I'm the right age for this but unfortunatley I'm in the wrong country. I have no idea what Show Biz Pizza is or who any of these characters are but it doesn't actually effect the viewing. This is a human story of obsession, childhood memories, faded glory, an inventor with possible aspergers and acheiving your dreams.
Show Biz Pizza was a restaurant chain in the 1980's that children loved and I'm sure most parents hated. It included video games, rides and an anamatronic band that sang while you ate. This band was called The Rock-afire Explosion and featured 2 bears, gorilla, wolf, mouse and something that plays the drums (I'm not sure what animal he is a mouse - bear?)
This documentary is about the man who invented the band and a man who loved the band.
When Chris Thrash was a child his mum used to drop him off at Show Biz while she went to see a movie and that place became his Mandalay. As an adult he lives in Alabama and works at a car yard and as DJ at the skate rink (where he met and married his wife) Chris bought the band Rockafire from it's inventor Aaron Fechter. He set's it up and programs it to play to modern songs which he posts on youtube. His part of the tale is glorious, a man who actually achieves his dream. There's a great part in the film where he tells of how he realised this and had a bit of a cry once he had set up the band.
Aaron Fechter remembers the glory days of his company Creative Engineering when he was king of the world and even Michael Jackson visited his workshop where he employed 300 people to make the rockafire characters, costumes and anamatronics. Today he is trapped in the tomb which is the CE warehouse surrounded by tools and the decomposing characters of rockafire. He takes fans on tours and still sells some of his robots - recently to Jordan but he had to make the gorilla character "whiter"
It's about preserving the past and being trapped in the past.
YES - Chris Thrash I salute you sir.
