Jim Carrey Unmasked
The book very vividly depicts its protagonist's intense frustration with Hollywood and his estrangement from his own work and accomplishments. Jim, how much does that represent your own true feelings?
CARREY "The Truman Show" was not a mistake. I'm a guy that suddenly looked up one day and started seeing all the machinery and the lights falling from the sky. Every project is a little bit of me recreating myself, tearing the old self down and exploring something new. My whole career I've asked a lot of my audience, and they've allowed me to do these things. I think they expect that of me, in a certain way. They don't expect convention.
Dana, do you think you've emerged from this project a different writer?
CARREY [to Vachon] Watch it. Watch it.
VACHON I don't think you can spend eight years working with somebody and not be changed. It freed me. People in New York spend many years on a single story. In L.A., there's a deftness and a confidence in, let's just get this done, versus the East Coast idea of, we'll listen to God. Writing's lonely, so it was great to have a writing partner. It could be 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you'd be like, "Yo, dude, what's going on? What did you do today?" And it still felt like work.
Jim, do you think you've arrived at a different understanding about creativity or celebrity?
CARREY An artist is a custodian of a divine spark and these people, no matter how complex or strange their character, they have a connection to something divine and they can give you that connection through their work. That's all I've ever wanted. Whether I was doing something funny or serious, all I've ever wanted, from the time I was a little child, was to free people from concern. This book, I think, is just an example of that. And I think we get there in the book. We get to a place where we give them a touch of that.
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