Hacker Cinema
Wayne's World
1992 · Film · 94 min
Part of Wayne's World Collection
Directed by Penelope Spheeris
The adventures of two amiably aimless metal-head friends, Wayne and Garth. From Wayne's basement, the pair broadcast a talk-show called "Wayne's World" on local public access television. The show comes to the attention of a sleazy network executive who wants to produce a big-budget version of "Wayne's World"—and he also wants Wayne's girlfriend, a rock singer named Cassandra. Wayne and Garth have to battle the executive not only to save their show, but also Cassandra.
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23 comments on Hacker News
This is exemplified in Wayne's World product scene. I later found out none of the companies shown in the scene had paid for their products to be in the scene. Its also one of the most iconic scenes from the movie.
I'd like to honor Rob Reiner and This is Spinal Tap by mentioning my work and other peoples' successful projects:
Jimmy Fallon, manager, and band Stillwater in the film "Almost Famous".
Ari Gold in Entourage
And Wayne's World, I would have to say.
I work at Google, and I didn't even know that there are good movies you can watch for free with a YT Premium subscription until I saw this article:
https://www.youtube.com/feed/storefront
Includes Roger Rabbit, Billy Madison, Good Will Hunting, Wayne's World, Mars Attacks, Grumpy Old Men, Osmosis Jones, the 90s TMNT movie…
In what 80s fantasy were you living in where gay people were open. Rumor was John was bisexual and Freddy getting aids in the late 80s was a huge deal. Queen's peak is around 1992 with Wayne's world. No men kissed on stage or in movies neither did women.
"College... and the Police Academy movies."
--Cassandra Wong (Tia Carrere), Wayne's World, on how she learned English
>Classic examples would be things like Apple paying to have their laptops or computers used as the props in movies. Or a car manufacturer having their vehicles shown.
Ah! Wayne's World...way (way) ahead of its time.
Ed O'Neill, who played Al Bundy, also appeared in the Wayne's World movies as the creepy donut shop manager. So there's an in-Wayneverse reason for him to be there.
Brad was, of course, the template for Garth. Dana first did the Garth voice as an impression of his brother.
I think you're being ridiculous. Like, would you want YouTube to skip over this entire scene in the Wayne's World movie?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs
Should it not let me see a product review if it was sponsored by the company that makes the product? Or only if the reviewers didn't have full editorial control?
Wherever you would want to draw the line, someone else would tell you that you drew it wrong.
Are we sure there isn't a dark forest thingy going on here?
Benjamin: You work in TV?
Mimi: No, but I watch a lot.
Benjamin: Of course you do. You're creative.
Noah: She came up with the name Noah's Arcade.
Mimi: I just opened my mouth and out it came.
Noah: You're a lucky man, Mr Vanderhoff.
- from Wayne's World, 1992
**
Mr. and Mrs. Vanderhoff were none the wiser. Even Cassandra didn't catch on until the end of the movie when she felt the similarity between Benjamin's unsolicited shoulder rub and the sensation of a literal snake slithering on her skin.
In conclusion, humans can be sneaky creatures. Especially smart ones.
Edit: clarification
ABBA is perfect background music for programming.
Their entire discography is around 3 hours which is how long I can maintain perfect focus, their songs are consistently good so that I don't have to skip bad songs, but not too good so that I stop working and start listening to song. Their songs were not in any movies I saw which means they will not bring memory of certain movie scenes (I'm looking at you Bohemian rhapsody in Wayne's world).
Not really the same vibe as what you're describing but I need to go back and watch Enemy Of The State.
Another one that seems similar to the vibe you describe is Sneakers. Hell, even Wayne's World is kinda the same vibe (in terms of their TV show).
> Instead of optimizing for fun, or a memorable experience, or an artistic vision, you are optimizing for profit, which compromises those other things.
But this has always been true of games based on whatever market pressures optimized revenue.
In the 80s arcade games, many of the classics we love today, were optimized around you feeding as many quarters as possible into a machine in order to beat it. There's even a joke about this in Wayne's World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4tmzwrdTmY
The 90s home console market has some classics but every 90s kid remembers awful games with great cover art or movie licensing.
Early 2000s is probably the peak of quality gaming: we were online enough to allow things like easy to access reviews to have a major impact on purchase decisions, while not online enough to make constant updates feasible.
After that we also saw the rise of extremely addictive MMORPGs that not only consumed people's wallets but their lives.
In the grand scheme of things I rather enjoy gacha games. Like most HNers I'm often in a position of having more money then time, and it's surprising how many relatively crappy gachas will evolve into pretty fun, well designed games over time.
> can behave like immature divas
I remember reading once that Mike Myers, while filming the movie "Wayne's World", came out of his dressing room, found that there was no non-dairy butter for his bagel on the catering table, flipped the table over in anger and returned to his dressing room for the rest of the day.
That sounds like "immature diva" behavior to me. Saying "you want me to deliver the best product possible, and I want that too. In order to do that so that we can both come out ahead, I do my best when I can focus on making sure I get every detail right" seems far less immature. But maybe that's just me?
Well, there used to be "cable access" shows where you could apply to broadcast your own program to a local audience. People today may be familiar with the concept as a plot point in the movie "Wayne's World". Of course having a Youtube channel in the modern era is a similar concept which can reach a much larger audience.
Most of the ideas behind the "YouTuber" phenomenon were present in Wayne's World, the Saturday Night Live skit/movie series about two metalheads shooting a public-access show from their basement. Doubtless Wayne's World inspired this kid, and many others like him, to do his own public-access show for real.
It also appears he's using a Video Toaster to do the titling, transitions, chroma keying, and artwork. The Video Toaster was the first device within consumer/prosumer reach to be able to do that kind of graphical effects in real time on analog video.
The early 90s were an exciting time. The seeds of "user generated" video content were being planted, and amateur video was making the jump from "home movies" to actual productions.
Ooooh, nice-talgic! I'm reminded of the fact that the menus for the DVD release of Wayne's World (1992) were an approximate replica of the Prevue Guide of the day -- a channel dedicated to (Amiga-generated!) scrolling program listings for your particular cable system. The DVD menus even displayed movie trailers in the upper half for other Paramount DVD releases, the same way Prevue did for movies showing on premium movie channels.
In addition to cable going to ads, it deserves mention that many shows today feature brand advertising right in the program.
I pay for Netflix, but go watch a Korean drama and they are clearly advertising Subway, KFC, Samsung, etc. right there in the show through the show itself.
Movies do this too, and you paid for that expensive ticket. Wayne's World even did a parody of this in 1992:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjB6r-HDDI0
Advertising is incredibly pervasive in our modern society and only going to increase.
You should check out The Decline of Western Civilization, definitely video footage of some of these shows (LA specific) in that documentary.
Edit: The full documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gc4yrcdAok
Another fun fact is the director also directed Wayne's World.
Those were quite entertaining to read through!
It really made me think that not all product placement is created equal. Sometimes there are products that don't serve a purpose just sitting somewhere really conspicuously, but something like the Snack Packs in Billy Madison never once struck me as a product placement, they just seemed like a goofy thing that a kid would get really worked up over, and it ended up being one of the most quotable lines of the movie.
And that got me thinking about product placement in general, and how much stuff on that list is just products being on screen, period. I'm sure none of that ever happens on accident, but at least for me personally, it can contribute to the art to have a certain brand be present (like the Wayne's World example).
In my own life, there are brands that evoke specific feelings like road trips, or sporting events, or drunkenness, or LAN parties, or childhood in general and seeing a generic bag of burgers on screen doesn't have the same effect as seeing a bag of McDonalds... I mean, it doesn't really matter and this is all silly conjecture, but people's reactions to seeing real life brands on screen are quite interesting!
It's a minor piece of trivia but one of the key engineers involved with the Video Toaster was Brad Carvey, the brother of Dana Carvey of SNL fame. Apparently Brad Carvey was also the inspiration for the Garth character in the Wayne's World movie.
This was a scene in Wayne's World, a major 1990s American movie set in American Suburbia.
They don't have rights to stream any decent movies
That seems hyperbolic. Just browsing around (I decided to cap this at 5 minutes):
The Interview
Forrest Gump
Major League
Pirates of Carribean
Hot Fuzz
Armageddon
Kingpin
A League of Their Own
Inglorious Basterds
Scarface
Django Unchained
Legally Blonde
E.T.
Days of Thunder
The Princess Bride
Crocodile Dundee
Clear and Present Danger
V for Vendetta
Galaxy Quest
Running Man
Big Trouble in Little China
Talladega Nights
Kill Bill (1 and 2)
Star Trek Movies (including The Wrath of Kahn)
Tommy Boy
Team America World Police
Lilo & Stitch
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Wayne's World
Clerks
Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure
Ok, but SF and NY are world capitals, tech/biz hubs. Skateboarding was part of the cultural zeitgeist for decades. The Patriot was a big budget "B" movie that featured the carnage of a bunch of innocents. I actually like the movie as a guilty pleasure. To put it another way, I wouldn't move to Minnesota because of Wayne's World.