Wayne's World showcased the crazy duo played by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey. Wayne’s World was originally a sketch on the NBC television series Saturday Night Live that evolved from a small snippet entitled “Wayne’s Power Minute” on the CBC Television series “It’s Only Rock and Roll”. The Wayne’s World sketch was so popular that it featured every week.
Metal enthusiast Wayne (played by Mike Myers – of ‘So I Married An Axe Murderer, Austin Powers, Shrek and The Love Guru fame) was joined by his goofy but loveable best friend Garth Algar (Dana Carvey). The film also featured a batch of other famous faces in main and cameo roles including Rob Lowe, Tia Carrere, Lara Flynn Boyle, Brian Doyle-Murray, Robert Patrick, Meat Loaf and Alice Copper.
The two main characters - Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar were from small town Aurora, Illinois. Wayne and Garth had set up their own local cable access television show broadcast from Wayne’s basement (or seeing as Wayne still lived with his parents it was more accurately Wayne’s parents’ basement) every Friday evening at 10.30pm– this was ‘Wayne’s World’. As well as being Metal-obsessed Wayne, Garth and their TV crew were mostly concerned with scoring with beautiful celebrity women, air-guitaring, playing the drums and undermining small town life.
Spotted one night by a television station executive, Benjamin Caine (played by Rob Lowe), Wayne and Garth are approached by Caine and his producer Russell Finley (Kurt Filler) with a lucrative sponsorship offer. Caine offers Wayne and Garth $5,000 each, plus the benefits of a “huge” salary in order to buy the rights for the show. Initially chuffed by the deal and the cash settlement Wayne and Garth soon come to realise that their small-budget but charming TV show has been ransacked and reinvented by Caine, merely using it as a means of showcasing the sponsor, arcade owner Noah Vanderhoff (Brian Doyle-Murray) every week.
Initially Wayne and Garth are bewildered by the show’s enforced “new look” but determined not to let Caine spoil the show the duo soon start to have fun undermining Vanderhoff by holding up a series of placards pointing at Vanderhoff with Wayne’s World-esque quips like “Sphincter Boy”. Unfortunately, Wayne and Garth’s jibes backfire and Caine fires them on the spot.
Unfortunately for Wayne, his new girlfriend and rock singer Cassandra is also represented by Benjamin leading to jealousy on Wayne’s part.
It all ends well however, after confronting Cassandra about her relationship with Benjamin when Wayne secretly broadcasts a new “Wayne’s World” featuring Cassandra’s band, Crucial Taunt. The band are spotted on air by Frankie Sharp, a record company executive from Sharp Records and signed on the spot. Or so we think. Full of parody and pastiche, Wayne’s World provides a number of different alternative endings including a “sad ending” (in which Crucial Taunt are told by Frankie Sharp that their timing isn’t right to get signed) and a “Scooby Doo” ending (in which Benjamin is revealed to be wearing a rubber mask, as the villain regularly did in Scooby Doo, and he is in fact the owner of the Aurora amusement park – Old Man Withers).
Nobody was prepared for the huge cult following that Wayne’s World achieved after his release. Just like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure cleverly managed to capture the tone, language and attitude of early 90s youth, Wayne’s World brought with it a new batch of heavily-used catchphrases like “Schwing!”, “Ass Sphincter Says What” , “Party On!” and “Not!”.
The film also successfully introduced contemporary and established rock acts like Queen, Alice Cooper and Jimi Hendrix to a new generation. Sales of the soundtrack hit the roof and went straight to number one in the album charts.
The equally success sequel to Wayne’s World, “Wayne’s World 2” was released shortly after in 1993.
Wayne’s World trivia
The catchphrase on the movie poster was "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl."
Directed by Penelope Spheeris and co-written by Mike Myers Wayne’s World was the eighth highest-grossing film of 1992.
In the Bohemian Rhapsody scene in the start of the film, Dana Carvey wasn’t sure of the lyrics and had to lip-sync the words.
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Arron said:
"Schwing!" classic film
Friday November 14, 2008, 11:00 AM
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