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Q: What song does Garth whistle when he and Wayne are lying on the car by the airport in "Wayne's World"? It's familiar but I can't figure it out.

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Author: 
Adam Thomlison / TV Media

The familiar tune Garth is whistling is the original "Star Trek" theme. He offers a fairly broad hint right afterward when he says, "Sometimes I wish I could boldly go where no man's gone before. But I'll probably stay in Aurora." Aurora is, of course, the suburban-Illinois setting of the smash-hit 1992 film.

This seemingly random inclusion makes more sense in the context of the film. The scene begins with a shot of the starry night sky and the whistling, which is note-perfect and has studio-sounding effects on it, so that for a second we aren't sure if they're watching "Star Trek" on television or if the film has suddenly turned into sci-fi or something. Only after a full bar of the song has gone by does the shot switch to the boys on the hood of Garth's car, and we realize it's a very terrestrial scene after all.

"Wayne's World" was, of course, a very music-heavy film. The main characters are forever going to concerts or listening to music (as in the famous headbanging scene to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," which occurs in the same car), or else performing it themselves, either by whistling or by playing guitar. Indeed, film scholars Arthur Knight and Pamela Robertson Wojcik, in their book "Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music," go so far as to say that "Wayne's World" "could be seen as a reinvention of the musical."

The film's soundtrack was a massive hit, though Garth's rendition of the "Star Trek" theme didn't make the cut. It was certified double-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, selling more than two million units, and hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.

 

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