Memoirs and Misinformation

March 30, 2020
More Scooby Doo than Charlie Kaufman, Carrey’s frenetic debut is a cartoonish fever dream darkened by middle-aged loneliness and existential terror. The story—written in the third person with Vachon (Mergers and Acquisitions) about an actor named Jim Carrey who found fame and fortune in blockbusters such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and creative fulfillment in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—begins in medias res with Jim holed up in his Brentwood, Calif., fortress, feeling low enough to accept a role in the loathsome animated feature Hungry Hungry Hippos in Digital 3-D. The authors then jump back in time to Jim’s short, disastrous marriage to a cable action star and an aborted Kaufman-penned Mao Zedong biopic amid flashes of Jim’s bleak memories of growing up in Toronto. In between, Jim spars with his friend Nicholas Cage (“we battle ancient mojo in my black sand shadow dojo”) and rants against capitalism and Hollywood. A surprisingly touching moment occurs on the set of Hippos, where Jim meets the digital essence of his idol, Rodney Dangerfield, who pays tribute to Jim’s dead father. But for the most part, the characters are underdeveloped, and the sketchy plot loses momentum amid interchangeable set pieces. Dip in for the laughs, but slip out before the closing credits. Agent: David Kuhn, Aevitas Creative Management.

April 15, 2020
Actor Carrey's first novel, cowritten with Vachon, author of Mergers and Acquisitions (2007), focuses on a heightened version of Carrey's life, one that swirls in a miasma of celebrity, wealth, power, excess, and hubris. In an emotional and spiritual crisis, Carrey has gained weight, and photos of his unhappy state have been sent around the world. But then he meets Georgie and quickly falls in love, and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (who also, in the real world, has a forthcoming debut novel, Antkind) offers him an absurd but potentially Oscar-worthy role. Although Carrey constantly spouts spiritual ideals, he craves that recognition. Throughout, Carrey has flashbacks to his Canadian childhood, which are some of the most interesting parts of the novel. Reminiscent of Mark Leyner's absurdist depictions of wealth (The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, 2012) and with a similarly otherworldly depiction of L.A. in A. M. Homes' This Book Will Save Your Life (2006), this is an engaging, fun tale that plays with the public perceptions of celebrities, questions our compulsive need to view, and contains a gloriously off-the-wall conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2020
A mad fever dream starring Jim Carrey, incorporating morsels of autobiography with adventures involving Nicolas Cage, Kelsey Grammer, Taylor Swift, Anthony Hopkins, Goldie Hawn, Sean Penn, and many more. "They say his empire was ruined by the same psychosis that found him, at the end, driving around Tucson with a loaded Uzi on his lap, ranting in word salad, high on methamphetamine." This remark is made about a fictional celebrity guru named Natchez Gushue, but when you encounter it in Chapter 2 you may wonder if it also applies to the creators of this book. Carrey and his collaborator Vachon pull out all the stops as their protagonist Jim Carrey careens from midlife blues through love and career complications toward the apocalypse. (The actual apocalypse, in which the world ends.) "He was nearing fifty, his fans aging, too. His talent was such that Hollywood could not replace him in its usual way, the kind of body snatching that saw Emma Stone swapped in for Lindsay Lohan, Leonardo DiCaprio taking over for River Phoenix." The question is, should he stage his comeback with "Disney's Untitled Play-Doh Fun Factory Project" or with a star turn as Mao Zedong in a biopic by Charlie Kaufman? Mixing the memoir with the misinformation, as the title suggests, is not the clearest or most powerful way Carrey might have presented the story of his life. Did his parents really tell everyone to feel free to beat him, "joking but not really"? Was an affair with Linda Ronstadt in 1982 "the only truly selfless love he'd ever known"? Is the scene where Carrey remembers telling Rodney Dangerfield a joke on the older comic's deathbed ("Don't worry Rodney, I'm gonna let everyone know you're really gay. That kind of thing isn't frowned on anymore") real? Moments of candor and alarming or moving revelations are a bit lost in the mad rush from Hungry Hungry Hippos in Digital 3D to the end of the world, when "Cher and Dolly Parton whizzed by overhead, both singing Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah.' " If you really like Jim Carrey, stick out the insanity for the gems of comic fantasy and the nuggets of memoir gold.

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