Shhh, baby. Snuggle up close, and I’ll whisper a secret.
No way this Mike Myers chap is the same fabulously groovy fellow playing that cool Austin Powers or that deliciously evil domehead Dr. Evil.
How could this shy and rather, er, unimposing guy with straight teeth be the irreverent, hiply stupid swinger of the summer’s second-most-talked-about sequel?
Slumped in an easy chair with his stockinged feet curled under him and his reddish-brown hair cut so short it sticks straight out all over, he appears the antithesis of Austin Powers, the raunchy, sex-mad exhibitionist eager to chase anyone in a plastic mini-skirt.
“I am a shy person, ultimately,” Myers says.
Despite the dozens of bizarre comic characters he did for the “Second City” comedy troupes in Toronto and Chicago, on “Saturday Night Live” and “Wayne’s World” and now “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” Myers looks and acts like a businessman forced to discuss the latest sales report.
“It’s an odd sensation,” he says of doing interviews, groping for a way to explain the feeling. “It’s strangely flattering. Why should anyone be talking to me?”
Why? Because Myers, 36, has connected in some indefinable way with the comic consciousness of young moviegoers. His “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery,” a seemingly 30-years-too-late parody of James Bond and Pink Panther films, was a juvenile, haphazard hodgepodge of frat-house humor combined with psychedelic sight gags that seemed unlikely to amuse any modern audience.
Think again, baby.
The film was only modestly successful at the box office, making about $54 million. (Plenty to impress the ’60s Dr. Evil, but far less than the “kajillion bajillions” the president of the United States offers him in the new film.) But “Austin Powers” took off on cable and video, creating a high demand for a much-anticipated sequel. To hear Myers tell it, no one was more surprised than he was.
“We saw this whole project as a cosmic in-joke,” Myers says of the first film. “I thought you would have had to grow up in my house to get this movie.
“It’s just basically about all the movies my father forced us to watch on TV. We just wrote what we thought was funny and hoped people liked it.
“I didn’t know we were going to do a second one. I didn’t know we were going to do a first one!”
“Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” is more — lots more — of the things we saw in “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.”
More double entendres. More puns on words for usually unmentioned body parts. More almost-naughty sight gags. More bathroom humor.
And, of course, more skitlike parodies of past movies: “From Russia With Love,” “In Like Flint,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “You Only Live Twice,” “The Exorcist,” “Blow-Up,” “The Thomas Crown Affair,” “Apollo 13,” “Dr. No,” “2001: A Space Odyssey.” And so on and so on. Even Myers, who co-wrote and co-produced the movie, admits he has no idea how many films are mimicked and satirized.
For the record, baby: “You Only Live Twice” is Myers’ favorite James Bond movie.
“That’s the one that has the (Little Nellie helicopter) that came out of a suitcase,” he says, gleefully. “That’s just cool.”
The volcano lair of the villain Ernst Blofeld in “You Only Live Twice” is copied by Dr. Evil’s volcano hideout in “The Spy Who Shagged Me.”
The new film also has more Mike Myers. This time, in addition to playing psychedelic ’60s secret agent Austin Powers and his ineptly wicked nemesis, Dr. Evil, Myers also plays an 800-pound Scottish hit man named — they must have thought a long time to come up with something this witty — Fat Bastard.
Oh, behave, baby.
“On `Saturday Night Live,’ I played up to eight characters a night,” Myers says. “I enjoy playing multiple characters. With Fat Bastard, I just wanted to play somebody gross.”
He succeeds at being gross not because of the character’s appearance, but because of his unpleasant personal sex and hygiene habits. But let’s move on.
To play the role, Myers had to endure entire days inside the heavy body suit created by Oscar-winning makeup artist Stan Winston (“Aliens,” “Jurassic Park”).
“Did I love that it took seven hours” to put it on? Myers asks sarcastically. “The suit smelled like a sulfur filtration plant. I probably lost four quarts of body fluid. It’s gelatin and latex. It is a work of art. It could tour. It’s suitable for framing.”
The first time Myers put on the fat suit, he discovered there was no way for him to go to the bathroom. So plumbing was installed.
Most of the characters from the first film are back, too, including Dr. Evil’s No. 2 man, played by Robert Wagner, and his son, played by Seth Green. Elizabeth Hurley is also back, but only briefly, as the delectable Vanessa.
“James Bond has a new girl every time. If Elizabeth was ’90s, uptight and English, we needed someone ’60s, liberated and American to have the contrast. And to underscore how much time has passed and how much the sexual revolution has passed and left Austin behind,” Myers says.
The new “shagadelic” heroine, played by Heather Graham, is named Felicity Shagwell.
Clearly, misbehaving is a prime ingredient of “Austin Powers” humor. Take the film’s title: in Great Britain, shag is a rude term for fornication. But Myers insists the movie is not as raunchy as it seems.
“There’s no actual sex; it’s virtual sex. There’s no actual smut; it’s virtual smut. There’s no actual violence; it’s virtual violence. It’s more `Tom & Jerry’ than anything. It’s just silly.”
He admits the movie rejoices in bad taste.
“At times, yes. So did the first one, though. I maintain the first one was actually cheekier.
“I try to take a page from the Monty Python book. In British comedy, there is a long tradition of smart stuff and dirty stuff.”
It’s a tradition Myers knows well. Although he was born and raised in Toronto, his English parents always spoke of home as a magical, wonderful place.
Myers’ father, Eric, remains a powerful factor in the actor’s life. Now, several years after his father’s death, Myers mentions him over and over.
“The movie is really a tribute to him,” Myers says.
How was the “Austin Powers” idea born? What was its genesis? “I was driving home from hockey practice, and I heard `The Look of Love’ by Burt Bacharach come on the radio. (Bacharach has a cameo in both `Austin Powers’ movies.) It brought back many, many images of the ’60s and of growing up in the early ’70s and watching stuff on TV.
“I always loved `Casino Royale’ (a spy parody with music by Bacharach). That was a very cool movie, and Woody Allen was in it, Peter Sellers and Orson Welles and David Niven.
“My father had just passed away, and what it most reminded me of was growing up in an English household in Canada. Of all the British comedy my father had introduced to me and my brothers.
“I liked the mood (comedy) put my father in. That’s my first memory of comedy. It made the house feel good.”
When Myers’ father died, Myers took off more than a year from work, coming back to do the first “Austin Powers.” Since his father passed away, Myers has become even closer to Robin Ruzan, whom he’s lived with for 12 years and been married to for six.
“My dad just dug me,” Myers says. “When I would tell him stuff that would happen and he would react, the journey was complete. I have a similar situation to Robin. She’s my best friend. I write stuff on my palm during the day to remind myself to tell Robin.”
All in all, Myers does a pretty good job of convincing people he’s a long way from the swinging Austin Powers. But if he’s such an ordinary guy, why does he do these movies?
“I’m naturally an introvert, and I get to be extroverted,” Myers says. “I love the clothes, I love the fashions and the furnishings and the cars and the music.
“I just really like to make people laugh. I care about (it in) this movie, and I also care if I’m over at somebody’s house just cracking wise. I like to make people laugh.
“I did have the most fun I’ve ever had doing this. If somebody said I had to do (an `Austin Powers’ movie) every two years, I’d be the happiest man on the planet.”
