KICK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (6)

By: Joshua Glenn
January 20, 2022

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of a favorite sidekick — whether real-life or fictional.

RAWHIDE

Not long ago, in an introductory career coaching session conducted by the wizardly Richard Nash, I was tasked with personifying the sort of internal “ally” whom I’d most like to cultivate — i.e., in order to help me achieve my seemingly impossible goals. Without skipping a beat, I said “Rawhide.”

Portrayed by Clancy Brown in the 1984 cult film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, Rawhide is the most omnicompetent and stalwart of the Hong Kong Cavaliers. When we first meet him, he is narrating the brain surgery that Buckaroo is performing in an El Paso hospital. “Dr Banzai is using the laser to vaporize a pineal tumor,” the big muscular lummox drawls in a laid-back yet erudite Western accent, “without damaging the quadrigeminal plate.” Who is this guy?

Later that same day Rawhide keeps an eye on things at the test bunker while Buckaroo pilots a Jet Car into the 8th dimension, then shows up on TV to help explain what Buckaroo has just accomplished. Wowed by the “cute guys of the Hong Kong Cavaliers, Buckaroo’s most trusted inner circle,” the interviewer turns her back on Rawhide — a nice bit of blocking. (Brown may be ruggedly handsome, but cute he is not. In fact, he is best known for playing villains — The Kurgan in Highlander, Capt. Hadley in The Shawshank Redemption — who are grotesquely evil.) That evening, as the other Cavaliers leap and twirl onstage at a New Jersey nightclub, Rawhide plays piano off to the side — content to remain in the background. When a gun is fired, though, it’s Rawhide who takes command of the situation — ordering the light board operator to “kill that spot” and shielding Buckaroo’s body with his own. The same dynamic repeats itself the next day at a press conference, where Rawhide prowls behind the scenes.

In David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust,” we learn that Ziggy kept his band motivated by “jiving us that we were voodoo.” We see Buckaroo doing precisely this sort of thing with the other Cavaliers — telling Perfect Tommy that he’s perfect, seductively recruiting “New Jersey” and Penny into the crew. But Rawhide he never jives. Buckaroo tasks his lieutenant with interpreting a spectrographic analysis of an 8th-dimensional creature; he relies on him to “set up the grid and get the last known coordinates” of the Red Lectroids, while also assembling nearby Blue Blaze Irregulars; and he simply assumes that he will be able to hack into Yoyodyne Propulsion’s computer system. Rawhide requires no jiving.

Buckaroo’s utter confidence in him is rewarded, tragically, when Rawhide intercepts a poisoned barb fired at his chief. With what may be his dying breath, Rawhide issues a directive for the Cavaliers: “You’re on the clock. Saddle up, huh?” The perfect final words for the perfect sidekick.

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MORE ENTHUSIASM at HILOBROW

KICK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (6)

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