Skip to main content

The Philosophy of Mr. Jim Carrey

Note to reader: If you're looking for the book Jim Carrey referred to in the interview, I have had on luck in finding the book. So in case you came across this post for that answer - I'm sorry this post is not about the book but something he said. So if you're still interested, please do read on!
I recently saw an interview of actor Jim Carrey on Inside Actors Studio. All of us know him as the pet detective in Ace Ventura, or the crazy guy from The Mask, or just as the most versatile comedian of contemporary times. However the interview showed me a whole different side of the actor. He turned out to be a lighthearted guy with a deep understanding of human nature. 

Towards the later half of the interview James Lipton spoke about a movie called, 'I Love You Phillip Morris'. It is based on the real-life con artist, impostor, prison escapee; Steven Jay Russell; who falls in love with a fellow inmate; Phillip Morris. The movie portrays the same-sex story of both these guys and how they struggle through their relationship. Jim Carrey explains about his conundrum while reading the script for the movie.

He describes the character of Steven Jay Russell as "a guy who has misrepresented himself his entire life". Referring to this guy who has conned thousands of dollars, escaped from prison multiple times and now is serving a 144 year imprisonment in maximum security prison. So this person's personality can be reduced to just a homosexual con-man! But as Jim Carrey further explains the one thing that stood out was the character's relentlessness of love for Phillip Morris.

Jim Carrey further refers to a book called "Anagrams". He references to a belief in the book about "how all of us start out with a notion of ourselves". This notion may be "I am stupid", or "I am only good at X", or "I am worthless" or even "I will never succeed". Then we build our personality around the same notion. Perhaps the notion came into existence because of a failure or maybe even a success. But that's just a single event in the entire life. The event may have the power to change the course of life but it certainly doesn't have the power to restrict our growth. 

Finally he describes acting as the ability to transcend the bullshit going around and get a performance out of it. Perhaps this aptly describes the life. There is always some bullshit flying around us whether we attracted it or it just happens. But success lies in the ability to distract ourselves from the bullshit and "just get on the boat, get your job done and get back home"*.

*Quote from the movie "The Breach".
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scuba Diving 36 feet deep in Goa (Surreal but Nice!)

"Surreal but nice" that's what Hugh Grant's character managed to blurt out, mesmerized by the beauty of Julia Roberts (in the movie Notting Hill ). And this was the exact thought that was running in my mind as I was rising from a depth of over 35 feet under water in the Arabian Sea near Goa, India. I had just finished my first dive (rather second dive of my first dive) with grouper fish, tailor fish - and many more - knelt at the bottom of the ocean floor and touched a ship wreck that sunk more than sixty years ago! It was a surreal experience that has left me with a feeling of self-satisfaction as well as endless curiosity. The two feelings very rarely take a house together in my mind. Probably the last time they shacked up together was when I got an admit for my Master's from State University of New York . The feeling of gliding underwater among the fishes, water pressure trying to burst your ears drums, flying over huge boulders of rocks under sea; like an un...
25 comments
Read more
The debate on Times Now Summit 2022 between Salman Khurshid, Dr. Vikram Sampath, Sai Deepak, and Pavan K Varma showed how disconnected the left, right, and the middle are from each other.  We all know these 'luminaries',  as Rahul Shivshankar, Editorial Director & Editor-in-Chief  @TimesNow introduces them.  How left and right  do not apply to Indian political viewpoints  is a matter for another time, therefore pardon my use of the western paradigm of left and right for the rest of this blog post. Times Now Debate, 2022 We all know Sai Deepak through his YouTube debate with  Asaduddin Owaisi  (Sai Deepak in fact moderated the debate) a few years back. And since then he has authored a couple of books on the historical context that surrounded the drafting of the constitution of India between 1946 to 1950. His first book on India, that is Bharat forced us to rethink colonialism and introduced an entirely distinct scholarly way to look at middle-e...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is Vulgar Propaganda?

Nadav Lapid called the movie 'The Kashmir Files' a propaganda movie while making his comments at the International Film Festival of India 2022 held in Goa last month. I'm not going to talk about the resulting controversy and eventual apology by Mr. Lapid. He was not only disrespectful of the freedom of speech of director Vivek Agnihotri but conducted his jury duty unprofessionally by taking a political stance. I'm only interested in the accusation of propaganda that Mr. Lapid so casually hurled at 'The Kashmir Files'.  The Kashmir Files What is propaganda?  The best definition that I could find is available on a website called  https://disinformation-nation.org/how-propaganda-works/ where it defines propaganda as 'an agenda' to promote a specific cause or ideology to a 'targeted audience' and a 'massaged message' which may alter or omit the facts. Propaganda can take various forms of communication to propagate the agenda.  And especially...
Post a Comment
Read more