Like everyone else in Hollywood, the producers of “The Cable Guy” expect the movie to open big on Friday. Real big. With any luck at all, box-office receipts next weekend should more than cover Jim Carrey’s precedent-setting $20 million salary.
Despite the barbs of outraged critics, Carrey’s recent pictures–two “Ace Ventura” features, the aptly titled “Dumb and Dumber,” “The Mask” and “Batman Forever”–have delivered more than $600 million in domestic revenues alone.
Yet there remains a question of how Carrey’s fans will respond to the dark comedy in “Cable Guy.” If they don’t support it with positive word-of-mouth, it could disappear quicker than you can say “Showgirls.”
In the film, Carrey plays a lonely and deranged cable-TV installer who attaches himself to Steven Kovacs, a heartbroken young architect, played by Matthew Broderick. Kovacs’ illicit request for free premium services is interpreted, by the Cable Guy, as an invitation for friendship.
When his overtures are spurned, the Cable Guy–who soon becomes the Stalker Guy–finds several menacing ways to insinuate himself into the architect’s life. For instance, the Cable Guy surprises his would-be pal with an expensive house-warming gift (it’s stolen) and arranges a tryst (with a hooker) to ease the memory of the architect’s lost love. He also invites Kovacs to a feasting-and-jousting theme restaurant, during which they become the entertainment.
The weirdness–and the darkness–escalates from there.
“I hope that everybody in the world likes everything I do, but that’s not reality and never will be,” said Carrey, uncharacteristically subdued after undergoing a full day of broadcast and print interviews. “I’m going to lose some people on this and gain some people, but that’s the way it’s got to go. If you play to the audience, you end up being some kind of shell.”
Even though it was inevitable that Carrey’s act someday would leave the sophomore class, it wasn’t clear exactly how this promotion might manifest itself on the screen.
“I’m not going to do `Hamlet,’ but I do want to tell stories,” said the 34-year-old Toronto native. “My favorite actors were guys like Jimmy Stewart, who went all over the place.
“You could laugh like hell with him, because he was so funny. At the same time, you cared about him so much that he could make you cry.”
Carrey will follow “The Cable Guy” with another $20 million comedy, “Liar, Liar,” and then a sequel to “The Mask.” However, he will put his loyalists to the test once again when he teams with director Peter Weir for the drama “The Truman Show,” about a man whose life becomes the fodder for a TV show.
While Carrey tries to make light of his great good fortune, he also realizes that studio executives might be less nervous knowing they were getting “Ace Ventura 3” or “Dumber, Dumber, Dumbest,” instead of a new-model, a-little-scary Jim Carrey.
“There was some concern about how dark to go, but Columbia was pretty liberal with me,” he said. “They let me go to some uncomfortable places, and I love that.”
Director Ben Stiller said he felt the heat of increased studio expectations.
“There’s always nervousness on the part of the establishment–the people who are paying the money–that we can deliver what they’re paying for. My feeling is that another `Ace Ventura’ really isn’t a sure thing for Jim.
“I try to give the audience some credit that they might want to see Jim stretch out and do something different. I think that’s what people like about him, that he takes chances.
“Jim had done a character on `In Living Color’–kind of a pathetic guy named Dickie Peterson–who hung out at the 7-Eleven and would pretend he’s a Guardian Angel, but basically he was a kid who lived at home with his mother,” explained Stiller. “That was really the basis for the idea of where this character came from. He was a guy who really was very lonely and pathetic but who got a little scary and psychotic based on his neediness, obsession and all those co-dependency issues.”
Something familiar, too
Co-producer Jeffrey Mueller pointed out that, besides the more adult spin to the story line, the film includes “five requisite set pieces for (Carrey’s) fans.”
They include a wild scene in which the Cable Guy, who uses the name Ernie (“but my friends call me `Chip’ “) Douglas, mimics singer Grace Slick at a karaoke party; participates in a game of Porno Password with the architect’s parents and girlfriend; battles Broderick at a Medieval Times restaurant and plays a manic game of basketball. Then there’s a high-altitude climax on a giant satellite dish.
While fully exploiting Carrey’s trademark physicality and impersonation skills–he remains the human equivalent of Silly Putty–“The Cable Guy” attempts to satirize the thriller genre through its use of television and motion-picture cliches. Here, the filmmakers are reaching out to an adult audience that might actually remember Alfred Hitchcock and, moreover, understand how troubling it is to have to deal with a cable company.
“I saw in the first scene an idea of taking it way out . . . making it into a psycho-thriller, while poking fun at the genre,” said Stiller, who also plays twin defendants in a televised trial that combines the Menendez brothers and O.J. Simpson cases. “This character is so immersed in television, and has seen so many movies, that he’s playing out this fantasy in his head.”
Originally, the movie was to have starred Chris Farley, and the humor was intended to have a softer edge. The $20 Million Man was brought in after Farley left the project because of a scheduling problem. Soon to join the project were Stiller and co-producer/script-doctor Judd Apatow.
“I turned it down when Chris Farley was still on it, because I didn’t want to do the original version of the script,” Stiller recalled. “Then Jim said he was going to do it and Judd–who I’d done the `Ben Stiller Show’ with on Fox–said he was going to rewrite it, because he knows Jim real well.
“When he told me that, I got on the phone with Jim and we discussed what we wanted to do. It was a departure from the original . . . something a little bit out there.”
Not that Carrey has to assume many risks these days, given his new tax bracket. In fact, his biggest challenge likely will come in trying to please himself.
“The first thing you do is realize how ridiculous it all is and try to remind yourself that it’s still about the work,” he said. “You just constantly have to focus yourself on, you know, if this scene doesn’t work, that $20 million is going to bite me in the ass.”
A wild ride to the top
In 1984, Carrey starred in NBC’s short-lived “The Duck Factory.” He landed small roles in the films “Peggy Sue Got Married,” “The Dead Pool,” “Earth Girls Are Easy” and “Pink Cadillac,” before breaking through as the hyperkinetic “white guy” on Fox’s hip sketch-comedy series “In Living Color.”
Then came his streak of low-budget, $100-million hits and an impressively demented turn as the Riddler in the blockbuster “Batman Forever.”
Carrey’s salary has gone from under $1 million for the first “Ace Ventura” to the $7 million range for “Dumber” and “Batman Forever” to $20 million apiece for “The Cable Guy” and “Liar, Liar.”
“It’s the most fantastically exciting ride of my life and at the same time, people go through my garbage,” he quipped. “I’ve got to tell you, it really is strange. That’s what my monologue was about on `Saturday Night Live’: `Hi, I’m an alien, I’m not normal.’ The strangest thing is that everybody knows who you are, knows too much about you.”
Despite Carrey’s reputation for being difficult on a set, his collaborators in “The Cable Guy” only had good things to say about him.
“Jim’s not a gorilla, he’s a human being . . . a really smart human being and actor,” said Stiller. “Most smart actors want to be directed. They know the best thing they can do is be in the moment, portray character and not think too much about what the end result will be.”
At 33, Broderick already is a seasoned veteran of the Hollywood and Broadway wars. Yet, he doesn’t appear to begrudge Carrey his dollop of fame.
“He’s a very good actor and he wanted to make a good movie, not just be good in it himself,” said the soft-spoken actor, who was taking a day off from his stage role in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” “He wanted my character to work, too . . . which is lucky for me. He’s in such a position of power right now, he could have been a real bastard.
“He’s got a lot of opportunities, as far as scripts and directors who’d like to work with him. But, being forced to live in a compound and be driven around by a bodyguard, and have every single person come up to you and ask to sign something for their kid . . . I can sympathize with that. It’s not much fun.”
When asked how his peers in the acting fraternity–most of whom make considerably less than what he is being paid for “The Cable Guy” and “Liar, Liar”–have reacted to him professionally, Carrey is philosophic. He refuses to apologize for his good luck, but knows some in the industry are ready to put his work under the microscope.
“There are people who are measuring me, obviously, but those are people who don’t have much of a life,” he said. “I’m sure Clint Eastwood isn’t envying my money. You put your head down and work.
“Before `In Living Color,’ I used to park up on Mulholland Drive and spread my arms out, imagining I was holding a giant funnel and all good things were coming through it.
“I believe in that kind of thing, visualizing everything I want in life. But they all come with a disclaimer: Please let me be human and not hurt anybody.”
