Lorne Michaels wanted Mike Myers to star in a remake of The Graduate, baby, yeah
During Myers' SNL days, Lorne had a lot of bad ideas for the man who would be Shrek
Mike Myers is back doing his thing on the six-part Netflix series The Pentaverate, a show that could only be green-lit prior to the streamer’s recent problems. To promote the series, Myers spoke with director David O. Russell for the Netflix Is A Joke comedy festival currently happening in Los Angeles, a festival that Netflix had to follow through with despite the fact that they’re hemorrhaging subscribers, canceling productions left and right, and being sued by shareholders for bad numbers.
During their chat, Myers dropped several juicy bits about the show, including that the series is about an Illuminati-esque society made up of five nice white guys, who actually make the world better. “In the last six years, just seeing the rise of all the weird conspiracy theories and the devaluation of fact, the rise of alternative fact, I thought, ‘What if there was a secret society of five people that ran the world, but what if they were nice?’” Myers said as reported by Variety. “Things can be shitty, but what if they had been way shittier if this group of [Myers lowers his voice for dramatic effect] white men had not been there since the Black Plague?”
Thanks, white people, for saving us from the Plague!
Anyway, he also dropped some bizarre stories about Lorne Michaels, his former boss at SNL. For instance, Myers said that Michaels was against using “Bohemian Rhapsody” for, perhaps, the most iconic scene in Wayne’s World (outside of Rob Lowe saying the line “gelatinous cube eats village—I think it’s terrific”). Apparently, Michaels and the studio wanted Guns N’ Roses.
But the weirdest one is that Michaels had the idea to have Myers star in a remake of The Graduate. Never one to follow through on a bad idea, Myers rejected the pitch. “So he pitched me a movie,” Myers said. “‘I want you to do a remake of The Graduate.’ And I said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ He said, ‘I just offered you a fucking movie!’”
“The Graduate doesn’t need to be remade,” Myers recalled telling him. “A little man should not stand in a great man’s shoes. It’s a perfect film.”
And this is why no one will ever, ever replace Myers as Shrek.