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Eugene
Levy
Canada’s Everyman Funnyman
by Marcie Somers
Copyright ©2006 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted:
October 21, 2006.
Eugene Levy has one of those faces that are instantly recognizable. Mention
his name to teenagers or to baby boomers and the answer you’ll likely get is
“wasn’t he that funny guy in American Pie or Armed and Dangerous
or The Man?” Over the past 30 years, Eugene Levy has appeared in over
80 feature films and television shows. While the roles are comedic in
nature, whatever you do, don’t call him a comedian.
“One
of the biggest misconceptions about me is that I’m a comedian, which I’m
not. A comedian is someone who can stand up in front of an audience and make
you laugh. I’ve never done stand up and I never will! I’m a comic actor. My
comedy comes through my characters.”
And
what memorable characters they are! On SCTV he played Earl of Camembert, the
earnest, but dimwitted news anchor;
cheerful
Leutonian accordianist Yosh Schmenge (alongside SCTV Alumn John Candy);
schlock Las Vegas lounge comic Bobby Bittman;
diminutive
union patriarch Sid Dithers; energetic, used car salesman Al Peck; and inept
dance show host Rockin' Mel Slirrup.
He has
appeared in all of Christoper Guest’s movies – as Mitch Cohen the folk
singer making a comeback in A Mighty Wind, the hapless dog owner,
Gerald Fleck, in Best In Show and small town dentist/singer wannabe,
Dr. Allan Pearl in the classic, Waiting For Guffman.
More
recently, he’s obtained cross-generational appeal with his work as the
clueless but loving dad in American Pie, he played Steve Martin’s
best friend in Bringing Down the House, and was in Dumb and
Dumberer, the teen comedy that takes place in the 1980s.
For the most
part, the characters he plays are nerdy, but loveable, and although Levy is
keenly aware that he runs the risk of sterotyping himself, he says that
“playing dumb is a lot funnier than playing smart.”
“I think all
of my characters aren’t the sharpest tools in the drawer, but you can’t
fault their heart and their intent. They are all characters that people can
feel for and that’s what’s always been important to me.”
Growing
up in Hamilton, the middle child of working class parents, Levy didn’t
set out to become an actor. In fact, he didn’t really know what he wanted to
do - acting just fell into his lap. In high school, he formed a singing
group because, says Levy, “My older brother had a singing group that
performed rock and roll and barbershop. I thought his band was so amazing to
watch and see, that I thought I should start a group too. I rounded up a few
friends and formed a quartet. So my performing really began in a singing
capacity.”
Although he had developed a taste for performing, Levy did what was expected
of him and following graduation from high school, went to McMaster
University where he studied Sociology “because it had the lightest
workload.” It was there that he met two people who would influence his life
in the years to come – Martin Brenzell, director of Drama and Ivan
Reitman who would go on to direct such classics as Animal House and
Ghostbusters.
“Martin Brenzell was a huge influence on me. Although he was hired primarily
to oversee the extracurricular plays that were put on, he ran workshops that
were essentially an acting class. We had these workshops at every rehearsal
for every production we did where we received instruction on acting
techniques.”
Levy
got so involved in the workshops and plays that his academic career
eventually took a backseat. Says Levy, “I was having so much fun taking
these classes, writing for the school paper and trying to be in as many
places as I could - besides the classroom, that I eventually stopped going
to classes where it got to the point that I was unable to pass my third
year.”
Still, it never occurred to him that this was something he could do for a
living. “People just didn’t become actors. Back then (late 60s) it was out
of the question for a nice Jewish boy to be a full-time actor. Going to
university was the most important thing to do in order to get a profession -
especially for my parents.” For Levy, whose father dropped out of high
school when he was a teenager to help his family, nothing was more important
than getting a degree and having a proper job. “My dad wanted to give his
kids the opportunity he never got.”
He
went back to McMaster the following year, promising his parents that he
would get a degree, but instead went right back to what he had been doing
before. Enter the second person who influenced the direction of his life –
his old McMaster buddy, Ivan Reitman.
“I
realized that I was going to fail again, so I called Ivan Reitman who was
working on his first feature film, Foxy Lady and said, ‘Look, I’m in
big trouble. I need a job, can you help me?’ He had one position left to
fill and that was for a coffee boy. I jumped at the opportunity, moved to
Toronto
and started working for $60 a week. That was the first conscious decsion I
made to make film and acting a full time profession.”
Looking back, Levy wonders what would have happened if he had not gotten in
touch with Reitman. “I often wonder, had I not made that call or had I
waited another day, that job wouldn’t have been available, what I would have
done – whether I would have left
Hamilton or stayed and looked for a job selling suits. I don’t
know, but that moment was a big turning point for me.”
In
1971, Levy moved from behind the camera, to the front of the camera to star
in Reitman’s next film Cannibal Girl, alongside Andrea Martin, with
whom he would later work with on SCTV. From there, he appeared in several
plays, including Godspell and became a regular with Second City, a
Toronto improv, comedy club.
In
1976, shortly after the success of Saturday Night Live, the creators
of Second City decided to do a TV show based on the sensibility of what SNL
had created. It was there, that Levy met his pals, John Candy, Rick Moranis,
Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara who would also achieve success. “SCTV was
an absolute blast. I was young, the hours were insane, but I loved every
moment of it.”
It
was also during those SCTV years that he created his most memorable
characters. The Schmenge Brothers came about as a result of watching a polka
TV show. “John Candy and I were in a hotel room in Edmonton (where the show
was filmed) and we were watching a local polka show. I turned to John and
said, ‘Wow, there’s a couple of schmenges.’ We had used that word on the
show before, but we didn’t do anything with it until a year later we were
trying to think of an idea and I turned to John and said, ‘What about that
Schmenge idea we had?’ And that’s how Yosh and Stan Schmenge started.”
He
continues, “Some characters came from the stage, such as Earl of Camembert,
however a lot of the other characters came about as a result of makeup.
Often we didn’t know what we were going to do until we came out of makeup.
That’s how important the makeup people were on that show. So much so, we’d
write a script, but it wasn’t as though we had worked out the characters, so
we would turn to the makeup people who had great ideas. They would start to
go to work on our characters and then you’d look in the mirror and all of a
sudden the voice came with the character and then you had the character.
That’s how Sid Dithers and Woody Tobias, Jr.
came about.”
Levy’s body of work is so varied, that he has been able to appeal to have
cross-generational appeal. “The lucky thing is, you can hit a movie that
really broadens your audience base and I’ve been very lucky because I’ve had
a few of those movies that have worked for me in that regard.”
After appearing as the loveable, but clueless dad in American Pie,
Levy became an instant hit with teenagers. Levy is constantly amazed with
the recognition he gets with the youngsters. “It’s pretty amazing how many
young people know who I am. It shows you the power of movies. I find it
shocking actually when I think about it because by all rights they shouldn’t
know who I am. They certainly don’t know about anything I’ve done before
American Pie.”
Levy
also experienced the same degree of success with African American audiences,
after his film, Bringing Down the House. “Before that movie came out,
they didn’t know me from Adam, but for some reason, they just loved my
character. That movie alone, gave me a lot of recognition within that
community.”
Despite
Levy’s various successes, he still feels the uncertainties of whether a
script is going to work. “Honestly, the scripts I get are never guaranteed
hits or successes. I don’t even know if people are going to like the movie.
Even American Pie--the script read a lot rougher than the movie. I
kept thinking, ‘Boy, if this movie gets in the wrong hands, this could be
really nauseating.’ Fortunately for me, the movie turned out to be a great
movie, which is what you really hope for, but never really know. Chris and
Paul Weitz (the directors) did a great job with that movie. They allowed me
to do a great job because they gave me a lot of freedom to change the part
and improvise. I think that’s one of the reasons it turned out as well as it
did.”
Levy
has loved collaborating with Christopher Guest and as master of the script,
there is obviously a lot less uncertainty. Over the past ten-years, the two
have penned indie classics Waiting For Guffman, A Mighty Wind and
Best In Show.
“I
was a big fan of his work that he did with National Lampoon and I had
met him a couple of times. So I was completely shocked when one day out of
the blue, I received a phone call from Christopher telling me that he’s
working on a movie and that he would really like to have me write it with
him. I was really taken aback, because I thought there were a million other
people he could have called, he has tons of brilliant friends, why me? So I
said ‘ok,’ and went down to his country cabin in Upstate New York to meet
with him. I was very nervous, because I didn’t really know him and yet here
I was in a very confined space with somebody that I didn’t know personally
and I didn’t know if we were even going to get along, let alone be in synch
creatively. But from the moment he picked me up at the airport we were doing
a lot of laughing and almost immediately, we seemed to fit so well and
worked so well together, it was kind of miraculous actually.”
One of the things the two are known for is the tongue-in-cheek feel of their
movies, which are often categorized by film critics and moviegoers alike as
“mockumentary,” a term Levy is uncomfortable with. “A mockumentary implies
that you are making fun of subject matter, which we don’t do. We try to get
our bearing on a subject and the comedy comes out of the true characters and
the situation. For instance, when we did Waiting For Guffman, we
talked to small town people about life in a small town. What you see in
Best In Show is pretty much what you see when you go to national dog
show competitions. The world we represent is pretty much the way it is. Of
course we take a few liberties for your laughs, but we try not to do that at
the expense of the characters.”
Levy
needn’t worry about his latest film. For Your Consideration is a
departure from their trademark mockumentary format. It takes a satirical
look at Hollywood, telling the story of weather-beaten, screen
siren Marilyn Hack (Catherine O'Hara) who has been struggling to get
recognition for thirty years. After some short-lived notoriety in the late
eighties, her star has long faded. Her latest gig is playing Esther Pisker,
the ailing mamele of a Jewish family in the Deep South awaiting the
return of her estranged daughter Rachel - played by belligerent stand-up
comic Kelly Webb (Parker Posey) - in the melodrama Home for Purim.
One day, Marilyn gets wind of an Internet rumor that her performance could
land her an Academy Award® nomination. Levy plays her scheming agent.
The
film premiered at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, which was significant for
Levy, as it meant showing it for the first time in his hometown of Toronto.
Down
the road, Levy would love to sink his teeth into an adult comedy (à la Jim
Brooks style), where he can “show more and more acting chops than comedy,
but unfortunately a lot of people aren’t making movies like that now.”
“Either that or I would love to work with Sir Anthony Hopkins. How and why
that would ever happen in a comedy, I’m not sure - why he would be dragged
over to this side or why I’d be dragged over to that side!”
In
the interim, Levy will continue to do what he does best and that’s make
people laugh. “At the end of the day, even if my part is a bit goofy, the
key thing is that I’m doing what I love to do, and that’s make people
laugh.”
Clearly he must be doing something right.
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