From a gig as a dance show host (billed as “Funky Mike Myers”) to a stint on Saturday Night Live to hit films like Wayne’s World and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Michael John Myers has followed the path of Canadian trailblazers like the SCTV folks who found fame making Americans laugh. The Scarborough, Ontario born comedian says he was able to break into the American comedy market “because other Canadians helped me.”
Citing early boosters like Dave Thomas, Martin Short and Lorne Michaels (who the young Myers idolized, even doing an eighth grade project on the producer) Myers found his feet as a comedian with Second City, (on stages in Toronto and Chicago), and then in 1989 he, like Dan Aykroyd and Phil Hartman before him, found fame as part of Saturday Night Live.
Since then he’s had time to reflect on why Canadians have been so successful in America. To explain he quotes one of his early advocates.
“Martin Short said something that was kind of interesting which is when Americans watch TV they’re watching TV but when Canadians watch TV they’re watching American TV. There is sort of a separation. We can look at American culture as foreigners except that we’re not all that different. ‘Wow, we are like two cultures separated by a common language,’ to quote Winston Churchill.”
Canadians, he suggests, are the great observers, carefully studying and digesting American movies, television and music before putting their own spin on them. Having both objectivity and perspective allows comics like Myers to analyze pop culture, and then create a unique style that adds to the culture while cleverly (and quietly) dissecting it.
“Canada is the essence of not being,” he says. “Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavor. We’re more like celery as a flavor.”
It’s been a while since a Saturday Night Live movie has been something to get excited about. Ladies Man and Stuart Saves His Family weren’t exactly laugh riots but a new film, Hot Rod, starring Andy Samberg may bring back the funny to the sagging SNL brand.
In Hot Rod Samberg, the slacker comic behind Lazy Sunday, one of SNL’s most talked about pieces of recent years—it was downloaded over one million times the day after it originally aired—plays amateur stuntman Rod Kimble. He’s a terrible stuntman, but is possessed of an inordinate amount of confidence, which keeps his dream of becoming the next Evel Knievel alive.
His biggest problem is his stepfather Frank (Deadwood’s Ian McShane). Frank is an ex-Navy Seal who treats Rod like a punching bag. In their weekly sparring sessions, scheduled to toughen Rod up, Frank mercilessly beats the youngster with his fists and weapons like Rhodesian fighting sticks. Rod willingly submits to the punishment hoping that his fighting skills will impress Frank and earn his respect. When Frank falls ills before Rod has a chance to beat him the dare devil hatches a plan to perform his most incredible stunt to date and raise money for Frank’s lifesaving operation. Once Frank is healthy and healed Rod plans to beat the crap out of him.
It’s a strange little story, one that ten years ago would have starred Adam Sandler as the revenge happy stuntman. This time out it’s Samberg and while the comparisons to Sandler are obvious, he makes the character of Rod his own. He’s more bizarre than Sandler has ever been on screen, (with the possible exception of Little Nicky), but he’s also quite sweet. Sandler made his bones playing characters who flew into rages, Samberg’s style is more gentle. I don’t know if he has any range, but he fits this role like a glove.
Hot Rod is a very silly comedy. It stretches the frat pack style of humor to the limit, milking every joke for everything it is worth. For instance, a scene where Rod falls down a mountain lasts forever. It’s funny at first, then not so funny, and then funny again just because of the sheer commitment the movie has to its gags. It’s not for everyone, but the audience I saw it with ate it up.
Hot Rod is a throwback to the SNL-inspired movies of yesteryear like Billy Madison. It’s childish and harebrained but it will make you laugh.
Tina Fey regularly appears on the Forbes’ annual Celebrity 100 list of the most powerful celebrities. She’s made the Entertainment Weekly roll call of Entertainers of the Year and Time called her one of the most influential people in the world.
Did I mention she’s also really funny?
For nine years on Saturday Night Live she worked behind the scenes—as the show’s first female head writer—and on camera as the anchor of Weekend Update. “She might be the best Weekend Update anchor who ever did it,” said Dennis Miller. “She writes the funniest jokes”
Then came 30 Rock, the medium-rated but critically adored sit com, a best selling book and a celebrated impersonation of Sarah Palin that even got the thumbs up from the ex-Governor.
This weekend she’s on the big screen in Admission, a comedy co-starring Paul Rudd. She plays a Princeton admissions officer who thinks one of her new recruits is the son she gave up for adoption years ago.
Fey made her film debut a decade ago in the quirky comedy Martin & Orloff as part of an ensemble cast that included SNLers Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch.
That movie didn’t garner much attention, and her role of “Southern Woman” even less, but in 2004 she shortened the unwieldy title Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughters Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence to Mean Girls. The story of high school in-groups was a hit and launched the careers of Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried.
She co-starred in Mean Girls as math teacher Ms. Norbury and made on-screen appearances as “Front Desk Girl” in Beer League but got her name over the title in Baby Mama.
She played Kate, a single thirty-seven year old businesswoman so desperate to have a baby she hires Angie, an inappropriate South Philly wild child (Amy Poehler) to be her surrogate.
Next was the “stranded-in-big-bad-New-York-City” movie Date Night opposite Steve Carell. The movie wouldn’t be as enjoyable as it is without the two leads. Fey and Carell breathe life into a hackneyed situation, bringing not only likeability, but also great chemistry and a way with a line that really works.
In the animated Megamind she voiced intrepid girl reporter Roxanne Ritchi, kidnapped by the master of all villainy Megamind (voice of Will Ferrell) and next year she stars with Ricky Gervais in The Muppets… Again!
The most famous movie nanny is, naturally, Mary Poppins. Julie Andrews brought the “practically perfect in every way” caregiver to vivid life in the 1964 movie, indelibly imprinting on minds young and old the image of the gracious English nanny with special powers.
Good old Mary with her magic satchel and odd ability to say the word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” backwards and forwards, is a pop culture icon, parodied on everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Saturday Night Live. She’s even inspired other movies, like this weekend’s Nanny McPhee Returns. McPhee (Emma Thompson) fits the enchanted babysitter mould, using her miraculous powers to teach pigs to do synchronized swimming and impose her will on her young charges. She means well even if her teeth are a bit scary and her methods unorthodox unlike some of the nightmare nannies listed below.
Crazysitters
Redubbed “Fetal Attraction” by one writer, the best known crazysitter movie is The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, a lurid story about a beautiful nanny with bad intentions. After that film, Rebecca De Mornay became the poster girl for nutty nannies everywhere, but she is just one of many who have played crazy caregivers. In Addams Family Values, nanny Joan Cusack is more interested in Uncle Fester’s money than the welfare of the kids and I think the name of the Beverly D’Angelo movie Crazysitter speaks for itself.
“I am here to protect thee”
Like Mary Poppins and Nanny McPhee, who both mysteriously appeared when their families needed them most, The Omen’s Mrs. Blaylock turned up at Damien Thorn’s house just in time to replace the former nanny who met an untimely demise at the end of a rope. Like her colleagues, this mother’s little helper had the child’s best interest in mind. Unlike Poppins and McPhee, she was a disciple of the Devil sworn to protect Damien until he can take over the world.
Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Nannies
Heading the list of musclehead nannies is wrestler Hulk Hogan who donned a pink tutu to play the lead in Mr. Nanny, a 1993 comedy co-starring Sherman Hemsley and former New York Dolls singer David Johansen. A close second is Vin Diesel, the big bad bald guy best known as car thief Dominic in the Fast and Furious movies. In The Pacifier, he’s an ex-Navy Seal on his toughest mission yet—looking after a gaggle of five kids.
From a gig as a dance show host (billed as “Funky Mike Myers”) to a stint on Saturday Night Live to hit films like Wayne’s World and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Michael John Myers has followed the path of Canadian trailblazers like the SCTV folks who found fame making Americans laugh. The Scarborough, Ontario born comedian says he was able to break into the American comedy market “because other Canadians helped me.”
