In his memoir Gasping for Airtime, actor/comic Jay Mohr talked about the cultural divide between the writers and performers on Saturday Night Live during his tenure in the early to mid-1990s. It was obvious he observed so many of the people were trying to be more smart and sophisticated than they actually were.
And reading a book like Memoirs and Misinformation, you can tell Jim Carrey is basically trolling the literary world with this muddled mess. When Tom Green co-wrote and directed Freddy Got Fingered which he also starred in, it was called the worst movie of 2001 and one of the worst movies of the 2000s. (And there were a lot. I keep telling myself I will examine that odd period in one blog. But so many things are happening right now.)
The movie bombed and it seemed by the time the movie made it to the home video market, Green was waning in popularity. He seemed to basically have disappeared only a few years later. But now, people look at the movie as classic trolling. Hollywood elites gave Green money and carte blanche to make hands down one of the worst movies ever where Green himself grabs a horse’s penis. As Siskel and Ebert observed, if a woman had done that, the movie would’ve been branded as pornography. Green was just seeing what all he could get away with and realized that Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox didn’t stop anything. Or if they did, what was consider too bad.
Carrey famously played Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. And depending on who you talk to, he either went too far with the role or got too in character. Several people noted that his version of Tony Clifton was meaner. Even though Jerry Lawler and Kaufman were friends in real life, Lawler didn’t care for Carrey and slapped him very hard for real while recreating the infamous Late Night with David Letterman appearance. Kaufman was the type who liked that he was the only one who got the joke. People compared Green to Kaufman and if they mean he burnt out very fast after people got tired of him, then that’s the truth.
Danny DeVito even said that Carol Kane, who was on Taxi with him, poked Kaufman’s body at the funeral because she believed he was faking. Several people suspected Kaufman was faking his cancer as well. That wasn’t the case. He’s been gone for 40 years. So, it’s got to be a good joke if it’s lasted this long. This novel feels like a joke Carrey has been pulling on the literary world, demanding they take a stand either for it or against it.
Sean Penn and Ethan Hawke have written books that some people have called the worst ever. But just because a famous person is attached, doesn’t mean it’s going to be good. This novel which Carrey co-wrote with Dana Vachon has been called a surrealist novel, but I think that’s just a vague description for a book that never seems to make any sense. There’s something about an alien invasion in the Los Angeles area and other famous people pop up, especially Nicholas Cage, who seems like he would appear as himself in a movie based on this book, but appearing as Carrey.
Carrey has said that he plans to retire from acting. He’s scheduled to reprise his role as Doctor Eggman in the third Sonic the Hedgehog movie due out later this year and then that’s it. Acting is one of those professions people get upset if you retire after 25-30 years of doing it. Carrey has been appearing in movies for over 40 years. He’s also been on TV programs. If he wants to retire, then that’s his choice and life.
However, I would suggest that he don’t return to the literary world, unless he improves. I mean, even Stephen King views Carrie as one of his least favorite. Writers can’t knock it out of the park the first time like Harper Lee did with To Kill a Mockingbird. But despite the rave reviews from the literary world, many avid person readers will be bored after 50 pages and toss this book across the room.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 