I got some great news this morning about a documentary called The Rock-afire Explosion made by Texas' own Brett Whitcomb and Bradford Thomason. The movie is about the lasting legacy of an animatronic show that went extinct back when Chuck E Cheese's finally monopolized the kids' pizza and play area industry in the 80's and early 90's. The movie's website updated today, touting a DVD release date of September 29th.
Before Chuck E took over, the other dominant chain was Showbiz Pizza Place, which I frequented with my parents and younger brother as a kid. Showbiz had pizza, skee ball, a ball pit, arcade games, and an animatronic band known as The Rock-afire Explosion, which was made up of various anthropomorphic animals singing and joking and carrying on. As a kid, I remember enjoying the show, which matched the quality in design and lifelike qualities of the dinosaurs I loved so much at the natural history museum. Girls and boys were often frightened by the gorilla (Fatz Geronimo) in the Rock-afire band, usually running screaming for their parents or the ball pit when he abruptly came to life.
I had the chance to see a workprint of the documentary last fall, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. Whitcomb and crew primarily follow superfan Chris Thrash, a small-town car salesman who owns a full "show" of the characters, and original Rock-afire creator Aaron Fechter. They both have their share of interesting (and in some cases cringe-inducing) stories to tell.
The affection for Rock-afire across "flyover country" runs deep, as evinced in various other testimonials throughout. The fervor in the voices of the people who loved, touched, or created this manufactured, computer-operated band would be right at home at some sort of religious revival. It's alternately hilarious and touching to see the affection for the ghosts in these machines.
Overall, Rock-afire was fascinating to me as a look at the aftermath of the extreme materialism and corporate greed of the 80's that gave birth to the world we live in now. It's kind of depressing that all those memories of my childhood have been contextualized for me by the rise of a consumerist culture that has no room for individual ingenuity, praising group-think above all.
I mentioned above that Chuck E Cheese "took over," which is technically accurate. Chuck E Cheese went bankrupt, and the flush-with-cash Showbiz Pizza Place bought them out, operating both chains independently for a few years. Eventually, the company decided to "unify the brand" under the Chuck E Cheese characters after various disagreements with Fechter. The most surprising part of the doc for me was watching the training videos that instructed Chuck E Cheese staff on how to retrofit and reverse engineer the Rock-afire shows into the vastly inferior (ask any kid from that era) Munch's Make-Believe Band. It was like a sci-fi horror movie where people were being retrofit into cybernetic monstrosities against their will.
The DVD features 35 minutes of bonus footage, but I'm unclear as to whether there are any other supplements (I'll update this if I find out about any). $20 will be nothing to fans or even just the moderately curious, but I'd love to see them do a limited Hulu or other ad-supported "free to watch" VOD option to promote it in the week leading up to release. This doc is well worth one's time, whether you grew up with it or not. Pre-order it at the movie's official site.