HOLLYWOOD -- Eugene Levy thinks of himself as a gentle comic breeze. It's everyone else -- from audiences to his collaborators -- who consider him a comic tornado.

"Eugene is humble about his genius. I have been an enormous fan of his since his SCTV days," says Christopher Guest, who first tapped Levy to collaborate with him on 1997's Waiting For Guffman.

They duo also worked on the screenplays for 2000's Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, opening Friday.

When Guest called back in 1995, Levy was convinced "Christopher had asked at least five other people who'd turned him down, and that remained my impression for many years."

Guest says Levy was always his first choice for a collaborator because he sensed they "shared the same comic sensibilities."

"I'd never really met Eugene, but that first day in the ride home from the airport I knew we were going to have fun."

Levy considers his work on SCTV and with Second City "among the proudest accomplishments of my career."

In A Mighty Wind, Levy and his long-time collaborator Catherine O'Hara play a couple who become the darlings of the folk movement.

Their divorce sends Levy's character into a deep institutionalized depression. Now they're being asked to reunite for a concert.

Levy will be seen this summer reprising his role of Jim's father in American Wedding, the second American Pie sequel, and as a high school principal in Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.

"I feel with movies like American Pie and Dumb and Dumberer, if the filmmakers can pull them off as they envisioned, then people are going to have fun."


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