The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 38

i 2 THE GAZETTE, MONTREAL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15. 1992 This mother of all catch phrases looks like a passing fad ANDREW HELLER YORK TIMES and suck the fun from it with ceaseless repetition the way a sea lamprey sucks the lifeblood from a trout. (NOT!) Remember all the fun we had last year with Saddam Hussein's "mother of all (NOT!) Remember how people would substitute "football games" or "kidney stones" or whatever for the word "battles?" And how, despite the fact that you would sometimes hear this phrase 100 times a day, in every conversation and in every conceiv-. able context, you never once had the urge to fling yourself off a tall building just so you wouldn't have to hear it again. (NOT!) Well, that's exactly the way I feel about this new catch phrase.

(NOT!) Can you guess what catch phrase I'm talking about? I bet you can't! (NOT!) For those of you who have been comatose until this morning, let me explain: it's meant to be a contrary statement. An example: Say you are in the emergency room after experiencing tightness in your chest. "How's the ticker, doc?" you ask. I going to have a heart attack?" "No, Bill," he replies. "It's just some indigestion." Then, just as the look of dread is fading from your face, the doctor screams "NOT!" and giggles hysterically.

What he means by this is you will probably keel over from a major coronary within the next 10 minutes. Mighty clever, eh? (NOT!) I don't know where this catch phrase originated, but I suspect it was the television show Saturday Night Live. That show spawns plenty of catch phrases. There's that one where you take someone's name and keep coming up with endless mind-numbing variations on it the Billster, the right up to the point where Bill threatens to beat your skull in with a stick. What a stitch! (NOT!) It just goes to show that with SNL "it's always something." (Har har!) But back to this wacky "NOT!" phrase.

It's become so popular and has lasted so long, it wouldn't surprise me if U.S. President George Bush adopted it for his re-election campaign. (NOT!) You know, when he's talking about Mario Cuomo he could say, "That deficit thing in New York. Gotta give Gov. Cuomo credit.

Done a smashing job with it. OK, so it's not very-presidential. But you have to admit it sure beats his current slogan: "Read my oh-my-gawd, I think I'm gonna do the hurl thing again!" Anyway, I'm about out of space. I sure have enjoyed our little discussion about this latest infantile entrant into the public lexicon. Let's do it again some time real soon, OK? (NOT! NOT! NOT!) NEW YORK Good news! (NOT!) A wonderful new catch phrase is sweeping North America.

It's everywhere. Moms use it. Dads use it. Kids use it. A character in Doonesbury used it the other day.

Even I've used it. (NOT!) But then I do love a good catch phrase. (NOT!) I mean, personally, I can't get enough of society's mindless tendency to latch on to a clever line Wayne's World freaks will find full-length SNL skit awesome llllft -r I I 11 'I of relativity from this duo? Like Ca-lifornian cousins Bill and Ted from whom these guys must have been separated at birth bubble-heads Wayne and Garth take viewers on an odyssey designed to destroy brain cells. Sure, it's dumb and juvenile. But just try to keep a straight face as our suburban cadets lip-sync to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Or as Wayne does an underwear impression of Tarzan, trying to mate the captivating Cassandra. A few inspired moments here and there was all it took to woo a crowd of Wayne's World freaks at the Montreal premiere Thursday: "A very awesome and original American idea," marvelled Jesson Ferrand, 17, a student who is hooked on Wayne's World. "Definitely as good as their TV bit," stated student Donald Levine, 1 7. "'But if it's the first time you're watching them, you probably won't understand what's happening." Mixed reactions Dennis Hetfield and Suky Jones, two members of a heavy-metal band called Shanghai Daze, had never seen Wayne and Garth's exploits on SNL, but were still impressed with the movie. "Excellent," said Suky.

"Same with the girl (Carrere) she's gorgeous. Let's move to Hollywood." "OK!" Hetfield agreed. "The movie made me crack, too." "Garth makes you hurl. NOT!" joked banker Todd Church, 31. Ricky Mezey, 13, was less enthralled: "It started off great, but it just died.

There's no way parents will like it. They won't know what planet these guys come from. "Then again, you can't expect more. They took a TV skit and multiplied it 20 times to fill a movie. It's funny in spots, but it's mostly cheesy and nothing too special." Wayne's World is playing at the Palace, Laval, Dorval, Cinema and Greenfield.

PG: NOT! World is better movie mush than The Way We Were NOT! Tia "Babe-raham Lincoln" Carrere will make the world forget Bar-bra Streisand MA YBE! Mike Myers (Wayne) and Dana Carvey (Garth) will make the world forget Robert Redford NOT! Wayne and Garth will make the EWorld forget the bodaciously excellent movie adventures of Bill and iTed. Not even. i Major psycho-hose-beast bum-mer, dude. Not entirely. Look on the bright side: Saturday fNight Live producer Lome Michaels and punkoid director Pene- lope Spheeris have managed to take a two-minute TV sketch, stretch it out and sustain audience interest for about um 20 minutes, before the film falls apart.

Still, that's a better fate than be-l falls most TV skits that are adapted 7. to the big screen. Just ask Wayne's -World star Dana Carvey, who "stiffed big-time in Opportunity Knocks, a lame spinoff of his SNL Remember Strange Brew? And what happened to the beer- swilling MacKenzie Brothers (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas), those beloved Second City nosers, when ithey attempted to prove 90 minutes of belching could be art in the mo vie Strange Brew? They mostly gave 'viewers gas, and another reason not to visit Canada. Unless you've been orbiting Planet Zarkon lately or you're an adult you're probably aware of Wayne's World, a SNL spoof about heavy-metal featherweights -'with their own cable-TV show. Originally developed by Toronto-nian Mike Myers in high school 'and later expanded by him in that Second City troupe, i Wayne's World has a cult following SNL largely because it lasts ionly a few minutes.

Myers who swears he's never BILL BHOWM8T1IN even seen one of Bill and Ted's most excellent adventures plays the relatively more stable Wayne, who could probably pass a saliva test in a pinch and produce children who don't look or talk like Lassie. Carvey plays Wayne's Ed McMa-hon, Garth, a techno-nerd who probably couldn't pass the saliva test, much less produce children who wouldn't bay at the moon. Garth looks like a- high-school chemistry experiment gone awry. But Garth also has wheels, the dreaded Mirthmobile, which makes him indispensable to Wayne. Unfortunately, the wheels come off on Wayne's World, when a slea-zoid producer appropriately played by Rob Lowe tries to move the tandem out of their basement and into the plush showroom of network TV.

Lowe also tries to move in on Wayne's babe, a heavy-metal singer and bassist called Cassandra (Tia Carrere). Dim-bulb Garth notes that if Cassandra were president she would be Babe-raham Lincoln. He also suspects Wayne want to wed her. But NOT! "Marriage is punishment for shoplifting in some countries," the deep Wayne tells Garth. Of course, Garth has his own sexual identity problems: "Do you find Bugs Bunny attractive when he puts on a dress?" a contemplative Garth asks Wayne, while stretched out on the hood of the Mirthmobile.

What, you were expecting discourse about Einsteinian theories Mike Myers (left), and Dana Carvey have taken Wayne's World from Saturday Night Live to the big screen. Torontonian puts big piece of home into his dream-come-true world tsr Jxl siasm for an hour of hockey with some friends." Myers used to play street hockey it was cheaper than renting an arena on his own street in Scarborough. There's a similar scene in the Wayne's World movie, involving Wayne and his goofball sidekick Garth (played by Dana Carvey). Because he was writing the screenplay (in collaboration with Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner) Myers was able to make sure the film had "lots of nods to Canada." The setting of the film may be Illinois, but Myers could never have conceived it without Toronto. In the movie Wayne and his friends hang out at Stan Mikita's DoNut Shop.

(Based on Canada's Tim Horton chain.) There are also scenes in a heavy-metal bar called the Gasworks. (There actually is a Gasworks in Toronto.) "When Wayne's World came to be a movie, I knew there would be a doughnut store. I knew there would have to be a heavy-metal bar. I knew there would be a scene of Garth and I lying on the hood of our car at one end of a runway watching the planes come in. I knew there would have to be a party in a warehouse.

That's the world I grew up in. That's how I always saw it." rv -t At i 0 Wayne Campbell and his head-banger world originated during the days when Myers wat still in Toronto, appearing at Second City and on the MuchMusic network with DJ Christopher Ward. "In those days I'd be doing the Wayne character on MuchMusic in the small hours of the morning, from midnight to 5 a.m. I'd be doing these various improvisations and they were always based on situations from life. "The reason I knew the character so well was because I used to talk like that in Scarborough and everybody I hung out with talked like that." Wayne started attracting a Much-Music following, but it was two fellow Canadians who helped pave his way to New York.

Martin Short, himself a Toronto Second City graduate, recommended him to Canadian Lome Michaels, the Emmy Award-winning executive producer of Saturday Night Live. Myers became an immediate hit on SNL, not only because of the character of Wayne, but also because of other memorable creations such as Dieter, the Teutonic host of an avant-garde German TV show, and the inimitable "Lothar of the Hill People." 1 JAMIE P0RTMAN SOUTHAM NEWS TORONTO Mike Myers will never forget his last day of school. In the morning he wrote an exam. In the afternoon, he signed to join Toronto's Second City comedy troupe. That was 10 years ago.

Today, Myers is a regular on NBC's Saturday Night Live, and his first Hollywood movie opens across the continent this weekend. Yet there's still this sense of child-like wonder as he thinks back to the day he officially became a professional comedian: Dream come true "My last exam was at 9 o'clock for Concepts of Literature in Grade 1 3. My Second City audition was at 12 o'clock. And I was hired at 3 o'clock." The memory sparks a wide, wide grin. "I'd wanted to be on Saturday Night Live since I was 1 1.

I'd wanted to be in Second City since I was 15. And I'd wanted to write, act in and direct a movie since I was 4." Since he was 41 "Absolutely. This is a real dream come true." Myers, 28, is curled up on a luxurious sofa in a lavish suite at Toronto's Four Seasons Hotel where he's being interviewed about Wayne's World, the movie. The posh surroundings are appropriate to someone who's a rising star. So how come he keeps coming across as the eternal kid from the Toronto suburb of Scarborough? To be sure, he isn't wearing the torn and faded jeans that are a hallmark of his character Wayne Campbell, the endearingly dippy teenage host of Wayne's World, a freaked-out cable-access TV show that purportedly originates from a basement in Aurora, III.

Trademark cap But the trademark blue peaked cap is present, perching precariously on an exceedingly shaggy head. The T-shirt is black. "Well, that's the sort of heavy-metal guy I am," Myers shrugs. And his way of checking the quality of the hotel's kitchen is to order lots and lots of yogurt from room service. Well, yes, he would feel more at home in the family basement in Scarborough.

Maybe that's why he feels so comfortable with Wayne's World. "The set for that show is based on that basement," he says in a tone that is half mischievous, half-nostalgic. Even the furniture strikes the right chord: "You know what I mean? The kind that used to be upstairs, but eventually ends up downstairs?" Saturday Night Live originates in New York, and the movie was made in Hollywood. But home is where the heart is and to Myers, home is very much Toronto. And he didn't come back just to do interviews.

His first night in town, he rented a North Toronto arena "so I could indulge my enthu i i Vr UAZtnt. OAVfc SI0AWAY 1,1 1 I i Vi'- Y''" "'If Heavy-metal musicians Dennis Hetfield (left) and Suky Jones are new converts to Wayne's World. The juggernaut continues now in paperback NEW YORK DAILY NEWS 1 i Things That Make You Blow Chunks, How to Schwing, and Xavier Cugat Charo: What Went Wrong? Myers and Ruzan provide a section called Vital Information, wherein we learn Wayne's full name (Wayne Nibblet Campbell), sex (yes, please) and birthday (Sept. 31). In another choice chapter, Wayne waxes poetic on subjects such as Ode to My Guitar, and Haiku: hate you haikuYou are too hardTo Food lovers will be sure to enjoy Wayne's recipe for Kraft Macaroni Cheese With Wieners Cut Into It.

Guitarists get a lesson in pickin', Wayne-style. And, oh yes, golfers might like the picture of Emerson, Lake and Arnold Palmer. Party on, if you dare. NEW YORK The Wayne's World juggernaut continues to build. First the skit on Saturday Night Live, then the movie, and next a book.

Fulfilling what appears to be a continent's unquenchable thirst for Wayne-ism, Mike Myers and Robin Ruzan bring us Wayne's World: Extreme Close-Up (Hyperion, The 96-page paperback is a kind of compendium of Wayneness, written in the character's demented patois itself an amalgam of party animal, pop-culture junkie, and leering adolescent, highlighted with an occasional flash of clarity. Laid out in an A to format, Extreme Close-Up covers such essential topics as Babe Talk, Top 10 1 -1 I Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) is obviously thrilled to meet rock singer Cassandra (Tia Carrere) in a scene from the movie Wayne's World. i.