verybody
wants Mike Myers.
Or rather they want at least one of him. Universal Pictures wanted him so
badly as Dieter, the monkey-touching German existentialist, that lawyers
got into the act. Paramount had him twice as Wayne Campbell of Wayne's
World fame. He's been wanted as Shaggy for Scooby-Doo
and as drummer Pete Moon of The Who. And there's a move afoot to draft him
as Inspector Clouseau in a remake of The Pink Panther.But the Austin Powers series of films remains the best place to see a great many faces of Mike Myers. We have it on good authority that the Scarborough kid is being paid a lot of money for this summer's Austin Powers in Goldmember ($25 million U.S. or about $10 billion in Canadian Tire
And yet, he's playing so many characters - four this time around - you'd swear he's being paid per minute of screentime.
Submitted for your shagadelic approval baby, Austin Powers in Goldmember, starring Mike Myers as '60s superspy/dental nightmare Austin Powers... as megalomaniacal supervillain Dr. Evil... as Dr. Evil's corpulent and disgusting Scottish henchman Fat Bastard... and as the equally evil title villain Goldmember.
"I think it's the Canadian and English in me," Myers told USA
Today regarding his propensity to lard Austin Powers movies with
over-the-top Mike Myers characterizations. "The whole thing is a
catharsis because I'm basically introverted, with moments of controlled
extroversion in which I get to be the architect of my own
embarrassment."Which sounds like deconstructivist-speak for "Oh, behave!"
The proof that the public wants more Mike Myers lies at the ticket booth. Austin
Powers is one of those rare movie franchises that gets more popular
the longer it goes on. Austin
Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me pulled in four times the box office
of the original Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery. And
judging by the buzz, Austin 3 is positioned to be a summertime
event flick with the "legs" to jockey for top position with Spider-Man
and Star Wars:
Episode II - Attack Of The Clones."The irony is Mike Myers is an employed actor (at all)," Myers said. "It's just been an amazing experience. The whole movie is kind of a universal in-joke in my house.
"I mean Jay (Roach, director of all three Austins) and I... we just thought we made it for ourselves. We never thought that anybody else would like it, you know?"
"It is very flattering," says Myers. "It's just flattering. You just gotta make stuff that you think is funny and you throw it to the universe and if people like it - great."
How Austin came about is now part of comedy lore. Some years back, with Wayne's World played out and a disappointing project So I Married An Axe Murderer behind him, Myers was driving around L.A. with his wife Robin Ruzan and heard Dusty Springfield's rendition of Burt Bacharach's "The Look Of Love" on the radio.
The song was a childhood touchstone for Myers, who recalled his late father waking him up to watch Peter Sellers movies and British spy films with him on TV. Out of the blue, he began riffing a characterization of a '60s British superspy straight-out-of-Carnaby Street and annoying his wife with lines about "shagging" and "Do I make you horny, bay-bee?" After a few days of doing it for sheer fun, he began writing down a character sketch that became the first Austin Powers movie.
His knack for eclectic characterizations has been Myers' strong suit since
he joined Toronto's Second City Touring Company straight out of high
school.A pop culture sponge, he sandwiched two years in England between two stints at Second City, absorbing absurdities that popped up later on Saturday Night Live (like his boy-in-the-bathtub Simon, or Hedley & Wyche "the British toothpaste... its mild cleaning agent enhanced by two teaspoons of pure cane sugar.")
Few of his SNL characters were an easy laugh, often relying on the audience's appreciation of arcane references. Dieter, Angus (of the All Things Scottish store), Lothar Of The Hill People, and even his own mother-in-law Linda Richman. Luckily, the audience was usually willing to follow - as they were when Austin Powers was thawed out of his '60s deep-freeze and unleashed on a 1990s world where 45 rpm singles have been replaced by CDs (which sound terrible on a turntable).
Time travel between swinging eras remains a key plot point in Austin Powers in Goldmember. The film finds Dr. Evil and his reductive clone Mini-Me (Verne Troyer) escaping from a maximum security prison and hooking up with the title maniac Goldmember (who comes by his name naturally, as you'll see).
Their inevitable plan to take over the world involves a trip back in time. This time though, they leave Austin's mojo alone. It's his father they're after, England's top spy Nigel Powers (Michael Caine). The temporal back-and-forth sees Austin chase the villains to the funkified year of 1975, where he re-unites with his old girlfriend Foxxy Cleopatra (beautiful Beyoncé Knowles of the chart-topping R&B group Destiny's Child).
Which brings us one of Myers' major flaws as Austin - he's a bit of a cad with women, never keeping them for long, or even from movie to movie. Fans will recall
his first shag, Vanessa Kensington, (Elizabeth Hurley) got blown up in Austin 2, making room for American spy Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham). Felicity is back
first
order would be as King Of The World, he suggested "Play hockey!"