I enjoyed the vehicle film called “So, I Married an Axe Murderer,” made in 1993. Mike Myers, who plays a beat poet (complete with a jazz band), falls in love with a butcher played by Nancy Travis. But Myer’s character becomes obsessed with stories of an axe murderer who kills her husband, and he begins to project that role on Travis. Travis does a lot of suspicious things in this movie, and her profession as a butcher lends itself to proficiency with the title murder weapon. So, we’re kept guessing.
MIchael Myers plays his own Dad.
Myers plays the poet and the poet’s father, a wacky Scotsman married to a lustful Scottish wife. She refers to a well-known sensationalist tabloid as “the paper,” so you know right off you are in for a nutty time. Myers plays the Scottish father, Stuart Mackenzie, way over the top, but it works. We expect that in a vehicle film. Basically, Myers could be the new Benny Hill if he wanted.
I liked the San Francisco locations. For the record, North Beach in San Francisco, where I live, does not host a succession of huge poetry houses where the clientele delivers lines of poetry to a young and beautiful crowd. Occasionally, a very small coffee house hosts poetry nights, which draw quite well. I just found out that “Meats of the World” where the Travis character worked — is the former Prudente Deli on Grant Avenue. I used to buy my sandwiches there. Now, it’s call North Beach Pizza.
Hollywood mixes things up. On the Hollywood map of San Francisco, neighborhoods that aren’t remotely close end up half a block from each other. In Edtv, from 1999, Matthew McConaughey leaves a video store in North Beach, takes a few steps, and enters the Castro Theater. That can’t happen in reality because the Castro Theater is almost five miles (eight kilometers) away.