The success of the second 'Austin Powers' caught us by surprise a little bit. We had decided not to do even a second one, unless the audience wanted it and we could do something better.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I remember, when I saw the first 'Austin Powers' movie, I was blown away by how fun and original it was.
For a long time, there was this rumor that I turned down doing 'Austin Powers,' which is not true. While they did send me the script, I don't think I was ever a serious consideration to direct it. I'm sure they probably sent it to 20 others as well.
It was most exciting when people first came up on the stage and then when they came back for the encore. We wanted to make a show that kept on developing, that was interesting, so we tried to do that with our live shows.
You never want your second act or the whole movie to just be this relentless march towards its goal. You want things to take the audience by surprise.
Me being able to beat up Austin Powers? I mean, how great can that be?
At some of the venues, the audience was so loud we could hardly hear what was happening on stage, which kind of threw us back to 1983, when we had very similar reactions on a much bigger scale.
Kubrick showed us something special. Every film was a challenge, and a direct assault on cinema's conventions.
The success of the storytellers - we're only as good as what we can withhold from the audience. Aspects of surprise and letting things play out for the audience - it's so much a part of their enjoyment. It's one of the great things about working in the movies and being a great storyteller.
I would love to do something like Austin Powers to show off my comic timing.
And we had the perhaps unfair advantage of not having to worry about what an audience was gonna think. We were in a vacuum. We were making little short films, really.