From his hero Kaufman, Carrey learned to attack.Ĭarrey’s first stardom came on In Living Color, where his exaggerated, antagonistic characters, like Fire Marshall Bill, showed off his gift for rubber-faced creations who were almost inhuman. He’d play a Mighty Mouse record and then lip-synch along to the song. He’d spend an entire show reading aloud from The Great Gatsby. The niceties and formalities of being a performer were stripped away - Kaufman would topple the invisible boundary between entertainer and audience, actively challenging the viewer. For Kaufman, a surreal stand-up who dipped his toe in the mainstream thanks to Saturday Night Live and Taxi, the deconstruction of entertainment was the point. This sort of anti-comedy was very much the sort of thing that another, far more established comic of the time was famous for: Andy Kaufman. It was a good impression - with all the requisite snarling lip and gyrating hips - but it also felt like a performance of a performance, as if Carrey wanted the audience to understand that he knew he was doing a showbiz bit. In 1983, he made his first appearance on The Tonight Show, sauntering on stage and doing an Elvis Presley impression. There’s really no choice to be made.”Įventually, Carrey began developing a stand-up act based on boundless energy and impeccably mimicry, serving as Rodney Dangerfield’s opener.
“I learned that you can fail at what you don’t love,” he says, “so you might as well do what you love. “As time wore on, wore him down,” Carrey says in Jim & Andy, adding sadly, “He got a little bit bitter.” Even more painful for Percy, he was fired when he was 51, forcing his family to become homeless for a time. Carrey gets emotional talking about his father, Percy, an accountant who’d aspired to a musical career, but was too nervous to pursue it because he was raising Jim and his siblings. Growing up in Ontario in the 1960s, he began developing a taste for impressions, which he discusses in Jim & Andy, speaking directly to the camera as director Chris Smith ( American Movie) cuts to old television footage of a young Jim on stage.
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