10 Things to Know About The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai... (1984)

10 Things to Know About The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai

10 Fox Did Everything Short of Lighting the Movie on Fire to Keep It from Playing

I’m being hyperbolic, but the release date frenzy and desperate confusion of the release of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai certainly made it appear as if Fox was trying to dump radioactive waste without anyone knowing. Executives scuttled release dates throughout 1984, canceled wide releases and forced director D.W Richter to darn near go door-to-door across America to find an audience for Buckaroo Banzai

9 W.D’s Roadshow

You have to commend director W.D Richter, he wasn’t going to let his movie go down without a fight. This meant traveling on his own dime with the movie to various places where the film was opening so he could sit face to face with local news reporters and tell them about the movie and why audiences should give it a shot. Richter reportedly traveled to Chicago, Boston, and Cincinnati following the staggered, bedraggled opening of the movie. It ultimately didn’t keep the film from flopping but you have to respect the hustle.

8. The Film Was Over a Decade in Development

It was in the mid-70s that novelist Earl Mac Rauch began feverishly panning his mind stream for the nuggets of Buckaroo Banzai. Not long after he began writing treatments, W.D Richter paid him $1,500 to develop a feature film script that the two would work on regularly until it finally, miraculously, was made.

7 Alternate Titles

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is meant to sound like a sequel title, as if the ‘Adventures’ were an ongoing event. That feels true in the end but that wasn’t the first title. According to Earl Mac Rauch other titles included: “Find the Jetcar, Said The President” and “The Strange Case of Mr. Cigars.” And there was also a 60 page treatment under the title, “Lepers from Mars.”

6. The Villainous David Begelman

In professional wrestling a favorite storytelling trope has a shorthand title of ‘heel turn.’ The term is used to describe when a seemingly heroic character becomes a villain with a sudden, shocking turn. If there was ever a Hollywood heel turn, what David Begelman did to the makers of Buckaroo Banzai would qualify.

Begelman, a former studio executive turned independent producer, helped finance Buckaroo Banzai to the tune of between $16 and $18 million dollars through Sherwood Productions. Then, as the film went through production, Begelman ‘turned heel,’ demanding changes and interfered regularly, often over meaningless details like criticizing the color of Buckaroo Banzai’s sunglasses. Begelman made production and post-production a nightmare and it got worse.

5 Embezzlement Allegations

According to sources with the production of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, the reported $16 to 18 million dollar budget for the film had been inflated by Begelman, reporting the big numbers on the budget while keeping the actual cost of the film low, and allegedly pocketing the difference.

This used to be called 'Hollywood Accounting' or 'Creative Accounting' and the accusation against Begelman had real legs to it. During Begelman’s time as a studio chief at Columbia in the late 70s, he’d done this exact scheme before only to have a forged signature on a check, made out to actor Cliff Robertson, but never actually given to the actor, accidentally expose Begelman’s embezzlement.

This led to nothing by the way, Begelman left Columbia and walked right into independent production and a deal with another studio. Hence how he was still in a position to do this all over again on Buckaroo Banzai. Allegedly.

4 Weird Marketing Never Connected with Audiences

Several different attempts were made to find a marketing hook for Buckaroo Banzai. Perhaps the strangest was a quote quiz asking audiences to identify who said what either in the movie or in reviews of the film from Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Time Magazine.

3 Film Critics Kept the Movie from Being Buried

Speaking of reviews, according to director W.D Richter, speaking to the Journal Herald in Dayton, Ohio, in November 1984, Fox was ready to scrap the movie and write it off as a loss after the film tested poorly among a group of movie theater reps who truly did not understand the movie. Then, film critics saw it and the reviews were rousing, enough to populate newspaper ads across the country that would help keep Buckaroo Banzai opening in new markets through November of 1984. In the end, nothing worked to save Buckaroo Banzai, but many tried.

2 Peter Weller Signed Three Picture Deal

Hopes were high for Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. An interview with Weller in August of 1984, around the major market release of Buckaroo included Weller confirming that he’d signed on for two sequels, one of which would have been the one teased at the end of Across the 8th Dimension, Buckaroo Banzai vs the World Crime Syndicate which would have featured a villain named Hanoi Zan.

1 What Happened to the Soundtrack?

A movie about a man who is a scientist, test pilot, brain surgeon, and rock star needs a soundtrack. It needs a little music that might help communicate the kind of cool that the character needs to attract an audience. Synth master Michael Boddicker was ready to deliver such a soundtrack, featuring a score and original songs with star Peter Weller. And then, nothing.

Speaking to Starlog Magazine in 1984 director W.D Rauch said several record companies were ready to take on the soundtrack for Buckaroo but producers, including David Begelman, kept asking for more and more in return for the soundtrack rights. They haggled for so long that the movie came out, underperformed at the box office, and record companies backed out of the project.

Fan mock ups of a soundtrack exist but no official release has ever occurred or likely ever will despite the cult fame of the movie.