Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery
THE SECOND JAY Roach heard ‘Soul Bossa Nova’, he knew the search was over. It had been a long, and hitherto fruitless, hunt for the song that would introduce Mike Myers’ Austin Powers to the world, in the opening dance number of Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery. Filming was just a few weeks away, when the film’s music supervisor, Chris Douridas, handed Roach a cassette tape with a few options on it. Roach doesn’t remember what else was on there — all he knows is that he flipped when he heard the opening bars of Quincy Jones’ 1962 instrumental, with its tinkling piano, fluttering flutes and explosion of brass. “We said, ‘Oh, this is the vibe of the whole movie. This is the whole thing,’” recalls Roach. “It revolutionised the way we looked at the whole film.” Austin Powers had found his mojo, baby.
That opening sequence, in which Austin sashays and swaggers around a version of Carnaby Street that could only have been filmed on an American studio backlot
(“I think it’s a section of the Universal backlot they often use for New York. But we wanted it to be the brightest version of Carnaby Street anyone had ever imagined”), is a pure expression of joy, and colour, and sound, and a statement of intent for both Myers’ creation and the film itself. The sequence, like Austin and his nemesis, Dr Evil, was the brainchild of Myers, who saw it as a homage to the ’60s spy films he grew up loving. “I had a little bit of experience directing second unit, and had worked as a cameraman a little bit. I had a visual sense,” says Roach, who made his debut as director on the film. “It was pretty clearly scripted. It was actually quite carefully storyboarded. We had an incredible storyboard artist named Gabriel Hardman, and we would show them to Mike. He had a vision I was really eager to serve. He knew exactly what it should be like.”
Given that filming took place nearly 25 years ago, Roach doesn’t remember every little detail. But he does recall things like his son Jackson running around on set with a Union Jack T-shirt on, and he also remembers having not nearly enough time or money for such a large-scale sequence. “We were a very low-budget production,” he says. “It might have been two days, but it might even have been one.” There was a lot of time pressure, with a complicated dance number to pull off. But Roach remembers Myers not being remotely fazed. “He gets loose pretty fast,” says Roach. “He had to get the dance number right, and Marguerite [Derricks, choreographer] came up with an eccentric kind of dance. But we were having a blast. When you looked around and saw that elevated form of Carnaby Street, transported to Los Angeles, it was pretty magical. I actually get emotional thinking about it.” Groovy, baby.