USA TODAY International Edition
ARE YOU WORTHY?
No way. Way! Things you didn’t know about ‘ Wayne’s World,’ 25 years later. Party time!
EBelieve it or not: Oddball comedy Wayne’s World made its debut on the big screen 25 years ago. The movie, adapted from the Saturday Night Live sketches with Wayne Campbell ( Mike Myers), the enthusiastic host of a public access cable show from his parents’ couch, and Garth Algar ( Dana Carvey), his socially inept, genius sidekick, went on to surpass $ 100 million at the box office and develop a cult following.
To celebrate the anniversary, more than 400 theaters are showing the movie Tuesday and Wednesday ( tickets: Waynes World25. com). The screenings include an introduction by Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers, a new interview with Myers and Carvey, and a taped fan Q& A featuring director Penelope Spheeris and other actors from the movie, who shared some of these 25 facts you may not know about Wayne’s World:
1According to Carvey, Garth was inspired by his brother, Brad, an engineer who built the first wire- wrapped Video Toaster editing tool.
2In Wayne’s World 2, Garth wears a Video Toaster T- shirt. Get it?
3When Garth plays the drums in Cassell’s Music, that’s really Carvey drumming.
4The movie marked SNL cast member Chris Farley’s feature film debut.
5Hosting a cable access show was a lifelong dream of Myers’, hence the Wayne’s World show within a show.
6Myers
and Carvey improvised dialogue when they were lying on the hood of the car, like the line, “Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played a girl bunny?”
7Remember
when Wayne famously says “No stairway, denied,” after trying to play Led Zeppelin? According to Spheeris, that came about because of fair use laws. “Stairway to Heaven was limited to, I believe, three notes, then we cut it back to two notes, then the studio went back and cut it down even further. The joke still worked.”
8The
Bohemian Rhapsody scene was inspired by Myers’ experience singing the Queen song in the car with his friends.
9Tia Carrere turned down a role on Baywatch to play Wayne’s love interest, rocker chick Cassandra.
10Myers
wanted to cut the scene where Stacy ( Lara Flynn Boyle) crashes her bike into a car, because he didn’t think it was organically funny. Then he realized it got some of the biggest laughs.
11One of the Wayne’s World move poster taglines was “You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll hurl.”
12Wayne’s World is the highest- grossing SNL sketch- turned- movie.
13The movie only cost $ 14 million to make.
14Wayne’s World was No. 1 in its opening weekend in 1992 ( with $ 18 million).
15It became the No. 8 movie of the year, just behind The Bodyguard.
16SNL producer Lorne Michaels told Spheeris she could hire Rob Lowe to play TV producer Benjamin Oliver “really cheap, because he can’t get a job” after the actor’s sex- tape scandal.
17Carrere sings rock music in the movie, but she has won Grammys for her Hawaiian music.
18Paramount’s international marketing plan translated the movie’s signature phrases into different languages in ads.
19Though the movie is set in Aurora, a suburb of Chicago, only two days of the 34- day shoot were spent in Chicago. The rest was shot in Los Angeles.
20Not laughing while Carvey’s Garth crazily hammered a robotic hand was nearly impossible for Lowe.
21Myers didn’t hire Spheeris to helm Wayne’s World 2 because the two had creative differences. She felt better about it after the sequel bombed at the box office, making $ 48 million compared with the first movie’s $ 121 million.
22Spheeris went on to direct The Little Rascals and Black Sheep.
23The character Cassandra was inspired by Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics.
24Terminator 2 star Robert Patrick, who makes a cameo, still has fans come up to him and ask “Have you seen this boy?”
25The town of Aurora, Ill., has organized a six- month celebration of Wayne’s World, using the hashtag # partyonaurora.