|
 Jim
Carrey | Merriment and Mirth
an emily blunt interview
Part
2 Deuix Dous
EM: I'd
like to follow up on something you said that intrigued me which
was the idea of faith that you have and that it is well documented
how hard some parts of your life growing up were. Things turned
against your family economically, and so forth…
JIM:
Don't leave out the sick Mom though! It's a very important part
of the equation!
EM:
[nervous laughter]
 JIM:
No. It was so funny because we were taking this picture for
the ninetieth anniversary of Paramount and all of us where on
the scaffolding and I was right up the top of the scaffolding,
the very top of it and Tom Cruise turns to me and goes, "How'd
you get up there?" and I said, "I have the
sickest Mom!" [Laughter] and that's basically why comedians
are born! Generally, sick Moms. You want to make them laugh.
You want to make them feel better. And then the economic thing
came in. But anyway, go ahead.
EM:
No please, I think you were starting to answer the question
already…
JIM: I knew it, of course. I'm Bruce Almighty ! [Laughter]
EM:
Where did your faith come from and was it tested in that period
or did it actually strengthen it?
JIM:
Honestly, it came from faith. Something that happened very early,
and maybe this is why I like teachers… it came from a substitute
teacher who came to my class room, and I was in catholic school
and came to my classroom in grade two for a day. She was an
Irish gal, and she said, "Oooh…[gibberish in a "blue
stars green clovers" tone]………." [Laughter]
Ah, any opportunity I get to go into my accents... No, she said
that she prayed to the Virgin Mary whenever she wanted anything
in her life to happen or if she wanted even something material,
she'd pray to the Virgin Mary to ask God to give it to her and
she would promise her something. And I sat at the back of the
classroom and I thought "Wow, that's sounds kind of cool."
And so I went home and I prayed to the Virgin Mary at night,
because my father couldn't afford a bike and all my friends
had these Mustang bikes and I wanted a Mustang bike, you know,
with the banana seat, and so I went home and I prayed for this
Mustang bike and [the phone rings we are all starled...]
TOM:
So, we last left you praying to The Virgin Mary?
JIM:
Yes! I was praying, yes. So I went home and I prayed to the
Virgin Mary because we couldn't afford a bike. My Dad would
say, "Well, someday" you know, that kind of thing.
And two weeks later, I walked home from school, walked through
my living room into my bedroom. My brother came in and said,
"What are you doing? What are doing in here? Come on out…
Didn't you see what was in the living room?" And I walked
out in the living room. My whole family was standing around
a lime green Mustang bike with a banana seat. And I had won
it in a raffle that I didn't enter. A friend of mine had gone
into a sporting goods store that was having this raffle, entered
his own name and entered my name separately, two weeks before.
And that just went 'poing' like that, and I just went "Oh,
Okay" like that and basically you know, I don't necessarily
ask for material things anymore or anything like that, but,
and it may not be through the Virgin Mary, it may just be straight
to God or whatever, whatever I need, I do that and I have done
that my whole life. So Yeah, I really believe in it! And here's
another. I just did Eternal
Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind, back East, and we did a
scene where I had to be a ten year, er, like an eight to ten
year old, in a memory and it was being erased and I had to jump
on my bike and take off and I showed up on the set and it was
a green Mustang bike with a banana seat. And I hadn't told anybody
anything, or anything, but this is how my life has always been.
I'm telling you, if I could document it and I probably
should have. You would not believe how amazing my life has been.
From the check that I wrote for myself to everything. Everything
has had something to do with that power of faith. Have faith
and it will all come. So, you know, I'm not a bible thumper,
I'm not any of that stuff but I do believe that the force is
with us.
EM:
In Bruce you trade places with the biggest cheese, God
himself. But how about Jim? Who would you want to glimpse into-
if just for a day and why?
JIM:
That guy. [Laughter] I would…who would I trade places with?
My gosh. Well, now we're on the religious subject, and this
is not an ego thing, but I'd want to be Jesus for a day. You
know, just to see what that was like.
[Laughter]
EM:
But not on the last day! [Laughter]
JIM: Oh, you don't know me well, do you? [Laughter]
TOM:
Sunday versus Friday [Laughter] Sunday would be a good day but
Friday would be harder.
EM:
[laughter] Now that we've got half the religions in a tizzy…you
continually acknowledge the impact of teachers on your life,
if you had to give up acting would you like be a teacher?
JIM:
I think that would be a pretty amazing thing to do with your
life, you know? It would be a pretty great thing to do. I  don't
think they get paid real well, but I mean it's a pretty beautiful
thing to do with your life, I think. I had another great teacher
to and she never really gets credit a lot of times but I had
this teacher in the 7th grade, Lucy Dervados who taught us Beatle
lyrics, you know, it's like today's lesson is 'Eleanor Rigby'
and what everything means and break it into down into what it
could mean and double meanings that were possible and all those
wonderful things, and she also kind of harnessed my delinquency
into a show at the end of each day. She said if I was good and
I didn't bother the other students when I finished my work I
would be able to do 15 minutes at the end of the day. So, I
would finish my work and instead of bothering everybody I would
write material and I would think about how I was going to skewer
the teachers and do whatever and she confiscated a couple of
my drawings I did of her. I did caricatures of her at the back
of the classroom and she sent them back to me years later once
I was known.
EM:
What would you teach if you were able to teach?
JIM:
What would I teach? Sex education. [Laughter] Edit edit
edit - the first three things from the mind...I think humanity.
No, probably art. Art would be it. Yeah. I think art would be
it! It'd be pretty strange to. Francis
Bacon….Ok, look kids.
EM:
Tehe! On another note, what kind of music are you into?
JIM:
It's nice the way you broached that question, "On another
note" [Laughter] Yes, I love music. I've always loved music
and my father is a sax clarinet player and so we grew up with
all the big band stuff playing around the house and my daughter
is very much into jazz. She comes over to my house and puts
Miles Davis on and you know, she's 15 years old. It's ridiculous,
you know? So she knows more about it than I do. And when she'd
visit me in New York we'd go to the Lennox Lounge in Harlem
and watch jazz players and stuff which is cool because at this
point I get to do the same thing my dad did for me, which was,
when I was 15 I was into comedy so he used to take me downtown
to Yuk Yuks which was on church street at that time. It's like
two lanes of bowling alley with like 100 tragically hit people
basically cursing everyone on stage and he used to take me there,
when I was 15 years old and I was like, "Oh, I can't believe
I'm here" and now I get to do it back. It's kind of wonderful.
But musically, I like everything. I like some of the hip hop
stuff that's happening. I like anything that's kind of like
an honest to goodness expression, you know? Like Missy Elliot.
I think she's cool. The Vines are great. A lot of the new stuff,
it's good.
EM:
What was your last CD?
JIM:
The last CD I bought was White Stripes. [a bit of Grinch slips
in] Very cool. Very oddly wonderfully complexly crude. [Laughs]
Great. I love it. I like boys and girls together. [Laughter]
Reminds me of the Partridge Family.
EM:
Hehehe. Jim, you mentioned you've had this under the radar kind
of career. I wonder how many know you were in Peggy Sue Got
Married, or Earth Girls Are Easy even, Once Bitten
- a film you played lead in. What do you think when you look
back, when you were doing those movies?
 JIM:
Oh, it's interesting to look back. I mean, Geeze, it's just
desperation, total desperation. But that hasn't changed that
much. But, it's just fun to watch it, because as I said, "It's
always been… I've been in this wonderful place." I'm
not saying it's a bad place to be under the radar, it's a wonderful
place actually, not to be the person that everybody plays out
until they get tired of them and don't want them anymore. I
like to be a nice hors deurve or something like that. Just something
that you just like all the time. Just whenever it comes out
it's kind special and that's cool. In "Living Color"
I was fortunate enough to have a vehicle where I didn't play
a character that was one thing all the time, so that I became
that character. At The Comedy Store I got known doing impressions
and so I stopped doing them because I saw where it was leading.
And because I did that I was able to excel to another level
without being known as the comic impressionist. It was weird
because in Toronto that what I was, when I started out, alright?
I was going to be the next Rich Little. It's amazing. So, I
don't know if that answers your question, but I like the pocket
I'm in. It's a good place. It's a place that feels like it's
not tired, you know?
EM:
How involved are you going to be for the DVD of Bruce Almighty?
TOM:
Well, we're going to get involved. It hasn't been done yet but
actually we started talking about it very, very early on the
movie. We decided early, because we have all these choices that
we don't use, I could cut three, five, ten other movies together
with the choices that we have.
JIM:
We've got to put the falling out of the airplane on the DVD.
There is a shot that we did of me falling out of this airplane,
doing a…
TOM:
Another news story. He discovered Big Foot and it kind of got
cut.
JIM:
Yeah, right. And so I'm falling out of this airplane and we
had this special effect guy with a gun, with a pipe that shot
air, like at a fierce rate, into my mouth, so my mouth is literally
stretched to the point…it's going "halulululula"
and just the whole time I'm speaking [laughter]! It's so stretched
you see my whole skeleton under there. It's really frightening.
When they yelled cut I couldn't see anybody, because everybody
was on the floor just losing their minds, but it didn't fit
in the movie so…it's got to be somewhere.
TOM:
Yeah, we'll put stuff like that on the DVD and the other choices
that you didn't get to see. There's a ton of scenes that we'll
put on too that have laughs but didn't quite fit in the rhythm.
EM:
Is DVD a comic salvation then because your material can still
be seen - preserved?
JIM:
It's kind of nice to be able to have that with our stuff. Yeah.
You know to show some things that didn't fit in the puzzle maybe.
It's given us a lot of good options
TOM:
It's actually really cool. I mean, it is another point of interest
and people are fascinated by what made it or didn't make it.
We have scenes from Ace Ventura, the original Ace Ventura. We
weren't doing that. DVD didn't exist then. But I can remember
scenes that we took out of the original Ace. [Turning to Jim]
Remember the contact lens, when one guy came after you in a
bar with a smashed beer bottle? [Laughter]
JIM:
[laughter] Yeah! I take out a contact lens and go [screech -smashing
the "lens" on a space-work bar he gestures menacingly!
[Hearty laughter]
TOM:
It's scenes like that. I wish we had the DVD back then. Funny
stuff.
EM:
Can we just touch upon Eternal Sunshine and working with Charlie
Kaufman?
JIM:
Oh, it's wonderful, wonderful material. Amazing. I felt lucky
to be part of that.
TOM:
Did you scream at him?
JIM:
Huh?
TOM:
Never mind.
JIM:
Oh yeah. [Laughter] No, Michel
Gondry is brilliant. All the special effects were done in
camera. It's a really interesting project. Really, really cool.
EM:
But you played all ages in the brain?
JIM:
Yeah, well we kind of, it's me but I got kids clothes on or
whatever.
EM:
Jim, would you ever want to direct?
JIM:
Maybe sometime.
There you go - the world's longest interview. I didn't leave
out a syllable. Truthfully, Jim's a comedic god in my eyes.
Almost everyone of my "favorite" funny scenes involve
him. And frankly it was an extreme honor to meet a guy this
talented and genuinely charming and that
has done so much for me without even knowing me by simply
uttering my name in a publication or
on a music TV channel. Thanks again Jim! And thanks for being...
"It's
better to go after something special and risk starving to death
than to surrender, if you give up your dreams, what's left?"
- Jim
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