What information is there about the Making of Buckaroo Banzai book?
Dan Berger (editor of the World Watch One newsletter) and I (Sean Murphy, maintainer of the Buckaroo Banzai FAQ) are working on a Making of Buckaroo Banzai book! The publication goal for the Making of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension book is in 2029 which would be just in time for the 45th anniversary of the film.
Tbe process officially began on February 20, 2022 when we sent an email to director W. D. “Rick” Richter and screenwriter Earl Mac Rauch to see if they were on board our idea. Luckily, they both gave us a thumbs up.
Rick kindly opened his personal archive to provide a wealth of production materials from 40 years ago. In addition to his materials, we have acquired production information from the J. Michael Riva collection (courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library), the British Film Institute, and the Dianne Wickes/Steve Lee Collection (Courtesy of the Hollywood Sound Museum). We’ve created a spreadsheet to help us keep track of all the materials that have dates on them. We want the book to be as accurate as possible. Right now the spreadsheet covers the 1970’s thru 1990 and consists of over 1,300 lines of memos, articles, scripts, and notes about the creation of, making of, and aftermath of Buckaroo Banzai in theaters.
We've been fortunate to interview the following production people and actors so far, in alphabetical order by last name:
- Michael Boddicker (Music Soundtrack Composer)
- Neil Canton (Producer)
- Terry Erdmann (Fox Publicity—Conventions)
- Jim Ferguson (Convention Presenter)
- Mike Fink (Special Visual Effects Supervisor)
- Lee Goldberg (Starlog Writer)
- Damon Hines (Scooter Lindley)
- Alan Howarth (Special Synthesized Sound Effects)
- Dennis E. Jones (Associate Producer)
- David Linck (Senior Publicist at Fox)
- John Lithgow (Dr. Emilio Lizardo / Lord John Whorfin)
- Carl Lumbly (John Parker)
- Dan Lupovitz (Assistant to Mr. Canton and Mr. Richter)
- Michael Nathanson (Executive in Charge of Production)
- Earl Mac Rauch (Screenwriter)
- David McDonnell (Starlog Editor)
- Denise Okuda (Scenic Artist and Computer and Video Supervisor, World Watch One Newsletter Director)
- Mike Okuda (Star Trek Graphic Designer and Scenic Artist)
- W. D. “Rick” Richter (Director)
- Aggie Rodgers (Costume Design)
- Anne Thompson (Unit Publicist)
- Dianne Wickes (Fox Publicity Secretary/Founder of the World Watch One newsletter).
We continue to work to secure interviews with Peter Weller (Buckaroo Banzai), Ellen Barkin (Penny Priddy), Jeff Goldblum (New Jersey), Christopher Lloyd (John Bigbooté), Clancy Brown (Rawhide), and others. Luckily, even if we are unable to make these interviews happen, we have a lot of older interviews they did to pull from and get their thoughts on the film.
We will be launching a website dedicated to the process of writing the book so that fans can follow along on our journey and we'll let you know here when the site is ready to launch.
This page was last updated on July 6th, 2025.
Maintained by Sean Murphy [figment@figmentfly.com]