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May 30, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
May 29, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Age of Inequality
Philip Farruggio
The
Cleaning Lady
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
May 28, 2002
Michael Leon
Lincoln
Brigades Memorial
Scott Lucas
Christopher Hitchens:
No Longer an Authentic
Voice of Dissent
Nelson P. Valdes
Castro,
Bioterrorism and
the State Department
Harvey Wasserman
What Does the White House Know
About Atomic Terror?
Norman Madarasz
France,
Brazil, the Politics
of the World Cup
May 27, 2002
Dave Marsh
Why I Voted for Nader:
Ticketmaster's Stranglehold
on Music and Politics
Robert Fisk
The Coming
Firestorm:
Bush's Crazed Remarks
May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time:
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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This Explosive
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Reviews of Gore:
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May
30, 2002
"Love Me...or
Else"
Jim Carrey: The Un-natural
by Steve Perry
Here is Jim Carrey, telling you pretty much everything
you need to know about Jim Carrey: "I just knew [from an
early age] that I needed a lot of attention from a lot of people
and I needed to prove to the world that I was magic. That was
the underlying factor in everything. It's the underlying reason
why I do this."Don't a lot of actors say things like this?
They do. The difference is, Carrey means it. He really really
means it.
In a Hollywood where there is rarely
very much at stake anymore besides money, Carrey's quixotic quest
for the best that Hollywood stardom has to offer is the most
interesting high-wire act around--maybe even the only one around,
at present. His career as a topline star commenced in 1994 with
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, an unusually apt vehicle in that
Carrey was allowed to take what started as a fairly straight
B-picture (think Jim Belushi and K-9) and turn it into a farce
on the strength of his manic mugging and ad-libbing. Two things
were immediately evident: He could do physical comedy like no
one else in generations, and he'd stand on your throat to get
your attention.
But it was more than attention Carrey
meant to command. He wanted love, adulation, respect--whatever
you had. It's hard to think of another male actor quite so needy.
He's practically an Y-chromosome version of Marilyn Monroe. And
Carrey was nothing if not likeable. His comedy contained nothing
of its era's defining cynicism, which was less a creative decision
than a reflection of the fact that Jim Carrey is not wired to
understand cynicism. Cynics stand outside. Carrey wanted in.
His metier was not the smirk but the full-bore anarchic grin
that only grew wider the harder he chomped on the scenery. There
was no malice and no condescension in anything he did, just a
gleeful sense of the untapped absurdities lurking in every scene.
But there was an undercurrent of menace,
too, without which the rapid-fire gags would have worn out pretty
quickly. If Carrey seemed a little like a stray dog that licks
your hand and follows you home, you always half-expected this
particular mutt to attack anyone who tried to leave the room
while he was doing his tricks. Ben Stiller's The Cable Guy (1996)
is Carrey's best performance, and his best movie, for exactly
that reason. It was also his first box-office stiff. Nobody wanted
a Carrey who wouldn't go home, who held on to your ankle and
gnawed until he drew real blood. Nobody wanted a comedy that
played fast and loose with the kind of bottomless loneliness
that turns its victims into dangerous people.
He followed The Cable Guy with two movies
that represented much safer bets: the gloppy, wholesome Liar
Liar (1997) and The Truman Show (1998), a concept movie of middling
merits that posed considerably greater risks for director Peter
Weir than for Carrey. It's tempting to suppose that Carrey made
them partly because he wanted no part of roles like The Cable
Guy that put his rising star at risk, but it's not so; the lead
times of Hollywood productions being what they are, he was signed
to both projects before The Cable Guy bombed.
The path his career has followed is the
one dictated from the start by his aspirations and the way he
defines success. What a friend of mine lamented a couple of years
back as the "Tom-Hanksification" of Carrey--the process
of turning him into a latter-day Gary Cooper, a totem of idealism
and uprightness--has been in the cards all along. And each step
of the way it has involved discarding a little more of what Carrey
does best in the pursuit of what he needs most.
I've always suspected that Carrey isn't
as interested in acting as he lets on. Yes, he takes pride in
his craft, approaches it with diligence and usually intelligence,
seems to enjoy the challenge of unraveling a character. That's
not the point. What I mean is that it's all a means to an end--that
he wants to be a star and an idol much more than he wants to
be an artist. That's a crucial difference. In the end Jim Carrey
needs to mainline adulation. He has to be loved for being Jim
Carrey, not for anything he manages to create as an artist (hence
all the painful, compulsive confessionalism in his interviews).
It leaves him little room to differentiate
himself from the parts he plays (remember all the bizarre tales
of his transmogrifying into Andy Kauffman on the set of Man on
the Moon), or conversely to differentiate the parts he plays
from the way he wishes to be seen. And he wishes to be seen as
someone who never gives offense, is impossible not to like. Which
leads inevitably enough to Opie Howard's shining, saccharine
Grinch and the even greater depths of The Majestic, the execrable
little post-WWII fable that's being released to home video this
month. They call it "Capra-esque," but Capra never
made anything this treacly. Carrey does everything but lick the
camera to pull you nearer, but it's a con. You know there are
plenty of things he's too afraid to show you. Even the Academy
Award nominators, usually suckers for simpering flattery, were
repelled this time. But no matter. "Carrey has never been
better," raved Roger Ebert. The show must go on.
Don't bet that he's through, though.
He's presently linked to three projects, and two of them sound
like stinkers--a God-for-a-day comedy called Bruce Almighty;
a social drama called Children of the Dust Bowl that's sure to
be Spielberg-ian in its middlebrow sentimentality; and a Howard
Hughes biopic with Memento director Christopher Nolan. After
that he would probably run for president if he could. But as
a native-born Canadian he can't, so he's stuck in the movies.
Once he's Forrest-Gumped his way to an Oscar and sees how little
it assuages in him, it's hard telling what Carrey may do. He
might even get interested in the work for its own sake. The Majestic
is available on DVD beginning June 17.
Steve Perry
is a frequent contributer to CounterPunch and a columnist for
The Rake.
He can be reached at: sperry@mn.rr.com
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