Back in 1985 Van Halen were one of the biggest bands in the world thanks to massive hits like ‘Jump’ and ‘Hot For Teacher’ and a live show which, notoriously, was kept in tip-top shape thanks to a rider that insisted there be no brown M&Ms backstage.
And then frontman “Diamond” David Lee Roth announced he was quitting the band and embarking on a solo career which started strong with his versions of ‘Just A Gigolo’, ‘California Girls’ and then went on to greater heights with… um…
Anyway, at the time Dave was also celebrating his imminent success as conqueror of the world of cinema as leading man in his debut film, Crazy From The Heat, which was also the name of the EP with two two aforementioned covers on it, and also his subsequent autobiography.
The film was never made – although seemingly because of management changes at CBS rather than because the DLR’s script was a pile of hot garbage – but the would-be auteur speaks highly of his cinematic talents in the aforementioned book:
I also decided that I was going to make movies, because I knew who Cecil B. DeMille was and I had a real good idea of how movies were made. Which I have come to do, in video form. They’re little movies. I wrote and directed, edited, cast and color-corrected. California Girls, Just A Gigolo, Hot for Teacher and Jump, among others. California Girls and Just a Gigolo are the Wizard Of Oz of pop video. And a dozen years later, they’re still very, very popular. There are hardly any videos by other artists that you can name; made, say, from ten years ago, that are still popular today. Go ahead, try to name some. You can’t.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMoLENWsSk
Man, check out that colour-correction! Whew! Why, it’s downright DeMilleian!
Anyway, now 90 pages of said screenplay have turned up online and it’s exactly what you’d expect from a vanity project for an insanely arrogant rock star with zero self awareness in 1985.
Jokes about underage sex? Got ’em! Loads of leering at silicon-enhanced breasts? Present! A surprising amount of farts? Oh, you better believe it!
It’s available for your perusal here, and if you feel that 80s cinema had insufficient levels of casual sexual assault and racial stereotypes then be advised that this is the passion project of your dreams!