IMAGINE Mike Myers as Rocky, yelling “Yo, Adrian!” while punching the air.
Or flitting about the Austrian Alps singing “The hills are alive” or “My favorite things” surrounded by the von Trapp children.
The chameleon actor – who’s transformed himself into a bald evildoer and a Scottish sumo wrestler – has yet another stunt planned.
Make that more than one.
Via a new deal with DreamWorks, he’ll be inserting himself, other actors and new plots into existing hits and classics to create new movies, in a process he’s dubbed “film sampling.”
“Rap artists have been doing this for years with music, and now we are able to take that same concept and apply it to film,” said Myers, who has already paid homage to films like “The Graduate” and “The Thomas Crown Affair” in previous outings.
“Think of me as the Puff Daddy of film or ‘M. Diddy’ or ‘M & M’ or just ‘M,’ or maybe when you sample movies you don’t need a special name?”
“M. Diddy” isn’t saying what projects he has in mind, but we’re hoping he lets that fertile imagination of his run wild.
Just envision him swapping his retro-funky “Austin Powers” garb for chaps and spurs as a transplanted rancher in “Midnight Cowboy.”
Or making someone an offer he couldn’t refuse as “The Godfather.”
Myers’ pact with DreamWorks – in which the studio will acquire the rights to the films so the actor can digitally alter them – is already exciting interest in the film community.
“I think it’s a great idea,” says Jeff Kleiser, a pioneer in the digital field. “It’s bound to produce some truly hysterical results, especially with Mike Myers as the subject.
“If anyone can pull it off, he can, and there’s enormous scope for him to use his comic genius to do something spectacular,” said Kleiser, who’ll meet with DreamWorks executives next week to talk about the nuts and bolts of putting the plan into action.
Kleiser says the advances made in computer technology will enable the filmmakers to place Myers into different environments “quite realistically” by shooting him against a blue screen and electronically superimposing that image over an existing background.
The idea is not entirely new – commercials have altered old movie footage to show John Wayne ordering a beer, Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner and Marilyn Monroe plugging Chanel No. 5.
Myers’ latest brainstorm is a more sophisticated version of Woody Allen’s 1983 film, “Zelig,” in which clever editing positioned Allen in real archival footage alongside people like Woodrow Wilson and Babe Ruth.
“It’s similar to ‘Zelig’ but back then it was a much slower, more difficult and painful process,” Kleiser says.
DreamWorks principals Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg will help to develop the first project, and “Austin Powers” franchise director Jay Roach is on board to direct.
“Mike Myers’ talent is obvious, and – as audiences worldwide know from ‘Saturday Night Live’ to his ‘Austin Powers’ films – as an innovator, he is virtually unparalleled,” says Spielberg.
“If anyone can create a way to bring old films to new audiences, it is Mike.”