David Johansen as the Ghost of Christmas Past in ‘Scrooged

For the first 20 years of David Johansen‘s career — despite his immense role in kickstarting the punk movement as the frontman of New York Dolls and all of his great solo work that followed — genuine mainstream success seemed like an impossible dream. That changed in 1987, when he scored a fluke mega-hit by covering “Hot Hot Hot” as his lounge act alter ego Buster Poindexter. It was the most successful thing he’d ever done by a huge magnitude, and it landed him on MTV and even The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.

“I’m doing a film now at Paramount with Bill Murray called Scrooged,” he told Carson. “It’s going to be a great movie. We’re having a lot of fun doing it. [Bill Murray] is my guru in the acting business.”

Scrooged is a modern retelling of the 1843 Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol where Murray plays a sleazy TV executive visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. Johansen plays the Ghost of Christmas cast as a deranged cab driver who takes Murray to his childhood home back in 1968 so he can understand the roots of his misery and loneliness as an adult. The role was originally conceived for comedian Sam Kinison, but Johansen grabbed the opportunity when it was presented, and made the most of his minimal screen time.

The movie was a massive hit that played endlessly on cable over the years. New York Dolls bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane came across it in 1989, and flew into a jealous, psychotic rage because his own film career had gone nowhere. “It flipped him out so much,” Kane’s ex-wife Barbara recalled in the documentary New York Doll. “And hurt him so much that he went out and drank a quart of peppermint schnapps. He ripped all my clothes off, started beating me with cat furniture, and I left him. That’s when he jumped out the kitchen window.”

Kane survived the fall because a planter box broke his fall, but he landed on his head, and shattered his kneecap and left elbow. It took him a year to learn to walk again. During his recovery, he came across an ad for a free bible from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Two young women came to his house to hand-deliver the book. And that was it: Kane was a devout Mormon for the remainder of his life, and it was all because he happened to come across Scrooged on cable.

Johansen, meanwhile, continued to act in movies like Let It Ride, Mr. Nanny, Freejack, and Car 54, Where Are You? He also reunited with Bill Murray in his 2015 TV special A Very Murray Christmas. Scrooged remained his most famous film appearance. And if you ever speak with someone who claims to have no knowledge of David Johansen or Buster Poindexter, bring up the cab driver in Scrooged. Odds are high they’ll know exactly what you’re talking about.