Jim Carrey explains why he calls Michel Gondry a “creative genius”
Despite a rocky Hollywood career, American actor Jim Carrey has enjoyed collaborations with some of the greatest modern filmmakers, including Peter Farrelly, Ben Stiller, Peter Weir, Miloš Forman, Ron Howard and Ana Lily Amirpour. Though it has been a while since he was in the industry limelight, the allure of Carrey has never ceased, being responsible for some of the greatest comedies of the 1990s.
At the turn of the new millennium, however, after staggering success in the previous decade with such movies as The Mask, Batman Forever and The Truman Show, Carrey was eager to try something new. After starring in the romantic comedy The Majestic with Laurie Holden in 2001, Carrey took on an altogether more high-profile role in Michel Gondry’s Oscar-winning sci-fi Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Arguably the greatest filmmaker Carrey ever worked with, the actor heavily praised Gondry for helping him to transform into the character of Joel Barish, a man who undergoes a medical procedure with his ex-girlfriend to erase their memories of each other forever. A devastating emotional drama, the movie won ‘Best Original Screenplay’ at the Academy Awards thanks to a stellar screenplay by Charlie Kaufman.
Certainly Carrey’s greatest performance, alongside his iconic lead role in The Truman Show, the actor reflects fondly on his collaboration with Gondry, telling Live About that the filmmaker is a “creative genius”.
“Michel is just a creative genius, I think, but people really haven’t discovered him on a mass level yet,” Carrey said of the filmmaker behind 2004’s Eternal Sunshine and 2006’s The Science of Sleep, explaining: “He comes in every day with something that just kind of spins you around and makes you go, Wow, somebody’s thinking, man! Thank you! This is great! Somebody’s bringing something to the table”.
Continuing, Carrey recalls a specific moment from the production of the movie: “He comes in and asks me to do things that are impossible. There’s a scene where I come into Lacuna in my memory, and I’m screaming at the doctor, and I’m in two different places in the scene. It’s not split screen – it’s not any of that – it’s Michel coming in and saying [in a French accent], ‘You’re going to run around the camera, and you’re going to put the hat on and take it off and put it on and take it off!’.”
A DIY filmmaker, who likes to work with practical materials to accentuate the hand-made quality of his movies, Michel Gondry has made eight movies and countless short films that each share a familiar feel. As well as his films, the French director is also known for his high-profile music videos, working with the likes of Lenny Kravitz, Björk, Sinéad O’Connor, Massive Attack, The Rolling Stones, Daft Punk and Foo Fighters.
Carrey argued with the director on-set, too, debating whether the scene described above could be achieved at all: “‘This can’t be done. I can’t do this. It’s impossible'”. Exemplifying exactly why the actor holds Gondry in such high regard, he adds, “He said [in a French accent], ‘How do you know if you don’t try?'”.
