Cameos Make a Comeback as Audiences Get the Inside Joke

Cameos are mushrooming at the movies this summer, and nowhere do they crop up in greater abundance than in “Austin Powers in Goldmember.” The film is the latest installment in the tongue-in-cheek spy franchise built around a protagonist lifted from London’s swinging ‘60s, who has already oscillated his way through two blockbusters in the last five years.

Notable for its onslaught of pop culture references, the series also is known for roping celebrities for blink-and-you-miss-them appearances--Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello and Woody Harrelson have done the honors in the past--but the current episode goes for broke. A slew of bona fide Hollywood stars take turns in support of the orthodontically challenged hero.

Attentive moviegoers can attest to the roster of celebrities whizzing through several recent films: Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart and Peter Graves sashayed through “Men in Black II,” while John McEnroe, Al Sharpton, Rob Schneider and Steve Buscemi popped in and out of “Mr. Deeds” in sequences meant to elicit knowing chuckles from the audience.

Using cameos by well-known personalities in a joking way is nothing new. But in current features, they assume a particularly self-referential quality and depend heavily on an audience steeped in movie culture and more than a little familiar with the inner workings of show business. In a sense, cameos these days are used to establish a conspiratorial relationship with the audience--to give them the satisfaction of partaking in an insider’s joke.

“The use of cameos is part of our pitch to the audience,” says Jay Roach, who directed all three Austin Powers movies. The fact that A-list Hollywood celebs appear in “Goldmember” is a jibe directed at Hollywood itself, the filmmaker explains. “We are aware of the fact that we are a cameo-oriented series, and we wanted to be cheeky--wink at the audience and say, ‘Look at us, we are gonna pretend like our strange, goofy series has penetrated the Hollywood culture.’

“So we had to get some of the most Hollywood of the Hollywood people. In each case, the person was carefully cast for the part,” says Roach, adding that the sequence was intended not only to meet, but to trump the expectations of a public accustomed to over-the-top Hollywood productions.

Spoiler alert: If you don’t want to know who’s among the cameos, stop here.

The surprise guests include Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito, who all appear in a sequence that explores the possibilities of Austin Powers going Hollywood.

The impact of these walk-on performances by well-known actors also relies on the audience’s familiarity with their career trajectory. When Peter Graves appears briefly in the sci-fi parody “Men in Black II” as host of a show called “Mysteries in History” and explains pivotal plot points, the cameo draws bigger chuckles from viewers who happen to know the actor once was host of the “Biography” series on the A&E; cable network. He also appeared in several low-budget sci-fi flicks in the 1950s, such as “It Conquered the World” and “Beginning of the End”--the latter “a fabulous tale of grasshoppers taking over Chicago,” as Graves describes it, pointing out the analogy to “Men in Black II,” in which Earth is infiltrated by insect-like aliens.

Graves says the function of his cameo was “really ticking two parts of my career. And I thought it was flattering.”

The recent avalanche of cameos offers renewed testimony to the extent to which mainstream comedies draw from recycled premises and familiar archetypes.

“So many modern films are referential to old films, remakes of classic TV series and movies, or parodies of those,” says UCLA film professor Jonathan Kuntz. “Many of them have incorporated cameos that refer back to the earlier incarnations--I already heard that [the upcoming feature ] ‘Incredible Hulk’ will feature a cameo of Lou Ferrigno, the actor who played Hulk in the original ‘70s TV show.”

The Austin Powers franchise is built on a cornucopia of references to British espionage flicks from the 1960s, like “The Ipcress File,” and it is no coincidence that Michael Caine, the spy in those movies, makes a comeback in “Goldmember” as Austin Powers’ father.

And of course the series pokes fun at the James Bond movies, although MGM, the studio that distributes the James Bond films, initially blocked New Line Cinema from using the title because of its reference to “Goldfinger,” but the dispute was resolved amicably.

The series has enjoyed success, explains Roach, because “we embrace as much as we send up.”

Some of the “Goldmember” cameos fit in a larger effort to connect with the audience by tapping into a shared pop-culture idiom. Celebrity sushi chef Nobu Matsuhisa makes a brief appearance as Mr. Roboto, a devious Japanese entrepreneur on the payroll of the evil power-monger of the “Austin Powers” series, Dr. Evil. Matsuhisa’s presence prompts Austin Powers to utter the line, “Domo arrigato, Mr. Roboto,” which also happens to be a well-known lyric from the early ‘80s pop tune “Mr. Roboto.” Not only does teen idol Britney Spears contribute a number to the “Goldmember” soundtrack; she also appears long enough to confront Austin Powers in a dance-off. TV personality Katie Couric dashes through, disguised as a prison guard, and John Travolta pops up an another sequence.

But being in lock-step with the zeitgeist can backfire. Given the recent troubles that have befallen Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson, their cameos in “Men in Black II,” intended to gently lampoon their public images, have been “likely to produce louder and nastier laughter than they or the filmmakers intended,” a New York Times review of the movie noted.

The origins of self-reflective cameos can be traced to early films that dealt with the film business itself, UCLA’s Kuntz says, like the 1928 “Show People” directed by King Vidor, in which Marion Davies plays a country bumpkin trying to break into the movies. Hollywood producers and stars played themselves in the film, which, says Kuntz, made sense.

Starting with the 1950s, well-known actors began showing up in cameo performances not as themselves, but as characters. “Around the World in Eighty Days” (1956) was built around a massive number of cameos, with actors playing one-scene character parts, and became a blockbuster for it.

Cameos became an even more entrenched practice in the 1960s “Batman” TV series, with a celebrity playing a villain every week. Even people such as Frank Sinatra made one-shot appearances.

Although such use of celebrities may have been designed primarily to tickle the audience, Roach insists that the cameos in “Goldmember” are not gratuitous. “It’s kind of a variety show in a James Bond setting. They all do something really funny; they don’t just stand there and wave,” he says.

In fact, Paltrow, Cruise, Spielberg and the other A-listers make seconds-long appearances that incorporate and send up their established Hollywood personas.

Roach declined to discuss the specifics of the cameos, which have been shrouded in what he calls “a very benign conspiracy,” hatched by the producers and distributor to preserve a sense of surprise for the moviegoing public. (star Mike Myers, Paltrow, Cruise, Spielberg and Spacey declined to be interviewed for this article through their publicists, and DeVito responded through his representative that he had promised not to talk about it.)

At advance screenings, fliers were distributed urging viewers, in Dr. Evil-speak, to “zip it,” or keep mum about the cameos. Some details have emerged, though, revealing that the creme of Hollywood simply wanted to be part of the Austin Powers cultural maelstrom. “Some of them mentioned to us after seeing [the second installment in the franchise, “The Spy Who Shagged Me”] that they liked the series and just wanted to be part of it somehow,” Roach said. “They asked, ‘Could I be a villainess?’ ” In several other instances, co-screenwriters Myers and Michael McCullers wrote the cameo part first and then cast it, encountering unanimous enthusiasm from hyper-busy performers. “The first person we asked in each case is the person who did it,” Roach says.

The stars, who usually command tens of millions per film, got “a very negligible amount,” “Goldmember” producer John Lyons says. “I think all of them donated the money to charity.”

Although both Roach and Lyons insist that the Hollywood personalities agreed to do cameos mostly for the fun of it, and without expecting compensation commensurate with their customary salaries, “for people who perform the cameos, this is another kind of exposure,” Graves says.

“If their careers are not exactly red-hot at the moment, maybe they can benefit from the exposure. Everywhere I go, people say, ‘I saw you in “Men in Black II,’ ” the actor says.

“After all, I open the picture, and in the end credits I’m listed as myself. That’s not your average cameo, it’s a hot cameo.”