Garth’s look feels rummaged out of a costume trunk - bedraggled blond wig, Buddy Holly glasses, mom jeans - but Carvey plays him with such feline sensitivity that l have always recognized him as a kindred spirit. It is an “SNL” sketch stretched into a movie, set amid the drama-kid fandom of Queen and Alice Cooper. “Wayne’s World” is a movie obsessed with authenticity but built on layers of artifice. He has become a kind of beacon - a guide to being a real person in a branded world. But over the years, I have been drawn to the character on a more existential level. Like Garth, I was muted by social anxiety, hypersensitive to attention and frustrated at being misunderstood my favorite part of the movie was watching Garth’s sheepish exterior crack into boiling rage. When I first watched “ Wayne’s World” as a little kid, I identified with Garth’s shy, proud demeanor. I keep that Garth moment handy, in GIF form, to deploy whenever I recognize that ambivalent impulse in myself and others, which is all of the time. “It’s like people only do things because they get paid,” Garth says. The scene culminates with Garth (Dana Carvey), Wayne’s introverted sidekick, languidly reclining in head-to-toe Reebok gear. Wayne slickly presents a Pizza Hut box, crunches a Dorito, takes a refreshing swig of Pepsi. Wayne (Mike Myers), the host of a public access show with a cult following, is grandstanding about the artistic integrity of his program when the scene spontaneously combusts into a surrealist orgy of product placement. There’s a bit in “Wayne’s World” that I think about all the time.
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