Buckaroo Banzai End Credits

[Berin Kinsman]

[Berin Kinsman]

That's actually Billy Travers, the youngest of the Hong Kong Cavaliers (18 at the time of the movie). Was recruited by the NSA at age 14 after hacking into the NSA and CIA mainframes using an Atari 800. In 1985, his fiancee ran off with a trucker named Jack Burton and broke his heart.

The age is close. I was 20 when the movie was released in theaters.

I used to live in Pennsylvania, across the river from Holland Township, New Jersey, where the Banzai Institute is located in the novelization. That's also where Earl Mac Rauch, creator of BB, lived. I could actually see his house from my girlfriend's house. Yes, I knew where Earl Mac Rauch lived.

[Sir Golgotha, KEoPS]

I had heard that before, that Big Trouble in Little China and Buckaroo Banzai were set in the same universe. Why were these properties never licensed for an rpg? It was the eighties after all.

I also don't know why the end credits are made out of the finest grade awesome. I thought it might be the catchy whistling tune, but I just re-watched it without sound--it's still a win. If you think about it as part of the screenplay, it has to sound stupid, but the end result is the Best Closing Credits Ever.

[Berin Kinsman]

W.D. Richter, who directed Buckaroo Banzai, was the screenwriter for Big Trouble in Little China. Urban legend has is that the script for the unfilmed Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League (teased at the end of BB) was retooled into BTLC. In truth, there's a lot of evidence that John Carpenter had the idea for BTLC long before BB was filmed, but it's arguable that Richter stole a lot of elements from the BB sequel and worked them in. Lo Pan is nearly identical to the way Buckaroo's arch-nemesis Hanoi Xan was portrayed in the novel, but then again most generic "Yellow Menace" villains are interchangeable stereotpyes.

The legendary "leaked pages" of the World Crime League script allegedly have Jack Burton (or a trucker with a similar name) as one of the Hong Kong Cavaliers (or a Blue Blaze Irregular) who stumbles across Lo Pan/Hanoi Xan's plot. Gracie Law (the Kim Catrall character) was supposed to be Penny Priddy, and Wang Chi was supposed to be Buckaroo Banzai.

At least, that's the urban legend. A lot of people claim to have seen the script, yet it's not plastered all over the internet. I find its existence dubious. BB is Earl Mac Rauch's character and he was the one set to write the screenplay, not Richter. While it's possible there was a scriptment, BB bombed at the box office before anyone would have ordered a sequel screenplay. It is entirely possible that Richter lifter ideas and incorporated them, but it's equally possible that fans took information in the BB novel (which discussed Hanoi Xan and the World Crime League at length), used Richter as the means to bisociate the two, and projected their hopes and dreams upon BTLC.

[Sir Golgotha, KEoPS]

If only these movies were only connected in Tommy Westphall's mind... I'm starting a new religion, Westphallianism, where all imagination is linked together within the divine. No remake, no sequel, nothing, and yet the Banzai Institute alone is far too big and important for just one movie, no matter how awesome. Whether or not BTiLC is the sequel--officially or tenuously--it becomes so in the mind of the fan, filing that necessary role. As some old French guy said, "If Jack Burton did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him."

[Deidzoeb]

I saw Big Trouble in Little China on sale and I'm planning to get it tonight. Please don't anyone tell me that Richter's screenplay for Home for the Holidays was supposed to be part three in the BB series or I'll have to go get that too.

[Berin Kinsman]

[Xose Lucero]

I finally saw it and it was so completely up my alley I can't believe I missed it for twenty-four years. It managed to be surprisingly nuanced and subtle while being zany, it crammed shots and scenes full of tiny details while being careless with continuity, and it appeared to be totally unaware that it was a comedy which, of course, made it a laugh riot. And it had about twenty actors I like and a Yakov Smirnoff cameo (as himself?). Not to mention, the end titles theme sucks so bad it becomes awesome.

On the subject of characters appearing out of sequence: I could swear the voice demanding an electromagnetic field reading prior to the supersonic pan-dimensional jetcar launch (built from a Ford pickup, lol) belongs to New Jersey, but he's elsewhere assisting Buckaroo with surgery.


Okay, I've seen it. Are you going to let me out of the cellar now?

[Berin Kinsman]

You're back in the will.

[Lon Sarver]

Welcome to civilization.

[Hank Harwell]

The shroud has been removed.

[Deidzoeb]

End titles theme sucks??? You're back out of the will! It sounds a little like "Linus and Lucy."

[Xose Lucero]

From The Onion: