The role that made Jim Carrey threaten a studio: “You fuck with this, I’m gone”
To casual observers, Jim Carrey has always been the rubber-faced, gangly-limbed cartoon man of big-screen comedy.
Of course, it’s easy to see why, given the movies that first made him a superstar – Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Liar Liar – all played wonderfully to his strengths as a physical comedian. However, Carrey has taken plenty of risks on projects showcasing different sides of his talents throughout his career. Movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Truman Show revealed he was an actor of uncommon vulnerability, and the Showtime series Kidding displayed his ability to portray deep wells of sadness in semi-comic ways.
However, perhaps the most significant risk of Jim Carrey’s career came in 2009, a time when he took on a film so daring that he had to threaten to walk away after the studio began getting cold feet over its more controversial elements.
By the late 2000s, Carrey seemed to be in an experimental mood. In 2007, he made The Number 23, a psychological thriller that made decent money but was lambasted by critics. He then lent his voice to the animation Horton Hears a Who before returning to a more familiar crowd-pleaser with Yes Man. Instead of doubling down on this familiar kind of film, though, Carrey next chose to star in I Love You Phillip Morris, a black comedy with aspects that made members of his team very, very nervous.
Reflecting on his work in 2010, Carrey told Parade: “There are very few scripts that I would come across that I would pay to do, and this was one of them. I didn’t mind taking a big salary cut. I’m here to do extreme and interesting things.”
What was so extreme about the film, though? Well, I Love You Phillip Morris was based on the true story of con artist Steven Russell, who fell in love with his fellow prison inmate, Phillip Morris, and then broke out of prison four times to be with him. The script included several scenes of fairly graphic homosexual sex involving Russell, whom Carrey was being lined up to play, leading the star’s agents and managers to express concerns.
Carrey wasn’t having any of it, though. “There were a few people sure in my circle who were concerned about it; certainly, absolutely, absolutely,” he told IndieLondon. “Advisors and people who are close to me going, ‘Erm, I don’t know, man. There’s some pretty crazy, edgy stuff in here.’ In response, an agitated Carrey asked them, “Well, why else do we live except to do something that people haven’t seen before in a film?”
As a major movie star, Carrey had reached the point where he wanted to stretch his wings and try some unexpected things. He didn’t care when he was warned about the potential negative consequences of playing a gay man and engaging in such explicit scenes. To him, Russell was simply a fascinating person, and the idea of bringing his life to the screen was compelling. “I want to play people, human beings, and this is an interesting human being,” he mused. “The bottom line is that the quest for love is everyone’s, and he’s just another person”.
Unfortunately for Carrey, the climate at that time wasn’t as LGBTQ-friendly as it is now—especially at EuropaCorp, the production company and distributor behind the film. During an appearance on WTF with Marc Maron, Carrey admitted that he was subjected to a considerable amount of resistance from the studio and his people. “They were just out of their minds over that thing,” he confessed.
In response to this negativity, though, Carrey simply resolved to do everything in his power to ensure the film was made as directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra envisioned. “I fought, and I fought, and I fought,” he said. “And I threatened not to promote, and I did everything that an artist can do to say, ‘You fuck with this, I’m gone.'”
Amazingly, he even claimed he told studio heads, “You know what? You’re the guys that would take the horse’s head out of The Godfather. Stop trying to file down the fuckin’ edges.”
Ultimately, Carrey won the war with the studio, and the film proceeded as planned. However, its release was delayed several times when multiple distributors got cold feet before it was finally released in October 2009 by Roadside Attractions and Liddell Entertainment. To Carrey’s delight, though, it received rave reviews from critics, who appreciated his commitment to making Russell a fully fleshed-out character in the film instead of a one-dimensional villain.
In the end, Carrey was adamant that the opinions of people who criticised him for playing a gay character meant absolutely nothing to him. “I don’t really care about a reaction if there’s a negative reaction,” he said. “I care about doing a story about amazing and fascinating people”.
