Podcast Tuesday: "Cyndiana Jones and the Temple of Goldblum"

Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum in Vibes.

Thanks to MTV, the music video became the format of choice in the 1980s. Rock stars were accustomed to recording albums, releasing singles, and performing concerts, but they were now expected to star in little four-minute movies as well. Some of them proved exceptionally good at it, and it's only natural that a few would try their luck at making full-length motion pictures. And so, photogenic MTV superstars like Madonna and Prince embarked upon movie careers with wildly mixed results. Occasional hits like Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) and Purple Rain (1984) were inevitably followed by flops like Shanghai Surprise (1986) and Under the Cherry Moon (1986).

Brooklyn-born songstress Cyndi Lauper was a little late to the party when she made her motion picture debut in the quirky supernatural comedy Vibes (1988) opposite Jeff Goldblum. It arrived in theaters a year after Madonna had suffered her second major flop with Who's That Girl (1987). If the American economy could not support Madonna's movie career, what chance did Cyndi have? Not much, as it turned out. Vibes bombed hard during a busy movie summer dominated by Cocktail (1988) and Die Hard (1988), and Cyndi Lauper mostly went back to singing with only occasional movie and TV roles.

Was this fair? As luck would have it, Vibes was written by two Happy Days veterans, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. That makes it a fitting topic for the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. Join us this week as we weigh in on both the film and Cyndi Lauper's viability as a movie star.