The Hollywood Reporter Celebrates 20 Years of Austin Powers

Its reputation irreparably harmed by sequels of astonishingly diminishing quality and catchphrases done to death by a generation of frat boys and office drones in grating put-on accents, reduced as if by choice to the image of a discount Halloween costume consisting of bad teeth, a Union Jack Speedo, and a fecund chest merkin, it's sometimes sadly easy to forget that Jay Roach's Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was not only a bona fide comedy classic, but something of a minor masterpiece. And as much as Jack Ryan or Nikita might beg to differ, it certainly ended up being the defining spy movie of the Nineties. It's also somewhat hard to believe, at least for someone who came of age to a soundtrack of Britpop and trip-hop during the Clinton Administration, that it's twenty years old this week. But it is. It's been that long since Mike Meyers' singular creation managed to simultaneously send up and pay homage to everything Sixties and British from The Beatles to Jason King to Harry Palmer to, of course, Agent 007, in the process forever ruining puns for future Bond actors. Sure, there are plenty of people to this day unaware that their ringtone actually comes courtesy of Derek Flint, not Austin Powers, but there are also plenty of people who never would have discovered Flint or The Avengers or Casino Royale or just about anything covered on this blog had it not been for the Meyers movie. So it's a movie well deserving of the lavish and rather wonderful oral history devoted to it in The Hollywood Reporter this week. Check it out. It's definitely worth a read for spy fans!

Roach and Myers Still Contemplating Fourth Austin Powers Movie

Dark Horizons reports that director Jay Roach (whose LBJ biopic All the Way recently premiered on HBO) and star Mike Myers (Inglourious Basterds) are still kicking around ideas for a fourth Austin Powers movie. "You know, we talk about it every time we get together," the director told Larry King Now. "It ebbs and flows, and I would say it's in a latent phase right now, but someday if we find the right idea that seems to have it earn itself, for sure." Asked by King if they had a specific idea for the sequel, Roach replied, "We've had a whole bunch. It's been many years of kicking around, and we've had so many, but there's no one that's kind of stuck yet." So it doesn't sound like anything very concrete is happening on this front. That's probably for the best. While the first film (which will be two decades old next year, if you can believe it) was brilliant and hilarious, the sequels proved the law of diminishing returns. Still, they managed to shine a spotlight on Sixties spy movies, which is always a good thing. It was in the run-up to the third Powers movie that Fox released Our Man Flint and In Like Flint on DVD for the first time (with a weird cover blurb on the sequel attributed to Austin Powers himself proclaiming it, "My favorite movie!"), along with Fathom and Modesty Blaise (the latter of which makes its Blu-ray debut this summer via Kino Lorber). So if another Austin Powers movie meant more obscure spy titles making their way to home video, then I'd be all for it.

Digging into the Double O Section archives, I see that I've already written this blurb virtually verbatim (right down to the Fathom reference) at least twice before, and probably more. Rumors of another Austin Powers adventure tend to pop up every couple of years. Back in 2011, New Line was reported to be "close to a deal" with Myers for a film focusing on the villainous Dr. Evil and his son Scott. More recently, The New York Times reported that Myers was planning to resurrect the character on Broadway instead. Neither ultimately panned out.

Austin Powers Returns... On Broadway?

The New York Post reports (via MI6) that, presumably having witnessed the success of his Shrek character on stage, Mike Meyers is in negotiations to bring Austin Powers to the Great White Way. "Myers, who [co-]wrote and starred in the three wildly popular movies, now hopes to turn groovy 1960s-era secret agent Powers into an all-singing, all-dancing theatrical production," according to the paper. Meyers himself would not star, but is expected to be "highly involved in writing the show." Rumors flared up earlier this year (as they do from time to time) that Myers is also hard at work on another Powers movie, which would be unrelated to the stage version. Personally, I enjoyed the heck out of the first movie, but found the sequels to be increasingly awful and the ubiquitous public imitations (brilliantly sent up by Ricky Gervais on the original Office) endlessly annoying. What started out as a really funny character was quickly done in by the worst sort of over-exposure, and I can't see a Broadway show (or another movie, for that matter), doing anything to rectify that problem. But maybe it will spur the studios to dig into their vaults and release more Sixties spy movies on DVD! If so, then I'm all for it. (Fox issued Modesty Blaise, Fathom and the Flint films for the first time to coincide with the theatrical release of Austin Powers in Goldmember.)

Tradecraft: Austin Powers Rumors Resurface

Every couple of years, the rumor mill spits out another Austin Powers sequel possibility. The latest one popped up yesterday, originating on the website Hitfix, which reported that Mike Myers had just closed a deal to resurrect the moribund shagadelic spy. The Hollywood Reporter then confirmed that Myers is "expected to close a deal" soon, adding that the actor would "write, produce and star in a fourth film," then hedging its bets by saying that "sources caution that no deal has closed." Deadline's Mike Fleming went even further with the denials,  stressing that "no deal has yet been signed, and top New Line brass are surprised the whole thing has reared up after they made Myers an offer six months to a year ago, and [heard] nothing." Fleming rehashes the potential story that popped up in 2007 and 2008 rumors about a movie focusing on Dr. Evil and his relationship with his son, Scott, but says that it's unclear whether that's still the concept if things move forward now. While Myers co-wrote the first three films with Mike McCullers, it's currently unclear (according to the trade blog) whether either he or director Jay Roach would be involved. Myers might work with a new collaborator. The whole thing even happening at all still depends on a deal being worked out between Myers and New Line, and apparently the two camps are far from in agreement on what that deal should be. So the upshot of all this? Maybe there will be another Austin Powers movie...

New Spy DVDs Out This Week

The Man Called Flintstone

A Flintstones movie? What the--? Would you believe, this is actually a pretty crucial release for people interested in Sixties Bond parodies! So pervasive was Bondmania (and spy fever in general) in 1966 that when it came time for Hanna-Barbera to adapt their popular prime-time toon about cavemen into a movie, the obvious choice was to make it a Bond take-off! The title, of course, is a take-off on another popular Bond-inspired spy movie, Our Man Flint. So was the original theatrical poster, which brilliantly mimicked Bob Peak's classic Flint pose. (Warner didn't use it for the DVD cover; click here to see a side-by-side comparison.) The plot finds caveman Fred Flintstone stepping in for his injured doppelganger, a Stone Age James Bond named Rock Slagg. He and his family (and neighbors the Rubbles) then embark on an adventure across, er, "Eurock," pursued at every turn by the incompetent agents of SMIRK. Today's Warner Brothers release marks the first time The Man Called Flintstone has been available on DVD in Region 1.

James Bond Mythbusters

The popular stunt/debunking cable series Mythbusters takes on myths perpetrated by James Bond movies in two episodes presented in Mythbusters: Big Blasts, the latest DVD release from Image--along with eight other episodes. In "The James Bond Special, Part 1," the MythBusters create a watch that can deflect a bullet like Bond's could in Live and Let Die, and attempt to recreate 007's spectacular speedboat jump from that movie as well. Then they find out if it's possible to blow up a propane tank by shooting it with a handgun as Bond did in Casino Royale. "In Part 2," according to Image's copy, "Jamie and Adam pack high explosives into an ordinary ballpoint pen, create a deadly bowler hat to see if it could really slice the head off a statue and build giant steel jaws to see if a metal-mouthed super villain could really chomp through steel cables." I saw Part 1, and it was a lot of fun. Read my review of it here.

Austin Powers Blu-Ray

If you really need Austin Powers in high-def, now you can have him. Today New Line unleashes The Austin Powers Collection: Shadelic Edition Loaded With Extra Mojo on Blu-Ray. I'm not quite sure what that extra Mojo is, but I'd imagine these discs at least contain all the special features of the original DVD releases, including loads of deleted scenes. Hopefully, they also retain that nifty text feature from the original edition of the first (and best) film where Mike Meyers recounts all the various Sixties spy films and series that influenced him.

Austin Powers 10th Anniversary Edition

DVDActive has pictures of a new Region 2 10th Anniversary Edition of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, and Amazon.co.uk has it for sale. The disc comes out December 3. There is no word yet on an American version, but I wouldn't be surprised if Region 1 gets this disc as well. It's strange that New Line hasn't revisited the title earlier. Unfortunately, there's surprisingly not a lot of new material on this release, save for a 17-minute featurette called "Austin Powers: A Shaggadelic Decade," an Interactive Quiz and a snazzy new cover that's extraoridinarily reminiscent of the Region 1 cover of Jason King! Appropriate, since Powers probably owes more to King than any of the many other spies he, um, borrows from. I think Meyers even cites Jason King on the commentary track from the original DVD release, which is still included, along with all the other original features.

More Austin Powers?

There's a rumor going around the web that Mike Myers is prepared to inflict more Austin Powers upon us. Let's do an anatomy of a rumor here: DarkHorizons links to a story at FirstShowing.net that quotes from an interview Myers did with RottenTomatoes (and my cousin's girlfriend said her mother's college roommate heard from her sister's ex-fiance...) where he mentions the possibility. And now I'm doing my duty as a spy blogger and reporting it here too, thus contributing to that morass of potential misinformation. Anyway, there isn't much meat to the actual story. Basically, when asked while doing press for Shrek 3 if there would be another Austin Powers movie, Myers said “There is one that we have an idea about. The only thing I will say is that it's entirely from Dr. Evil's point of view." It's unclear just how serious he was being; FirstShowing thinks he could have been joking.

When the first movie in the series, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery came out, I loved it. It put the spotlight on a genre I (clearly) love dearly: the Sixties spy movie. He borrowed and stole from everywhere, and I loved seeing all the references to even some really obscure spy flicks. And it was genuinely funny. Then the two dreadful sequels came along, each one worse than the last, continually shifting the focus from clever spy parody to stale potty humor. And then the impressions started, and soon you couldn't turn around without some idiot saying, "Yeah, baby, shagadelic!" or some such nonsense, and that really killed the franchise for me. It's even, sadly, impacted my enjoyment of the original. So would I want to see another? Not really. But if you're gonna do it, focusing on Dr. Evil is probably the best way to go. Austin's kind of been done to death, and Dr. Evil was always the best character, so that could actually be interesting. If it happens, I think the idea could have the potential to actually be good and outshine the execrable The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember.