The Mike Meyers of tech
The remarkably similar career arcs of the "Austin Powers" guy and the man running Twitter into the ground.
A Hollywood cautionary tale:
In the late eighties and early nineties, Saturday Night Live emerged from a decidedly uneven period with what has been scientifically proven1 to be the greatest cast in the show’s history: Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Dana Carvey, Jan Hooks, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Rock…this ensemble was so good it even made Victoria Jackson and Rob Schneider (speaking of cautionary tales) tolerable and sometimes even funny. It seems hard to believe now, but when the show was at its peak, they had Dennis Miller hosting Weekend Update - and he freaking killed it.2
And then there was Mike Myers, the latest in a long line of ringers the shows Canadian-born producer, Lorne Michaels, brought in from his home country to show you Americans how to be funny.
After bringing to life some of the show’s most memorable characters - Dieter Sprocket, the “if it’s not Scottish it’s crap” guy, and especially hair-metal icon Wayne Campbell - he went on to have an absolutely staggering winning streak after leaving the show and pivoting to movies.
The Wayne's World movie was, and remains, rivaled only by The Blues Brothers as the best SNL movie by a wide margin. (A hurriedly written sequel was much more uneven but had its moments.) Then came Austin Powers, the time-traveling British secret agent whose first film did decently well in theaters but became a true cultural phenomenon - and launched a million catchphrases- on VHS. And he followed that up by stepping into his departed pal Chris Farley’s role as the voice of animated troll Shrek, giving rise to yet another lucrative and (mostly) much-loved franchise.
Most actors are extremely lucky to play just one iconic film character in their entire careers. Myers had three under his belt in the early 2000s - actually four or five, when you account for the different roles he played in the Austin Powers films - and that's not even counting the ones on SNL who didn't get movies made about them. He proved he could do drama as Steve Rubell in 54, a potentially interesting film hacked to pieces by Harvey Weinstein. Heck, even his flop So I Married An Axe Murderer gained a dedicated cult following on video and cable.
The man could do absolutely no wrong. Everything he touched turned to gold. The underwhelming third Austin Powers movie and the creepy as hell Cat In The Hat were warning signs in retrospect, but a lot of people still paid good money to see them in theaters. Audiences were still ready to give Myers a chance.
And then came The Love Guru.
Full disclosure: like Most of you, I have never actually seen The Love Guru. If I ever get around to watching it and end up enjoying it, it certainly wouldn't be the first time a universally panned movie has turned out to be one of my all time favorites.3
The clips I have seen certainly don't inspire confidence, though. (Its probably the low point in Ben Kingsley’s career, and he was in a freaking Uwe Boll movie.)
The great Nathan Rabin compares The Love Guru, something of a passion project for Myers, to “a group of brilliant scientists working around the clock for a decade to build a malfunctioning fart machine: a surreal waste of time, energy and manpower.”
I do remember reading an article (in Entertainment Weekly, I believe) about The Love Guru and its spectacular failure back in the day. The big takeaway was that many of the crew members and supporting performers admitted that they just didn't get what Myers was trying to accomplish with this project, but they also knew Myers had an impeccable track record - and that no one really had high expectations for Austin Powers, either - so they figured he must know what he's doing.
Shortly thereafter, Love Guru Halloween costumes were at Walmart on the clearance rack. Heavily discounted. The movie didn’t end Myers’ career - he still turns up now and then, doing something like hosting a reboot of The Gong Show or making a Netflix series I literally never heard of until I did some Googling for this post - but he was never the same afterwards.
With so much going on in the world, why am I wasting your time writing about a guy whose movies you loved during the Clinton era? Because Myers’ career arc reminds me of another man who apparently could do no wrong, got everyone to believe his antics will surely pay off in the end, only to crash and burn and destroy his reputation.
Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, I thought he was an intelligent and forward-looking man. Now that he’s made a complete hash of it,4 and falling for conspiracy nonsense and anti-anti-Putin talking points, to boot…I still think he’s an intelligent and forward-looking man who is just really, really bad at running a social media network.
Seriously. I’m sure his role in PayPal and Tesla and SpaceX is overstated, but you don’t become part of so many groundbreaking companies’ origin stories out of pure dumb luck. He had a good head start in life,5 but trust-fund babies squander their inherited wealth more often than they turn it into historically gigantic fortunes.6
But there is a very long history of extremely intelligent, forward-looking entrepreneurs and academics who play themselves out of the business and intellectual halls of fame by signing on to bad and sometimes dangerous ideas, or simply falling victim to their own hype and surrounding themselves with yes-men.
And that is when they fail. To paraphrase a public service announcement familiar to we Canadian Gen-Xers, everybody is good at something, but nobody is good at everything.
Don’t @ me, Boomers. Deep down you know much of the 1975-80 show was funny only if you were extremely stoned while watching it.
There’s another post to be written about why so many SNL cast members from that era went full Tea Party and then MAGA. My theory is that working with Al Franken had something to do with it.
A “red flag movie” is a film which, according to several Reddit threads, makes you extremely wary of anyone who insists it’s his favorite movie of all time. Fight Club and The Boondock Saints are prime examples.
Hudson Hawk is what I consider a “green flag movie.” If it is one of your favorites, I can trust that deep down, you’re a good person. (Other green flag movies: UHF and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.)
Musk has responded to the Substack stuff. He might be telling the truth and that this isn’t just a vendetta against a competitor, but a response to said competitor trying to steal Twitter’s data. But who would trust him now?
A side note: many of Musk’s purportedly progressive critics really tell on themselves when they denounce him for being - gasp! - a filthy immigint. But that’s another post.
Another side note (man, I’m really going crazy with the footnotes in this one): Musk has reportedly lost billions of dollars in personal wealth since he took over Twitter, much to the delight of the “billionaires shouldn’t exist” crowd. And yet…have his losses made anyone else better off?
Elon Muck is proof that there is no connection whatsoever between the brain and the billfold.
His entire reputation is built on the fact he is a trust fund baby who came here with his portion of the dodgy profits his dodgy family made in the dodgy Afrikaner Wars (blood diamonds, conflict gems from Rhodesia, etc.). He has never BUILT anything. He did not "invent" Paypal - he invested in the guy who did that, and then stole the credit, the same way he did with his Tinny Toy company and Space X. He is the Chief Engineer of nothing, though he really is the Chief Twit (and not necessarily of Twitter).
He is definitely NOT the Aspergian he claims to be. I'm an Aspergian and I can say definitely that he does not act like any actual Aspergian I have ever known. For one thing, while Aspergians can often be seen as assholes (which comes from failing to "read the room," a major trait) I have yet to meet one who CHOOSES to be an Asshole. Muck, on the other hand, REVELS in being an asshole.
If he was being chased in school as he claims in his foundation myth and had to hide to avoid being beaten up (the source of his paranoia that he's going to be assassinated), it was likely because people got tired of his Rich Kid Assholery. It's definitely NOT from having Aspergers - he just latched onto that so he can go be the Asshole he loves being, and when he gets called on his assholery he plays the victim - "I can't help it if I was born that way." BULLSHIT!
Elon Muck is merely the biggest fraud to come out of the Capitol of Fraudulence, Silly Con Valley.
Go drive one of his Tinny Toys, but beware it may decide to drive you - right through a red light. When you have to sign a non-disparagement agreement in order to get service on something you bought, you bought the Wong Foo King Thing.
So, Mike Meyers had his face put on a Canadian stamp. Too bad the Pony Express isn't still around. We could similarly honor Musk by tattooing his face on the east end of every west-bound horse.