Writing my last blog about Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock put me in mind of the hilarious scene from the movie Wayne’s World, wherein the character Garth, prone as he is to day-dreaming, envisions himself inveigling a beautiful woman to the soundtrack of Hendrix’s Foxy Lady. I chuckled so much solely from its recollection that I just had to find it and feature it (along with several other scenes from the movie) this week!
Back in 1987, on a Canadian variety show called It’s Only Rock & Roll, an aspiring comic called Mike Myers was trying out a new character in a brief segment called Wayne’s Power Minute. The character of teenage heavy metal fan Wayne Campbell with his puppy-like exuberance and loveable-airhead philosophy was pretty much fully formed even back then.
It was a couple of years later that Myers joined the Saturday Night Live cast and introduced Wayne to a wider audience, in the form of the Wayne’s World sketches, now with sidekick Garth Algar (Dana Carvey). The premise of Wayne’s World was that it was a public-access television show broadcast from Wayne’s basement, and characterised by its chaotic production style, the anarchic schoolboy humour of its hosts, and their obsession with “babes” and rock music.
Myers and Carvey recorded 27 episodes during its 1989–1992 heyday and in 1992 filmed the first Wayne’s World movie, the perfect vehicle for Wayne and Garth to get involved in antics and exploits in the wider world. The movie was an instant critical and commercial success. Catchphrases abound, and many of them have become colloquialisms: “Party on!”, “Good call!”, “I am not worthy”, “Excellent!” (when intoned in the correct way), “No way…way!”, and of course “…not” (as in “Sure, it’s a great movie…not!”).
Let’s view a montage of some of their hilariously juvenile movements, followed by that mesmerising Foxy Lady mating dance of Garth’s. Excellent!
