Widely regarded to be the best movie adapted from a Saturday Night Live sketch (although that’s a low bar to clear), Wayne’s World stars Mike Myers and Dana Carvey as Wayne and Garth, a pair of fun-loving metalheads who have their own public access show and refuse to grow up. Although the studio had little faith in the movie, it was an instant success.
It’s one of the rare movies that has the qualities of a cult classic but actually managed to break through and captivate mainstream audiences, thus making it a regular classic. So, here are 10 Excellent Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Wayne’s World.
Wayne Campbell wasn’t supposed to have a sidekick
When Mike Myers first created the character of Wayne Campbell at Second City, he didn’t have a sidekick. And when Myers got hired at Saturday Night Live and he pitched the character as the focus of a recurring sketch, he intended to keep it that way.
But the SNL team felt that, since Wayne’s humor targeted such a niche market and Myers was just starting out, the idea was risky. Dana Carvey was a bigger star than Myers at the time, so the SNL producers pushed Myers to give Wayne a comic foil, and the character of Garth Algar was born.
Alice Cooper wasn’t expecting to do a monologue
Alice Cooper’s cameo appearance in Wayne’s World features a monologue about the history of Milwaukee and its name: “Actually, it’s pronounced ‘mill-e-wah-que,’ which is Algonquin for ‘the good land.’” Wayne hilariously replies, “I was not aware of that.”
When Cooper came onto the set, he was expecting to do a musical performance for the film and maybe have one line of dialogue. He was surprised to find that he had a monologue to learn. The cameo brilliantly plays on the fact that Cooper is known for being a history buff outside his musical career.
Garth’s overbite gave Dana Carvey jaw pain
Dana Carvey based his performance as Garth on his brother, Brad. While he was promoting the movie in interviews, he mentioned that putting on Garth’s overbite in every take gave him serious jaw pain.
After each day of shooting wrapped, he spent the nights with bags of ice held against the sides of his face to alleviate the pain. When the movie became a huge box office success and a sequel was greenlit, it probably didn’t come as good news to Carvey.
Penelope Spheeris hated Mike Myers’ diva behavior
Director Penelope Spheeris really wasn’t a fan of Mike Myers’ on-set behavior. Apparently, one day, he arrived at craft services and found that they only had butter and not margarine, and he flipped the table over in a blind rage and retreated to his trailer for hours. To try to temper his diva attitude, Spheeris assigned her daughter as Myers’ assistant to stop him from leaving the set in the middle of a shoot.
She explained, “To this day, I have this image of my daughter sitting on this little cooler, looking at me, like, ‘Mom, I f*****g hate you.” Spheeris’ feud with Myers led to the actor icing her out of directing the sequel.
Tia Carrere sang all of her own vocals on the movie
Tia Carrere turned down a role on Baywatch in order to play Cassandra in this film. Carrere did all of her own vocal work on the songs featured in the movie.
In fact, some of the cover songs she did for Wayne’s World, including Sweet’s “The Ballroom Blitz,” were deemed so great that they ended up appearing on the film’s soundtrack.
It was tough to translate the movie’s slang-driven dialogue for foreign markets
Since most of the dialogue in Wayne’s World is made up of obscure American slang, translating it for foreign markets proved to be a nightmare. In many international versions of the film, there are lines that have virtually no connection to the original.
For example, Wayne’s line “And monkeys might fly out of my butt!” as a response to something unbelievable was translated into Spanish as “When Judgment Day comes!”
Mike Myers directed a documentary about Alice Cooper’s manager after meeting him on this movie
When Mike Myers looked into licensing some of Alice Cooper’s music for the movie, he wanted to use “I’m Eighteen” and “School’s Out,” two of the iconic rocker’s most famous hits. But Cooper’s manager, Shep Gordon, wanted him to use a track from the new album: “Feed My Frankenstein.”
Following this meeting, Myers and Gordon became close friends, and Myers even went on to direct a documentary about Gordon called Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon.
Dana Carvey actually performed Garth’s drum solo in the music store
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Garth’s drum solo in the music store – which lasts for 36 seconds (a long time when you’re playing the hell out of a drum set) – was performed by someone other than Dana Carvey, and touched up with some movie magic.
But Carvey actually played the solo himself. Carvey previously performed a drum solo as Garth in one of the SNL sketches that Wayne’s World was based on.
The car hood scene was entirely improvised
This movie was shot over the course of 34 days, and at the end of it, the cast and crew were exhausted and just wanted it to be over. The final scene they were shooting was Wayne and Garth talking on the hood of their car.
Since everyone wanted to get it over with, Mike Myers and Dana Carvey ad-libbed the whole thing and just went with whatever they came up with. They had to keep improvising lines while they waited for an actual airplane to fly over the car, which is difficult to choreograph. The plane seen from below is actually a four-foot-long model.
Mike Myers fought the studio to use “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Mike Myers had to fight the studio to use Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” in the car scene in Wayne’s World. The studio was pushing for a Guns N’ Roses song instead, and Myers even threatened to quit the movie if they didn’t use the Queen track. The scene ended up becoming iconic, and the movie is credited with re-popularizing the song.
Dana Carvey apparently didn’t learn the lyrics to the song before shooting the scene, which is why Garth isn’t following along with everybody else. However, this sort of suits the character more than if he was singing along.
