By Kristy Puchko | Film | November 5, 2018 |
By Kristy Puchko | Film | November 5, 2018 |
Bohemian Rhapsody is an ambitious biopic that aims to usher audiences through the rise and hard times of the legendary British rock band Queen. Yet amid the concerts, studio sessions, and sexploits, the filmmakers made sure to drop in an allusion to the titular song’s memorable employment as the headbanging anthem of Wayne’s World.
The events shown in Bohemian Rhapsody only reach as far as the 1985 Live Aid concert, so the 1992 Mike Myers’ comedy that propelled “Bohemian Rhapsody” back onto the charts is still years away. However, Myers makes a rare screen appearance in the film as EMI record executive Ray Foster, who bickers with the band about the commercial appeal of their operatic suite that dared to be nearly six minutes long.
You can spot Myers at the 1:10 mark in this trailer, saying, “Mark these words: no one will play Queen.”
It’s a small role in the film, and not necessarily a Wayne’s World reference in and of itself, even though Myers has largely dropped out of showing his face in films since the $62 million comedy The Love Guru flopped hard. However, in a pivotal scene, his Foster and Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury argue over which song from Queen’s 1975 album A Night At The Opera would be the first single. There, Foster dismisses Mercury’s demand the single be “Bohemian Rhapsody,” declaring the track is too long for the radio and moreover not the sort of thing teens will play in their cars and “bang their heads” to. Basically, to underscore how Foster had misjudged the band’s greatest song, Bohemian Rhapsody references the song’s biggest movie moment, which reintroduced Queen to a whole new generation of fans.
That it was Myers saying it was a wink to those who recognize him under some truly scary hair prosthetics. There’s also a double layer of irony in that it was also Myers who threatened to quit Wayne’s World after the producers demanded he exchange “Bohemian Rhapsody” for Guns n’ Roses “Welcome to the Jungle,” a fight that Myers won but that also got him labeled as “difficult.”