Behind The Scenes - THE LOVE GURU

"The Love Guru"
BEHIND THE SCENES
by Tim Nasson
June 17, 2008

Watch "The Love Guru" Trailer

A GURU IS BORN

Guru Pitka, a.k.a. “The Love Guru,” first popped up in Mike Myers’ imagination while he was still working on the blockbuster “Austin Powers” series. At the time, Myers had just lost his father and, in his grief, began a serious personal spiritual quest that led him to gurus and ashrams and then, unexpectedly, full circle back to comedy again. In the words of Deepak Chopra, he came to see that “humor is humanity’s way of escaping deep suffering.”

Celebrated for his uniquely irreverent and irresistible way of taking unconventional fish-out-of-water characters to hilarious extremes, Myers could not resist the idea of spoofing a world he found alternately intriguing and outrageous at times, silly in its trappings and yet, at other times, profoundly sincere, a world where enduring ancient questions about the nature of life regularly slipped on the banana peel of modern temptations. This was prime comedy territory as far as he was concerned.

“What struck me as I began meeting gurus like Gary Zukav and Deepak Chopra is how actually really funny they are,” he says. “I started to realize that the whole idea of enlightenment is really, at heart, to just lighten up.”

Another reason he was attracted to the subject, Myers explains, is that “Steve Martin once said the most exciting thing to do is to find comedy where comedy hadn’t existed before. And I loved the idea of bringing irony and humor to the human search for happiness and love.”

Myers next took his impudent guru for a test drive. Donning a purposefully fake beard, mysterious accent and guru get-up, Myers hit a series of New York theaters, where he offered Guru Pitka’s deliciously unhinged “dharma lecture,” a whimsical montage of non-denominational advice ranging from the truly ridiculous to the surprisingly sublime.

The character was an instant hit among those early New York audiences lucky enough to witness Myers’ evolving creation. Some found Pitka a hilarious satire, others experienced him as a bit of an inspiration in his own right – and the mix seemed to do exactly what Myers had hoped: go places in comedy he had yet to explore.

When Deepak Chopra first saw Guru Pitka, he says, he found the character “hilariously funny. Yet Mike was able to make some profound statements by stating them in a very silly way that, nonetheless, makes you remember them.”

Soon after unveiling Guru Pitka, Myers began collaborating with screenwriter Graham Gordy to bring a younger, hipper incarnation of the character to the screen in an original story of his own, much as he had done with his earlier improvised character, Austin Powers. Gordy had a blast working with Myers, turning cosmic sutras into slapstick comedy and coming up with a tale that would reveal how Guru Pitka became the world’s second-best guru and how he now yearns to take the crown from his outrageously famous chief rival, the real-life Deepak Chopra, by getting involved in pro sports and celebrity romance.

Says Gordy of their partnership: ”Mike is brilliant and tenacious and cares as much about comedy as you hope all comedians do. He is the quintessential student of comedy but, thankfully, he’s also a great teacher of it because he taught me everything I know. I loved working with Mike.”

The story Myers and Gordy came up with had Guru Pitka not only caught up in all kinds of comical situations, including his own spot of love trouble, but also unwittingly hurtling towards both romantic and spiritual revelations of his own. “It’s really a journey from celebrity back to purity,” explains Myers. “Guru Pitka has some great ideas, but he’s strayed from helping people to just wanting the accolades. Now, as he is faced with his most resistant student ever (star hockey player Darren Roanoke), he himself is forced to live by the rules he wrote. In a sense, the teacher becomes the student.”

For Myers, key to the fun of “The Love Guru” was weaving in one of his other great quests in life: to see his beloved Toronto Maples Leafs hockey team actually have a winning season. “It’s one of the great pains in my life that they haven’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967,” he confesses. “And to have the chance to shoot on the ice at the Air Canada Center, where every Saturday, without fail, I watch my boys playing, was a thrill.”

Mixing and matching satiric riffs from several film genres – from sports dramas to romantic comedies – Myers & Gordy even wrote an ambitiously full-scale, Bollywood-style dance sequence into the screenplay. “I’m an old-school entertainer,” remarks Myers. “I see it as a huge responsibility to ask people to sit in the dark for 90 minutes, so I always want to make sure there’s lots of entertainment – so there’s dance numbers, comedy, drama – and more – in ‘The Love Guru.’ It’s just what I love, entertaining people.”

DIRECTING THE GURU

Myers’ producing partner, Michael De Luca, instantly recognized his inimitable touch in the screenplay. “Mike Myers, unlike a lot of comic actors of his generation, creates entire worlds in his stories,” comments De Luca. “He starts with a single idea and then builds an entire original universe around it. You really can’t compare his movies to any other movie comedies out there because they always contain something people have never seen before.”

This seemed especially true in the case of Guru Pitka, whom De Luca notes rides a very unusual line between the uproarious and the uplifting. “He’s a wonderful character and you also kind of want him to come along and fix your life. That’s the charm of this character,” says the producer. “Guru Pitka inhabits an unusually positive world for a comedy, and his warmth and unending optimism is really appealing.”

With the screenplay finished, Myers began his search for a director who could take his vision of the Guru's world and set it into motion with all the manic energy it demanded. He decided to take a chance on a young, promising director, Marco Schnabel, who had previously been Jay Roach's invaluable aide on the "Austin Powers" films. "Marco is super-smart, loves movies, he's funny and he knows how to make beautiful worlds on the movie screen," summarizes Myers. "I think this is the beginning of a long and illustrious career for him."

For Schnabel, the chance to direct a project starring his comic idol was a dream come true. "I'm a huge Mike Myers fan," he says. "I must have watched 'Wayne's World' and his 'Saturday Night Live' characters at least a hundred times back in college. When I got out of USC Film School, I had the opportunity to work with him on the 'Austin Powers' movies, which was like going to the best graduate school for comedy in the world."

From the start, Schnabel was well aware that Myers' films have their own unique vocabulary and rhythms. "Mike is an amazing improviser. Each scene is very tightly thought out before we get on the set, but new ideas are always emerging," he explains. "To keep things fresh, Mike is constantly trying out different lines and reactions. His mind is always thinking of ways to make something funnier and better."

Schnabel had also developed a deep affection for the character of Guru Pitka. "By the time I got involved, Guru Pitka was already a fully realized creation and it was really exciting to watch," the director notes. "He's sort of the foolish wise man, who can be silly and cheeky but also very profound. I thought it was a very interesting balance Mike had achieved."

On the set, he found a great groove with Myers. Observes the film's co-star Jessica Alba: "Marco just kind of put himself completely in Mike's mindset during the shoot, which was terrific. He knew what he needed to get from each of us, because he was so much inside Mike's brain."

THE GURU’S DISCIPLES

To bring Myers' distinctive brand of comedy to life in "The Love Guru," the filmmakers knew they would need a supporting cast that would be capable of keeping up with him in the film's equally hilarious co-starring roles. This was especially true for the part of Jane Bullard, the young, gorgeous female owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs who is determined to undo the "Bullard Curse," which has left the Maple Leafs without a coveted Stanley Cup since her father bought the team in 1967. Jane needed to be tough, smart, beautiful - and completely vulnerable to Guru Pitka's mysterious charms.

The answer to the riddle of who could encompass all those qualities came in the person of Jessica Alba, one of today's fastest rising stars, whose roles in such films as "Sin City" and "Fantastic Four" have brought her a huge global following. But what took Mike Myers by surprise were her comic chops, which had yet to be showcased on screen.

Myers says, "Jessica Alba is very beautiful, but she's also a sweet, dedicated, talented and wonderful human being who has become one of my favorite co-stars I've ever worked with. And she's really, really funny. She knocks her scenes right out of the park."

Schnabel concurs: "Jessica came to this film ready to laugh and be playful. She really took it to a level neither Mike nor I could have ever imagined. We knew she was absolutely stunning, of course, but her comic ability is really what surprised and delighted us. I think people are going to love what they see."

One of the things that struck Schnabel right away was Alba's chemistry with Myers. "Right from the get go, they hit it off. I watched them together during the make-up tests, laughing and playing off each other's energy, and just knew this chemistry was going to work."

Alba says the chemistry was born in part out of her love for Myers' exuberant style of comedy. "He has always reminded me of Peter Sellers, the way he can completely transform himself into these outrageous characters. Yet, they all have a heart and soul, so you're always rooting for them. It's a balance not many other comic actors can strike," she observes. "He's really tapped into this inner-child kind of playfulness that's very inspiring. With this film he's also tapped into something that's going on right now, with so many people reading self-help books and trying to find new ways to change their lives."

Working with Myers turned out to be a fresh challenge for Alba as an actress. "He likes to do a lot of improv and you never know what he's going to come out with, so you really have to stay on your toes to keep up," she says.

This was especially true in the scenes where their subconscious feelings for one another start to emerge. "They meet under such unconventional and bizarre circumstances that I think they both are immediately resistant to these feelings, so they try to put a lid on them, which is part of the fun," explains Alba.

Equally challenging for Alba was getting into hockey, a game she admits she didn't have a clue about before she was cast. "I got a very intense crash course in hockey on this film," she laughs. "Basically there's lots of testosterone, a lot of funny guys and some real fragrant outfits. But I wouldn't dare get on skates. I leave that to the pros."

Alba might have been able to avoid the blades, but not Romany Malco. For the role of Darren Roanoke, the so-called "Tiger Woods of hockey," whose unhappy love life has led to an agonizing losing streak for his team, Malco had to head straight to skating boot camp. Best known for his role as Mary-Louise Parker's "business" associate, Conrad Shepard, on the acclaimed Showtime comedy "Weeds," Malco might be a comedy veteran but he was a definite hockey amateur, barely able to wobble across a rink when he won the part. But, with a lot of devotion, he was able to turn that completely around.

"For a guy who never really skated before, Romany became an amazing hockey player," Myers notes. "Romany is also an awesome actor and I especially enjoyed improvising with him, because he's so spontaneously hilarious."

Malco was equally thrilled to work with Myers and especially excited to play an African-American hockey player, even holding out hope that with more role models, greater diversity will one day soon come to the game. "Darren is supposed to be like the new Wayne Gretzky, so I gave my all to master all these strides and deliver my best," he says. "But I'm thinking if my uncoordinated body can learn to skate in six weeks, there must be some really talented kids out there who haven't had the opportunity yet but could really cut it up," he says.

Darren's scoring troubles begin when his wife's affections are stolen out from under him by his chief rival, the savagely seductive Quebecois goalie Jacques "Le Coq" Grande, whose prodigious charisma, love of chick-flicks and crooning of Celine Dion tunes melts her heart.

For the hilariously uninhibited role, Myers immediately thought of someone unexpected: the global pop star and multi-talented Justin Timberlake, with whom he had worked on the animated hit "Shrek the Third." Timberlake had also been seen on a number of memorable "Saturday Night Live" sketches, but this would mark his first major comedic film character.

Says Myers about Timberlake: "I do have a man-crush on him. He's like the most talented human being I've ever met in my life. And as the most well-endowed player in the National Hockey League, he's very funny. Justin instantly nailed the character. He also turns out to have a great goalie stance."

"Other than his SNL appearances, Justin's comic abilities have been largely untapped," notes Schnabel. "But after 'The Love Guru' comes out, I believe a new comedy star will be born. Justin really committed to playing Jacques Grande and had a blast with it. Whenever he was on camera, we had to shoot take after take because we were laughing so hard. We never knew what Justin was going to do next."

To develop his Quebecois accent, Timberlake worked with a special dialogue coach and underwent weeks of skating training to hone his hockey skills. In the end, his transformation was so complete - topped with curly hair and a bushy 1970's mustache - that most extras on the set had no idea that Jacques was actually Justin Timberlake.

The casting fun continued as Verne Troyer, who played the infamous Mini-Me in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" and "Austin Powers in Goldmember," came on board in the role of the NHL's toughest (albeit smallest) hockey coach, Cherkov.

Myers couldn't wait to reunite with Troyer. "Verne is a great actor and he didn't speak in the Austin Powers movies, so this was a great chance to finally hear Garbo talk, in a sense," he says. "Here, Verne plays an old hockey man who is set in his ways and can't believe he's having this guru thrust on the team by his lady team owner . . . but in the end he's redeemed."

"People are going to be very happy to see Verne Troyer and Mike Myers together again," notes Schnabel. "Ever since 'Austin Powers' Mike has been looking for new ways to capitalize on Verne's comic abilities and in this film, audiences will see Verne in a way they've never seen him before."

For Troyer, the role was a true change of pace from his previous outings with Myers. "It was about time he gave me some lines," he laughs. "But seriously, Mike is such a cool guy that working with him again has been an honor and a lot of fun."

Completing the main cast is an Academy Award(R)-winning actor in the role of Guru Pitka's own revered Guru Tugginmypuddha. Few people could be more suited for the role of a guru than Ben Kingsley, who won international acclaim and an Oscar(R) for his portrayal of the great Indian philosopher and activist Mahatma Gandhi.

The contrast alone brought a smile to the filmmakers' faces. "Of course Ben Kingsley is one of our finest actors and with Tugginmypuddha, you have a cross-eyed guru who hands out chastity belts, so it's a very broad conceit," says Myers. "But Ben is such a consummate actor that he really fleshed him out, gave him his own voice and posture, as well as his own gentle way of interacting with people. He also understood that we were trying to have fun and he certainly came to play. We were very, very fortunate to have him in our film."

Rounding out the supporting cast are a number of fun, surprise cameos. "Mike has a great track record of pulling in cameos because he really tries to be very of the moment and take advantage of what's happening in pop culture, and of course based on his past work a lot of people want to be involved with him," notes Michael De Luca.

Naturally, Deepak Chopra, the world's #1 guru in both the film and contemporary American culture, also makes an appearance. Chopra contends that spending time exploring comedy with Myers led him to some fresh insights - and this from a man whose very job is coming up with insights. "I've learned to take myself less seriously," he says. "Mike helped me to appreciate comedy a lot more and also to really understand it. Spirituality is all about a lack of self-importance, and comedy is the best way to get beyond all that."

THE “WAY” OF HOCKEY

As a major hockey fan, Mike Myers loved having the chance to bring his favorite sport into the story of Guru Pitka, whose unorthodox means of helping the Toronto Maple Leafs – including such unlikely advice as “don’t fight” – leads to one comic situation after another. From the outset, Myers hoped to showcase hockey in “The Love Guru” not only as humorously as possible, but also as authentically as possible. Early on, the production received the full support of the National Hockey League. Then they recruited Mark Ellis, renowned for creating much of cinema’s most viscerally realistic sports action, who previously brought professional hockey to the screen with heart-stopping excitement in such hit films as “Miracle,” the story of the 1980 Olympic Gold Medal American hockey team.

Ellis couldn’t wait to work with Myers. “As a hockey fan, he really gets the sport. So I knew we had an opportunity for this to be a very funny movie with some great game action, with lots of big hits, fast pace and great storytelling,” he says.

At the same time, Ellis knew he had his work cut out for him when he took on “The Love Guru.” He’d be trying to bring several actors who had never played hockey before up to snuff, and he would have to find a way to create real moments of free-flowing hockey action in the midst of some very slapstick scenes. He also notes that, of all sports, hockey might be one of the hardest to capture on film.

“Anytime you have to shoot action sports on frozen water it’s a big challenge,” laughs Ellis. “Add to that the comedy component and you ramp the challenge way up.”

Tackling the task head on, Ellis first put Romany Malco into a blades boot camp. Malco, who hails from the South, had barely ever seen a hockey game, let alone played one. But with a rigorous training schedule over several months, he began to shine.

Says Ellis: “Romany told me right away that he was ready to work as hard as he possibly could to make his character credible. At first, Romany could barely stand up on the ice, but every day he made massive improvements and then you couldn’t get him off the ice. In the end, he did a remarkable job.”

Ellis also undertook training Justin Timberlake, who impressed him as a naturally gifted athlete. “With Justin, we got lucky. He’s obviously hilarious; he really embraced this character and it turns out he’s a great skater,” he says. “He had only skated as a kid but he picked up the skills of a goalie very fast. There are very specific nuances to being a goalie, but after just ten training sessions, Justin was tremendous.”

Meanwhile, Ellis was able to bring on board a number of pro and minor league players – including L.A. Kings star Rob Blake and such hockey legends as Jim Thompson and Bob Probert – to play members of the various teams depicted in the film. “When word got out that Mike Myers was doing a movie with some hockey scenes, my phone started ringing off the hook,” recalls Ellis.

With the cooperation of the NHL and the Toronto Maple Leafs,  “The Love Guru” production also was able to wrangle special permission to shoot on the ice during a break at an exhibition game to capture the inimitable excitement of a real hockey crowd. The crew had exactly five minutes to make it happen, so precision was everything – and they got the shots with just 10 seconds to spare!

Sums up Ellis: “I thought it spoke volumes about Mike Myers and what he means to hockey people and the NHL that they gave us this opportunity. It was the real highlight of the whole project for me, and just an amazing experience for all of us.”

WELCOME TO HARENMAHKEESTER: THE GURU’S WORLD

As he had done with Austin Powers, Mike Myers wanted to create an imaginatively designed, highly detailed visual universe for Guru Pitka and his comic cohorts. For inspiration, he and director Schnabel looked first to India - not just to the country's rich spiritual history, but also to its breathless exuberance, brilliant colors and sudden breaking-out-into-dance moments that typify the Bollywood film phenomenon.

A big part of the film's design began with Myers' look for Guru Pitka, which was modeled after the youthful, rock n' roll-inspired style of the famed Beatles guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Myers developed the initial outfit when he performed the character at New York theaters and then later worked with costume designer Karen Patch, Academy Award(R)-winning makeup artist Ve Neill and hair stylist Jennifer O'Halloran to refine his final transformation for the film. Ultimately, the complete guru get-up required up to fours hours a day in the makeup chair while various facial prosthetics, fake beards and wigs were applied.

From there, "The Love Guru's" production designer Charles Wood ("The Italian Job") forged all kinds of fusion looks, melding East and West in sets that run from sweaty hockey rinks to the sanctity of Tugginmypuddha's ashram. "We needed a designer who could marry all these different worlds together and also bring the sumptuousness of a Bollywood production, and Charles did a really good job with that," says producer De Luca.

The film's more than 80 sets were often teeming, not just with comedians and laughter, but ostriches, elephants and high-tech puppets. Wood says the focus was always on creating something eye-popping and resplendent without overshadowing the story's even more colorful characters. "We wanted environments that were joyous, detailed and interesting and could intertwine with the comedy of the film," he explains. "It was important to Mike that the set designs be believable, but also support the humor."

Scale played a big part in the creation of Guru Tugginmypuddha's ashram, which took three months to bring to vibrant life. Wood had to work especially carefully to make sure the set could accommodate the film's two huge, hockey-loving Asian elephants, Maggie and Jenny, who are Pitka's main mode of transportation.

The opposite dynamic was at play for Coach Cherkov's office, in which everything was cleverly scaled down to Verne Troyer's size, right down to the water cooler and office supplies.

For director Schnabel, the creativity of the sets was a constant inspiration, but his heart, he notes, really belongs to "The Love Guru's" lavishly designed Bollywood dance numbers. "The musical numbers were amazing and really fun to shoot," he muses. "We did several wildly different musical dance sequences. There's an old school Bollywood duet between Mike and Jessica that was shot to look like it's from the 1960's. We also did a more updated Bollywood dance-off with huge production values, full of bright colors and fun energy. They were a real highlight for all of us."

Aside from the sumptuous musical interludes, some of the most exciting shooting days came whenever the elephants were working, especially during the climactic sequences in which they play a major and hilarious role. "All praise goes to Marco Schnabel, who pulled it off," says Myers. "We wound up with a masterful mix of real animals and mechanical trickery that created some amazing effects."

The mechanical elephants, as well as an ostrich, were created and brought to life by special-fx artist Ron Stefaniuk (who also created Guru Pitka's chastity belt, puppeteered special "yogically flexible" legs for Mike Myers, and built other unusual items), who used a five-man rig and a unique series of airbags to create their faithfully realistic rolling motion. He recalls Myers' reaction to seeing the man-driven beasts for the first time: "He just loved it. He was really impressed with the fluid motion," recalls Stefaniuk.

To capture all of this mayhem in a visually dynamic fashion, Myers reunited with cinematographer Peter Deming, who also shot the original "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery," as well as "Austin Powers in Goldmember."

Sums up the film's director Marco Schnabel: "Everything you'd want to see from Mike Myers is in 'The Love Guru' - a hilarious world filled with memorable characters, musical numbers, sweet romance, incredible style and design. It's one giant party."

Concludes Myers: "This is the most fun I've ever had making a film. I think the more I do it the more I realize that making an audience laugh means more to me than anything in the world. That's my bliss and my joy."