Jim Carrey, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
Thank you, man. Great to be here.
So great to be here.
Um, you are one the most unique talents that we've seen,
and I mean across the board.
You know, whether it's been stand-up comedy,
drama, it doesn't matter.
When Jim Carrey does something, he does it differently.
That's what you're known for.
So I guess it's no surprise that
-you've written... -An aberration.
You've written a memoir
that is... part reality, part fiction.
I-I... I won't lie to you. I didn't know...
I didn't understand it, because I was told,
"Hey, Jim Carrey wrote a memoir."
Then I was like, "Oh, man, I'm excited."
Then I read the book,
and then I called the person who got the book to me,
and I was like, "But this... is this... is this real?"
Then they were like, "Well, it is, but it isn't."
Can you explain what you've written?
Best to approach everything I do,
uh, as-as something that could be completely untrue.
And yet, there will be parts of it,
there will be... there will be, uh, things in it
that will be absolutely authentic.
Okay, maybe that's a blanket statement.
You should trust me sometimes.
But, uh, in this case, you know,
this was the best way to get my truth out there,
and to say everything I need to say,
and, uh, and do it in a way that is completely entertaining,
and-and, uh, you know, harkens back to Dante
and all of those wonderful apocryphal stories
of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and stuff.
You know, that became somebody's history at a certain point.
-Right. -People living in England-- that's the history,
you know, and, uh, I just love that concept.
So, when we started
writing together, Dana and I started writing together,
we were really just having a conversation, a friendship,
you know, and such wild ideas came out of that,
that, uh, we had to go with it.
We had to go with it.
We-we didn't want to do a memoir.
We didn't want to take stock of all the things
that have happened to me and celebrate them,
and say "Oh, and by the way,
the time when the wolves told me I was worth something."
Uh, you know, uh, it wasn't gonna be that.
It was gonna be something different.
Do you want us, as the readers, to know
what's real and what's not real in the book,
or is this your way of telling us the truth
without telling us what's real?
I think people have an inner computer,
an inner sense of discernment
that-that deciphers what's real and not real, even in fiction.
You know, the best fiction, you know, is, you know, Moby Dick.
It's, like, basically telling the story
of what's happened to us right now.
It's not only a prophecy.
It's a... it's a truism.
There's this crazy, power-hungry, white maniac
who's trying to take the Pequod down
and all the races down with it.
-(laughs) -Because he's hell-bent
on finding the biggest white cock.
That's that book.
And so, you know, you can do that with fiction.
Fiction is a way to tell the truth.
Then let me ask you this.
You've included celebrities in the book, right?
-Absolutely. -And you've named them. You've named them.
Like-like, for instance you have Gwyneth Paltrow,
you've got Kanye West mentioned, Nicolas Cage.
But then, this was strange to me.
Tom Cruise is... I think Tom Cruise is in the book,
but then, you refer to him as "Laser Jack Lightning."
Laser Jack Lightning, yes.
I went right to the essence of the character there.
-Um... (clears throat) -(laughing)
You know, 'cause if you stay in front
of Tom Cruise for loo long, you realize, you're being probed.
You know, and, uh, the laser is active.
He's looking for things, uh, behind your eyes.
Some sense of doubt, some weakness.
You know, and so, in-in a... in a way,
of kind of using litigiousness, you know, of...
the litigiousness of Hollywood.
We just kind of, uh, gave a little nod to that...
that whole concept,
that some people you have to be careful with, you know?
You-you wrote a... You wrote notes to people, though.
Has anyone given you feedback?
Has anyone contacted you back, and been like, "Yo, what..."?
-I've had incredible feedback so far. -Okay.
Uh, and, um, Joan Dangerfield e-mailed about Rodney
and was so happy with how Rodney turned out in the book
and how I brought him back.
You know, I'm looking forward to everybody's reaction.
I'm waiting for a letter from, uh, Hopkins.
And, uh, and, uh, Tom Hanks has written something to me.
It'd either be, "You know, I've spoken
to the powers that be. You're done,"
or, uh, you know,
"I'm, uh, I'm sure the Illuminati's meeting right now."
No. Uh, so, you know, yeah,
it's-it's a wild thing, and it get...
You know, it's-it's, uh...
People will see things in this book. There's, like...
Can I... can I read you a little snippet of it?
Uh, in the story, uh, Charlie Kaufman has, uh... has a...
is trying to convince me to play, uh, Chairman Mao.
-Okay. -Uh, and of course that's absolutely unheard of.
I can't do that.
I really found this part of the book interesting
because here, you were talking about, like, like,
just like the essence of what Hollywood's going through now.
-Trying to decide who can play who. -Yes.
You know, can people play someone
who may have been a different ethnicity,
or different culture or different...?
And it's interesting that in the book,
you as Jim or not Jim, are going through this process.
There's a question of whether it's right at all,
and Charlie comes up with some conceit
about me playing an actor playing an actor
playing Chairman Mao
-who has all these problems and these conflicts. -Right.
(clears throat) So...
one night at a dinner party
in my, uh, my swanky backyard,
um, I speak, and I-I give a toast,
uh, during the dinner,
and it causes a few problems with my handlers.
So, this is a small part of it.
"The American citizen is so lost.
"He doesn't realize he's a factory pig.
"Drugged and poisoned from the cradle to the grave,
"chained to impossible debts,
"never, ever free.
"Liberty? Bah.
"This is a land of invisible fences.
"We're all prisoners watching Capra on Movie Night.
"But nothing lasts forever.
"Europe's monarchies sent their sons to die
"in the trenches of the Somme
"just as surely as we drove Chiang Kai-shek into the sea.
"You think America will be different?
"You think this era, not one of consumption but of gluttony,
"will last forever?
"It will not.
"'We're going 6,000 miles an hour around the sun,
"and nobody's driving this bitch!'
said Gary Busey from the woods,
-(Noah snickers) -"where, for his own reasons,
he was halfway up an 80-foot pine tree."
-(laughs) -Mr. Carrey, you've...
you've got the part.
-Congratulations. -Thank you, sir.
Um, it felt like a lot of the book was about persona.
You know, the idea of persona: who we are,
who we think we are, who we wish people want us...
want to... you know, who we want them to see us as.
Yeah. And it's big enough and powerful enough,
-Yeah. -it's something you have to drag around with you.
When you show up, you have to be the socially concerned,
politically adept person, you know what I mean?
-Right. -Uh, so, you-you...
you might be happy to be that at certain times,
but not all the time.
-Yes. -You know? That's not who you are, ultimately.
-Yes. -There's nothing you aren't, you know?
So, uh, that's my personal belief,
and that's the belief I try to espouse in the book.
We got to a place that was not only, uh...
kind of science-fiction, but it was,
-Uh-huh. -it was spiritual and metaphysical.
It was... it was, uh, it's something of a way
for the reading audience
to free themselves from... from self,
from the burden of their own construct.
And, uh, so, I think... I think we accomplished that.
I think we gave them a... at least a moment of freedom.
When did you get to the place...
yeah, when did you get to the place where you were like,
"Oh, I've got to... I've got to break out a little bit of...
"what everyone thinks I am, and then try and flex
a little bit more of who I am"?
I think I, you know, the-the...
the, uh, the moment of shifting
was somewhere around when I was playing Andy Kaufman.
And I got so deeply into that character,
and I kind of lost myself as Andy and Tony.
And afterwards, I found myself really struggling
to remember again who Jim Carrey was
and what his political beliefs are and what his choices are
and his aesthetics.
And, uh...
and, uh... it was, uh...
it was really awakening to me.
It-it gave me a kind of a point of view
into the frailty of personal.
Well, if... if I can play somebody else's persona
and get lost in it and-and assume it,
then who's Jim Carrey?
Who is that guy? You know?
And so, you know, life becomes, um...
kind of a two-step thing, you know, at that point,
where you start to go: Okay, this is a...
this is a character I play with.
I want it to represent itself right.
-I want it to be a good avatar. -Mm-hmm.
As you can see, I have my, uh... the tree my avatar lives in,
a picture of it, right here.
Uh, and what's that avatar gonna do in this world?
What's he... how's he gonna represent?
What's he gonna represent? Is he gonna represent love?
Is he gonna represent desperation and greed?
Is he gonna represent compromise? You know?
So those are the choices I'm making
for that avatar every day in everything I do.
And then there is the absolute truth,
which is: There's nothing I am not,
there's nothing I can lose,
uh, there is no family I don't belong to,
um...
there's-there's no one suffering that isn't a part of me.
-Hmm. -You know? And no one...
uh, excelling that isn't a part of me.
You know, there's... it goes beyond that, even.
It goes beyond this planet, in my mind.
I, you know, those moments of freedom are...
are moments where you connect with the... with the everything,
which is what we really, truly are.
That's why we're never satisfied,
no matter how we build our characters.
No matter how... how tough and Teflon this thing we create is,
we're never satisfied.
Because it's too small.
No matter how big this, you know, Elvis inside us gets,
it's too small to represent who you are.
It can't possibly represent who you are.
That's why I laugh when people say,
"Why don't you just be funny?"
And I go, "Funny? Now, let me find funny.
Hold on, it's under this fingernail here."
You know? It's a part.
It's a part of this wonderful wholeness
that is, uh...
that's there for anybody anytime, you know?
Heaven is as close as your own hands and feet, you know?
It's interesting that you talk about "connected" and "family,"
and before I let you go, I wanted to delve into that.
Because... you dedicate the book to your brother.
Tell me why, and what you hoped...
either to get from that dedication
or what you would have hoped to give.
Well, what I want to do is, uh,
is-is tell the world I had a very special brother.
And he passed away...
(voice breaks): ...last year.
Uh, he suffered with aplastic anemia his whole life.
He was 60 when he passed,
and, uh, and he wore it like a champion.
Like a champion.
Like, this guy never complained.
He never said, "Oh, my God,
"I can't do things because of what I have
-or what I'm dealing with." -Mm-hmm.
He was on death's door from the time he was four years old.
You know? Until 60.
And he raised a beautiful family,
and he created gorgeous, gorgeous opportunities
and... and, uh...
a beautiful aura around him and his family.
And he was a very dedicated father.
And, uh, so yeah, and I talk about him in the book,
'cause we went through the hardest times together,
the craziest times, where I would walk into the factory,
and he'd be beating the crap out of his cleaning machine
with a hammer. (laughs)
Or-or he'd be up in the security office
and he'd be looking at the monitors
and he'd suddenly see some lunatic
uh, sitting on a two by four in a, in a, in a hook
that's going down this giant cable in the ceiling
going in front of the security camera like this.
It would be me...
trying, trying to get his attention,
because I was working on the factory.
We had the worst and the best of times together.
-Right. -And he's just a-a beautiful person.
I think I-I-I-I sent a picture to you guys
-of, uh, of my brother John's wedding. -Right...
And he cursed a lot, he cursed a ton.
-(Noah laughs) -Like, he broke up words with the F-word...
(stammers) syllabically.
(laughs)
But, uh, just a sweet, sweet gentleman.
-Really loved me. -Well, thank you, man.
Thank you, Jim, for sharing, um...
and thank you, thank you for breaking it down.
I-I hope everyone who reads the book
really approaches it in the way that you've-you've laid it out
in that, like, you know... nothing-nothing is true,
but everything is real and I-I really appreciate that.
So thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Not everything is true-- I get confused myself.
Swear to God, I'm just as confused, man.
-Who knows? Who knows...? -Look after yourself, my friend.
-You know, we're living in crazy times. -Stay safe.
Thank you for what you're doing, man.
-You're doing a wonderful job. -Thank you.
Yeah, you-you-you picked up a hell of a, like,
uh, of a weight and, uh,
and you're-you're wearing it... really well.
So thank you for that.
Thank you, my friend. Look after yourself.
You, too.