‘Austin Powers’ CD may be your bag, baby!
The sequel’s
SOUNDTRACK TURNS THE
’60s ON ITS HEAD
By Nicole Gallon
Oregon Daily Emerald
It’s not the shagadelic,
blockbusting “Phantom Men
ace,” but the trailers are tout
ing it as the “other” summer
must-see movie.
And the sound
track isn’t com
posed by John
Williams, but it
just might be the
grooviest thing
since the
Swedish-Made
Penis Enlarger.
Oh, behave\
If James Bond
meets “Saturday
Night Fever” is
your bag, baby,
then the music
trom Austin Powers: Ihe Spy
Who Shagged Me” is for you. The
soundtrack for this saucy sequel,
which comes out June 11, is spiked
with some of today’s hottest musi
dans performing rockin’, hip-dis
locating tunes from the ’60s.
The album’s producers, Danny
Bramson and Maverick partner Guy
Oseary, take the same lighthearted,
skippity-hop approach to the
soundtrack that Mike Myers takes to
the movie’s title role, and the result
is a collection of songs that clash
worse than one of Powers’ velvet
suits at an MTV dance party.
One of the first singles off the
Austin Powers: The
Spy Who Shagged Me
Artist Various
Genre: Soundtrack
Score: ★★★★*
soundtrack is the
Guess Who’s
“America n
Woman” with a
twist: Lenny
Kravitz spewing
raspy and some
times distorted,
Nine Inch Nails
type vocals.
R.E.M. also
contributes to this
kooky collection
with a reworked
version of Tom
my James’ “Drag
gin’ the Line.” With its “Earth An
gel” reverb and R.E.M.’s
melancholy sound, this tune is
one of the few that actually stays
pretty true to the original.
Other notable twists include
the Spice Girls’ Melanie G
singing Cameo’s “Word
Up,” Big Blue Missile with
the Stone Temple Pilots’
Scott Weiland performing
The Zombies’ “Time of the
Season” and a duet by Elvis
Costello and Burt
Bacharach, the buttery ditty
“I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.’
About the only classic on the
album not hacked to pieces is The
Who’s previously unreleased
BBC version of “My Generation.”
Fortunately, not all of the songs
are wacky remakes of old faves.
The soundtrack does boast a new
song by Madonna as its crowning
glory. “Beautiful Stranger” is
a sexy, psychedelic spy
number similar to some of v
the sweeter-sounding ear »
candy the singer has put
out over the years.
Punk band Green Day ^ ^
pops in, too, with its energetic,
half-spy, half-surf instrumental
tune “Espionage.” (Rumor has it
that vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong
actually gave his son the middle
name “Danger” in honor of
“Austin ‘Danger’ Powers.”)
But be warned: “The Spy Who
Shagged Me” isn’t all velvet and
lace.
Madonna may be the sound
track's centerpiece, but the real
star is as bald and bumbling as his
hairless cat, Mr. Bigglesworth.
That’s right, Dr. Evil turns in a per
formance on the album with a
modified cover of Will Smith’s
“Just the Two of Us,” dedicated to
his newly discovered pint-sized
clone. Although hilarious, this
clumsy tune is perhaps the al
bum’s biggest cringer—Mike My
ers is certainly no Will Smith!
Altogether, the soundtrack takes
the listener on a fun romp through
the ’fiOs turned upside-down.
Some songs are butchered, others
are well done, but all encapsulate
the feel of the groovy movie.
And nothing beats the final
track, a funked up version of
“Austin’s Theme.” Yeah, baby,
yeah!
Student playwright and actor barrels toward entertainment career
Senior Ryan Honey finds
TIME TO GRADUATE BETWEEN
FILM AND THEATER GIGS
By Jason Lewis
for the Emerald
11 I 11 tel1 V°u a secret,” he says
■ with a smirk. “I’ve basically got to
I write 80 pages in the next three
I weeks.” He pauses before adding,
unconcerned, “That’s how I do things,
though.”
Ryan Honey, a 22-year-old senior in the
University’s theater arts program, is refer
ring to his thesis for the honors college, a
project notorious for dominating the entire
senior year of many students.
But Honey can’t afford the luxury of a
monomaniacal existence. As a founding
member of the comedy troupe Absolute Im
prov, he’s thinking about the group’s next
show.
He’s also several weeks into rehearsal for
his original play, “Lick the Remote,” which
played at the Pocket Playhouse on May 22.
Furthermore, he has been in pre-production
for six months for a local feature film called
“lacks.”
And after spending a summer planting
seeds of opportunity with agencies in Los
Angeles, he has more than academics on his
mind. With his whirlwind lifestyle and
dreams of success in the entertainment in
dustry, graduating college is just another item
to cross out on the list of his master plan.
It’s a hectic lifestyle, but staying busy is
the only way to stay alive in the entertain
ment business.
“The minute you’re an actor waiting for
the phone to ring, “Honey explains, “you’re
not an actor—you’re homeless.”
Honey set his sights on acting at an early
age, but quite by coinci
dence.
As a selt-described jock
growing up in Portland,
Maine, Honey says he never
found anything he wanted
to pursue as a life dream. A
move to Boulder, Colo., the
following year changed all
that. He was turned away
from the high school basket
ball team, so he turned to
theater to fill the void of
empty time. He got a part in
the musical “Narnia,” and
the experience in tront oi an audience suit
ed Honey’s extroverted nature just fine.
“I went through that ‘I’m going to be a
movie star’ phase like all young actors do,”
Honey recalls. But it was a trip to Asia fol
lowing his graduation from high school that
shaped the philosophical filter through
which Honey sees his career goals.
He spent six months in Hong Kong and
six months traveling the continent. Over
the course of the trip, he performed once in
Hong Kong in a British company’s produc
tion of “Hamlet.”
“That trip made me do two things,” Hon
ey says. “It made me realize that there’s
more to life than fame and fortune — be
cause I was broke and nobody knew who
the fuck I was, but I was having a great time
— and that I needed to be performing. I
could feel it. I was missing it.”
The trip also broadened the scope of Hon
ey’s life experiences by teaching him how
essential they were to any
hmBI one interested in acting.
What Absolute Improv
Wien: Wednesday at 8 p.m.
Where: The Wild Duck,
169W.6th Ave.
Cost $5
“If you don’t have any
life experiences, you can’t
be a good actor.”
This interest in life expe
rience played out when
Honey chose to attend and
remain at the University.
When choosing a school
four years ago, he could
have attended conservato
ries in Seattle or L.A., but
they didn’t put much em
phasis on life experience,
Honey explained. He could have stayed in
L. A. last summer and tried to nurture his ca
reer, but he felt that finishing col lege would
allow him more time to develop his skills in
a controlled environment.
And the Eugene environment has catered
to his workaholic tendencies. Here he finds
time to develop his skills in all his areas of
interest: screen writing, theater, sketch com
edy and fdm.
Although Honey loves everything he
does, he realizes that as he focuses on his ca
reer, something has to give. “My biggest ob
stacle is not the lack of opportunities, or the
ability to make opportunities, it’s really de
ciding, ‘Where do you go?’ I tackle those
questions every day. Some days I’ll be like,
‘That’s it. I’m going to L.A. as soon as
“Jacks” is done.’ And then I’ll come out of a
really good rehearsal with my friends and
be like, ‘I just had more fun than I’ve had in
weeks, and I want to be able to do this forev
er.’”
In the face of all the decisions he’ll make
in the coming months, Honey keeps his cool
by looking at the bigger picture.
“You have no idea where the master plan
is going to take you. You have to keep mov
ing forward. And what that causes you to do
is learn more. And so what I’ve learned to
do is work my ass off constantly. But the
minute you achieve one goal, you open up
new things.”
Honey is far from surrendering any of
his major goals, even if it’s to achieve an
other goal. Instead, he wants to use his
first goal, producing and acting in “Jacks,”
as the springboard toward the second as
piration, success in the major entertain
ment market.
“Ideally, my goal is to create something
up here in the next six months that will
make me go to L.A,” Honey says.
Despite the scale of his plan and the mul
titude of ways he might go about achieving
it, Honey manages to keep tabs on all his ac
tivities and options. He remembers to take
things one day at a time while focusing on
one cardinal rule: staying as busy as possi
ble.
“The minute I’m in this town and there’s
nothing going on,” he says, “I’m gone.”