A Real Life Wayne’s World

How well do you recall the actual plot of the movie Wayne’s World?

In the movie, friends Wayne and Garth host a public access TV show focused on rock music and entertainment. It catches the eye of a local TV producer who helps them move the show from public access to commercial television. The movie came out in 1992. Five years later a similar public access show would make that leap for real.

Real quick, for those of you who don’t remember public access TV, it worked like this: Cable companies had regulatory requirements to serve the community. One way they did that was by setting aside a channel — and sometimes also a low-budget TV studio — for public use. In the pre-YouTube days, the idea of being on other people’s screens was still novel, and through public access, anyone could have a TV show. Some people used it for community news or religious programming. And some people used it for entertainment.

In New York City, beginning in 1986, there was a public access show called Beyond Vaudeville. It was hosted by Frank Hope (a character played by Rich Brown), a quirky, affable, nerdy guy with an interest in offbeat and unusual talent, and his mostly-mute sidekick David Greene.

In each episode, Frank brought on some of New York’s most lovable eccentric characters and celebrities. If you’re a certain kind of person, you’ll recognize a lot of the people who appeared, many as recurring guests, including:

• “Grandpa” Al Lewis

• Tiny Tim

• Fred Willard

• Soleil Moon Frye

• Larry Storch

• Ron Palillo

• Pat Cooper

• Bobby “Boris” Pickett

• Joyce Randolph

• Joe Franklin

• Lady Aberlin (from Mr. Rogers)

• Barry Williams

• Wavy Gravy

• William M. Gaines

• Barbara Feldon

And if you are that certain kind of person, you’d be just as intrigued by some of the oddball personalities you’d never heard of before who made appearances like:

• Professional nose-whistler Jim Grosso

• Marilyn Monroe conspiracy expert M. Vinson Hayes

• Rocky Horror Picture Show Fan Club president Sal Piro

• “Underdog Lady” Suzanne Muldowney

• Female Elvis impersonator Dee Nack

• UFO abductee Gertrude Adams

• Driving instructor Bert Rapp

• Kerima the bellydancer

While “Frank” interviewed some of New York’s most delightful misfits, David sat there quietly and a bit creepily while puppets and other distractions popped up throughout the episode. It was weird and occasionally uncomfortable, but mostly too fascinating to look away.

Originally created by Rich as a stage show, the move to public access meant it could be more widely seen by anyone with cable. And eventually, it caught the eye of MTV.

Just like how Wayne’s World moved from pubic access to commercial television in the movie, so did Beyond Vaudeville in real life. It launched on MTV in 1997 under the new name of Oddville, MTV.

Oddville, MTV kept largely the same format as Beyond Vaudeville, but with the addition of Melissa Gabriel as an announcer slash second pseudo-sidekick (because every MTV show needs a pretty girl?). And now the show booked more contemporary stars among the eccentrics. So on the same episode with Haley the Human Bowling Ball, you also had an interview with Stephen Baldwin. Accordionist Nicole Pinto appeared on the same episode as Bloodhound Gang. Tara DeLong the Closed-Mouth Singer appeared on the same episode as Henry Rollins.

Some more recognizable names who appeared on MTV alongside novelty acts like a lightbulb eater, grape catcher, burp master and an animal cracker expert include:

• “Weird Al” Yankovic

• Alan Cumming

• Jessica Biel

• Smash Mouth

• Kathy Griffin

• Dave Atell

• Doug E. Doug

• Kevin Smith

• Hanson

• Ween

• Jill Sobule

• Joe Pantoliano

Variety described it as “stupid human tricks on methamphetamines.” The New York Times compared the show to Ed Sullivan and described a delightful little moment typical of Frank’s interview style:

Oddville, MTV ran for 65 episodes. Rich Brown moved on, becoming a TV producer for shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live, and Jay Leno’s recent revival of You Bet Your Life.

Meanwhile, he actively maintains both the Beyond Vaudeville Facebook page and the YouTube Channel, a rabbit hole of old episodes from both the public access and MTV runs, along with recordings of the original stage show and other live appearances.

He also occasionally does live stream interviews with some of his original guests and other experts who shed more light on these people and moments from cultural history.

But here’s what kills me: Most of these videos have views just in the hundreds or low thousands, and the channel itself only has about 3,500 subscribers. This is a treasure trove of pop culture nostalgia and nobody knows it’s there!

So if you’re the certain kind of person that this form of entertainment appeals to, go subscribe and check it out! You can’t go wrong picking pretty much any random video as a starting point.

Like, say, this one featuring Lady Aberlin from Mr. Rogers, Yankees superfan Freddie Schulman, the Florence Miller Dancers, and a flamingo dance that’s so bizarre I can’t bring myself to even describe it:

And that brings another edition of the newsletter to a close. If anybody at MTV is reading and would like to have me write a new “Ironic Sans, MTV” newsletter, get in touch. I clearly have my finger on the pulse of today’s youth. Skibidi.

Somewhat related, if you haven’t seen it yet, is a video I made about another oddity of New York City around this same time period: the celebrity voices in taxis that everybody hated. If you like old-school celebrities and 90s/2000s NYC, check it out.

As always, thanks for reading! See you next time!

David

P.S. There’s a completely unrelated but pretty cool thing I learned about right before publishing this newsletter, so I thought I’d add it here at the bottom as a little bonus for those of you who made it this far. It’s a huge collection of screenplays of unproduced superhero movies.