Jim Carrey Could Have Starred In One Of Mel Gibson’s Biggest Flops

Jim Carrey’s career has taken interesting turns over the years. After becoming a box office juggernaut in the mid-1990s with a blockbuster run of “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” “The Mask,” “Dumb and Dumber,” “Batman Forever,” and “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls,” he found the ditch with the commercial and critical demise of Ben Stiller’s dark curveball “The Cable Guy.” The thoughtful actor re-established his commercial connection with mainstream audiences the following year with “Liar Liar,” then took another risk with “The Truman Show” by Peter Weir. The result was one of the best films of 1998, one that received a curious number of Oscar nominations for Weir (Director), Supporting Actor (Ed Harris), and Original Screenplay (Andrew Niccol). That a film as acclaimed and successful as “The Truman Show” could be deprived of Best Picture and Best Actor The Best Actor nods in a weak year feel like a rebuke to its star. Many members of the Academy could not get past the fact that, just four years earlier, this man had literally been talking out of his mouth on the big screen.

Oscar voters sent a clear message that year: Carrey had to earn his nomination, which, given that they had denied him in 1999 for his perfectly creepy portrayal of Andy Kaufman in “Man on the Moon,” meant some a vague appearance of distance and seriousness. required This was dumb, and I wonder if it wore Carrey out in the end. After the non-starter acclaim that was Frank Darabont’s “The Majestic” in 2001, he bounced back with the performance of his career to date in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” by Michel Gondry. More mixed signals: the acclaimed/successful masterpiece managed to grab a pair of nominations for Actress (Kate Winslet) and Screenplay (for Gondry, Charlie Kaufman, and Pierre Bismuth, who won), while Carrey got nothing (he was also denied by the Screen Actors Guild).

Carrey responded with a pair of quality commercial flicks in “Fun with Dick and Jane” and “Yes Man,” and the lousy thriller “The Number 23.” Now that the look of his talking ass is over a decade in the rearview, the time felt right for another serious film. This is when a super hot original script hits Hollywood. We needed an actor with a manic edge. Carrey felt like a perfect fit. The role eventually went to Mel Gibson, who flopped the film. How did such a promising project go wrong?

“The Beaver” by Kyle Killen was the hottest script on the 2008 Blacklistan annual compilation of the film industry’s best scripts as voted on by Hollywood development executives. It’s a strangely cathartic story about a toy company CEO who has a nervous breakdown and begins communicating with his estranged family through a beaver hand puppet. In 2009, “The Beaver” appeared as a co-picture with Jodie Foster directing Jim Carrey in the main role. He ended up going in front of cameras with Mel Gibson as a star.

“The Beaver” was a crossroads for the two actors. By the time the film was released, Gibson was embroiled in scandals involving allegations of domestic violence by boyfriend Oksana Grigorieva, as well as major comments dating back to 1991. The problem with Gibson to this day is that he is an extremely talented actor and director with a penchant for making and starring in blockbusters. Foster, who had co-starred with Gibson in Richard Donner’s “Maverick,” rolled the dice on Gibson in a comeback project, and, shockingly, no one wanted to see the action star in a quirky drama. The film made $7.3 million on a budget of $21 million.

Would “The Beaver” have worked with Carrey? Yes. I hate to say it, but it worked with Gibson. Jettison the terrible bags Gibson came to the role and plugged an incandescent talent like Carrey into that part, and this could have been an Oscar contender. It’s a silly film, but it’s also painfully sincere and so well directed by Foster. A decade after not making “The Beaver,” Carrey appears fiercely dedicated to the “Sonic the Hedgehog” movies. and nothing else. Way to knock down a genius, Hollywood.