Jim Carrey Questions Your Existence and His
Jim Carrey is either losing his shit, has lost his shit, is on some whole other shit, or has got this shit figured out. Jim was interviewed on some New York Fashion Week red carpet by E! News and made things meta for microphone-pusher Catt Sadler by questioning her existence and his.
Jim manically circled Catt while deflecting her dumb questions about fashion with existential truth bombs such as “there’s no meaning to any of this” and “I wanted to find the most meaningless thing I could find and join and here I am.” When Catt tried to defend the event’s existence as a celebration of icons, Jim answered “Do you believe in icons? I don’t believe in personality, I don’t believe that you exist.”
And when Catt gamely tries to validate celebrity idolatry, Jim answers as any nihilist would, by singing James Brown at her.
So what is going on here? Either Jim is legitimately experiencing profound existential nihilism and somebody should be keeping an eye on his affairs and keep him away from sharp and/or exploding objects, or he is just having a go at us because he thinks we’re all dummies. A third possibility is that Jim is still channeling Andy Kaufman years after starring in the biopic Man on The Moon.
In fact, a new documentary about the making of that film called Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond – The Story of Jim Carrey & Andy Kaufman Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (yes that’s the name) conveniently just came out. It premiered last week at the Venice Film Festival, and it chronicles the extreme method acting techniques that Jim implemented in order to play notoriously elusive Kaufman. In fact, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Jim said “It was psychotic at times. Jim Carrey didn’t exist at that time.” In other words, Jim’s not here right now, Mrs. Torrence.
Jim went on to say:
“We spend our life running around looking for anchors. ‘Oh, I’m Italian, that’s who I am.’ The fact is you don’t exist. You’re nothing but ideas. We take all those ideas and cobble them together and make sort of a personality charm bracelet, an ID bracelet we wear in life. But that’s not who we are, because we’re nothing. And it’s such a fucking relief.”
Back to the E! Interview, it seems like Jim was echoing a lot of those same themes and beliefs. So you guys, Jim would like you to know that the avatar Jim Carrey that made you snort with his butt-talking antics throughout the 90’s is dead, and that the new Jim Carrey avatar should be taken more seriously both as an actor and as a person who is neither the original Jim nor the current construction “Jim,” but is in actuality a non-Jim or “Anti-Jim,” a truth-teller in a world of utter meaninglessness, where the truth is both devastating and without consequence. But you should definitely still go see his movie and if you see “Jim” at an event, know that it’s not really Jim, but jIm, and you should absolutely interview him. Or not. It doesn’t really matter.
Here’s more of Jim in another shiny suit at the premiere of Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond at the Venice Film Festival last week:
Pics: Wenn.com