For Myers, there are few things more serious than a dumb joke. He's not the type of comedian who can stroll onto a movie screen and get a laugh playing some version of himself. His humor is based on artful contrivance, every detail machine-tooled with painstaking precision. ''Just because it's comedy doesn't mean it's not as important to Mike as There Will Be Blood is to Paul Thomas Anderson,'' says Michael De Luca, who helped launch the Austin Powers franchise as an exec at New Line and has produced The Love Guru. ''I'd make 10 movies with Mike in a heartbeat, but you've got to take it as seriously as he does, and he gives 150 percent.''
Myers takes unabashed pride in that intense devotion to his craft. ''Dave Foley said about me — which I love, greatest quote ever — that it's dumb comedy done by smart people,'' Myers told EW. ''What Jerry Seinfeld said about me is that I've managed to break the rules of all American parody: I parody things that Americans don't even know. It's been said of me that I can do comedy where comedy hadn't previously existed.''
It wasn't always so. Growing up in the blue-collar suburbs of Toronto, Myers was told he was not the funny one. His father, Eric, an encyclopedia salesman from Liverpool, England, was funny. His mother, Alice, a former actress, was funny. His older brothers, Peter and Paul, were funny. But in a family in which there was no higher value than a sense of humor — in which the boys would be roused from their beds late at night to watch a Peter Sellers movie on TV — Myers was imbued with the idea that he was lacking in that department. ''My mom would say... 'Everyone in the house step forward who's funny. Not so fast, Michael,''' Myers told Charlie Rose in 1999.
Myers' innate talent and relentless ambition couldn't be denied, though, and by 1989, having cut his teeth in the famed Second City improv comedy troupe, he landed a spot on the cast of Saturday Night Live. Though shy off screen, he quickly became one of the show's biggest draws thanks to his talent for creating oddball characters with memorable catchphrases, like the German TV-talk-show host Dieter and the dim-witted wannabe rocker Wayne Campbell. ''There was nobody doing what Mike was doing,'' says SNL creator Lorne Michaels.
In 1991, Myers got the green light to bring the much-loved ''Wayne's World'' sketch to the big screen. But what should have been a moment of triumph soon began to sour. According to several accounts, including a Vanity Fair article in 2000, Myers felt threatened by his more famous SNL costar, Dana Carvey, who played Wayne's nerdy sidekick, Garth. ''Mike didn't want Dana in the movie because he felt insecure that someone who had his own creative ideas would get in the way,'' says one source involved in the production. Carvey, via his publicist, calls this notion ''ridiculous.'' Michaels, who produced the film, says it's ''overstated,'' but adds, ''That isn't to say they're not both comedians and that occasionally there's not some disagreement over who should be speaking what.''
Directing her first studio film, Spheeris found herself struggling to prop up Myers' often dark moods. One day, infuriated that there was no margarine for his bagel, only butter, Myers — who, according to several sources, said he suffered from hypoglycemia — stormed off the set. (Myers' rep denies he is hypoglycemic.) ''He was emotionally needy and got more difficult as the shoot went along,'' Spheeris says. ''You should have heard him bitching when I was trying to do that 'Bohemian Rhapsody' scene: 'I can't move my neck like that! Why do we have to do this so many times? No one is going to laugh at that!''' To manage Myers' moods, Spheeris put her daughter in charge of making sure he had whatever snack he needed at any given moment: ''To this day, I have this image of her sitting on this little cooler, looking at me, like, 'Mom, I f---ing hate you.''' In a statement to EW through his publicist, Myers says: ''I'm incredibly grateful for Penelope Spheeris' contributions on Wayne's World. Some 17 years later, the movie is still a bright highlight in my professional career. I'm very proud of the work Dana Carvey and I did. It was wonderful to be able to work with Dana again on the MTV Movie Awards this year. He's a hilarious, talented and great guy. I've missed him.''
NEXT PAGE: ''Mike's a visionary, but his way of getting what he wants is to emote and threaten and express anger. It's not healthy for personal relations.''
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