Eugene Levy Rewatches American Pie, Schitt's Creek, Best in Show & More

I was playing one too many nerds, I think, in my day.

That's just an observation.

Not sure if it necessarily helped me in the long run.

Hi, I'm Eugene Levy,

and today I'm gonna watch some scenes from my career.

[upbeat music]

I bought some magazines.

Do you wanna just flip to the center section?

Well, this is the, this is the female form

and they have focused on the breasts,

which are used primarily to feed young infants,

and also in foreplay. Right.

All my scenes were improvised.

Although I thought the script

was a brilliant script by Adam Herz,

I didn't really care for the part of the father.

I didn't really like the way it was written.

I wasn't getting much out of it.

It was more kind of a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, kind of,

let's be pals, father-son relationship.

So Paul and Chris Weitz who directed it said,

well, this is a week before the shoot,

and they said, what would you want to change?

I said, I'd like to change everything.

So he said, well why don't we come in,

let's arrange a get together with you and Jason,

just improvise our way through the scenes.

You see that, see what she's doing?

She's kind of looking right into your eyes saying,

hey big boy.

Hey, how you doing?

You see? Right.

It wasn't uncomfortable at all for me.

The only thing uncomfortable for Jason in the scene

was trying not to laugh.

If you really look at his face during the scene,

you can almost see him holding it in.

[upbeat music]

It's just one lie.

What did I say? You said two lies.

Well, it is two lies.

No.

No, the game is two truths and a lie.

So you've heard of it, you've heard of it.

Well, yeah, because babies play that

at their birthday parties.

Okay, whatever, it's a good game.

Okay, now, here's how it goes.

I'll give you an example.

Why don't I start?

I'm miserable, drunk, and hate this game.

So here's a hint.

Sadly I'm not drunk.

This was an early show.

I think it was maybe the fourth show

in our very first season.

And the most fun aspect of this show for me

was always the family scenes when we're working together.

The scene itself is, you know, two truths and a lie.

I find out my daughter spent a spring break

going to Thailand and actually bribing a drug lord with sex

in order to get out of a car trunk.

So it's not what a dad really loves to hear.

You did what?

That probably made its way into the script

with a lot to do with my son, Daniel.

That two truths and a lie probably

wouldn't have come from me 'cause I've never played it.

Everyone can just calm down

because Arun was a lovely gentleman

until he ran out of money.

How people do you know

that are currently in the prison system?

Alright, that's enough.

Good game, good game everybody.

Alexis, you're grounded.

No, that was 10 years ago

and everybody does dumb stuff in high school.

You were 17?

I just love the interaction.

I love this cast, I gotta be honest.

And what we tried to do with a scene like this

was to make it as natural as we possibly could

by keeping the dialogue very loose

and not being afraid to step over each other

and keep the interaction as natural as we could.

We tried not to kind of break up on camera,

although it did happen from time to time

and you can't do anything about it.

Did you know this?

As if, I don't do girl talk.

Catherine was always Moira from the very, very inception.

She was reluctant to be a part of it

because when you sign for a pilot,

you're signing for five seasons.

So she didn't wanna do that.

We finally told her look, you know what,

if you wanna just do the pilot, there's no commitment.

You don't have to commit to five years.

If you don't want to do the series,

if we go to series, you don't have to do it.

Then she finally said, well okay, alright, I'll do it.

And then she got to love the show

and we went to series and she was fine.

I would look for any opportunity

to do something with them again.

[upbeat music]

I love to make people laugh

and I've been doing it since, you know, school.

People ask me, were you, you know, were you,

you must have been the class clown.

And I say, no, I wasn't.

But I sat beside the class clown and I studied him.

Look like a dentist.

So I focused on the mouth.

That's acting.

My first day, I walk on set and I say to Chris,

so where do you want to rehearse the scene

before we shoot it?

And he said, what do you mean?

I said, well, where do you wanna work it out?

Where do you want to like work out the scene

before we go on camera?

He said, I don't follow.

They said, now the camera's right there.

We're gonna do it on on camera.

What were you thinking?

I said, I don't know what I was thinking.

So there's no rehearsal, there's no, we don't rehearse.

Being the first time on camera,

the character comes out the way it kind of comes out

because I'd never kind of rehearsed the character.

My grandfather, Hayim Proga,

who was very, very big in the Yiddish theater

back in New York.

He was in the, the very,

the sardonically irreverent Divick Smivick.

I said more ham.

Well, it's pretty amazing.

'cause I, I really didn't know Chris at that time.

I just found him to be hysterically funny

and so interesting to watch.

I'm in Toronto and I get a phone call from Chris who said,

I'm thinking of doing a movie.

I've got an idea for a script for a movie.

Would you wanna work on it with me?

And I was dumbfounded

because I wasn't sure why he was calling me,

but I said sure, that's fine.

We can work on this thing.

But as it turned out from day one we got along so well.

He was making me laugh.

I got a few laughs outta Chris,

and we started writing Waiting For Guffman.

[upbeat music]

And I just thought she was the prettiest thing

that I'd ever seen.

And, and she was there with somebody else.

She was very popular back then.

She had dozens of boyfriends.

Hundreds.

Hundreds.

Yeah, hundreds.

I did not know that

We were going through the outline

and going through the Jerry talking about meeting Cookie.

We were talking about the fact that we're at a dance

and he was kind of shy.

So I was saying, oh, no, no, yeah, I've got two left feet.

I was very, very, very shy.

And I kind of look and I see Chris kind of looking at me,

and I look back at him and I'm saying, no.

He's going, why?

No, we can, no, no.

Actually, to why not?

And we laughed for about 20 solid minutes and right then

and there he said no, you're sitting and you're sitting.

And then we go right down

and we see both feet are left feet.

Nobody really knows what anybody looks like

or sounds like until you get on camera.

There's no consultation with the director, with Chris.

He lets the actors do whatever they want to do in terms of

what they look like, what they sound like.

I felt I needed a little something in the front of my teeth.

So I had a couple of teeth made

that accentuated the whole look around the mouth.

Catherine, when she saw me,

what she had said at the time was,

oh, this is who I'm married to.

It's a lot of fun getting on camera for the first time

with other actors that you're playing with in the scene

and realizing ah, this is the character.

[upbeat music]

♪ Oh when the veil of dreams has lifted ♪

♪ There's a kiss at the end of the rainbow ♪

I know this song. This is that really pretty one.

We had to learn our instruments right,

because we're gonna be playing these things on,

on camera and actually singing.

Most of the people in this movie were actually musicians.

The Folksmen, Chris, Harry, Michael, musicians,

they've done this kind of thing before.

They did Spinal Tap.

It's all legitimate music.

Most of the other people in the other group,

they had good musician ringers in that group.

But Catherine and I, we didn't, it was just us.

We always felt the pressure of the actual performance.

We had written Mitch as a guy with severe problems.

First of all they were married, then they divorced.

They had a terrible breakup, huge fight, they split up.

Mitch did not, you know, take it well.

Now there's a reunion.

What is this guy gonna look like

and sound like when we eventually see him?

Because we've heard his entire history

before we get to see him.

So I walked on set as this guy Mitch,

and I was getting very strange reactions from people on set.

And I got so nervous

because I wasn't getting good reactions.

And I went up to Chris and I said Chris,

I'm getting a weird feeling.

I'm getting strange reactions from everybody

and I've come to the edge of the cliff on day one

and I've just fallen off.

And Chris said, well, it was a brave choice.

And I thought, okay, well this is it.

It's too late to change character.

I'm gonna be the torpedo that takes down this whole movie.

So every day I went out to do the character,

and the character just seemed to play.

I mean it just, it seemed to work.

And people took to the character as we went on.

When Chris was finally editing the movie,

months and months later, he called one day to say boy,

this stuff is really working so well.

And I went wow, that's, that's good to hear.

[upbeat music]

♪ I'm the goof in the classroom ♪

♪ And I don't mind if kids pick on me ♪

The premise was these, you know, these guys are as nerdy as,

you know, as can be.

And yet they were a huge hit.

The funniest thing about these guys is Joe's character,

the guy who played N is a bit of an alcoholic

and every time you see him performing,

he's just slightly drunk.

That made me laugh.

♪ Five thugs pulled my tie from my collar ♪

♪ So don't step on my clip on tie ♪

[Announcer] It's 5 Neat Guys' neatest hits.

It was the Second City theater

that was the biggest school, a comedy school.

And that was the art of improvisation.

We learned that at the Second City.

SCTV, I have to say there was very little improvisation.

On the actual program we did, we did end up scripting,

you know, everything.

And I wrote a lot of the musical stuff on SCTV.

There's five parts,

and three of us actually did the five parts.

But, you know, fun stuff.

That was probably, you know, seven, eight,

of the greatest years of my life.

[upbeat music]

Indefor, indefor, indefor.

Eugene, that's a dog command.

Oh.

You need a sheep command.

Oh, well the dogs are here so I guess it worked.

We're actually in Germany on the island of Sylt,

spelled S-Y-L-T.

And I didn't know there was an island in Germany,

but that's where we were.

I was at a complete loss.

I mean, I got some instructions on what to say to the sheep.

I not only forgot what the instructions were,

but by the time 600 sheep are behind you

bulldozing their way past you,

you just have really have no control.

I'm feeling the weight of the responsibility.

Come on Choppy.

I should be wearing robes like Moses.

She's trying to teach me how to lead the sheep

ad I was all over the place.

I just couldn't, I had no control over these animals.

So it was up to Uda to, you know,

keep the sheep in harness.

And we had a tough time

because they actually got outta control at one point,

started eating all the shrubbery

in these million dollar homes and gardens.

So it was up to her to get them outta there fast,

not up to me.

It was up to her. [gentle music]

Thanks for watching. [gentle music]