The movie Jim Carrey loathed making from start to finish: “He was at war with the director”
Now that he’s in his early 60s and effectively semi-retired, having made nothing but Sonic the Hedgehog movies for the last decade, Jim Carrey will never have to suffer for his art again unless he really wants to.
Back when he was one of the biggest stars in the business, though, he frequently put himself through the wringer. He may have been the only reason to watch Ron Howard’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but it was hardly a barrel of laughs, with his experience in the makeup chair tantamount to being tortured.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind features one of his finest performances, but he had a thoroughly miserable time being pulled so far outside of his comfort zone. Man on the Moon was entirely his own fault, with Carrey’s method madness causing plenty of friction when he refused to drop character.
However, it wasn’t one of his serious turns that he loathed with every bone in his body from beginning to end. Funnily enough, it was the first sequel of his career, and the leading man hated making Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls with such disdain that he wouldn’t reprise another one of his roles for almost 20 years.
The pet detective got a kid-centric spinoff, Dumb and Dumber got a prequel, The Mask and Bruce Almighty got sequels, but all of them were Carrey-less. He’s since changed his tune, but after gritting his teeth and persevering with a picture that he detested on every level, it’s easy to see why he was sworn off the franchise business for the better part of two decades.
Thanks to the success of the first instalment and his newfound star power, Carrey was able to choose the director. After turning down Spike Jonze, he settled on Steve Oedekerk, who fared better than the first guy in the chair. As co-star Simon Callow recalled in his memoir, Shooting the Actor, the first name on the call sheet “was at war with the director and the producers.”
“He believed, rightly or wrongly, that having paid him a sum of money beyond computation to make this sequel, they were stinting on everything else; props, studio, time,” Callow explained. “The atmosphere was somewhat strained. Jim was often ill. We shot reaction shots to scenes we had never played. Whenever Jim returned, he was possessed of a manic comic energy many times beyond what you see on the screen.”
From the way Callow tells it, it sounds like Carrey wasn’t best pleased with the production cutting corners, which he played a hand in when over a third of When Nature Calls‘ $30 million budget was his salary. He did have a slightly better time once his friend, Oedekerk, was brought on board, with Tom DeCerchio originally hired as the follow-up’s director before he was given the boot fairly sharpish.
Still, all was not well as the shoot fell behind schedule, shot scenes without having Carrey on set, and conspired to convince him that the last thing he ever wanted to do was return to the well and play the same character twice, at least until Dumb and Dumber To came along.
