cable access television showWayne’s World,Coffee Talk
host Linda Richman (based on his mother-in-law),
and Dieter, the host ofSprockets. Each character had
a popular catchphrase—Wayne’s “Excellent!” and
“Not!” Richman’s “It’s like buttah,” and Dieter’s
“Would you like to touch my monkey?”—that soon
entered the teenage lexicon. The Wayne’s World
sketch was made into a 1992 feature film and be-
came the only film based on aSaturday Night Liveskit
to gross more than $100 million.
Wayne’s World, with Myers as Wayne and Dana
Carvey as his sidekick, Garth Algar, became the most
famous of Myers’sSaturday Night Livecreations. Still,
some were concerned about how the sketch would
fare. Carvey thought “we’d be nailed as doing a Bill
and Ted ripoff”—referring to the popular comedy
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure(1989). Then-show
writer Conan O’Brien even tried to dissuade Myers
from submitting the idea for the sketch. Both
O’Brien and Carvey were shocked at its success. On
one occasion, in 1992, the skit caused a minor politi-
cal furor when Myers’s character mocked Chelsea
Clinton’s looks and compared her unfavorably to
Vice President Al Gore’s daughters. Myers later apol-
ogized to First Lady Hillary Clinton for the sketch.
Wayne’s World 2(1993) was less successful than the
original film, as was his next comedy,So I Married an
Axe Murderer, released the same year. After leaving
Saturday Night Livein 1995, Myers created the satiri-
cal character of 1960’s British spy Austin Powers. A
spoof of the James Bond films,Austin Powers: Interna-
tional Man of Myster y(1997) was a cult hit, and two
successful sequels followed in 1999 and 2002.
Impact Myers, with his work onSaturday Night Live
and theAustin Powersmovies, along with Jim Carrey,
another comedian who went from television to film,
was a major comedy force of the 1990’s.
Further Reading
Shales, Tom, and James Andrew Miller.Live from New
York: An Uncensored Histor y of “Saturday Night Live.”
Boston: Little, Brown, 2002.
Sydney, Leah. “The Very Groovy Life of Mike Myers.”
Biography3, no. 6 (June, 1999): 96-101.
Julie ElliottSee also Carrey, Jim; Comedians; Film in the
United States; Late night television; Television.600 Myers, Mike The Nineties in America