STORY OF THE SHOT
Wayne’s World
THE ‘BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY’ HEADBANG-A-LONG.MAMMA MIA!
WORDS CHRIS HEWITT
“Galileo! Galileo! Galileo!”
A24, Getty Images
THE ORIGIN
Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers), his best friend Garth Algar (Dana Carvey) and three of their chums are driving through Aurora, Illinois, at night. “I think we’ll go with a little ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, gentlemen?” says Wayne, popping a cassette (ask your grandparents) into the stereo. As Queen’s mid-1970s hit blasts out of the speakers, they all sing along in their finest falsettos. Eventually it gets to Brian May’s crunching guitar solo, at which point the fab five headbang in unison to the music, and that’s when Wayne’s World became a cultural phenomenon. It’s a moment Myers — who also wrote Wayne’s World — pulled from his teenage years growing up in Toronto. “At one point I said, ‘I don’t want to make this movie if it’s not ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’,” he has recalled.