Comedy in the ’90s, Part 1: ‘Wayne’s World’ Starts the Party 🔗

It may seem like a dumb comedy, but take a closer look and you can see that the highly referential, highly quotable tale about two slackers breaking into the TV business was made by smart people, a formula that helped launch a golden age of funny movies.

Nearly 30 years ago, a handful of smart people set out with one mission: To make some silly movies. What followed was a true golden age of Hollywood comedy that saw the arrival of megastars still with us today, a commercial explosion, and then, an eventual splintering that changed the genre forever. Welcome to Comedy in the ’90s, a six-part series released over the next three months that will document this decade-defining boom in all of its sophomoric glory. We start—where else?—in a basement in the suburbs of Chicago.