The movie Mike Myers was blackmailed into making: “If you don’t, we’re going to sue”
If Mike Myers had a nickel for every time the threat of legal action forced him into making a movie, he’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
The actor and comedian only made the disastrous Cat in the Hat because he’d backed out of giving his Saturday Night Live character Dieter their own solo film, and the Dr Seuss adaptation was such a cataclysmic shitshow that the author’s widow banned any more live-action movies based on his work.
Remarkably, that wasn’t the first time the looming threat of litigation had strong-armed him onto set against his will, but the circumstances were stranger the first time around, considering that it was the sequel to a hit movie, which was based on a character he’d created and co-written the script for.
After the success and pop culture impact of Wayne’s World, it was inevitable that a second chapter would be on the cards. After Myers had informed Penelope Spheeris that her services would not be required for the follow-up, the real problems began when he tried to devise a story for Wayne and Garth’s next outing.
His original plan was to base it on the 1949 British comedy, Passport to Pimlico, with the title character discovering a document that allows him to secede from the United States and form his own country. However, when Paramount failed to secure the rights to the Ealing caper, he was sent back to square one.
Naturally, this irritated studio boss Sherry Lansing, who wanted Wayne’s World 2 as soon as possible. With Myers dragging his heels, she laid down the law. “Sherry is sitting on her throne, and Mike is sitting on the couch, and he starts to rock, almost like a rabbi davening,” someone who attended a meeting between the two informed Vanity Fair.
At this point, he was adamant that the project was effectively dead: “I can’t do it, I can’t do it, you can’t make me,” he told her. Since she was in charge of the studio, Lansing wasn’t going to bow to an actor’s petulance, and she made herself clear in no uncertain terms that he’d better get the fucking finger out.
“She stretched out a talon and said, ‘Let me be fucking clear,'” one eyewitness recalled. “Stanley Jaffe [then-Paramount CEO] is sitting in a room in New York right now with 15 fucking lawyers. And we’ve got a 100-page lawsuit ready to file. You’re making this movie, and if you don’t make this movie, we’re going to sue.”
Lansing even went as far as to tell Myers that she’d “take your fucking house” if things went to court, and as you might expect, the star subsequently “curled up in the foetal position, tried to cocoon himself inside his shirt” as the Paramount head honcho vowed to destroy him. Of course, he made Wayne’s World 2, and it wasn’t a patch on the original, possibly because he’d agreed to do it under duress.
