To the tune of “Uptown Girl”. (Later replaced with the actual theme.)
And in the Sepulveda Dam, which is probably up there with Vasquez Rocks and Chatsworth for famous filming locations.
BB was quirky. The '80s/early '90s were kind of the Golden Age of Quirk. Because to be quirky or weird, there has to be a “normal” and the Internet has really compromised the idea of “normal”.
Sometimes a normal ending to a weird film can put the weirdness in perspective and make it seem less weird. Other times it can seem like chickening out.
In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, the ending is so normal as to be a comic commentary on movies and movie stars. It mostly works.
Then there was April Fool’s Day, the slasher-movie-that-wasn’t. All of the deaths were fake, a huge prank. Then, at the end, after the whole thing is revealed and we’re in relax-the-movie’s-almost-over mode, one of them takes out a knife, sneaks up behind one of her friends, and stabs them, they scream–
–and that TOO is fake. It’s a trick knife. The end.
In the errata about the movie it was told that the Banzai Institute was developing a watermelon that could be air-dropped into areas with famines and other food problems from the airplane to the ground. The rind was being engineered to be so hard you could drop the watermelon from a plane to the ground without damaging the fruit, which people could then use a tool to open up and eat.
Came in here specifically to quote “I’ll tell you later”. Thank you for this.
Buckaroo Banzai is an absolute gem in that its worldbuilding is simply thrown at you all at once. I can definitely understand it now that I’ve seen it five times, but my first viewing was something truly special.
(Also, “so what, big deal”/the “Team March” through the LA River is one of my favorite endings. It just…works.)
I kind of wish they’d had Lithgow and the Lectroids marching as well so the whole cast could have gotten in on it. I also liked the river march ending. It had a certain comradery to it that went with the whole quirky, indie, tongue-in-cheek attitude. It said, “We know we’re out there and we’re going to be cult classic so we’re just going to enjoy the ride in the Jet Car.”
My absolute favorite Lithgow role, bar none, and that’s not his fault.
Trivia: According to Kyle Sobczak : “In Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 (published in 1964 or thereabouts) much of the narrative takes place in the immediate vicinity of Yoyodyne Systems, a SoCal aerospace & missile manufacturer. This was undoubtedly a conscious reference by the screenwriter (having attended Dartmouth, he must have been exposed to Pynchon’s work)”
While it may be true that it is a conscious reference to Pynchon, I think “having attended Dartmouth, he must have been exposed to Pynchon’s work” is a leap of logic.
By the time BB rolled around, I feel like “Yoyodyne” was like a low-key “Acme”. I can’t back this up (largely due to lack of interest) but I think the “Yoyo” in this short-lived buddy copy show:
Turned out to be short for something like “The Yoyodyne 1000” model of android.
I wrote about THE APPLE in a book about end-of-the-world movies and to have this musical suddenly decide to end with the Rapture after everything else in it was like, “Hey, you know what? Godspeed, movie. You’ve earned it.”
