The director Mike Myers called the “mack daddy” of cinema: “A god that walks as man”
Since the only thing he’s ever directed is the 2013 documentary, Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon, it might seem hard to believe that Mike Myers initially dreamed of being an independent auteur.
An actor and comedian who began his professional career with the Second City improvisational troupe, which hired him on his last day of high school, before becoming famous for Saturday Night Live sketches and playing multiple characters in his movies, doesn’t scan as someone who longed for a life behind the camera.
The guy who played a portly Scot called Fat Bastard, created a character who loves talking about few things more than shagging, and became synonymous with headbanging to Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ wouldn’t be the first name that comes to mind when imagining Hollywood staples who fantasised about changing cinema forever, but Myers did.
Although he grew up obsessed with comedy, particularly the offbeat British brand popularised by the likes of Monty Python and The Goon Show, he had another career path in mind. “I thought I was going to be John Cassavetes,” he once shared. “I thought I was going to create a film movement called Canadian neorealism.”
Suffice to say, he did not. Instead, he parlayed his SNL stardom into Wayne’s World, Austin Powers, and Shrek, before undoing all of that hard work when The Love Guru cast him out into the mainstream wilderness, matters that weren’t helped by his reputation for being a difficult customer at the best of times.
That might lead you to believe that Myers thinks Cassavetes is the single greatest director of all time, but he doesn’t. He’s definitely one of his all-time filmmaking heroes, as is François Truffaut, but as far as he’s concerned, no auteur in history has been, or will ever be, fit enough to lace Stanley Kubrick’s boots.
“Kubrick is a god that walks as man,” he said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “He’s the mack daddy of everything. I worship him.” While he’s never gone out on a limb and named his favourite movie from the director he’s adamant is the best to ever step foot behind the camera, an educated guess would suggest that it’s got to be Dr Strangelove.
After all, Peter Sellers was an icon to the young Myers, and he channelled the comedy legend’s penchant for burying himself under makeup and prosthetics in all of his biggest live-action hits. Combine his Academy Award-nominated tour de force with Kubrick at the helm, and you’d think there’s no way he’d be able to place 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, or any of the rest above it.
It’s not out of the ordinary for a well-known actor or filmmaker to call Kubrick the pinnacle of cinematic achievement since so many of them have placed him on that pedestal, and he’s deserving of the honour. Myers, who lest we forget popularised ‘Schwing!’, ‘Get in mah belly!’, and ‘Shall we shag now, or shag later?’, is just one of many.
