"This country (the U.S.) defined me. This country allowed my dreams to come true."

-- Jim Carrey, on applying for American citizenship.

"It's called God's country, Conan, get used to it. Air is just a little more pure, isn't it Yankee Boy?"

-- Mike Myers praises the true north, strong and free.

This is a tale of two hometown giant apes of comedy, whose respective films have grossed more than -- as Dr. Evil would say -- "one beee-llion dollars."

Fittingly, this week of Late Night With Conan O'Brien in Toronto was kicked off by one -- Mike Myers -- and wraps today with the other, Jim Carrey.

Both have had an almost meteoric impact on pop culture ("Alll-righty then!"... "Schwing!"), but they are also a contrast in how one does or does not maintain a relationship with one's hometown.

Whereas Mike Myers bleeds Leaf blue and has been a more effective Toronto booster than any mayor (his Leafs jersey has more talk-show appearances than all of the Baldwin brothers combined), the impression is that Jim Carrey has a distant, cool relationship with T.O. In Bruce Almighty he had the Sabres win the Cup, for crying out loud!

When Myers comes home, he can be seen quaffing at that cozy Danforth bar of choice, taking in alternative comedy at places such as Clinton's, riding the subway, attending a Leafs game or checking out one of the local teams he sponsors.

By comparison, Carrey is the master of the stealth visit.

Even their comedy bespeaks a Canada-U.S. dichotomy. Carrey's brand is aggressively physical, in your face and not burdened with layers of meaning or reference. He doesn't do spoof. Conversely, as per his Brit/Canadian experience, Myers' brand is delivered ironically, often sweetly (compare Wayne & Garth to, say, Beavis & Butthead) and floats in a sea of winking pop-culture references.

Clues might lie in their respective backgrounds.

Strictly speaking, Carrey's well-publicized itinerant and troubled childhood spanned a number of nearby "hometowns," including Jackson's Point on Lake Simcoe, and Newmarket and King City in upper York Region. By contrast, Myers' Scarborough is as much a fixed-point state of mind and emotional anchor as a location.

It's also true that Carrey's early hometown success didn't include respect from peers back in the early 1980s. Yuk Yuk's comics generally had "attitude" and a disaffected point of view, but the aim-to-please teen Carrey, with his repertoire of (spot-on) old movie and TV star impressions, was the opposite. Crowds loved him, but backstage he was regarded like a nerd equipment manager in the locker room.

He must have taken some of this scorn to heart. After moving to the U.S., he had a crisis of the soul, gave up his road-to-Vegas path, adopted the late, great Prince of Darkness Sam Kinison as a mentor and tapped into his anarchic side to create characters such as hermaphroditic Vera de Milo and the hideously-burned Fire Marshall Bill for TV's In Living Color. Fine-tune that sensibility and you've got Ace Ventura and Dumb And Dumber.

On the other hand, Myers didn't glide through Second City as the most popular kid in the class either. "He would take and not give," according to a sometime castmate. But in recent years, a contrite Mike has gone out of his way to mend fences. Example: showing up in Edmonton to do improv with ex-Second City partner Dana Anderson (who'd complained that Myers took the Dieter character they'd created without acknowledgement).

That said, Myers and Carrey have similarities. Each has one local faithful best friend, immune to the lucrative temptations of the tabloids.

For Carrey, it's Yuk's comic/impressionist Wayne Flemming, his early mentor and "partner-in-crime." When Flemming was hospitalized a few years ago, Carrey and then-girlfriend Renee Zellweger flew to Kingston to his hospital bedside.

For Myers, it's lifelong friend Dave Mackenzie, the putative inspiration for Garth. "When he gets asked for autographs, I call him a celebrity freak. But otherwise nothing much has changed," Davey-Mac has told us.

And both Carrey and Myers have had a stormy relationship with Hollywood.

Myers took his lumps -- a lawsuit, a glossy hatchet-job by Hollywood lapdog Vanity Fair and a "reputation" -- when he refused to do that Dieter movie. Carrey should have received an Oscar nom by now and he knows it, as evidenced by the frozen-smile brittleness and snark he displays as an awards-show presenter.

But the box-office trumps politics. On those terms, Myers and Carrey are like Gretzky and Lemieux both hailing from the same pond.


More Artists