Banzai!
Generation X provided us with nothing if not a rich variety of entertainment options with limited technology and a limited budget, and few films that have achieved cult status amongst those who grew up in the 1980s exemplify that fact as thoroughly as The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Those of you who lived the life of a geek (or a nerd, as they were more often called in that decade) recognize the title as one of the worst movies ever made, and yet one steeped in a vat of pure awesome.
I am ashamed I did not know either of those facts until tonight.
The movie was released in 1984, sandwiched between genre classics Return of the Jedi (1983) and Back to the Future (1985). I was eleven when it hit the theaters, old enough to know what I wanted to watch, but too young to have the financial independence to make good on my pre-adolescent plan to subsist only on Butterfingers, episodes of Dr. Demento, and science fiction flicks. Add to the mix parents who were wholly uninterested – not in the genre itself, they loved the Star Wars movies and E.T. – but in pulpy b-movie format shows characterized by bad writing and worse acting, and you have the recipe for a young Big Simon missing this beast in its native habitat.
Tonight, over twenty five years after its release, I watched Buckaroo Banzai for the first time. Sitting here in my easy chair, The Digital Kid (who wandered off ten minutes in) and The Coppertop watching my monitor from odd angles, I set into motion the hundred minute train wreck of genius. Starring Peter Weller (best known for the title role in the movie Robocop) as the improbably named Buckaroo Banzai, a fantastically talented physicist, neurosurgeon, Samurai, rock musician, jet car driver, and comic book hero (thank you, Wikipedia!), the story spins quickly out of control as it introduces character upon character, including some names better remembered than the lead. Jeff Goldblum, John Lithgow, and Christopher Lloyd also appear as a fellow surgeon and new member of the Hong Kong Cavaliers, a scientist possessed by the leader of a malicious alien faction, and an alien in the form of a researcher for YoYoDyne Propulsion Systems, respectively.
I would love to shower praises on the film. I would like to, but it’s nearly impossible. The main character, while interesting, is such in the way that you want to know more. Sadly, the movie never expounds on the myth of Dr. Banzai. He is, simultaneously, everything a young geek might wish to become; he’s handsome and debonair, witty, and has the kind of charm that has stunning women (and their twin sisters (separated at birth)) swooning, even falling at his feet. He’s blessed with a Swiss Army Knife of skills, but there’s no explanation for his wide variety of talents, which apparently includes the ability to play every instrument imaginable (he plays both guitar and organ in a night club scene, but also switches to a flugelhorn, a tiny trumpet-like instrument that looks like a miniature tuba (not to be confused with the wrap-around sousaphone, which most people call the tuba)), a pitch-perfect voice, cat-like driving reflexes, gunslinger-style pistoleer skills, unquestionable leadership, and an almost preternatural understanding of “Science!”. Unfortunately, the enigma he represents is too much to swallow, even in pulp satire.
And yet there is a charm to the movie that makes you root for the good guy and laugh at the silly, almost childish jokes hidden throughout the script. Somewhere beyond the crappy dialog and worse special effects, there is a certain allure to the flick that is as difficult to pinpoint as it is to resist. Maybe it’s that child in me, the one who wanted so badly to see Buckaroo Banzai at the Fiesta Mall AMC theater back in ‘84. Or maybe it’s the scribbler of tall tales I wish to become, reminding me that sometimes the absolutely absurd is precisely perfect. In either case, Dr. Banzai’s adventures will go down as one of those movies I will want to see again, even if it’s only to imagine I could have been both stupidly cool and dangerously mysterious.
In the past I’ve called myself a Jedi Watchman, a Browncoat, and a Roughneck, but tonight, I take on not one but two new titles. In honor of the schlock goodness of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, in honor of the 25 years I’ve wanted, somewhere in the back of my head, to see it, tonight I am a Blue Blazer Irregular and a member of the Hong Kong Cavaliers. As a certified geek and interested retrospective onlooker of the 80s, I’ll carry that title proudly wherever I go.
… because wherever you go, there you are.
I was 21 in 1985 and although I caught both Jedi and Back to the Future (the first, the finest) I missed or ignored Buckaroo Banzai. All I know of it comes from the fanboyish things done behind the scenes of various incarnations of Star Trek: impulse engines being made by Yoyodyne Propulsion, a BB prop showing up by itself or as part of a larger Trek prop, that sort of thing. Perhaps it’s time for me to see it, too.
I always remember Jeff Goldblum from The Big Chill and Silverado. And the first time I saw John Lithgow was in drag in The World According to Garp. He was much more likable then than he was in Footloose. Ah, memories.