Party On, Wayne
Canadian Mike Meyers is like buttah.
Party on, Garth.
Party on, Wayne.
Wayne Campbell, a man for our time. Well no, really, more like a man for all time. Oh, sure, Canadian SNL star Mike Meyers created our greatest American hero back in the 90s. But we need him now, particularly as That Man threatens Canada. Canada! The least threatening country since Bermuda. The trucker’s hat atop our American Continental mainland.
Sure, as an early nineties breakout star on the pre-eminent sketch comedy program in history, Mike Meyers gave us some of our best memes: “If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!” “And now, ve dance!” (as Dieter from Sprockets) Oh! Or anything from Linda Richman, of Coffee Tawk and the giant bouffant hairdo: “Like Buttah!” “Talk amongst yourselves” and “I’m a little verklempt…” I’d lived in New York for five years by then and still got to learn the term farkakta from Meyers’ mouthy Jew. Nearly all those memorable bits contain physical components. To utter Dieter’s line is to plant your feet and wave your arms like a robot. Of course, every utterance from Richman is accompanied by exaggerated gestures of hands with two inch nails, fresh from the salon. Mike Meyers is a master of physical comedy: it is hard to recall most of these skits without shuffling, waving, or jumping around to accompany the funny words. Closest thing we had to memes in those days, as my kids remind me.
As enduring as all those characters and catch-phrases are, still, and before Dr. Evil was even a glint in Austin Powers’ eye, there stood Wayne. The scrappy kid who has a cable show with his friend Garth broadcast live on public access cable TV. When I made his portrait, Meyers’ was at the peak of his fame for his portrayal of Wayne. The Wayne’s World movie had not come out yet but was undoubtedly in the works. The creator of all those excellent characters could have been expected to be protective of his darlings.
This is where his ur-Canadian politeness came in. Meyers was terrific to work with, eagerly complying with whateverI asked of him with an affable ease. Since about tenth grade I have liberally peppered my conversation with “dude!” I am certain I must have deployed it on the most excellent party meister himself. And he met it with equanimity and grace. He is a truly nice guy, the kind of guy who became one of only two people to ever send me thank you notes (the other was MTV News scribe Tabitha Soren, Texan). Dude is so polite he uses “Mike” in show business because “Michael Meyers” is that serial killer guy in slasher Halloween movies.
Back then, perched upon just about every desk in town, next to the (wired to the wall) telephone, was an “answering machine.” Voicemail, before it was on a central server, existed on a tape machine in your house. Sometimes the tapes were big standard sized cassettes, but many answering machines used these little micro tapes. The kind I found in a box about fifteen years ago. I excitedly found a local place that had a machine to play those little tapes. I plunked down my fifty bucks, barely able to contain myself for the thirty days it took them to process and transcribe them. And was immediately sorely bummed when it turned out the tape I found was the second of the two tapes, the one that recorded incoming messages. If you remember the eighties, you weren’t there. Maybe my memory of Mike Meyers happily recording an outgoing message for me was to remain apocryphal. Like the snow leopard in Matthieson’s book, it’s almost better when it doesn’t show up.
Until about a month ago. A suspiciously small tape tumbled out of a box of miscellaneous office stuff. Oh ho, says I, and hied back to the lady with the tape player. Only it turns out she doesn’t have the tape player, a dude in Texas has it, and she has to mail the tape to him. Fair enough, I pony my fifty bucks, she mails her buddy at the Alamo, and calls up a month later. And now we can return to our story.
Literally on his way out the door, after having a great shoot and having him actually give me the SNL hat off his head, one final indignity. This photographer I worked with at SPIN, Laura Levine, hung out with a lot of her subjects. And had a habit of getting them to record her outgoing message so you’d call her up and never know who would be on the line. I shamelessly stole this idea, though ended up only feeling comfortable enough with a couple subjects to ask. I asked Mike Meyers
Mike Meyers understood the assignment. He set down his bag, crossed back over to my office in front of the enormous loft, leaned down, and became legend.
“You’ve reached Chris’ house, excellent. Leave a message, he’s out partying. Excellent, ewewewewrhe!!!”
Party on Wayne. Party on, Garth. If you need me you’ll have to leave a message because I am indeed, out partying.
PS Astute readers may wonder what was on the “B side” of that tape. In the spirit of nobody putting Baby in the corner, I offer what arguably exhibits even better comic mastery than Wayne himself. Ladies and gentlemen, Brooke Shields.
*Brooke, if you happen to see this, call me, maybe?
Love that Mike Meyers is every bit the awesome dude we'd want him to be. I miss him!!
And that was all before he took on Elon Musk!