Bluntly Speaking | Count Olaf aka Jim Carrey
aka Henry Von Schnickenhunkdimple
an emily blunt interview

Order LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS...Immediately!
Your Beloved, Count Olaf

Bluntly speaking? James Carrey is a rare bit of talent. You hear a lot of brouhaha about comedians changing their shtick and trying to go legit; from cream pies to dramalogues . I usually concur, but it actually makes sense. It's a hard job making people laugh - and only the truly funny - or talented - ones hold within that seed of versatility (See: Eternal Sunshine should you dare to debate me).

An actor after all is a great pretender, and comics are the best "liars" in the sandbox. The king of the sandbox is Jim Carrey (er, and Robin Williams - but you get my drift).I think he's one of the greatest talents walking - and that's not even biased...well, I guess that's not fair to say, he is my Ganeesh...but I'm always brutally blunt.

That's neither here nor there in this case because Jim's the heavy-weight champion of mayhem, back in the guffaw arena with his latest remarkable spin on film is as one Count Olaf, the villain extraordinaire, in the most anticipated film of the season, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. And this version of a villain is delightfully nasty and oozing sinister - he makes Jim's Grinch seem a down right friendly sort.

The film is a dark comedy (in the hue of black), and Carrey is firmly in his element. His character Olaf (though he ultimately plays several in the film) is a grandiose arse. To say Count Olaf is an über narcissistic hammy evil parlaying actor with a terrible balding condition, is being....kind. Jim frolics about, relishing in the absurd, and delivers a signature performance - it's wonderful. And Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is a unique masterpiece. A visual cornucopia amidst a sea of surreal swirls, accented by one helluva ham.

Here's what we talked about:

EMILY: So Jim, tell me was it tricky to play a truly obnoxious and bad actor like this Count Olaf?

JIM: I'm insulted they picked me [laughs]. No actually it was really fun because when he makes choices you don't have to do any research whatsoever on. 'I'm an Irish pirate? Okay'. The thing about it is he's always Olaf underneath it all. I love the idea that he thinks the children are so stupid that they would never recognize him in a million years. That's kind of the gist of this piece of material, it's that no one believes the kids and Olaf is trying to work off of that but they immediately nail him every time! I think that's a really cool thing that comes from the books. That feeling that kids are kind of on their own.

EMILY: Where do you draw your characters from?

JIM: It's wonderful to have good tools and I've been blessed with emotional tools that I can draw on and physically as well. As Joel in Eternal Sunshine I was trying to disappear the whole time but this guy [Count Olaf] wants to be seen badly and basically everything is animated, his little finger is animated, it's total self-consciousness. Then there's the total self-consciousness of an actor losing his hair!

EMILY: Yeah, that's gotta be traumatic - and you made it dramatic for sure...Is there a relative lurking in your family tree, yourself excluded, that as strange as Count Olaf?

JIM: Well the weird thing is that Olaf turned out looking a lot like my dad! Which is really frightening to me. I usually try to put a little Dad-ism in my role so that's it kind of a wink to my family when they see a movie. They saw the advanced pictures of this film and they went, 'Dude, now you're starting to scare us' because it really is like my Dad. I thought of a slightly less human inspiration for this role really, he was kind of a smart bird. This one was a predatory bird rather, he was the kind of bird that waits for you to leave the nest and then steals the eggs. Of course I have much experience with actors and acting classes and how that can turn into Jesus and the disciples in moments. I know a lot of acting teachers want that kind of relationship. You know, that Guru kind of thing. Olaf is a bad leader. He's completely selfish. If he's being nice to you it's only because you have something he wants. He's just a fun character to play not to mention that it is the most dangerous character to play - an actor who's losing his hair.

EMILY: [Laughter] Hilarious! In the same kind of thought. What's it like to be "Jim's" relative. I mean do you have honour of being court jester at functions?

JIM: [Laughter] I have the kookiest family. For years I was the entertainment. It was almost a slavery situation. I'd get a knock in the middle of the night and my parents would say 'Get your tap shoes on we have company'. I was always doing shows. I was always the center and I got that from my father. When I was a little kid I remember watching him captivate the room and be so animated and I thought it was fantastic. I was trying to be like him.

EMILY: That is very sweet actually. It takes hours for make up to create Olaf and characters like the Grinch. Do you like the process of being transformed into these characters?

JIM: I don't like it at all. I like the results. The results are fantastic and I have fantastic people working with me who are incredibly patient. They do brilliant work and they put up with me when I lose my mind and have to run out of the trailer screaming. I was pretty Zen on this one. After the Grinch, which was like CIA training, that one brutalized me so much that everything afterwards was a cakewalk. You could hit me with a brick right now, and I'd be like "Hi, love ya".

EMILY: Yeah The Grinch looked so uncomfortable- even your eyes were basically covered. Ewewewaargh. So then what is that makes you accept the heavy-make-up roles?

JIM: To me it's like a child - like fascination with " My gosh how different could I look?" "What characters can come out of this at the end of it all?" Because you really don't know when you start in. When I'm shaving my head I don't know if I have a dodecahedron under there (Laughs). I have no idea what the shape of my skull is under there. You take a chance. What I find is that when you go full boar into it with faith. It always ends up surprising you. It's really kind of a feeling of giving birth to something. You sit back and you take a look at this guy and you think, "Wow this guy never existed at all and now he's there in all his glory."

EMILY: How was working with the children?

JIM: I was constantly messing with them off camera. I would sometimes even reach into the frame when Liam had his close-up and manipulate his face. It was Olaf saying, "No you're not expressive enough, it's all facial you see". I had a lot of fun with them they're a blast. The babies were crazy they were tough. There was like fourteen of them. They were actually just breeding them in the back somewhere (laughs). Which I thought about when I was working with Emily and Liam, these kids basically grew up on camera; I was like "Dig a trench, Liam's grown another foot!"

EMILY: What did you think of the look of the film?

JIM: Phenomenal! Kahn? What a talent that guy is. The whole thing looks so beautiful and I have not seen the finished product yet. I never saw it color timed, all I saw was from videotape at one point. I followed along and I saw a couple of screenings but I never saw it timed but the artistic work in this movie is just brilliant. Performances aside, to look at this movie is beautiful. It's just dark and beautiful and gothic and it's really good artistic work. The sets were 360 degrees forced perspective so when you get into the middle of them and you look around you go "Oh my God! Somebody just dropped me into the Wizard of Oz."

EMILY: Okay, let's be blunt. The buzz -

JIM: Ready.

EMILY: Do you think this movie is too dark for kids?

JIM: (reacting in a court-of-law testimonial way-ish). We grew up with Oliver Stone and Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang with the child-kidnapping creature

EMILY/JIM: Candies, Ice cream….lollipops! [<- on cue mind you...]

JIM: [laughter] That character freaked me out when I was a kid, but I LOVED it. I loved creepy fun when I was a kid. I wouldn't bring your four year old, maybe, but I think it's more than just entertainment. I think it is entertaining and funny but I hope the movie taps in, as the book did, into something that's going on with young kids and teenagers. Even though we have parents, sometimes, they're busy, and we all kind of feel alone in the world. The kids do. I put myself in with them because I'm immature. They are up against not being believed by anybody. They have to prove everything they say like, "It's a nuclear holocaust!" "Are you sure? Are you on something?" They do feel by themselves.

EMILY: Did you learn any new techniques for scaring children?

JIM: [laughter] There was a moment where count Olaf slaps one of the kids and there was controversy as to whether or not to have that in the movie and I said "You know what dude? Bambi dies." In most great movies that connect with people there's some kind of tragedy involved and some kind of pain involved. It is a strange kind of balance that we're striking here, I'm not sure if it's been done this way before. Although I want to be entertaining, the bottom line is Olaf is not a nice person. He has to be that way. I said to the early on that I want them to laugh, but at the same time the danger has to be real or we have nothing. The movie is meaningless without real danger.

EMILY: You amaze me - I mean you are in two very different films in the past year. Did you actively look for polar opposite films? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Vs. Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events are such very different, yet beautiful, beasts.

JIM: Yeah. Eternal Sunshine to me is a different kind of animal. Basically in Eternal Sunshine the script is the star and it touched a nerve in me - the idea of being made invisible. The idea that at some point everyone's felt that feeling of erasing them like their time together didn't mean anything and that's just probably the most brutal thing to feel in an unrequited love.

EMILY: What gets Jim out the door and onto a film lot or location? Script, director, chance to play a new person?

JIM: I like all very creative attempts to reach through. I think that anything that's off beat I'm really attracted to. I always look for that in my movies and if nothing else at least let me be interesting, don't bore people to death. I think Daniel Handler is one of the most original voices to come along in a while. I was fortunate enough to go from Eternal Sunshine with Charlie Kauffman, whose thoughts, are from another planet to Daniel Handler who's definitely coming from a different place. He's like, "I'm really willing to risk my audience. I'm willing to risk them to express what I really feel." That's where he comes from which is like, "Yyeah, life's a bummer sometimes and all we've got is each other." He's tough that way.

EMILY: If you were not "Jim Carrey - International Comedian, Filmstar, Mega-talented Mansteak," what do you think you would be doing today?

JIM: [laughter] I'd be a painter or something creative with my hands. I definitely would be doing something art. I was very much into art when I was a kid growing up. It was between entertaining the company and writing poetry in a closet on a legal pad trying to figure out the universe. It was all over the place when I was a kid but the other thing that I had was art. If I was drawing something or painting and somebody asked me to do something I would lose my mind.

EMILY: What's it like to be one of the world's best-known talents?

JIM: I have a royal inauguration every morning before I leave the house [laughter]. I have many ways to make myself centered and happy. To me it's staying in a place and realizing what everything is really worth. I know we try to mythologize everything in Hollywood so everything's blown out of proportion but as far as I'm concerned I make movies that make people feel good for two hours, that's my thing I do in life and I'm okay with that. I think you'd be surprised at how much of a normal person I am in my life. Obviously it's a big life and although I have to have certain people to take care of certain things I'm still such a boring guy. I'm not exciting, really. I like my home life. I'm quiet. I like a couple of friends hanging out, and every once in a while my friends drag me out to some club because it's "what you're supposed to do" to have fun.

EMILY: What would you like for Christmas? [Thought but not spoken: Perhaps a nice, unHollywoodish blonde who cooks great and cleans up nice for fancy soirees, but can fish like a Prince Edward Island native?]

JIM: You buyin'? [laughter] No. I just want family and togetherness. I'm the toughest person to shop for. My family threw their hands up long ago. I'd say, "A t-shirt would be great" but they're like, 'no there must be an ancient something from somewhere.' Or else it's a Flintstones tie and they expect you to wear it. I'm going to be here in L.A. with my daughter and I might have my family down here.

END

Run and see Lemony. Jim has truly managed to ad to his incredible list of roles. Granted I did not think it got much better than Eternal (film-wise and acting-wise) but Count Olaf is a different Jim yet again. Bravo.