Austin's Power
By Jeffrey Ressner
It was ouch, baby, very ouch, when the original James Bond met his mocker Austin Powers during the Cannes Film Festival last month. "Mistah Myers, is this your first time to Cannes?" asked Sean Connery in his thick Scottish brogue. "Yes!" answered Mike Myers nervously. "And is it going well?" Connery inquired. Myers was so flustered before his childhood hero that he could barely squeak out another affirmative reply. "That was all I said, just yes and yes," Myers recalled later. "I was too intimidated to talk, even though I was dying to meet him. What else was I going to say?"
Well, how about "Things are sooo groovy"? The heavily hyped Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me not only played during the prestigious French festival but, opening in North America this past weekend, also pulled in $20 million on Friday alone. In comparison, 1997's Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery earned just $9.5 million in its entire first weekend. Still, the exploits of the silly secret agent eventually scored more than $100 million in the U.S., nearly half of that from video sales. Not bad, considering it cost only $18 million to make. Also not bad for a movie that began as an in-joke, Myers' personal tribute to the British goon shows his late father adored and the kooky spy spoofs young Mike watched on TV with his two older brothers. "This is essentially something I thought only people in my house would get," he says. "It should have been a home movie, really."
Told and repeated so many times, the genesis of Austin Powers has become industry folklore. Traumatized by his father's losing battle against Alzheimer's, which ended with his death in 1991, Myers was in a slump. He had milked his Saturday Night Live skit Wayne's World for two films, then had appeared in the dud So I Married an Axe Murderer. Driving home from his practice with an amateur hockey team, he heard Dusty Springfield cooing The Look of Love on NPR, and images swirled in his mind: fuzzy memories of free love and Nehru jackets, trashy movies like Casino Royale and Our Man Flint. While soaking in Epsom salts that evening, he started spouting randy Brit-speak to his wife Robin Ruzan in what he calls "that well-traveled, jet-setty Englishman voice." She suggested he write up the character. Within three weeks there was a first-draft screenplay. A toothy icon was born.
"I'm not Faith Popcorn, but I love pop culture," says the 35-year-old Myers, invoking the best-selling trend spotter as he explains how he tapped into the retro zeitgeist. "I'd seen a lot of tie-dyed/Volkswagen van/hippie '60s, but not that mod/go-go boots/everybody's-a-photographer-or-in-a-band thing." For his new character's name, he thought of 007's Aston-Martin sports car. For the look, he borrowed Michael Caine's eyeglasses from The Ipcress File, Connery's thatchlike chest hair, the costumes from the Who's rock opera Quadrophenia and the grotty dentures he used in an SNL skit about sugar-filled British toothpaste. The supervillain, bald-pated Dr. Evil, was lifted from the Bond film You Only Live Twice, with Myers adding the pinky-sucking tic of his former SNL boss Lorne Michaels.
Not everyone got the joke immediately, including the guy Myers brought in to direct. "The first time I read the script and saw Mike do it, I wondered if it was going to work," admits Jay Roach. "I wasn't a big fan of that level of camp, so it took a while for me to get it. Since then, many people have told me they didn't get it, either, until they shared the viewing experience with their kids."
Austin's goofy antics appealed to youngsters who appreciate anyone who's good at behaving badly (in a PG-13 way, of course) and to grownups who wish they could. Soon after the video was released, catchphrases like "Shagadelic!" and "Oh, behave!" caught on in schoolyards and trendy cocktail lounges alike. "I can't walk past a construction site without having 'Fancy a shag?' yelled at me," says Elizabeth Hurley, who co-starred in the first film and has a cameo in the sequel. Laughs Roach: "So many women have blamed us for giving men pickup lines. In the era of sexual harassment, I hope it's good for mankind to use a line that can be fairly innocent and still somewhat naughty."
Following his small dramatic roles as Steve Rubell in the unsuccessful film 54 and as a repentant drug dealer in the unreleased Pete's Meteor, Myers felt ready to have another go at Austin. Several prequel ideas were tossed about. In one, young Powers and Evil were classmates fighting over the same woman. Roach, returning to direct, suggested making Dr. Evil a square cold-war agent, with Austin "single-handedly creating the British invasion to mess with his head." But Myers and co-screenwriter, Michael McCullers, a former writer for SNL, decided on a plot that had Austin revisit the '60s to retrieve his stolen mojo, or raging libido. "If the first movie was Timecop, this one is Back to the Future," says Myers.
About 40% of the new film was improvised on the set, say several actors. Yet things weren't loosey-goosey for everyone. "It's not as lighthearted as it seems," says Heather Graham, who plays slinky CIA agent Felicity Shagwell. "They were pretty specific about the script. Mike would improvise and make up stuff, but if you forgot one word, they'd say, 'No, that's wrong.' It appears off the cuff, but it was kind of scientific and took hours to get right." Some over-the-top bits were chopped from the movie, many involving a grotesque adversary named Fat Bastard. Portrayed by Myers in an 80-lb. blubber suit that required hours to apply, the character was so foul that women at preview audiences were nauseated, not to mention Graham. "The worst was when he ate all this food and then spit on me," she says.
You won't see many Fat Bastard items among the products from the 100 or so licensees, which include action figures, shagadelic-shaker alcohol mixers, inflatable furniture, an Austin-inspired fragrance and an authorized Swedish penis enlarger. There's also a new version of the Clue board game, a near life-size doll of Dr. Evil's tiny henchman Mini-Me and a talking watch that barks phrases like "Throw me a frickin' bone here!" Kicking in additional millions for promotional tie-ins are half a dozen companies, ranging from Virgin Atlantic airlines to Heineken beer. Next spring there will be a prime-time HBO cartoon series. "We want this to be around for the next 10 to 20 years, ad infinitum," says Bob Friedman, the marketing co-chairman of New Line Cinema (which is owned by TIME's corporate parent, Time Warner). As James Bond might say, that's a pretty Moneypenny.