- Get The Big Picture

I owe Hunter at Slashfilm for running with this earlier today: Can there really be a documentary about Rock-afire Explosion?

If you were a kid growing up in rural Oklahoma and you would legitimately get excited about the one or two times a year your parents would take you to Tulsa and the old Showbiz Pizza Place at 71st and Memorial, then you're both a little delighted and surprised that such a movie could exist.

At least I was. Or am.

Though the technology of an animatronic band was later co-opted more successfully by Chuck E. Cheese (which was eventually owned by the same outfit, as I understand it), Showbiz Pizza Place featured a very talented band of robotic rock n' roll animals called the Rock-afire Explosion, and they'd sing songs while you ate lousy pizza and lost your parents' money playing Skee-Ball.

Of course, looking back on it now, having a large gorilla named Fats Geronimo playing piano a la Fats Domino might be a bit...oh, what's the word...um...racist?

Still, when you're ten, it beat the hell out of the animatronic Abe Lincoln at Disneyland.

There is a documentary, which they say will be released this fall. You can get more information on the MySpace page, or you can simply let the trailer speak for itself. And it speaks volumes.

Man, how 'bout that slow talker from Alabama? If he doesn't hit your stereotype then you're stereotype is done broke, daddy. And if that guy's not weird enough, why not jam to Rock-afire Explosion tearin' up the new Madonna-JT single "Four Minutes"?

Uh-huh. That's the shit right there.