The eruption that happened during the Van Halen/David Lee Roth split in 1985 shook up rock fans and led to a lot of venting from both camps in the press (for example, Eddie Van Halen infamously told Rolling Stone, “Twelve years of my life, putting up with his bullshit”).

Fans were likewise split into factions — you were on Team Dave or you were with Van Hagar; people to this very day debate which side was better.

But does anyone remember why Roth left?

It was a movie — a movie called Crazy From the Heat, just like his debut solo EP. CBS Studios had supposedly given Roth $10 million to write, direct and star in a film about a rock star named Dave who went to the tropical (and fictional) Dongo Island, where he and his posse (his manager, assistant and other hangers-on) encountered adventure, drunkenness and lots of scantily clad women.

Roth left arguably the biggest hard rock band on the planet to make this film, but had his auteur dreams shattered when there was a change at the top of CBS, and the studio pulled its funding.

Roth recovered by putting together another slammin’ rock band (featuring Steve Vai, Billy Sheehan and Greg Bissonnette), making Eat ‘Em and Smile, and embarking on a career with the intention of trampling his old band beneath the soles of his leather moccasins.

He returned to Van Halen in 2007, having missed out on his opportunity at an acting career, except a cameo on The Sopranos and a starring role in his own bizarre No Holds Bar-B-Que video.

However, the folks at Dangerous Minds have dug up a copy of the screenplay of Roth’s Crazy From the Heat movie, which has been floating around in the netherworld of Roth message boards for a while. It is everything one could have hoped for/suspected: a 77-page, quasi-funny, quasi-coherent example of all things Dave, circa 1985. The humor is corny, the action pure Three Stooges and the overall effect akin to reading the script for a 90-minute version of the “California Girls” video.

Check out the script here. Read it and smile.