Interview: Mike Myers
Karma Chameleon
Mike Myers’ first new character since Austin Powers sees him transform into an opportunistic Hindu guru. But why did it take so long?
By Bob Strauss
Okay, we’re finally going to see Mike Myers on the big screen again.
How long has it been? Well, the 45-year-old comedian’s last two movies were Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third; he was a cartoon ogre in those. The Cat in the Hat — in which he played, well, a cat — came out way back in 2003. The last time we actually got a glimpse of anything like his real puss in a theatre was earlier that year, when he made a cross-eyed cameo in the barely seen comedy View from the Top.
But the Toronto-born cut-up is back in full flower as The Love Guru, his first self-created, headlining character since the supersuccessful spoof spy Austin Powers. Under long, flowing locks and a fake nose, Myers plays Pitka, a self-help life coach who, unlikely though it may sound, is offered big bucks to work his motivational magic in the world of big league sports.
|
Mike Myers as Guru Pitka in The Love Guru
|
“The Love Guru is about a [North American] boy who is left in
an ashram in India, grows up to become a guru and is hired by the
Toronto Maple Leafs to win the Stanley Cup,” Myers says during an
interview at the W Hotel in L.A.’s Westwood Village. “He has to help a
star player who’s gone off the rails get it together.”
Romany Malco plays the heartbroken skater whose errant wife
(Meagan Good) takes up with a Francophone player from a rival team (um,
Justin Timberlake?). Jessica Alba is squeezed into the scenario for
good measure as the Leafs’ owner and Verne Troyer is its coach, while
Marco Schnabel, who was an associate producer on Austin Powers in Goldmember, makes his directing debut.
All right. So this is the best Myers could come up with since the last Austin Powers movie in 2002?
|
“This is what I’ve been working on,” Myers states flatly, not sounding like someone who thinks he needs to make any excuses. “I would do secret shows in the character of the guru at friends’ theatres. About a third of the audience were friends of mine, a third would be people who had heard that I was doing it and a third would be people who thought they were coming to see a sutra by an actual guru. I did that for a year and I videotaped them, and they informed the movie.”
That’s typical of the long, involved process that Myers says goes into the creation of his signature movie characters (Wayne Campbell, the aspiring rock guitarist who made Myers a movie star in the Wayne’s World films, was workshopped at Second City before being refined on-air during Myers’ eight-year stint on Saturday Night Live).
Another part of Myers’ process is honing a script until he considers it just right — something that may not be immediately evident in the anything-for-a-laugh style of Powers and Wayne’s World. But with a collective box-office gross of well over $600-million (U.S.) for those five films in North America alone, it’s obvious that there’s some method to the madness.
“There are two things you’ve got to chart in a movie, which are going for the dramatic goal, and your A laughs,” Myers explains. “They have to be figured out to get that comedic momentum. It’s more of a journeyman task, or like being an engineer, in that way. But it takes time, that’s the thing.”
Myers swears that he doesn’t slack off during these long development periods, even though he can afford to (he makes eight figures for the blockbuster Shrek voice jobs, and reportedly received 21 percent of the gross for the last Powers movie, Goldmember).
“I haven’t done many movies over the period of time that I’ve been doing movies,” he acknowledges. “I create and I write the movies that I do. An average film takes 60 months from your first inkling of an idea to it first being in front of an audience, and I actually only take 36 months, generally. But because I write and produce them, I’m actually in an office from nine to five every day. And because that’s so satisfying, it does take a lot to break me out of that cycle and do somebody else’s movie — although I have, I will and I do.”
While he sees no reason to apologize for his limited output, Myers may have to mend fences with some members of the Hindu community after The Love Guru comes out.
Before its release, some religious figures publicly fretted that the movie would make fun of their beliefs. And with characters named Guru Satchabigknoba and Tugginmypudha, they may have grounds for concern. Then again, Myers’ pal Deepak Chopra makes a cameo appearance, so how insulting can it be?
It’s doubtful that Myers set out to offend. He seems pretty sincere about simply wanting to entertain as vast an audience as he can. And when he talks about growing up Canadian it’s clear that, even when joking, he’s extremely sensitive to matters of cultural identity.
“I’m the youngest of three brothers; my head is mostly scar tissue,” he says, not exactly smiling, about his youth in suburban Scarborough, Ontario. “It was tough, I’m the ‘Hey guys, wait up!’ kid. And I come from a younger brother country. Canada is, in many ways, the younger brother to America. We have the longest undefended border in the world and we’re its number-one trading partner. Y’know, I always love American maps; each state has its own colour and Canada’s just a blob of pink. So we have an identity problem and a self-image problem, and I relate to that.”
Rough as his household could be, there was one saving grace Myers’ British parents brought to it from across the pond: a rich English sense of humour.
“My dad was funny,” he recalls. “He was from Liverpool, and one of the biggest joys was making him laugh. And one of the greatest feelings was that no matter what kind of chaos was happening in my house, if a funny comedy was on TV, there was a truce. It actually made the house smell nicer, everything was just good. So I love comedy, blah blah blah. It seems so precious to talk about it.”
Myers has said that The Love Guru’s genesis was the personal spiritual journey he began after his beloved dad died. As for his next movie forays, well, there are Shrek and Powers sequels in the works, and a characteristically long-awaited bio-pic of Who drummer Keith Moon.
Will there be any new comic characters, though? Probably, but don’t hold your breath.
“I never pre-plan anything,” the comedian insists. “There’s no central committee that makes decisions. I try to make considered decisions and do stuff that appeals to my heart and to this little, silly pocket that wants to make something. I love making things.”
Bob Strauss is a freelance entertainment writer living in L.A.
Evil Powers
It has yet to be cast and has no director, but it looks likely that Austin Powers 4 will happen. Mike Myers has said the story will be told from Dr. Evil’s perspective, and several sources have the film listed as a 2009 release. As for the newest Powers Girl? Smart money has Brazilian-model-turned-actor Gisele Bundchen following in the go-go booted footsteps of Elizabeth Hurley, Heather Graham and Beyoncé. But nothing’s official.