Limelight:
That sunny funny face
By
Lubna Abdel Aziz
More than a comic, more than a clown, more than a harlequin, more than a buffoon, he is all of these and then some. His name may not yet be a household word but there is no mistaking the face that has created some of the most popular and entertaining characters in modern film history. A rubbery visage that is always in motion, it keeps tickling your funny bone until it wears out your resistance, and you find yourself holding both your sides convulsed with laughter.
The face belongs to 39-year-old Jim Carrey "the only thing happening in Hollywood comedy-wise". "Where is Michael Keaton? Steve Martin? Billy Crystal? And where is Robin Williams?" Carrey is it! In two years (1994-1996) his salary shot from $350,000 to $20 million per film and for good reason. His first four films have made over $1 billion in US revenues alone, and the rest of the world was in stitches over this mindless, babbling, exhausting, outrageous comic.
1994 was the year he broke into feature films "and into the collective unconscious of the world". It was the year of the Funny Face. His latest, Bruce Almighty is one of this summer's major blockbusters ranked up there with Matrix II and Terminator III, grossing well over $200 million in the US market. Amidst the endless sequels and prequels, this story is refreshingly new. Bruce Nolan, a dissatisfied human-interest TV reporter, dreams of becoming news anchorman. The day he expects this promotion, the job goes to his much-hated rival, he is fired, beaten up by a gang of thugs while trying to help a homeless old man, and ends the worst day of his life by crashing his car into a lamppost. He is convinced that God is against him until "God" himself appears, and endows him with supernatural powers, challenging him to attend to all of humanity's demands. He soon discovers it is not easy being God.
Lebanese-born director Tom Shadyac combines this powerful theme with the comic genius of Jim Carrey and produces a whimsical fantasy reminiscent of the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946) with James Stewart, who happens to be Carrey's idol. The gross out humour, offensive to some, has been toned down and the physical comedy and mimicry pleasing to all has been played up. Carrey is in his element.
If he would keep still for more than five seconds, you will discover underneath the rubber mask a pleasant, almost handsome, face. Carrey (French for Le Carré) was born in Ontario, Canada, with an invalid mother and a helpless father. He developed a shield of humour to protect him from the pain and anger the world had hurled on one so young. His quizzical style of tomfoolery sprang from extraordinary suffering. His grandparents were drunks, his parents penniless, his father a loser, his mother chronically ill. Always a loner, Carrey would withdraw to his bedroom and spend every free hour mimicking actors like Henry Fonda and James Stewart. "Everybody has enough pain to do what I do." To cheer his mother up Jim performed by her bedside impressions, gags, gigs, pratfalls, anything to see her smile. He carried this pain within him throughout his childhood. By 15 he dropped out of school and took his comedy to the Toronto-based Comedy Club. "Yuk. Yuk". At 17 he moved to Los Angeles. There he came to the attention of comedian Rodney Dangerfield who signed him up to tour the club circuit. For many years he lived in obscurity doing impressions at the famous Comedy Store.
It would be many years of bit parts in TV, films, impressions in clubs and mostly an endless stretch of rejections before Jim Carrey would get his big break. "Impressions are the path of a B-comic," so he dumped his impressions, regrouped, and created tortured cartoon- like characters, which he later used successfully in the TV comedy series In Living Colour in 1982. Director Joel Schumacher (The Client, Batman Forever) auditioned him for a part in DC Cab -- "he gave this dazzling performance, but you couldn't just put this guy in anything -- you had to build an entire movie around him". And so they did.
The film was Ace Ventura, Pet Detective (1994). It cost $12 million to make and made $12 million its opening weekend, eventually grossing $107 million. Everyone's favourite Pet Detective was followed by another box office hit, tailor-made for Carrey's unique talents - The Mask, based on the comic book series of the same name, established him as a formidable talent to reckon with. Funny face was finally on his way.
That same year (1994) he and his wife Melissa separated. His mother died of kidney failure, and never saw her son become a star. But his Dad did -- the dad whom he adored, but despised for being "such a born loser". He was desperate not to be like his Dad, 'not to be a loser'. In 1987 he wrote a check to himself for $10 million and dated it Thanksgiving 1995. When his Dad died in 1994, Jim took the check that he had written to himself, which he had been carrying around in his wallet for seven years, and put it in his father's casket. By 1995 he was well worth over $10 million.
He followed his first two hits with yet a third Dumb and Dumber (1995), an Autumn release that not only swept at the box office but ended up on top of the holiday crop. His fourth film was a sequel to Ace Ventura -- Nature Calls (1995), making it four hits in a row. Jim Carrey was now a bankable star whose power at the box office was staggering. His salary jumped to a monstrous $20 million, an amount that all the comedians put together could not reach. Even those few critics and viewers who were unimpressed started to take notice. Like a magnet, producing 100 million human laughs a minute Carrey's mimicry and physical humour were compared to the best comedic mimes who preceded him in history like Aristophanes and Buster Keaton. The French dubbed him "Le nouveau Jacques Tati", and "Le fils de Jerry Lewis", the ultimate compliment in France. Jerry Lewis himself became a big fan calling him "some talent". Even the venerable Pauline Kael, grande dame of film critics of the New York Times came out of retirement to praise Carrey's originality, defining his high-comedy style to her highbrow readers. When Cable Guy (1996) for which he received his first $20 million check, crashed miserably at the box office, he immediately picked up the pieces, teamed up with director Shadyac and returned to the screen with a riveting tour de force in Liar, Liar, his best critical and commercial success for which he received a Golden Globe Award in 1997. His venture into more serious fare like The Truman Show (1998) and The Majestic (2001), proved his versatility and wide range. His sparkling zany humour always outlandish, often bombastic, is highly infectious. The joke is always on him.
The lonely poor boy from New Market, Ontario, who used to crawl around in his underwear trying to make his mother smile, now lives in an 11,000 square foot mansion in Brentwood, dates the most glamorous ladies in tinsel town, and dreams of becoming the next Jimmy Stewart.
He has avenged his parents' misfortune on earth by amassing a vast fortune of his own. His father, a loser no more, having begot such a brilliant son, his mother smiling eternally at her son the king of clowns. As for the rest of us, we just cannot stop laughing at Jim Carrey.
