Issue date: June 6, 1999

In this article:
The roots of Myers' comedy
The definition of "funny"
A tribute to dad: Austin Powers

By Jeffrey Zaslow

It is not just whimsy and laughter that determine which of his comic cargo planes finds a Hollywood runway. Sometimes it's pain and fate. His swinging secret agent, Austin Powers - introduced in 1997's Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and back next Friday in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me - first landed in 1991 after Myers' dad died of Alzheimer's. To deal with his loss, Myers created the over-the-top Brit as a tribute to his Liverpool-born father. The world of Austin Powers is filled with touchstones from his father's life, and many of the zaniest bits answer the question, "What would dad find funny about this?"

We know Myers, 36, from the manic characters he created for Saturday Night Live and the movies - the "Wayne's World" party boy, the Streisand-loving TV gossip host. He introduced "schwing," "Not!" and "talk amongst yourselves" to the vernacular. Offscreen, he's surprisingly low-key and cerebral. Comedy, he says, is basically "the realization of your own mortality. When a man steps on a banana peel, he's subject to gravity, and in that moment you realize he's just matter and he's mortal. Therefore, you laugh at your own mortality."

As Myers talks of "reducing comedy to its molecular form," he sports a NASA baseball cap with what he calls the "we're-going-to-win-everything-through-science logo." For a wedding ring (his wife, Robin, is a writer), he wears his father's 1957 Encyclopaedia Britannica "salesman of the year" ring.

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he roots of Myers' comedy are intertwined with those of his family tree. His parents emigrated to Toronto before Myers was born. He learned comic timing by joining his father on encyclopedia-sales calls. "People from Liverpool are really funny. It's a poor city, and they don't own anything except their own bodies, so it makes them very sexy and funny." His dad used sly humor to convince customers "they needed this unwieldy appetizer tray of little snippets of knowledge."

Growing up in Canada with parents who sounded like the Beatles, Myers developed an ear for accents. His father raised him and his two older brothers on Peter Sellers and Monty Python films and told them to invite friends over only if they had a sense of humor. Funny friends, his father said, "are essential."

His mother, an actress, quit the stage to raise her boys. She encouraged Mike's performance inclinations as a child, giving him such pointers as "the villain is the hero of his own story." (She still "constantly" gives him acting tips.) And she helped him win roles in commercials. At age 10, he played Gilda Radner's son in a commercial for a Canadian electric company and felt a burst of puppy love for Radner. When she turned up later on Saturday Night Live, he vowed he'd join the cast someday.

By the time he landed on SNL in 1989, however, his dad was in serious decline. Though he lived to make his kids laugh, Alzheimer's slowly turned him into a sadly "Willy Loman-esque" salesman. He'd get lost. He'd lose things. He'd blurt out inappropriate comments. When Myers performed with Toronto's Second City comedy troupe in 1986, his dad heckled performers: "You're not funny! Get off the stage! Bring Michael out!" The illness was "horrendous," says Myers. "It really was a horror show. His death made me less funny for a year and a half." But Myers believes in the formula "pain plus time equals comedy" - and "I was in dire need of the 'plus time' component of that equation." A few years later, a vision of Austin Powers arrived in his head.

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he definition of "funny" changes with the times, but Myers doesn't run jokes by focus groups. "The path to madness is trying to figure out your audience," he says. Instead, he trusts his instincts. He's clearly on to something, which leads one to ask: What's funny as we enter the new millennium? His answer? "Naughtiness." The renaissance in cheeky comedy - led by himself, Adam Sandler, There's Something About Mary and the Starr Report - has roots in the '70s. It's popular today, Myers believes, in part because current practitioners are talented. "Lenny Bruce used to talk about censorship and comedy. He'd say no government in the world could legislate comedy better than an audience not laughing."

Obviously, his humor works. The masses have embraced Myers' brand of bawdiness. Austin Powers is repellent - yellow teeth, bearlike chest hair, icky come-on lines - yet Myers makes him lovable. "He does it with such innocence," says Spy Who Shagged Me producer John Lyons. "It's a weirdly wholesome naughtiness. It's the wink at the audience." Veteran actor Robert Wagner, a star in both Austin Powers movies, says Myers has come along at a time when "society has all these stigmas. We're all worried if it's politically correct to laugh." Refreshingly, Powers has the sexes giggling together.

Myers calls comedy a byproduct of location. He has lived in Toronto, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. "The Canadian experience is the experience of 'not.' We're not American. We're not English. We're the 'Hey, guys, wait up' guys." Canadians laugh about things that leave people in the States stone-faced. "Like snow tires. Snow tires are to Canada what cigarettes are to jail. They're currency. I've paid for Aerosmith tickets with snow tires. Americans don't realize how pervasive snow tires are in our culture." As for which city is funnier, New York or Los Angeles: "New York is, hands down. In L.A., you drive alone in your glass-and-steel car. In New York, you're forced to deal with a cast of thousands. It's like my wife says: 'Isn't it crazy that we all live on a planet?' " Appropriately, Robin is from New York.

Friends say Myers can get into people's heads. Even animals' heads. Robin believes dogs have a sense of humor. He argues otherwise. "You can talk to a dog all day long, but he's just looking at you and thinking, 'Where's the ball?' " Says Jay Roach, director of both Powers features: "Unlike any human I know, Mike has the ability to absorb people and store them in his head in a three-dimensional way. He can then play it all back as if he's a living hologram."

Many of the movie ideas now flying around in Myers' head have very personal origins. "You can only go by your heart," he says. He might make a World War II film as a tribute to his mom and dad. "Both my parents fought in the war and were shaped by the experience," he says. "They had to endure stuff we'll never know."

When people meet Myers, they want him to make them laugh. Is that a chore? "It's an honor. Sometimes that expectation to be funny can make you be funny, and that pulls you out of a funk."

Myers calls Austin Powers a "therapeutic journey" into the world his father loved - James Bond, the Pink Panther, impertinent comedy. His dad turned him on to all of that. "He didn't like anything he didn't find funny. I think he'd like Austin Powers."

PHOTO CREDIT: Jim Wright for USA WEEKEND

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