. Mike Myers was mortified when the new version of Bohemian Rhapsody video was released interspersing clips of Wayne's World with the original promo, which is when he had said

they just whizzed on a Picasso. Then he said they didn't whiz on the Picasso in the movie and then he said they just whizzed on the Picasso. As what he said, about the music video. Well, and that's very telling. This is going into the editing.

This is what Penelope, I almost called her Britney Spears again. This is what Penelope Spears had to say. I always say I had to shoot the movie a few different ways. I shot at Mike's way. I shot at Dana's way. I shot at my way. Sometimes I shot at the Bonnie Terry and Lorne way.

But I knew that when I got into the editing room, I could put it together the way that I wanted. And that's exactly what I did. And so apparently, this leads to a test screening, during which Mike Myers is seething because there are takes that he wanted in there that weren't used there were jokes that maybe didn't go over as well as he wanted yada yada yada he wasn't even in the screening though

he heard about the screening and was pissed off about all of it oh right because his dad passed away his dad had passed away and then gives spurious several pages of suggested changes 11 pages of suggested cuts none of which she ends up using she puts her foot down. And even Lauren took her side. It was like, he's not going to let you direct the sequel if you don't use any of his changes. She's like, this is the movie.

This is it. It's great. And she's right. It's great. I couldn't imagine. I'm sure there are other takes that would go over just as well or whatever. But I mean, how perfect is this film? And so, yeah, I love that.

And she puts her foot down. And of course, that is legendarily what leads Mike Myers to not allow her to make Wayne's World too, which I think was a massive miss. step. It was. So the film opens in February of 1992. It goes on to gross $183.1 million globally on a budget of $13 million. And yeah, just massively huge leads to a terrible video game.

Awful fucking game. Oh, I never played it. Was it a computer game? Super Nintendo Sega Genesis, NES, and Game Boy game. It is very bad. The graphics are, just look it up. They're like bobbleheads. You can only play as GAR.

You can only play as Wayne. It's just really confusing, like maze puzzles. Those promo movie video games usually were garbage. It's funny how bad licensed video games used to be. To the point where I had to, as a kid, I started to realize, like, don't get the Spider-Man game. Don't get the movie game. Don't get the Simpsons game. It's always going to be trash.

I remember how bad the Robocop game was too. The Robocop arcade game actually pretty good. But either way, I digress. Uh, yeah, did you have anything else to say, Jackie, uh, before we move into the sequel or now? No, let's jump. Let's make the jump. I don't have a ton about the sequel. I will say this, though.

I may be a bit of a sequel apologist. I enjoy things about the sequel. Again, I think, I think Wainsworld, the first movie is, is like a collection of incredibly quotable moments and scenes. Wainsworld 2 is like half of it is that. And the other half is not as good. It lacks the connective tissue that Penelope Spheres brought, which was creating that environment, that scene, the legitimacy of the music and the people.

It was very commercialized, corporatized in the second one where they kind of like talked about music and the way that like a brand would figure out. Like, oh, the doors is a band. Right. Let's talk about the doors. But I will say the Grody was pretty hilarious. A bit of death with his own shoes. He's my favorite part.

There's plenty of funny moments in it, but again, it's not this like just scene after scene of just memorable amazingness like the first one is. It is also just showing that like just you giving more money to a movie doesn't make a movie any better. Just because now, so originally in the first Wayne's world, like Mike Myers wanted Aerosmith to perform. not Alice Cooper, and Aerosmith turned it down. But of course, after seeing how successful the first one was,

you know what? Aerosmith decided to be in the second movie. It's like, oh, well, fuck you. Alice Cooper was so much better for that part anyway, and it was much more fitting, much more, like, true to like the metal scene. Aerosmith was already sort of like a fluffy big time band. But it just shows that they did exactly what they didn't want to be doing in the first movie. That's what, I feel like the second movie reeks of that.

Oh, yeah. Not of like, I'm not against the idea of selling out, but the idea of just, No, you just lost your drive. There's no heart in it. It was like if it was a Coke commercial. Yeah. That was the second movie. It felt like there's of course funny stuff in it because funny people are in it.

There are some reasons for this as well though. First of all, I will say Stephen Surgic took over the directing. He started out directing film segments for the kids in the hall, connects him to Lorne, connects him to the project. Did mostly TV stuff outside of this film. He's done a million different shows directing wise Bates Motel, Marvel's Jessica Jones, just tons and tons of stuff, superhero stuff, crime stuff, yada, yada, yada. Now, this is where it gets a little

interesting when it comes to Wayne's role, too. Mike Myers' original script had Wayne and Garth forming their own country and seceding from the U.S. after finding an ancient scroll, a story from a British comedy film from 1949 called Passport of Pimlico.

Which is about a film about a region of Britain that discovers that due to a recently unearthed manuscript, they're actually part of the Burgundy. region of France, which is why Mike Myers was so hell-bent on essentially remaking this movie under the terms of Wayne's world for some reason, but to the point that he thought that Paramount had gotten the rights to essentially remake this movie. They had not, and they found out that this was actually taken from an old movie, like,

deep into pre-production, and literally, like, just hauled. the whole thing. The director, uh, Surgic said, I could hear chainsawls like ripping down sets. That's how rough it was. And they're freaking out at Mike Myers because he didn't share this with them that they, you know, because they needed the rights. I love this line though, the Sherry Lansing, because Sherry Lansing, who was the studio exec that wrote this book, she said to him in a meeting, how dare you? How dare you put us in this position? We'll sue you. We'll take your fucking house. You won't even own a fucking home. And apparently another Paramount Bigwig, John Goldman reveals in Galloway's book that Lansing said,

as I'm sitting here with you, there's a team figuring out how they can take every single thing away from you. Goldwin goes on to say the outburst left Meyer's so shaken that he curled up in a fetal position on Lansing's couch. Yeah, but I just didn't answer to this woman's scraping at it. It didn't stop him because he did that in Shrek. In the middle of Shrek, he decided he was going to change his accent, and they had to go back. They had to re-record the whole thing. $5 million worth of animation. Check out Wizard and the Bruiser episode on Shrek.

Recently came out a couple of months ago. Essentially, what she tells them to do was she was like, you better go hole up in Lorne Michael's office and we'll slip you food under the door until you finish writing this new fucking script. So I think the film also suffered because of that whole flub a dude. He had to rewrite it so fast. Yeah.

And also, it wasn't like Dana Carvey was going to help? It wasn't like anybody was going to fucking help him either at this point. True. So you do have some fun cast members in this one, Christopher Walken, most notably, Kevin Pollock, Kim Basinger, with cameos from Jay Leno, Heather Locklear, Robert Smigel, Bob Odenkirk, Charlton, Heston, Aerosmith, and many more. Farley. Farley is in it again.

And Farley is in it again, absolutely. And, but the thing totally tanks, it does just, it barely makes a profit, which isn't good in Hollywood. It was given a $40 million budget as opposed to. to the $14 million budget that the first one had, and it only took in $48.2 million. It came out during the Christmas season, and I remember this season that it came out

because it was competing with Mrs. Doubtfire, Schindler's List, and the Pelican Brief. I mean, if I'm going to choose, Wayne's World 2 or Schindler's List. Especially, and Christmas time, all wrapped into one. So that's all I got. I think is that our episode on Wayne's World, ladies. Man, it is our episode,

on Wayne's World. I think that in ending in this, this quote from Penelope Sphiris on the lasting qualities of Wayne's World, she says, when you watch Wayne's World, it reminds you of how we can all just be really happy. And I think that's really what has given it. It's lasting nature.

I think it comes from that early 20s teenage exuberance that you have and thinking that the world is all great. I think that's why people like it. I agree. Right? Yeah. Yep. 100%. There you go. That's our episode on

Wayne's World. We all nerded out pretty hard on different things on the show. So I hope everybody listening doesn't mind that we all just went on tangents on our favorite things. Watch Wayne's World. It will put a smile on your face. Listen to the soundtrack. Soundtrack still puts a smile on my face. I love Alice Cooper. I want to kiss his little face. And thank you guys so much for joining us for Wayne's World. Hell yeah. You can check us out further patreon.com forward slash page 7 podcast bonus content every single week. $5 a month. Check me out. Twitch.tv.4 slash Holdenaders Ho. I'm on there with Jackie.

Every Friday night six P M.E.T. Jack a knees. Get it. Get it. My name is Jackie Zabrowski. You follow me on Instagram at Jack. That Wormon. Also, I think we're going to pose a couple pictures of these cats and their little hats. Oh, we're going to. They should be illegal because cats are angry. You follow me at The Natty Gene and Page 7 LPN on all that stuff. All that jazz. Did you just say cats were canceled? Cats are canceled. Whoa, new thing.

Whoa, I agree with Natalie actually. Way more of a dog person. Party on, Natalie. Party on. Cat hats are canceled as well. Party on, both of my friends. Party on, Jackie. Swing!

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