There are several surefire ways to reveal someone’s character. Do they like pineapple on pizza? Do they think it’s acceptable to talk in the cinema? And finally, how do they feel about the 1984 cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension?
This misshapen, esoteric and utterly magical science-fiction romp made less of a splash on release than it should have, but since then it has become a kind of celluloid speakeasy; a real “if you know, you know” kind of movie. It all revolves around one man: Buckaroo Banzai, played by Peter Weller.
“For the life of me, I gotta tell you, Paul … I got no idea what the film is about to this day,” Weller says, on Zoom from Los Angeles. “I know it’s about a polymath guy, a brain surgeon, a gunslinger … but I still don’t know what it’s about! Kevin Smith once called it ‘a genre-defying one-off’. He said, it’s not action, it’s not science fiction, it’s not comedy: it’s all those things. It’s about race, it’s about social science, it’s about politics, existence, existentialism … Jeez, man! All I knew was that I dug the idea of playing a gun-slinging brain surgeon!”
Buckaroo Banzai is all of those things and more. He’s a renaissance man. The thinking man’s action hero. As the film opens, we see him finishing up a gruelling, pioneering neurosurgical procedure alongside his colleague Dr Sidney “New Jersey” Zweibel (Jeff Goldblum). Before long, he’s downing tools to carry out an incredibly dangerous experiment in his jet car, which is fitted with an “oscillation overthruster” (imagine the flux capacitor after a run-in with a garbage disposal). The world watches on as Buckaroo, equal parts Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Adam Ant, burns towards a waiting mountain … and drives through it.
From there, it gets even weirder, as Buckaroo and his friends battle a surreal interdimensional threat. But the real threat was from within: studio interference was rife during the film’s legendarily fraught production process, resulting in an uneven, lumpy film – all part of its charm – made by bewilderingly talented people, on and off camera. 20th Century Fox even fired the renowned director of photography Jordan Cronenweth (the man who gave Blade Runner its unique look) halfway through the production.
“Jordan was a maestro, man,” says Weller, shaking his head. “Like Rembrandt. It’s not like our second DOP was a hack or anything, but Jordan was a one-off. You talk to Ridley [Scott], and he’ll say, ‘That guy was a painter.’ Just look at the ambience of his scenes in the film, man. Look at the colour. Look at the softness.”
But for every off-screen battle, there were cast members giving career-best performances to make up for it. And what a cast: Weller is best known for playing Alex Murphy in Robocop, but his warmth and wit as Buckaroo is a thing to behold. The character was a patchwork of Weller’s personal heroes: “I was a real aficionado of Adam Ant and Hendrix, and jazz guys. There were these amazing people who I rolled in there. Einstein. Elia Kazan.”
John Lithgow’s turn as the villainous Dr Emilio Lizardo is halfway between Mussolini and Gumby – a fervent, explosive maelstrom of idiocy. Goldblum is at his effortless best, wowing us long before Dr Ian Malcolm unbuttoned his shirt. Ellen Barkin’s Penny Priddy is buttery and strange, and Christopher Lloyd’s small but manic bad-guy performance sings.
But being released in cinemas at the same time as Ghostbusters, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock meant that Buckaroo Banzai never stood a chance. Did the production woes, the screw-ups, the lay-offs, the box office, sour the memory of it all for Weller? He lights a cigar and mulls over the question.
“The way it’s lasted, and the way people love it, is wonderful. Even when I didn’t know what it was about,” he says. “I was on a golf course with the wonderful Dennis Haysbert, who said, ‘Peter, it’s my favourite film.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He says, ‘Peter, it’s about love.’ And it is! It truly is. And that’s what people love about it. It is about surrender, and happiness, and wondrous, wondrous science. And it brought me a lot of love from people who are friends to this day – I just had lunch with Goldblum in Florence, and a great time with Chris Lloyd in Japan. Lithgow, I haven’t seen in a little while, but he’s still a great pal.”
In the years since the film came out, Weller has become, much like Buckaroo himself, a renaissance man. He acts, of course. But he also directs, is an accomplished musician (he and Goldblum performed together for years) and, in a very literal turn, now has a PhD in Italian renaissance art history. We talk about renaissance art for a full half hour, Weller flourishing his cigar as he takes me through a thrilling, byzantine travelogue of times past. We might not need a Buckaroo Banzai sequel – not when Weller embodies the spirit of Buckaroo so fully himself.
Buckaroo Banzai is available to stream on Amazon Prime. Peter Weller’s new book, Leon Battista Alberti in Exile: Tracing the Path to the First Modern Book on Painting, comes out 1 May
