(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 5 December 2025 17:15, UK
Back when he was a big deal, Mike Myers wore a lot of hats. Spinning so many plates at once inevitably creates more pressure, and if things were to reach boiling point, it repeatedly became clear that he wasn’t the kind of personality who’d make it easy for everyone on set to deal with.
The actor and comedian would create his characters, often playing several of them in the same movie, and even when he wasn’t a credited screenwriter, he’d be heavily involved in the script. Throw in the producing side of things, and you can maybe understand why he earned the tag of being volatile.
He had constant run-ins with Penelope Spheeris when they were making Wayne’s World, which got so bad that Myers stepped in to prevent her from helming the sequel. His next big-screen effort was the murderous black comedy, So I Married an Axe Murderer, and much the same would happen again.
Robbie Fox was the only writer listed in the credits, which was contentious in itself. Myers and his friend, Neil Mullarkey, significantly rewrote it, only for the scribe to reject a proposal that would give him story and co-scripting status. In the end, there was nothing he could do about it, but his feathers had been ruffled.
“You’re talking about a game of inches,” he explained to the Los Angeles Times of the dispute. “It was never a situation where I’m Mr Comedy, and he’s Mr Story. The dynamic was never that I’m sitting there like Morey Amsterdam, like Buddy on The Dick Van Dyke Show, going, ‘I got a good joke for you’. That would be an unfortunate, facile, sound-bite presentation of the way things were.”
However, the problems didn’t end there. Director Thomas Schlamme also found himself in the firing line, with the filmmaker having to deal with Myers’ occasional habit of refusing to leave his trailer when he was needed on set. Producer Rob Fried corroborated that he was a tricky customer, but tried to put a brave face on it.
“I think Mike’s a visionary, but his way of getting what he wants is to emote and threaten and express anger,” he suggested. “It’s not healthy for personal relations.” As for Schlamme, he tried to downplay that the set of So I Married an Axe Murder was as fractious as everyone believed, but he nonetheless admitted that “Mike is a difficult personality,” making him the third high-profile creative involved to say something along those lines.
“I’m not trying to sugar-coat this,” the director added. “I’m not trying to tell you that every morning we were hugging and dancing and having the best time of our lives. This was a very hard movie to make. But the notion that after Mike did Wayne’s World, he turned into this demon has been blown out of proportion.” Maybe not a demon, then, but based on what so many people have said, a bit of an egomaniac.
Even the crew member grew frustrated with Myers’ willingness “to argue loud, long and vehemently about any point he believes will affect his appearance onscreen, whether it’s dialogue, direction, or positioning of props.” Was it worth it? Not really, since How I Married an Axe Murderer bombed at the box office, although it has become something of a cult favourite in the three decades since.
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