It’s strange, the things that pop into our minds while trying to fall asleep.
The other night, I found myself thinking about Mike Myers’ career while waiting to enter the dreamlands.
What defines it, and where might it be going forward?
Perhaps because I’m of a certain age and certainly based on my comedic proclivities, Peak Myers for me was unleashed weekly during his ’89-‘95 stint on Saturday Night Live.
Sprockets. Wayne’s World. Coffee Talk. The weirder and more experimental the better.
Lothar of the Hill People, people. That’s what I’m talking about.
While surely many still tie Myers to Wayne Campbell of Wayne’s World fame, they likely do it far more with relation to the two movies versus the original SNL sketches. And then overall, Myers is likely best known as the “Austin Powers guy” with a sidenote of Shrek.
An incredible resume to be sure.
But real heads also know Mike Myers from the excellent 1993 movie, So I Married An Axe Murderer.
During my pre-slumber musing, I thought about the different path Myers might have taken as a romantic comedy leading man, or perhaps even as a dramatic actor. So I Married pointed the way toward the former – this is the rare role where Myers largely doesn’t take on an entirely different persona and/or accent. He’s basically a regular dude, if one who frequents a beatnik-inspired spoken word coffee shop dripping with ‘90s vibes, and he’s completely charming and winning.
I use the word largely here as Myers also gets to sink his teeth into a second character, playing a Scottish dad who steals every scene he’s in.
Saying “That’s a virtual planetoid – it’s got its own weather system,” with relation to William a.k.a. Head is one of the funnier lines ever to be immortalized on film.
But then I also find myself musing – with head on pillow or otherwise – about Myers as dramatic actor. While we’ve only seen this side of Myers as a scattered offering over the years, what we’ve gotten has been outstanding.
He’s just great as Steve Rubell in the otherwise uneven disco-era drama 54, for example, but for my money I’d love to see Mike Myers explore the studio space as a dramatic character actor.
My favorite example here is Myers hamming it up gloriously as a British military officer helping to set things in motion in Inglourious Basterds.
Quentin Tarantino perfectly sets up Myers to shine by allowing him to craft a hyper specific character – General Ed Fenech, an aging World War II British military man with a devilish grin – with a stylized but dramatic context.
Of course, Myers is going to follow his muse, and he’s an eclectic cat. In recent years, he’s directed a documentary called Supermensch, which focuses on talent manager Shep Gordon, and starred as a bunch of different characters in a sadly not good miniseries called The Pentaverate in 2022.
These days, Myers has popped up on Saturday Night Live – he absolutely nailed his Elon Musk impression – and has two of his longest running franchises back in production, with planned outings of Shrek 5 and Austin Powers 4.
Myers did also pop up recently in a small role in the controversial but highly popular Michael Jackson biopic, Michael, as music exec Walter Yetnikoff, so perhaps we’ll be seeing more dramatic roles for Mike yet in the years to come.