And so how far away are you from knowing...?

I have five ideas. You need to just let them percolate. Everything’s about whether the idea is sparking me. Is this something that I can honor the audience, and make it great, you know? Those are the two things. Often the logistics of moviemaking are, between coming up with an idea and it on the screen, the tendency of the idea is not always to bloom, it’s mostly to rot. It’s an entropic process. So between you pitching an idea and it getting written down, nature takes some of its energy away. Between it being cast, it being shot, it being edited. And then you’re in the theater and the guy in front of you has a coughing attack, you know. This is just the nature of it.

Are these five all ideas that you hope will all be movies one day?

I do but I can’t be attached. When I wrote Austin Powers I’d also written a Battle of Britain movie at the same time. This Battle of Britain movie I was certain was going to be it, and then it was Austin Powers.

Was that a funny movie?

It honors the heroism of it. My mom was in the RAF and she’s one of those radar ladies with the sticks on the Perspex-covered map of England. The tone that I wanted for it was True Lies. An action movie with some comedy. I love that film. I think that film is tonally one of the more perfect combinations of comedy and action. I’m in for ten minutes, I’m in for two hours with that movie. If I get ten minutes in I’m, like, "Ahhh, dammit, I’m gonna be late."****

But are you prepared to go back to, say, Wayne’s World or Austin Powers if you decide you want to?

That’s an interesting question. The quick answer is: Yes, I’m prepared to do anything, you know, if it’s good. If it feels like it’s going to be thrilling. You know, one of the great things of turning 50, one of the great things of becoming a parent, is I get to be me. I don’t have to please anybody. I’m extremely happy with how things are going, have gone, and will go. I’m very grateful for my beautiful family and I’m grateful that I got to choose an artist’s life. But I don’t have to explain myself to anybody. I can tolerate living in the temporary uncomfortability of being misunderstood. At the end of the day, the feedback I get from people—including George Harrison which is of course extraordinary—but equally, and I promise you equally as meaningful to me, complete strangers, who are not known artists, who have said "We’re going through a hard time and we put on Austin Powers, Wayne’s World, whatever, and for that moment that your movie was on there was a truce in our house...." That’s all that Shep ever talks to me about, by the way, did you know that? He never talks to me about box office, he just keeps saying to me, "Do you know how much joy you bring people?" And I go, "I don’t." But he goes, "That’s it, dude, your movies make people happy."

Do you see a lot of echoes of what you’ve done out in the culture?

Constantly, and it’s unbelievably flattering. I noticed it when I got super sick. I had this horrible flu that was going around New York. It starts in the throat and then it went everywhere, and I was down, dude, and I couldn’t sleep I was that sick, and for eighteen hours the only thing I could do was watch TV. I propped myself up on the couch and just grazed. There were seventeen references to stuff that I had done.

Somebody called somebody their Mini-Me without explaining it, somebody said somebody had lost their mojo, somebody said "schwing", somebody said "you’re like butter", somebody said "touch my monkey." It was surreal. I thought I was hallucinating. But it was very gratifying. I was blown away. It was very surreal, and very satisfying.

How would you like people to think of you these days?

I don’t know. You can’t go there. It sounds so corny, but the only meditation you can do is love...alignment with...and making stuff. The insane absolute almost Newtonian law of just loving the art in yourself and not yourself in the art is the path to such amazing happiness

So what I’m hearing is: you’ve got a lot more Colonel Sanders paintings in you.

I do. A lot more GarageBands. And I have a lot more movies. I just make stuff, you know. That is absolutely the truth. That is the absolute truth.

Chris Heath is a GQ correspondent