Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (24 page)

Jerry:
I wanted to show that. I thought people would get a kick out of seeing what it’s really like. This is the fun part.

One of the most intense experiences I’ve had in this business was the creation of the film
The Cable Guy.
In 1995, Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, and I were all just beginning to make a name for ourselves in Hollywood—well, Jim was having a little more success than Ben and me in this department. The movie happened at a moment when Jim Carrey truly could do anything he wanted.
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
and
The Mask
had just come out, and he was on fire. What he decided to do was a dark, strange comedy starring a needy, media-addicted man with a lisp—and by doing so, he basically announced to the world, “I’m not only going to make hilarious, silly comedies, I’m also going to challenge you and myself.” We all loved the movie, but when it came out, it was not the mega-blockbuster that the business demanded. In fact, we went quickly from having one of the best, most rewarding experiences of our lives to getting the shit kicked out of us by the press for daring to attempt to blaze a different trail. For some of us (especially me) it took a fair amount of time to recover our footing. Looking back, that movie was the moment that dictated what the three of us—and so many of our friends—would do with our careers. This commentary for the tenth-anniversary release of
The Cable Guy
on video was the first time we sat down to talk about how it all went down and what it meant. It’s been twenty years now since we shot
Cable Guy
, and the prevailing feeling I’m left with is a sense of pride about what everybody in the film has accomplished—both in their careers and as people.

Ben Stiller:
Let’s introduce ourselves.

Jim Carrey:
Okay.

Judd Apatow:
Who are you?

Jim:
I’m—Orson Welles! My name is Jim Carrey.

Ben:
And I’m Ben Stiller.

Judd:
I’m Judd Apatow, and I guess we should talk a little about how this movie got started. There was this script,
The Cable Guy
, and I knew that you were doing it, Jim, and I desperately—

Jim:
And you jumped on board and rode my coattails all the way to the top.

Judd:
Yes! And here I am, looking down. Actually, I made a very brief play to direct, which got rejected by the Sony people in about fifteen minutes.

Jim:
Really?

Judd:
Then it was like, well, who else?

Jim:
“Judd Apatow will never direct a movie.”

Ben:
Yeah. Dream on, buddy. Dream on. So, what should we talk about?

Judd:
Well, we could talk about—that me and Ben went and visited Jim when he was shooting
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
to discuss what to do with this script. And Jim had very specific lisping ideas for his character.

Jim:
I wanted to do the lisp because—you know, the more money people pay me, the more I want to rebel.

Ben:
Yeah, I remember. We went to Charleston. I remember you were shooting a scene from
Ace Ventura
where you were—was that the scene where you’re coming out of the—

Jim:
The rhino’s butt.

Ben:
Yeah, the rhino’s butt.

Judd:
But it was hot out! It was like a hundred and five out!

Jim:
Yeah! People were dying out there. People were falling apart. And the producers were asking them to drink less water.

Ben:
Couldn’t afford the water!

Jim:
Yeah, and we spent a couple days, just brainstorming.

Judd:
I have those notes still, from the hotel: It just says, like, (
stilted voice
) “Push tit against glass. ‘Oh, Steven!’ ”

Jim:
That’s right. But that’s one of the most sublime scenes ever, in a movie. Oh my gosh. Can’t believe we got to do that.

Ben:
And then you got to—you sort of rewrote the script—

Judd:
I went and rewrote the drafts.

Jim:
You cut your teeth!

Judd:
Lou Holtz is the credited writer on this film; I did a pass on it. I think if I said more than that I’d get kicked out of the Writers Guild. But this was post–
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.
It was a white-hot Jim Carrey madness at that moment.

Jim:
Yeah. And I was just about to destroy the industry as we know it.

Judd:
You were paid twenty million dollars. What’d you do with all that money?

Jim:
I’m still living off that twenty million dollars.

Ben:
And they made a big deal of it—the studio
announced
it, I remember. They were like very excited about it.

Jim:
Yeah, they stuck their heads right out there. Into the guillotine.

Ben:
It put us out there, right from the beginning.

Jim:
It really did expose us.

Ben:
“Let’s get our money’s worth!”

Jim:
“Oh, yeah. We’ll be
real
happy for them. We’re rootin’ for ’em!”

Judd:
I remember they said forty-million-dollar budget, twenty million to Jim, and then if we ever asked for more than forty million dollars they’d get very angry.

Jim:
(
Watching movie
) Hold on, I’m caught up in this. I’m so good at this.

Judd:
At this moment in time, when I was doing my work, I was very, very lonely. I was lonely, and so the idea of the desperation of this was not a big leap for how I was feeling at the time.

Ben:
I was coming off a big breakup, too.

Jim:
We’re all disenfranchised. It’s all about abandonment, man. Every role I do is about abandonment. How about you guys?

Ben:
My life is about abandonment.

Judd:
I remember every aspect of this—we could not have laughed or enjoyed the ideas of this or the shooting more. But then, when you watch it years later, you do think,
That was completely crazy.

Ben:
I think a lot of the issues with the movie are about the
context
of the movie being made as this sort of mainstream, summer, hopefully comedic blockbuster type of movie. But really we were making this dark, pseudo-sexual tale of two men who become obsessed with each other.

Jim:
With homosexual overtones!

Judd:
This is the first bromance.

Jim:
Yeah. But I think it was important! I still think so. This movie is what’s wrong with
everything.

Ben:
I don’t think the studio ever—they were sort of afraid to
question
what was going on.

Jim:
Well, I don’t think you should. I think it’s a great movie, man!

Ben:
But if it had come out on Halloween or something, or if they hadn’t put it out there as—

Jim:
I remember they took all the psychodrama craziness out of the first trailer and I got worried right then. I went,
Uh-oh. They’re trying to mask this thing.

Ben:
The trailer was a little ridiculous, in terms of the oom-pah-pah music.

Judd:
We wanted the trailer to be a little more, like,
Cape Fear.

Jim:
I wanted me attempting to put my drill into Matthew Broderick’s head or something like that. I wanted it to just be out there.

Ben:
Judd, you said that the experience was fun, and it
was
so much fun—up until the day it came out.

Judd:
I remember at the premiere, literally at the premiere, someone handed me two faxes—the
Time
review and the
Newsweek
review—and they were both bad. And I was like,
What’s happening
?

Jim:
I knew. I
knew
we were in trouble, financially. The wolves were at the door at that point. But I also
knew
that we were doing something interesting that, in retrospect, we were gonna look back on and—

Ben:
I remember that you never ever had any question about where you wanted it to go. I blame you.

Jim:
I would take it further. I would.

Judd:
At the time, it felt like you were throwing down the gauntlet, that you were announcing that you wanted to do things other than big, broad comedy.

Jim:
It was a complete rebellion.

Judd:
It kind of set up people to know that
The Truman Show
and
Eternal Sunshine
were coming. This one was the first time they were like, “Oh my God, this is
not
what his other movies were like.”

Jim:
How they speak about it still is so strange to me. It’s like, “And then he gave the audience something they weren’t ready for….” They talk about it as if it was some murderously dark thing and I think it was just funny, and the need of the character is hilarious, but our sensibility, you and me—you love to go to that place.

Ben:
Were you thinking of that at all when we were doing it, though? In terms of how audiences would react to it?

Jim:
No, I always follow what I think is funny.

Ben:
Your character is funny to me because he’s just so needy, and he’s so—he just wants a friend. I mean, he has a very clear motivation. He’s pure.

Judd:
And it took an insane level of commitment. Jim, you had limitless energy: It was never like, “I’m tired. Can I go home?” It was always like, “Grr, how many more? Let’s go, let’s go!” (
Growling sound
)

Ben:
I think we were sort of all at that place in our lives where we sort of had nothing else going on except our work.

Jim:
We had nowhere else to go.

Ben:
I just wanted to be there all the time.

Judd:
I remember when—I used to have panic attacks around this time from smoking too much weed and working too hard. And I’d have to go into these meetings with the head of Sony, Mark Canton—

Jim:
Everything was on the line for Mark at that point.

Judd:
And I’d realize that this meeting is going to take two hours and I’d have a panic attack. Or we’d be at page five of a hundred and five and I’d know that I was going to have a panic attack for a hundred and fifteen pages but not
look
like I was having a panic attack.

Jim:
Wow. I didn’t know you were going through so much, Judd.

Judd:
Here’s something: Jim, you make sweet love to my wife, Leslie Mann, in the movie
I Love You Phillip Morris.

Jim:
We go at it! We go at it like bandits. Like bandits! My God, my forehead was bleeding from the headboard.

Ben:
Now, what was that like?

Jim:
It was insane. Unbelievable. I dislocated her hip.

Judd:
I don’t mind when it’s friends! Between friends, it’s okay. The only person that bothered me was Owen Wilson.

Jim:
Well, of course. Because you figure, like, that could be something real.

Judd:
I just want to be apologized to before you do it—like, “Sorry, Judd, it’s the job.” But Owen was just like, “Hi, Judd.” Then just did it. Anyway, Jim, was this the weirdest character you’ve played? Or Ace Ventura? Like, what’s the top three weirdest Jim Carrey characters?

Jim:
I don’t know. I don’t think they’ve happened yet. But yeah, Ace was definitely an out-there character. And suddenly I got this big paycheck and stuff, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. My first terror went through me—
Oh my God, you’re getting paid a lot of money, you’re gonna get
safe—and so my reaction is always to do something outrageous.

Ben:
Well, it worked well for you until this movie.

Jim:
Till I started chasing penguins around and kissing up to the public. No, this movie
rocks
! I don’t care what anybody says. I don’t care what the masses say. This movie is dear to me.

Judd:
How do you feel about the movies you’ve made since then, about your canon?

Jim:
It won’t be complete, Judd, until you do your best work with me. Seriously, we have to reteam. It has to happen. I mean, honestly. I think the world is ready for this.

Ben:
They’re clamouring for
Cable Guy 2.

Judd:
That
would
be awesome.

Ben:
This time we’ll have a hundred-million-dollar budget.

Jim:
And I should get paid fifty of the hundred million! That would be amazing.

Judd:
For all the film students out there—are they learning anything about film right now, listening to this?

Ben:
I never know if these things are supposed to be entertaining or informative.

Jim:
I don’t know what they’re supposed to be.

Judd:
This is your first commentary.

Jim:
I feel so virginal right now.

Judd:
I kinda feel like you should do some impressions, since we’re on audio now.

(Jim does an impression.)

Judd:
Now do your Clint Eastwood face!

Ben:
Come on, dude. I was just watching that on YouTube. There is this incredible YouTube video of you doing all the impressions, from the early days—

Jim:
Well, yeah, I was on the Johnny Carson show. Remember him?

Judd:
You were on with Johnny? Did you meet Johnny Carson, or—

Jim:
I was on twice with Johnny. He was awesome, man! I loved him. He was on something, for sure, but—