The one role Eugene Levy hates being reminded of: “Got a bit tedious”
An entire catalogue of 1990s comedies has now aged, pretty awfully.
There’s Something About Mary, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Swingers all immediately come to mind for their comedic glorification of now problematic societal issues. But one film that has faced particular scrutiny in that regard is American Pie.
Closing out the decade and looking forward to the millennium, this film became the weird pinnacle of adolescent hope. With the promise of losing their virginity as the dangling carrot, these four awkward schoolboys were portrayed as very actively pursuing a goal, so to speak, and so lost sight of the ramifications within that.
Upon release, that was somewhat hard to decipher for the audience, who were primarily more concerned with the film’s irreverent humour. How could I even begin to list those moments without acknowledging the film’s invention of the term “MILF” which is as embedded into the cultural lexicon more than any other line from a movie.
There were also webcam disasters, mishaps with super glue and of course, the protagonist Jim engaging with an apple pie in a way that has since ruined the dessert for me. The latter scene’s humour was amplified by the fact that it featured one of Hollywood’s most beloved actors, who played the awkward dad of the character and thus provided the relevant level of discomfort for us all.
Now, over 20 years on from the film, Eugene Levy is still reminded of that fateful scene to the point where it is a source of embarrassment for him. No matter what project he starred in, cinema fans would regularly remind him of that toe-curling scene whenever they saw him on the street.
He explained, “Now it’s Schitt’s Creek. All over the world. People came up and talked about the show in pretty much any location we visited. The American Pie thing got a bit tedious. People would bring me apple pie every time I went into a restaurant or to a wedding. Which is kind of funny, but it did happen a lot.”
However, Jason Biggs, the actor who played Jim and was tasked with the job of engaging with said pie, decided to instead double down on the scene and partner with American brands looking to sell the apple pie, but he’s merely done that to acknowledge its ridiculousness and has since come out to address the problems with the movie as a whole.
He said, “That particular scene and the content of that scene could not be done now, and it shouldn’t be done now. It reflects the progress that we’ve made as a society in the last 25 years that we know think, ‘That’s inappropriate.’ It is, and it should be, but the movie stands as its own little time capsule – it’s a reflection of the times that we lived in, as most things are.”
Either way, with Christmas soon approaching and baked goods aplenty, this article may have just reminded you of American Pie at a time you least needed it.
