The Truman Show
Truman's World
Kim Carey
(January 17, 1962)
Jim Carrey
Truman's world
1998's The Truman Show, with an IMDB score of 8.1, ranked 177th highest-scoring film in history. It was Kim Carey's first non-comedy work.
The story tells that Truman is the protagonist of a reality SHOW, his life is the plot of the camera grid, his relatives and friends around him are actors, only he himself knows nothing about it, this "real life" live broadcast to hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world, slowly, Truman began to doubt the world he lived in, and began to explore the truth.
Poster of Truman's World
The film explores a lot of content, what is true? free will? Media ethics? faith? The relationship between man and society, and even the world? Wait, when we look at Kim Carey in the play, is it like the audience in the play seeing Truman? This meaningful and thought-provoking film was a turning point in Kim Carey's acting career.
Stills from Truman's World
In "Truman's World", Kim Carey adjusted himself, putting away the exaggerated funny talent slightly, and weakening the comedic effect brought by the character. He has to deal with more emotional changes in this film than any other film he's ever acted in, and it's also several times more complex.
Doubts about life; determination to break through everything; entanglements in the face of various experiments; and painful struggles, etc., these inner drama transformations are both trials and challenges for Kim Carey, but he can handle it, and in the last scene, he stands on the edge and shows a meaningful smile to the camera, which is impressive.
In fact, a year before the filming of "Truman's World" (1997), Kim Carey had already made a film called "Liar Liar" to try to do other than comedy.
This parent-child movie tells that Kim Carey is a lawyer who turns black and white upside down, specializes in litigation for rich people, often can't accompany his son for work, and makes up lies as an excuse, and finally his son makes a wish on his birthday, which makes him suffer a lot.
There are comedic performances by Kim Carey and his relationship with his son, and the whole movie looks light and warm.
Stills from "The King of Big Talkers"
"Truman's World" brought Kim Carey the first award, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series, and had previously been nominated in the musical comedy category for "The King of Words" and "Stranger in Disguise", but it was also unsuccessful, and this time the success of the transformation of the scene led him to star in the biopic "Man on the Moon" about the legendary comedian Andy Kaufman.
Stills from The Man on the Moon
Andy Kaufman, the archetype of Man on the Moon, was a famous American comedian, screenwriter and performance artist from the 70s to the 80s, but he prefers to describe himself as a "singer and dancer" and declares that he does not like to tell jokes or be funny because his understanding is traditional.
In an interview, he said "I'm not a comedian, I've never said a joke... The comedian's promise is that he'll go there and make you laugh with him... My only commitment is to do my best to entertain you. ”
Andy Kaufman (himself)
Andy Kaufman explores "funny" through performance art, we understand that "funny" is divided into performers and viewers, performers through expressions, actions, speech, situation design and atmosphere creation, etc., so that the audience gets a sense of joy, sometimes in the form of interaction, such as in the theater or talk show, Hong Kong called "Dong Du Laugh" ("Stand-Up Comedy" by Wong Tze Wah in English). Andy Kaufman breaks this restriction and pulls the audience into the whole "funny" performance, so that they can "perform" together passively or unknowingly.
For example, students who were expecting Andy Kaufman to perform crowded the auditorium, ready to laugh, but after the opening, Andy Kaufman on stage held a copy of "The Great Gatsby" in his hand, recited, and read the whole book, leaving only a few people asleep in the audience.
That night, the audience felt fooled, deceived, toyed with, and didn't feel "funny" at all, but in Andy Kaufman's view, the whole thing was ridiculous, and that was his performance.
In addition, he deliberately added images of receiving bad snowflakes to his live television program, which made the home audience in front of the tv in front of the country think that there was a problem with the home television that night.
He also created a person who hated Andy Kaufman named Tony Clifton, who actually played himself, but deceived the manager into thinking that there was really someone, and let Tony and Andy participate in the sitcom "Taxi".
Andy Kaufman has done too many crazy things in his life, and his performances are wonderful, but they often make the audience feel mixed, because they are ridiculed, teased, and provoked, and the embarrassing and angry reaction they show is part of the "funny".
Andy has offended countless people in his life, and finally died of lung cancer at the age of 35, when many people also thought that this was a prank he made, reporters did not dare to report, even the closest people can not tell, but this is really the last "Show" arranged by Heaven to Andy Kaufman, until 2013, the government also re-issued the death certificate to confirm his death.
Throughout his life, Andy Kaufman has also searched for and explored the possibilities of various "performances" to break through the limitations of the medium. There is a lot of deep thinking about actors and performances in his dramatic life, speaking of which, it is easy to think of "Truman's World", echoing the feeling of each other, "life is like a play, drama is like life", and in "Man on the Moon" Kim Carey playing Andy Kaufman is also experimental, further developing this proposition, not only in the play, but also in the entire filming process.
The opening scene of "Man on the Moon" is funny, with Kim Carey announcing to the camera that "this is the end of the movie", and after saying that, the list of staff at the end of the film appears, he bends over to adjust the radio, controls the rhythm of the list, and finally after a short black screen, Kim Carey sticks out half a head, saying that he did this to exclude some people who don't understand him, and says that the movie is about what he shot and is shooting. This "he" is Andy Kaufman, who is making the film, which is the present progressive, not Kim Carey.
Kim Carey and Andy Kaufman: Beyond the Great poster
The documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond chronicles Kim Carey's filming of The Man on the Moon.
At that time, in order to devote himself to the role, Kim Carey entered the character's heart with the method of acting, and also "played" Andy and its derivative Tony inside and outside the play.
Stills from Kim Carey and Andy Kaufman: Beyond The Great
On set, Kim Carey constantly changed identities and did all the trouble, and Milos Foreman, the great director who directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, also had headaches.
Especially when he "becomes" the eccentric Tony, often unconscionably summoning the staff, making a big fuss on the set, graffiti, breaking into Steven Spielberg's studio, saying that his best work is a great white shark (fortunately, the Buddha was not there at the time) and so on...
Throughout the filming, director Foreman only met Kim Carey twice, other times with Andy or Tony, and wanted to talk to Kim Carey. At one point he couldn't hold back and called Kim Carey to say he had never been afraid of people, but Tony made him timid.
On the other side of the microphone, Kim Carey solemnly said, "I can fire them, I can imitate, I am a very good imitator, I should be able to play them very similarly." But Foreman was silent for a while, still saying "no."
Left: The Man on the Moon is directed by Milos Foreman
Right: Tony (himself)
Kim Carey is not going to act, but to be the "person" to participate in this play. Withdrawing the "self", turning the body into a vehicle, allowing any "character" to enter, everything he does is not "acting", but leaving it to the role to decide.
This is also the case when writing a script, and sometimes to a certain extent, the character will naturally lead the creator's mind. But in the case of Kim Carey, there is no "other" other than the character, and there is no viewing, judgment and thinking of the creator.
The line between "real" and "performance" is removed, and this almost performance art thing would have been something That Andy Kaufman would have done.
Tony Clifton
The documentary wasn't revived until 2017, when Universal banned the release or distribution of the film in any form because "we don't want people to think Ofan Carey is a jerk."
Twenty years later, Kim Carey sat in front of the camera, looking back on the shooting experience, and was asked at the beginning, "How do you want this movie (documentary)to start?" He mused for a moment and then said, "If I could choose, the play didn't start at all, it's already progressive, and it never ends."
Kim Carey himself is a fan of Andy Kaufman, he collected a drum stained with idol blood, and when he was performing at the club, the audience wanted him to perform the previous performances, but Kim Carey still insisted on performing new ones, and the audience was angry and made a big fuss about him.
"For a few nights, I even stood at the table, broke the bottle, and went to declare war on the crowd. It's a crazy experience, but I feel super good because it's a creative process and sometimes innovation has to be isolated. I'm still in this situation to this day," probably by then when he was already influenced by Andy Kaufman.
So when he learned that Milos Foreman was not interested in looking for him to star in this film, he immediately put down his body, recorded an audition film, and finally successfully defeated Edward Norton, who looked more like a real person, and won the role.
After hearing the news of his election, he looked out to sea and wondered where Would Andy Kaufman be? What will he do? It was at that moment, according to him, that's when Andy Kaufman showed up, tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Sit down, I'll be in my movie," and then it wasn't something he could control.
Kim Carey's experiments on the set confirmed that Saudi Arabia's "existence precedes essence" and that he can choose to be any "person" and become them, doing relative things.
Sometimes Kim Carey is Andy Kaufman, sometimes Andy Kaufman is Truman, and the identities of the three are uncertain, can refer to each other, alternate with each other, and they transcend fiction and reality; the boundaries between actor and character.
It can be seen that Kim Carey is an actor who constantly thinks and breaks through himself, and he always thinks about how he can play different roles and bring different viewing experiences to the audience.
He once again won the Golden Globe For Best Actor (Musical Comedy) for "Man Under the Moon," and even though the Oscars weren't even nominated for him (probably a bias against comedians), Kim Carey's acting skills were well recognized.
Works on display
Photography: Yuan Guoxin, Xia Xi
(Leica 100/2.8 lens Canon 5D Mark IV shooting)
Author: Flat water ruler
Typesetting: Gu Qianrui