The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (67 page)

His early work was a fond and felicitous tribute to the aura of RKO in the forties: very low-budget pictures full of visceral excitement and rich cinematic texture that belie their cost. He adores and refers to the style of Hitchcock and the atmosphere of Hawks, and he made
Dark Star
as a rebuke to
2001
and an affirmation of the innocent wonder of
The Thing
or
Forbidden Planet
. With effect, for
Dark Star
is among the best space-travel film since the early fifties.

Carpenter was a movie-mad child who went to study film at the University of Southern California. But he is not a member of the coterie of young directors from that hothouse, and he is proud that
Dark Star
began as a student movie and cost only $60,000—so much less money and so many more ideas than
Star Wars
can claim. It is a very witty film about a crisis in deep space, the metaphysical dimension always restrained by the homemade special effects and the dry portrait of men and machines grumbling at one another in a shared mood of grievance.

Precinct 13
is a Hawksian set piece of a police station besieged by hoodlums—economical, tense, beautiful, and highly arousing. It fulfils all Carpenter’s ambitions for gripping the audience emotionally and never letting go. But it has a natural taste that uses violence or sensation quickly and obliquely—so much more tender a play upon audiences than De Palma’s ruthless grip.

Halloween
showed that, despite remarkable facility with the medium, Carpenter remained loyal to his B-movie revivalism. It was likely that someone would insist that he work with a big budget—cheap films frighten financiers more than blockbusters. Big budgets mean commercial decisions and projects compromised by profit sharers and residual artists. Could he retain that precarious ground?

Carpenter also wrote scripts, to keep in practice and to make money for his own projects. He had no great esteem for such work, and probably regards
The Eyes of Laura Mars
(78, Irvin Kershner), which he wrote with David Zelag Goodman, with the scorn it deserves. However, suppose that Jon Peters, Kershner, and Dunaway had yielded to Carpenter and Lauren Hutton and you have a brilliantly contrived TV thriller called
High Rise
(78).

Carpenter did not advance.
The Fog
has some creepy moments;
Escape from New York
is not just a great title—it’s a complete vision of New York’s dread of where it is going;
The Thing
is retread Hawks; and
Starman
is that rarity, a love story that grows out of sci-fi, with a fine performance by Jeff Bridges. There’s not a lot to be said for the rest—and the rest also includes the producer’s job on some
Halloween
repeats. Since 1984, Carpenter has become terminally boyish in his pursuit of spooks, devils, and thrills.
Memoirs of an Invisible Man
has Chevy Chase as a comic special effect: that is a working definition of being at the end of one’s tether.

Jim Carrey
, b. Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, 1962
In the space of two years, Jim Carrey went from a $350,000 salary on
Ace Ventura, Pet Detective
(94, Tom Shadyac) to being ranked at the $20 million level per picture. No wonder he behaves as if it’s a wild and crazy world—no wonder his very face and figure seem elastic, ready to stretch with dreams and horrors. He is an authentic clown, enormously energized, furiously “on,” yet curiously reliant on others for his material. He has been compared to Jerry Lewis, and Lewis apparently asked Carrey to consider a remake of
The Patsy
. But Lewis was always the master of his own material—maybe that’s one reason why he gradually acquired the reputation and the atmosphere of a monster, or of someone far from just plain funny. Whereas it is vital to Carrey’s character that he seems decent, kind, far more relaxed, and even—let’s face it—attractive! Jim Carrey is sexy? Or would hope to be?

Though he is often described as an overnight success, the night was long and the preparation hard. He worked in Canada as a kid, and only slowly found his way into television: his 1984 show,
The Duck Factory
, flopped in three months, though his character—Skip Tarkenton, an innocent, enthusiastic cartoonist—was a big influence on his future. He had actually become James Carrey by the time of
In Living Color
, which debuted in 1990 and in which he was one of the few white performers. It was there that he began to attract serious attention as a physically inventive comic with an instinct for characters who mixed vulnerability and freakishness.

He had been doing movies:
Finders Keepers
(84, Richard Lester),
Once Bitten
(85, Howard Storm);
Peggy Sue Got Married
(86, Francis Coppola);
The Dead Pool
(88, Buddy Van Horn);
Earth Girls Are Easy
(89, Julien Temple);
Pink Cadillac
(89, Van Horn). But he was away from the big screen for the years of
In Living Color
, and only returned with the first
Ace Ventura
vehicle.

After that, the rise was very rapid:
The Mask
(94, Charles Russell) relied a good deal on effects, and it was rather more violent and disturbing than was comfortable for its natural audience of kids, but Carrey’s spirit shone through, and the best parts of the movie are a fascinating addition to the Jekyll-and-Hyde principle.
Dumb and Dumber
(94, Peter Farrelly) was a vast hit, and its appeal to little boys had as much to do with gross-out jokes as the play upon stupidity. (Note that while Jeff Daniels made a good foil, that role nearly went to Carrey’s close friend Nicolas Cage. It says something instructive about both of them that they still hope to act together.) Then Carrey’s Riddler was the star turn in
Batman Forever
(95, Joel Schumacher), dainty but truly sinister, and with a masterful mockery of his own camp risk-taking. Moreover, Carrey clearly moved with something akin to grace.
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
(95, Steve Oedekerk) was a routine sequel, short on invention, and compensating with bathroom jokes. But
The Cable Guy
(96, Ben Stiller)—a flop—was his darkest work, hinging on a quality of true danger or mania.
Liar Liar
(97, Shadyac) was closer to the helplessness of Jerry Lewis, propelled and ordered by some trick of nature.

The film that clarified, and advanced, Carrey’s artistic ambition, of course, was
The Truman Show
(98, Peter Weir), a Day-Glo noir scarcely imaginable without Carrey, and ample proof of the actor waiting behind the clown’s costume. Moreover, the not-quite-delivered tragedy in that story owed a lot to Carrey’s awareness of pain—even his need for it? His next film role, as Andy Kaufman in
Man on the Moon
(99, Milos Forman), was nowhere near as successful, but it showed the courage with which Carrey was ready to test his own fan base.

Where will it end? Or begin? Is Carrey himself yet, or still growing?
Me, Myself and Irene
(00, the Farrellys) was another brilliant small comedy exposing the demon within niceness.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
(00, Ron Howard) was apparently a little too nasty for some children. But it was a huge hit and one more piece of ecstatic pantomime disclosing fabulous depths of misanthropy. But then
The Majestic
(01, Frank Darabont)—awful, misguided, and with Carrey on TV promoting it, so gosh-darn nice he seemed to need to explode. So maybe it hasn’t begun yet. Whatever, if you doubt the power of headlong, natural, unguided genius in American film—just look at Carrey.

There was another disappointment (but boxoffice hit) with
Bruce Almighty
(03, Shadyac), but again it seemed reasonable that Carrey might move from mortal to god, and back, with giddy speed. He was in
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(04, Michel Gondry), Count Olaf in
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
(04, Brad Silberling). He has U.S. citizenship now (as well as Canadian), but no Oscars—he also holds a strange place, almost “failed genius,” a phenomenon, but so often disappointed and depressed at what he has done:
Fun with Dick and Jane
(05, Dean Parisot);
The Number 23
(07, Schumacher)—a brilliant concept, faulty in tone; a voice in
Horton Hears a Who!
(08, Jimmy Hayward and Steve Marino);
Yes Man
(08, Peyton Reed); and
A Christmas Carol
(09, Robert Zemeckis).

Jean-Claude Carrière
, b. Colombière, France, 1931
In his autobiography,
My Last Sigh
(published in France in 1982), Luis Buñuel made a generous nod to Carrière: “I’m not a writer, but my friend and colleague Jean-Claude Carrière is. An attentive listener and scrupulous recorder during our many long conversations, he helped me write this book.” The debt may have been greater still. Something magical happened to Buñuel as he passed sixty. Some force, or angel, reinterpreted his spirit of surrealism for a modern age and found a way of making dreams possible with smooth photography and big stars. Carrière wrote those films, and I suspect that he was an angel of enablement for Buñuel on some of the smartest, funniest, and flat-out best movies ever made:
Le Journal d’une Femme de Chambre
(63);
Belle du Jour
(67);
La Voie Lactée
(68);
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
(72);
The Phantom of Liberty
(74); and
That Obscure Object of Desire
(77).

That would be achievement enough for our gratitude. But Carrière has served many other directors with tact and grace—even if there is nothing that matches the Buñuel films. Moreover, Carrière has his own directorial ambitions—he made a short,
La Pince à Ongles
(68), and a feature,
L’Unique
(85)—and thus his willingness to be a vital, yet necessarily rather secret, helper to others is all the more admirable.

He has many skills: he was a cartoonist who collaborated with Pierre Etaix; he wrote plays—
L’Aide-Mémoire
(68)—and novels
—Le Lézard
(57) and
L’Alliance
(63). He also acted occasionally. But he is too good at the furnishing of deft screenplays, especially adaptations, to be allowed much liberty for anything else:
Le Soupirant
(62, Etaix);
Nous N’Irons Pas au Bois
(63, Etaix);
Insomnie
(63, Etaix);
La Reine Verte
(64, Robert Mazoyer);
Yoyo
(64, Etaix);
Viva Maria!
(65, Louis Malle);
Tant Qu’on à la Sante
(65, Etaix);
Cartes sur Table
(65, Jesus Franco);
Le Voleur
(66, Malle);
Hotel Paradiso
(66, Peter Glenville);
La Piscine
(68, Jacques Deray);
Le Grand Amour
(68, Etaix);
L’Alliance
(70, Christian de Chalonge);
Borsalino
(70, Deray);
La Cagna
(70, Marco Ferreri);
Un Peu de Soleil dans l’Eau Froide
(71, Deray);
Taking Off
(71, Milos Forman);
Le Moine
(72, Ado Kyrou);
Un Homme Est Morte
(72, Deray);
France S.A
. (73, Alain Corneau);
Dorothea Rache
(74, Peter Fleischmann);
Un Amour de Pluie
(74, Jean-Claude Brialy);
Le Clair et l’Orchidée
(74, Patrice Chereau);
Grande Nature
(74, Luis Berlanga);
La Femme aux Bottes Rouge
(74, Jean-Luis Buñuel);
Sérieux Comme le Plaisir
(74, Robert Benayoun);
Le Gang
(77, Deray);
Julie Pot-de-Colle
(77, Philippe de Broca);
Photo Souvenir
(78, Edmond Sechan);
Un Papillon sur l’Epaule
(78, Deray);
The Tin Drum
(79, Volker Schlondorff);
Une Semaine de Vacances
(80, Bertrand Tavernier);
Every Man for Himself
(80, Jean-Luc Godard);
Circle of Deceit
(81, Schlondorff);
Danton
(82, Andrzej Wajda);
The Return of Martin Guerre
(82, Daniel Vigne);
La Tragédie de Carmen
(83, Peter Brook);
Swann in Love
(84, Schlondorff);
Max Mon Amour
(86, Nagisa Oshima);
Wolf at the Door
(87, Henning Carlsen);
The Possessed
(87, Andrzej Zulawski);
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(88, Philip Kaufman);
The Mahabharata
(89, Brook);
Valmont
(89, Forman);
Cyrano de Bergerac
(90, Jean-Paul Rappeneau); and
May Fools
(90, Malle).

In the nineties, it was evident that Carrière was working more often on TV adaptations of classic novels. It might be added that, after Buñuel’s death, Carrière was unable to reclaim the master’s light lethal touch. He worked on
At Play in the Fields of the Lord
(91, Hector Babenco);
Le
Retour de Casanova
(92, Edouard Niermans);
La Controverse de Valladolid
(92, Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe);
The Night and the Moment
(94, Anna Maria Tato);
La Duchesse de Langeais
(94, Verhaeghe); the very exuberant
The Horseman on the Roof
(95, Rappeneau);
Der Unhold
(96, Schlondorff);
The Associate
(96, Donald Petrie);
Une Femme Explosive
(96, Deray);
Chinese Box
(97, Wayne Wang);
Clarissa
(98, Deray);
Salsa
(00, Joyce Buñuel);
Madame de …
(01, Verhaeghe);
Lettre d’une Inconnue
(01, Deray);
La Bataille d’Hernani
(02, Verhaeghe);
Ruy Blas
(02, Jacques Weber);
Les Thibault
(03, Verhaege); and a cowriter on the intriguing
Birth
(04, Jonathan Glazer).