{"id":2195,"date":"2011-01-19T12:13:37","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T17:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/?p=2195"},"modified":"2024-03-09T08:16:52","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T13:16:52","slug":"geek-cred-across-the-8th-dimension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2011\/01\/19\/geek-cred-across-the-8th-dimension\/","title":{"rendered":"Geek Cred Across the 8th Dimension"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was 1984 and the Star Wars<\/strong><\/em> saga had finished up. I couldn’t get too worked up about the Star Trek<\/strong><\/em> films which were hit-or-miss. Indiana Jones<\/em><\/strong> was doused pretty quickly with the overstuffed second film. What else was there?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I was in a film class in art school, and the teacher was trying to work up the enthusiasm to talk to his class about the art of editing. He didn’t get too far; decided to phone it in and let us go early so we could catch Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope<\/strong><\/em> which was reissued at the time and playing in an art house theater. I knew about the film and thought it was lousy as far as learning anything about editing being that Hitchcock tried to film it all in one continuous take. There’s no editing in it! So I went to see The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension<\/strong><\/em><\/a> instead.<\/p>\n

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is not a great film, but it’s a goofy fun one. If you’re not familiar with it, the movie is about a brilliant scientist\/musician played by Peter Weller who fights crime along with his fellow adventurers and band mates The Hong Kong Cavaliers. The group saves the world from an alien invasion led by a hyperactive John Lithgow who has a wonderful time chewing up the scenery. It’s like Doc Savage crash-landed in the 80s with a whole lot of hair gel and shoulder pads thrown in. It seemed like it was on the cutting edge at the time. Now it looks kind of like a Duran Duran video.<\/p>\n

The movie was a flop. It was probably too weird for audiences at the time, and the whole thing desperately needed a big action sequence which it never delivered, but it had its fans, and I was one of them. There was a fan club that printed a newsletter and provided the sad little tin button above. It was no where near as professionally done as the Star Wars Fan Club, but it had its followers concerned about the continued adventures of Dr. Banzai. We were hoping that with enough of a following we could convince studios that sequels would be made. If we applied enough pressure, Buckaroo Banzai vs. The World Crime League <\/strong><\/em>– the unfilmed followup mentioned during the end credits – would see the light of day!
\n<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The fan club members were known as The Blue Blaze Irregulars<\/strong><\/em>. My code name was Bazooka Joe.<\/p>\n

There were probably some valid reasons why I didn’t get married until I was in my 30s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was 1984 and the Star Wars saga had finished up. I couldn’t get too worked up about the Star Trek films which were hit-or-miss. Indiana Jones was doused pretty quickly with the overstuffed second film. What else was there?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[120],"tags":[255,258,197,193,259,196,5809,256,205,257],"class_list":["post-2195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curious-clutter","tag-255","tag-button","tag-fan-club","tag-geek","tag-geek-cred","tag-movie","tag-original-team-banzai-button","tag-peter-weller","tag-street-cred","tag-the-adventures-of-buckaroo-banzai-across-the-8th-dimension"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1ed1x-zp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2125,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2010\/12\/28\/the-geek-cred-holiday-special\/","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":0},"title":"The Geek Cred Holiday Special","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"December 28, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In between Christmas and New Year's still counts as the holidays, right? I uncovered the first patch that came with the package of swag from The Star Wars Fan Club. You can see what you got in glorious black-and-white halftones HERE. I was amazed at how crude the embroidery was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Holiday"","block_context":{"text":"Holiday","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/holiday\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/1st-SW-patch.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1960,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2010\/12\/07\/geek-cred-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":1},"title":"Geek Cred","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"December 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, I was among the first wave of fan club members back in 1977. I used to carry this in my wallet as if that was going to grant me entree into special or unusual events or situations sort of like members of the old Playboy club flashing a membership\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Curious Clutter"","block_context":{"text":"Curious Clutter","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/curious-clutter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/star-wars-fan.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2155,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2011\/01\/11\/geek-cred-best-served-cold\/","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":2},"title":"Geek Cred Best Served Cold","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"January 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Shall we expect REVENGE when the Jedi RETURN? When they RETURN, are they going to dole out any REVENGE? How's Luke making out with the Bionic hand? Can he open beers without an opener? Does he still need an oven mit? Is Jedi plural or singular? This is one of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Curious Clutter"","block_context":{"text":"Curious Clutter","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/curious-clutter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/rotj.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2055,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2010\/12\/14\/geek-cred-strikes-back\/","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":3},"title":"Geek Cred Strikes Back","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"December 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I continued to be a Star Wars Fan Club member through the first three films or the sequels or Episodes IV through VI or what ever they are currently called. I like to refer to them as the good ones. Along with the monthly newsletter, fan club members also received\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Curious Clutter"","block_context":{"text":"Curious Clutter","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/curious-clutter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/SW-fan-club-info.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2509,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2011\/04\/21\/friends-of-old-geek-cred-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":4},"title":"Friends Of Old Geek Cred","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"April 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"As I de-clutter, I uncover an alarming number of membership cards for various defunct fan clubs. The one below is for FOOM also known as Friends Of Old Marvel. Membership in FOOM came with a magazine that came out once in a blue moon which I cherished. The initial membership\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Curious Clutter"","block_context":{"text":"Curious Clutter","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/curious-clutter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/grimm.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4305,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2011\/09\/15\/dd-dice\/","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":5},"title":"D&D Dice","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"September 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Geek Cred RETURNS with a scan of a little bag filled with my brother's Dungeons and Dragons dice! It's amazing to think how popular this non-computerized game was back in the 70s and early 80s. Of course, computer games consisted of simplistic shoot-and-kill games and, at the time, were no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Curious Clutter"","block_context":{"text":"Curious Clutter","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/curious-clutter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Brian's D&D Dice","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3242\/2956441416_f3e62e0ffc.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}