The scene Jim Carrey refused to shoot: “I won’t do it”
Jim Carrey is regarded as comedic royalty, with decades of performances establishing his signature style and quirky humour in films like Bruce Almighty, The Mask and Ace Ventura. He is also one of the few actors who can blur the line between comedy to suit more dramatic roles, bringing a lightness and strange depth to his characters in The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, making the existentialist tone of both films feel more dystopian and unnerving.
However, the actor rose to fame through a string of hits in the 1990s, becoming one of the most highly paid actors in Hollywood. This led to friction during the production of his 1994 film Dumb and Dumber.
Dumb and Dumber follows two men who, in simplest terms, aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. After a woman called Mary loses a suitcase full of money, the pair embark on a journey to retrieve it and win her affection. Despite both having equal roles in the film, Carrey was paid significantly more than his co-star Jeff Daniels.
Carrey refused the initial offer of $350,000 and instead managed to negotiate $7million for the role, while Daniels was only paid $50,000, earning less than 1% of what Carrey was paid for the picture. The budget for the entire film was $16m, meaning that nearly half of it went to the actor, which was the highest fee for any comedic actor at the time.
You’d think that with a pay cheque like this, there wouldn’t be much that you could say no to during the production. However, there was one scene that Carrey refused to film. The studio pitched for an alternative ending to be filmed that would show the iconic duo boarding a bus with the Swedish bikini team in order to be given a heartfelt farewell. But Carrey was not a fan of this idea, allegedly saying, “I am not stepping foot on that bus. I won’t do it”.
Peter Farrelly, who directed the film, explained, “So we never did shoot it the other one, we went back and told the studio we ran out of daylight and we couldn’t do it.”
There were apparently many disagreements with the studio on the correct approach to the project, but despite this, it ended up making $250m at the global box office, also leading to a prequel and sequel to the story.
Perhaps Carrey was aware of this conflict while shooting, and it was for this reason that he demanded better compensation. The actor has starred in many taxing projects, with an extensive physical transformation for his role as The Grinch that also nearly prompted him to quit the film entirely. There’s no doubt that these roles require a lot of energy, but perhaps the prospect of being paid $7m would make it slightly more bearable. However, for the actor to refuse the Swedish bus scene, it must’ve been truly awful for him to be so strong in his unwillingness to participate.
