Your ONLY hope.

Okay, imagine you are a big shot Hollywood producer, somebody like Brian Grazer. (I'll wait here while you go and do that Edward Scissorhands thing to your hair.) Imagine that you go into the office of the soulless corporate fiends that typically infest major Hollywood studios. (Note to Lincoln: When we submit our script, remind me to go back and delete this line. Thanks.)

“It'll be great,” you whimper at the studio head, “Mad scientists, government conspiracies with good aliens who look like Rastas and bad aliens who run an aircraft company, the President in traction, jet-powered Ford pickups that drive through mountains, a smokin' hot chick, and our hero is a neurosurgeon-slash-rock star-slash-martial artist-slash-particle physicist who rides a Harley.”

“I like it,” purrs the studio head, as he selects a live baby duckling from a bowl on the desk and considers it for a moment, before consuming it whole. “Who's the hot chick?”

“Ellen Barkin.”

“I really like it,” grins the studio head, revealing three rows of teeth. “Who's your cast?”

“Well, I'd like Peter Weller as the hero.”

“Good, okay. Peter Weller and Ellen Barkin. Who else?

“Um, okay.” Emboldened, you pull out a list. “Jeff Goldblum.”

“Hmm.” The studio head pulls out a calculator and starts tapping buttons.

“John Lithgow. Christopher Lloyd. Dan Hedaya. Pepe Serna. Vincent Schiavelli. Rosalind Cash. Robert Ito. Clancy Brown. Carl Lumbly. And-”

“Stop.” The studio head tosses the calculator on the table. “Do you have any idea what that cast would cost? Forget it.”

Fortunately for all of us, this conversation all took place back in 1984, before any of these people were famous, and one of my favorite movies of all time, Buckaroo Banzai: Across The Eighth Dimension, was brought to life.

No matter where you go, there you are.

The plot is pretty difficult to follow, which was possibly a clever ploy by director W. D. Richter and writer Earl Mac Rauch to get thousands of young dorks across the nation to rent and re-rent the movie multiple times and to get people to hunt down the truly amazingly well-written novelization. I borrowed Angelo DeFazio's copy, and I think he eventually had to break into my apartment to get it back. Let's look on eBay and see if we can find one now... Nope, couldn't even find one.

Let's have a go at the plot anyway. The film opens on the Bonneville Salt Flats, where the amazing Jet Car, fitted with the secret Oscillation Overthruster, is waiting for the arrival of Dr Buckaroo Banzai, who is performing emergency brain surgery on an Inuit patient with the help of Dr. Sidney Zwiebel, a dancing, piano-playing neurosurgeon from New Jersey who fancies himself a cowboy...

Oh hell, I give up. That's literally the first three minutes of the film right there, and it's already completely out of hand. Buckaroo has yet to drive the Jet Car through a mountain, figure out a way to see the evil Red Lectroids, play “Rocket 88” in front of the most heavily armed nightclub in New Jersey, save the girl who is the spitting image of his dead wife, pursue and then escape from the Red Lectroids, figure out a way to communicate with the Black Lectroids...

Jeez. See? This thing is a crazy, pulp-magazine, roundhouse kick to the head of a movie, and it really must be seen to be believed.

The good guys.

The characters are so insane as to beggar belief. Peter Weller's character, a half-Japanese genius who wields aphorisms as easily as he does a Strat or a pair of matching Navy Colt pistols, could almost be called perfect. Except that there's another character named “Perfect Tommy” already, one of the Hong Kong Cavaliers, Buckaroo's gang of research assistants/backing band/fire team that follows him everywhere in a giant double-decker bus...

Man. Sorry.

The bad guys.

The bad guys are hilarious and quirky as well. John Lithgow plays Emilio Lizardo, whose brain was taken over by Lord John Whorfin, the leader of the Reds, in an interdimensional accident years ago. Christopher Lloyd plays John Bigboote. The other characters are John Many Johns, John Parker, John Emdall, John Small Berries, John Ya Ya...

Damn. Did it again.

The hot chick.

In addition to everything else, this movie is a perfect time capsule of that fabulous decade known as the Eighties, when gangs of roving mutants roamed a post-apocalyptic landscape, searching for oil and getting in crossbow fights with Ronald Reagan and Mr T, while Alf made wisecracks from the passenger seat...

Okay, again, I seem to have drifted a bit. I'm not sure how the Eighties actually went, as I was working full-time and going to college and sleeping thirty-five hours straight on the weekends.

But that's sort of the point. I watched Buckaroo make a go of it as a surgeon, a physicist, a rock star, and an adventurer, and I thought to myself, “Hey, I can do everything, too,” and I nearly wore myself out trying.

It took years for me to realize a couple of things, namely that: A)Buckaroo Banzai is a fictional character; and B) they haven't made a sequel in the past twenty-five years. So I slowed down to doing only fifteen or twenty things at a time, and things have been much easier since then, as long as I have decent WiFi and my iPhone is charged up and there's fuel in the truck. (Sigh.)

Oh, and finally, this movie has the coolest end titles EVER. Behold: