"Wayne's World 2" does not get its due as one of the better sequels ever made. It's a somewhat bizarre take on Wayne & Garth, but still has its moments, such as this scene with Harry Shearer, the Grover Cleveland of Saturday Night Live. He was a castmember in 1979-80, the fifth and final year of the original cast, joining just after John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd left. According to the excellent book "Saturday Night" (Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, 1985), producer Lorne Michaels convinced Shearer to keep the hiring under wraps so as not to upset fans and seem like a usurper/replacement for the departed Blues Brothers. By season's end, when everyone left, Shearer made an appeal to the network to take over the reins with members of his social circle, plus his former comedy troupe, The Credibility Gap. That COULD have meant SNL would have been run in 1980-81 by Shearer, David L. Lander, Michael McKean, Rob Reiner, Albert Brooks and Billy Crystal. Wow, who would want that?! Shearer felt the show lacked professionalism and a commitment to craft, although season 5 also suffered from a lot of burn-out.
In season 9 (1983-84), Spinal Tap (including Shearer) came back as a musical guest under then-producer Dick Ebersol. Shearer felt the environment was much-improved from four years earlier, and agreed to come back as a castmember that fall. Unfortunately, he had been fooled by assuming that cast and musical guests were treated the same (wrong; the latter got much better treatment). He left by the middle of season 10. During the SNL40 celebration, he was asked if he was upset with Lorne Michaels. Shearer said that "loathes" is a better word. Wow.
Somehow, though, he agreed
to this cameo in the Michaels-produced "Wayne's World 2."
It's actually based on a sketch Shearer wrote (and appeared in) on SNL, on December 8, 1979, with host
Howard Hesseman. #SNL4kidz
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