So I Married an Axe Murderer

So I Married an Axe Murderer
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Thomas Schlamme
Produced by	Robert N. Fried Cary Woods
Written by	Robbie Fox
Starring	Mike Myers Nancy Travis Anthony LaPaglia Amanda Plummer Brenda Fricker
Music by	Bruce Broughton
Cinematography	Julio Macat
Editing by	Colleen Halsey Richard Halsey
Distributed by	TriStar Pictures
Release date(s)	July 30, 1993
Running time	93 minutes
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$20,000,000
Gross revenue	$11,585,483

So I Married an Axe Murderer is a 1993 American film starring Mike Myers and Nancy Travis. Myers plays Charlie McKenzie, a man afraid of commitment until he meets Harriet (Travis), who works at a butcher shop and may be a serial killer. In addition to playing the main character, Myers also plays Charlie's father, Stuart.

This was Myers' first film after achieving success in the Wayne's World franchise and was not well received by most mainstream critics or at the box office, grossing a total of USD $11 million in North America, well below its $20 million budget.

Plot

Charlie McKenzie (Myers) is a beat poet with Scottish roots and a fear of making a big commitment such as marriage. He even proceeds to create outlandish reasons to break up his relationships ("She smelled like soup", "she was in the mafia" or "she stole my cat" are some of the memorable reasons). This all changes when Charlie meets Harriet (Travis), a butcher whose first date with Charlie has him assisting Harriet on a busy day at her store. Eventually, Charlie continues to date and ultimately becomes engaged to Harriet. However, upon learning from several sketchy, ambiguous sources (namely the tabloid rag, The Weekly World News) that Harriet could indeed be a killer on the loose, infamous for butchering her husbands on the night of their honeymoon, Charlie wonders if he has made a grave mistake.

Cast & Characters

Production

The genesis of the film originated in 1987 when producer Robert N. Fried met with writer Robbie Fox to discuss story ideas. They ended up talking about the problems they had with women and agreed that "most women appeared to be out to destroy us!" the producer recalled.^[1] Fried and co-producer Cary Woods formed their own production company in 1992 and So I Married An Axe Murderer was their first film^[1] and they were given a $20 million budget.^[2] Fox wrote the screenplay in 1987.^[3] In the original version, Charlie was Jewish and, according to Fried, it was "initially conceived as being more about paranoia than commitment".^[3] Myers wanted changes to the script that would allow him to do some serious acting and Saturday Night Live-style comedy.^[2] He extensively rewrote the script with writer Neil Mullarkey, an old friend from Britain.^[3] According to Myers, they changed the story and many of the comedic moments. Fox was asked to consider a new set of credits that gave him a "story by" and co-screenplay credit. He rejected the proposal and in arbitration, the Writers Guild of America decided that Fox would receive sole screenwriting credit.^[2] Fried and Myers were upset that Mullarkey, who put a lot of work into the script, did not get any credit.^[3]

Casting

To play Charlie MacKenzie, Fried and co-producer Cary Woods asked Mike Myers because of the success he had with the first Wayne's World film.^[3] He agreed because he liked the script and many of his friends also had a fear of commitment and "were all suffering from cold feet and what is cold feet but a low-grade terror? This story just expands on that terror".^[4] In the original version, Charlie was Jewish and, according to Fried, it was "initially conceived as being more about paranoia than commitment".^[3] Before he was approached, Woody Allen considered playing Charlie. Chevy Chase, Albert Brooks, and Martin Short also considered the role but did not like the character.^[3] Nancy Travis was drawn to her character's "qualities of danger and compassion mixed with humor [which] make her an intriguing character".^[1] Anthony LaPaglia said that his character "has grand illusions of being Serpico, you know he's ready to fight crime like his hero did. But he's just not competent".^[1] When the actors did the first cast read-through of the script, Charlie's father, Stuart, had not yet been cast. Myers read that character's lines and the filmmakers enjoyed his interpretation that they realized he could play that role as well.^[1] The film also features cameos by Charles Grodin, Phil Hartman, Michael Richards, Mike Hagarty, Debi Mazar, Steven Wright, and Alan Arkin, appearing uncredited as Tony's sensitive boss. They all agreed to be in the film for the opportunity of working with Myers.^[1]

Principal photography

To fit both Charlie and his father in the same scene together, the filmmakers used a split-screen process. To look the role of Stuart, Myers spent over three-and-a-half hours having special prosthetic make-up applied.^[1] While filming scenes in the butcher shop, Nancy Travis was distracted by Myers' antics and accidentally took off the tip of her middle finger on her left hand while chopping vegetables with a kitchen knife.^[2] A local doctor sewed her finger back together. Travis said that she and Myers did a lot of improvising together and he taught her a lot about comedy and showed her "how to be relaxed and spontaneous on the set".^[2]

There were stories in the press that Myers' over-inflated ego forced extensive re-shoots on the film and that he tried to deny Robbie Fox credit for writing the film.^[3] On the set, director Thomas Schlamme said that he had his differences with Myers over how the film should be shaped. He said that Myers was "taking a stretch beyond his usual self and was playing outside himself. Personality clashes were bound to happen. We struggled".^[2] However, the director denied that Myers was a control freak and praised the "total commitment to his work. (But) yes, it was difficult".^[2] In addition, several major newspapers and magazines claimed that the film went over budget, in-fighting among the principal actors, lengthy release delays and was unfunny.^[2] Despite these early reports, So I Married an Axe Murderer scored high at test screenings.^[5]

Locations

Set in San Francisco, California, the film features many famous sights and neighborhoods of the Golden State metropolis, including the Golden Gate Bridge, the Palace of Fine Arts and Alcatraz.^[1] The restaurant where Myers and Travis double date with LaPaglia and Debi Mazar is the Fog City Diner. The butcher shop used for "Meats of the World" was Prudente Meats on Grant Ave in the North Beach Section of San Francisco. The final scenes are set at Dunsmuir House in the East Oakland foothills. Additional special effects and matte paintings created the illusion that the location was secluded among mountains.^[1] The exterior shot for the cafe, Cafe Roads, where Myers recites his beat poetry is the bar Vesuvio, at Columbus Avenue and Jack Kerouac Alley. The filmmaker picked San Francisco as the film's setting because it was an ideal place for a poet like Charlie to live. Myers has said that he was attracted to its "coffeehouse culture, with its clothes and music and its whole sensibility ... people aren't going to bars as much. They tend to go out and have coffee".^[1] Several sets were built in warehouses near Candlestick Park and these soundstages were used for many weeks.^[1]

Soundtrack

So I Married an Axe Murderer (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Soundtrack by Various artists
Released	July 27, 1993
Genre	Soundtrack
Length	39:14
Label	Columbia Records
Professional reviews
Allmusic link

Track listing

1. Boo Radleys - "There She Goes" 2:18
2. Toad the Wet Sprocket - "Brother" 4:04
3. Soul Asylum - "The Break" 2:46
4. Chris Whitley - "Starve To Death" 3:14
5. Big Audio Dynamite II - "Rush" 3:55
6. Mike Myers - "This Poem Sucks" 2:04
7. Ned's Atomic Dustbin - "Saturday Night" 3:08
8. The Darling Buds - "Long Day In The Universe" 4:08
9. The Spin Doctors - "Two Princes" 4:15
10. Suede - "My Insatiable One" 2:57
11. Sun-60 - "Maybe Baby" 3:43
12. The La's - "There She Goes" 2:42

Other music in the film

1. The Bay City Rollers - "Saturday Night"
2. Ron Gonnelia - "A Touch of Gaelic"
3. Rod Stewart - "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" (sung by Mike Meyers)
4. Nancy Travis - "Only You"

Reaction

So I Married an Axe Murderer was first shown at a screening to benefit the local San Francisco film office on July 27, 1993 at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater and had its official world premiere at the Galaxy Theater in Hollywood on July 28 with Myers, Travis, and LaPaglia in attendance.^[5] The film was not well-received at the box office. It was released on July 30 in 1,349 theaters and grossed a total of USD $3.4 million on its opening weekend. It made a total of $11.5 million in North America, well below its $20 million budget.^[6]

The film had a very mixed reception by critics and currently holds a 52% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert, in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, criticized the film for being "a mediocre movie with a good one trapped inside, wildly signaling to be set free".^[7] Rolling Stone magazine's review felt that "Juggling mirth, romance and murder requires a deft touch - think of Hitchcock's Trouble with Harry. Axe is a blunt instrument".^[8] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C-" and said, "In some perverse way, So I Married an Axe Murderer seems to be asking us to laugh at how not-funny it is".^[9] In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson had a mixed reaction to Myers' performance: "Everything he does is charmingly lightweight and disposable and reasonably impossible to resist. And in the end, because the character is so easily within reach for him, you may come away feeling a little cheated, as if you hadn't quite seen a movie at all".^[10] However, Janet Maslin's review in the New York Times said that it came as "a welcome surprise that So I Married an Axe Murderer, which might have been nothing more than a by-the-numbers star vehicle, surrounds Mr. Myers with amusing cameos and gives him a chance to do more than just coast".^[11] In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Edward Guthmann called the film a "trifle, at best - but it's so full of good spirits, and so rich with talented actors having a marvelous time, that its flaws tend to wash away".^[12]

DVD

Region 1 DVD artwork

The DVD was released on June 1, 1999. The artwork for the DVD featured an altered image. Early releases of the poster had Harriet holding an axe behind her back, mirroring Myers holding flowers behind his back. For whatever reason, the axe was then removed, creating a noticeable amount of empty space behind Harriet on both posters and the DVD cover, thus ruining the gag.^{[citation needed]}

A "Deluxe Edition" DVD and Blu-ray edition was released on June 17, 2008 but with no special features.^[13]

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: So I Married an Axe Murderer

• So I Married an Axe Murderer at the Internet Movie Database
• So I Married an Axe Murderer at Allmovie
• So I Married an Axe Murderer at Rotten Tomatoes
• locations where the film was shot