Mike Myers names the single greatest director of all time: “There’s nothing that man can’t do”
As an actor and comedian who started in improv and sketch before gaining fame on Saturday Night Live and mostly starring in movies designed to make audiences laugh, where he was usually found buried under a mountain of makeup, Mike Myers hasn’t worked with many auteurs in his career.
Just two, in fact. He played a minor supporting role in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, as Ed Fenech, and another minor supporting role in David O Russell’s Amsterdam, as Paul Canterbury, and on both occasions, he didn’t look too much like Mike Myers at all, as he’s wont to do.
However, just because he reached the pinnacle of Hollywood by playing Wayne Campbell, Austin Powers, Dr Evil, Fat Bastard, and voicing a green ogre, that doesn’t mean he’s not a cinephile. Like many comedians, Myers’ penchant for juvenile and anarchic humour belies his lifelong love of the all-time greats.
Of course, he shouldn’t need to mention Peter Sellers as an influence when it’s been obvious from the first time he disappeared into a character, the Canadian comic grew up obsessed with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and the ‘French New Wave’, and his original dream was of breaking into cinema and emulating the career of John Cassavetes.
As tends to be the case with almost everyone else, Stanley Kubrick is another filmmaker Myers has adored for as long as he can remember, but he doesn’t worship any of those aforementioned directors. Instead, he bows down at the altar of a multi-talented Academy Award winner who rarely, if ever, gets mentioned as part of the ‘greatest of all time’ conversation.
In a conversation with GQ, Myers suggested that so few directors are capable of making dream sequences that Hollywood should introduce a licence that needs to be applied for, and only after it’s been approved can the auteurs in question incorporate them into their narratives. He named Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, and Darren Aronofsky as three who’d get a lifetime pass, plus another.
“I think Soderbergh should also be allowed to make dreams, because there’s nothing that man can’t do,” he said. “I worship him so much because he just makes things, and some things are for everybody, and some things are for a few people. And he takes his time, and he drops out, he comes back in. I just think that the dude is doing everything right.”
The figurative and literal hero worship doesn’t stop there, either, with Myers explaining that “one of the most influential things I ever saw was Steven Soderbergh’s acceptance speech” at the Oscars. “I reference him at least once a day,” the SNL veteran added. “To the point where a friend of mine got me a needlepoint that said, ‘What Would Soderbergh Do?’ He just makes things.”
In addition to his vast filmography, which spans almost 40 features covering virtually every genre, Myers appreciates Soderbergh as an artist. He’s a director first and foremost, but he’s also a screenwriter, editor, cinematographer, showrunner, camera operator, painter, and more. Myers doesn’t see himself as an actor or a comedian; he’s a creator. When he heard his hero say “he just makes things,” he knew he’d found a kindred spirit.
