ntic funnyman Jim Carrey takes a dramatic turn in the upcoming SF movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, from a script by Oscar-nominated writer Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich). Carrey plays Joel, a somber man tormented by a failed love affair with a free-spirited woman, Clementine, played by Kate Winslet. When he discovers that Clementine has undergone a medical procedure to erase all memories of him, Joel decides to get the same treatment.
But when Joel begins the procedure, he finds himself reliving the moments of their romance in reverse. And the closer he gets to the beginning, the more he realizes that he doesn't want to wipe out all memories of Clementine after all.
Kaufman (Adaptation) crafted the unusual and non-traditional story based in part on an idea by French-born director Michel Gondry. Carrey, Winslet and Kaufman spoke recently to Science Fiction Weekly about Eternal Sunshine (the title comes from an Alexander Pope poem). The movie opened March 19.
Jim Carrey, how did you get this role?
Carrey: Someone gave me the script, and I read it, and I thought it was incredible, and I couldn't believe that I was being offered it, so I was just very, very happy. ... And I kind of had this guilty feeling like "How can I get this one and Truman Show?" Two really interesting, original movies. So I was really happy about it.
This is such an interesting romantic movie. Was there anything that was an inspiration for you as far as films of the past or favorite romantic scenes?
Carrey: Just in my life, you know? Movies are great, but the real romance happens right here [taps nose] somewhere, real close up. I don't know. To me, this part, I really couldn't have done it if I hadn't been through a lot one way or another. Either you're the one erasing, or you're the one being erased, so it's not a pleasant feeling.
Everyone has a memory of a relationship gone sour. How have you dealt with that?
Carrey: How have I dealt with that? I've had ... a lot of conversations with myself. Summations. "OK, that is my final word on the subject! And another thing!" That kind of thing goes on for a while, but then I generally forgive and move on and look at the world as a beautiful place again sooner or later [laughs]. I think that's the real magic. ... The thing about this movie is you accept the flaws, you accept what was wrong, and you move on. You love the person for who they are, flaws and all. You can't help who you love, either. It comes from a different side of your brain than the logic part that tells you that this person is horrible for you. "You should walk away!" So while you're walking away, the other part of your brain is trying to gain control of your bodily functions. "Turn around! She's the one!"
The idea of erasing somebody from my brain is extremely appealing.
Carrey: Of course. In the moment, especially, when you're going through something. You think, "I don't need this. I don't need to live in a fight-or-flight response. Why can't I just let this go?" But in retrospect it always seems to work out that you can look back on something that was a disaster and find some gems in there.
What treasured memories of love would you never erase?
Carrey: I would never tell you. But thank you. ... That would entail me opening up the most crucial intimacy of my life, and I can't do that. Sorry.
Comedy comes so easily to you. What's it like to play a humorless character?
Carrey: He's not a humorless character at all. I think Joel has amazing things going on inside his brain that spill out on the page when he's doing his diaries and things like that. When Clementine comes by, she's like the outward manifestation of what he has inside himself, but can't express. So I don't think he's humorless or uninteresting. I think he's really complex.
You have wonderful chemistry with Kate Winslet in this. Will you talk a little bit about what it's like to work with her?
Carrey: Well, I get excited when the people I work with scare me. She's just scary-talented and just an amazing actress. ... I get excited when I'm surrounded by people who make me better and make me stay on my game and challenge me. So she's wonderful to watch—unbelievable—because you sometimes don't know what she's doing when you're in a scene with her, and you look at it later, and she knows what's going to come off, how it's going to look. It's beautiful.
If you could revisit your childhood like you do in the movie, which place would you like to see?
Carrey: What was interesting was during the movie, the psychic things were happening. Of course, I was pouring a lot of what I've gone through into it as much as I could, but things like when I was in the second grade, I had a teacher who came into school, and she was an Irish lady who said, "If I pray to the Virgin Mary and ask for anything I want, she gives me anything I want." I'm sitting in the back of the class going, "Hm." So I went home and I prayed to the Virgin for a bicycle, for a green Mustang bike. Two weeks later, ... I won a green Mustang bike in a raffle I didn't enter. ... A friend of mine put my name in to a sporting goods store, and I won the bike. That bike showed up in the movie without me even trying, in the scene where the rain starts and I try to bring her back to when I grew up in the memories. .. When it showed up that day, I was so excited, because this is how my life is. It's like, "Wow! OK, so I'm going back into my past, and here's the magical Mustang bike!" Green, everything. The whole thing was the exact bike I had. And I didn't do it.
Looking at your recent dramatic roles—Majestic, Truman and this—it's about a loss of memory, it's about a false memory, it's about an erasure of memory. I was wondering why you choose so many films about memory like that?
Carrey: You know, truth be told, that didn't even occur to me when I read this script. It wasn't about memory. It was about being erased. It was a different perspective on it. It was about how it would feel to be erased. That was the strongest pull for me. That's a heavy feeling. That's what hit me with the script. When he finds out that she's erased him, it's just a brutal thing to hit probably anybody's ego, but a male ego especially. I loved the idea that the memories went in reverse. There were so many things that made it different than your normal losing-your-memory movie. I love the clunky, sci-fi aspect of this movie. It doesn't take it over, it's just a function within it. It's interesting.
Some people have started making the distinction between the goofy Jim Carrey roles and the more serious Jim Carrey roles.
Carrey: It's a Jekyll-and-Hyde situation.
Do you make that sort of distinction when you look at scripts and consider projects?
Carrey: No. They come as they come and when something like this comes by you just jump on and that's all there is to it. There's no question about it. Anybody would be lucky to be part of this.
Can you talk a little about the challenges and rewards of a Charlie Kaufman script?
Carrey:. It's like Moses coming down from the mountain with the tablets every time he has a script. All of Hollywood goes, "It's here!" He's just so rock and roll and at the same time, he's a complete intellectual. This movie has everything going, so when I read the script, I was just ... first of all, just happy to be a small part of his legacy, because I know that's going to be one hell of a legacy at the end of all his creative madness. But this script is everything. Most of the time, he stays in this wild, intellectual world. This one has such an anchor or heart, something we can all identify with on an emotional level, so it's got everything going at the same time. I feel like I won the lottery. ... The major challenge is knowing where you are in this script. When you're going through the memories. "Are we lucid in the memories?" ... "Are we lucid in this memory? Is this memory the way it was or has it been gilded in retrospect?" It was really fascinating.
Kate Winslet, you and Jim have this great on-screen chemistry, and we've been told that Jim is so into character on the set. How did you and he work out this chemistry that you had? Did you have conversations?
Winslet: When you come at a script like this that is so incredibly rich and has so wonderfully formed, such well-formed characters, a lot of the work is really done for you. But you know, in order for this to work, Jim and I had to get on. We did have to be friends. And frankly you can't make that happen, you just have to hope for the best, and I've been so lucky because I've always had great relationships with the actors that I had to play opposite in all the movies that I've done. Certainly the love stories. And we didn't really work that out, you know, we just did get on very, very well, and he made me laugh. And I was able to make him laugh, too, which was a tremendously rewarding feeling for me because I'm not used to comedy.
What about your process, when you have a great little piece of character, like all the hair colors that give you a chance to hide a little bit inside the character? Does that just open some doors for you?
Winslet: Well, definitely, and it certainly opened me up, actually, quite considerably, just because I got to be loads of other sides of myself that people don't often see. And Clementine was just a wild ride, she was just so much fun and so liberating. I loved playing her so much.
What color wig was your favorite?
Winslet: The red was my favorite, yeah. But I would get to the end of a shooting day, and I would go back to my trailer and I'd wash my face off and put my own clothes back on, and I'd be like, "Damn, I wear too much black." It would be back to boring old me, you know? It was great ... being her. And, yeah, I own all the wigs and actually a lot of the clothes, too. I just wanted to keep them, it was so much fun.
It's such a fantastical story, but what makes it work is that it's grounded in so much reality and the characters. How much of that was a dialogue you had with Michel about where you wanted to focus? Because I think it's one of the most realistic depictions of a romance I've seen in a long time.
Winslet: I'm completely thrilled that you say that, because I've actually been saying that for the last two days. But that's what I felt too, very much so. That it is a very, very real depiction of a close and very personal intimate relationship and also a very passionate and feisty one. And you know, that's what relationships ... are like. You do get pissed off with your partner if they leave their hair on the soap in the shower. You may not mention it to them, but if you have a bad day it might just come out accidentally.
But you're contrasting that with this really fantastic story about erasing memories and the whole sci-fi part of it, so how did you guys decide to balance that?
Winslet: Well, we had to create the relationship between the two of them first. That was the core of the movie, and it was essential that Jim and I, as I was saying before, had this relationship together and got on very well in order to be able to make it work. And to be prepared to allow ourselves to get pissed off with each other on screen. You have to just make yourself do that sometimes, even if it doesn't necessarily come naturally or even feel very nice. And we were just so incredibly supported by this incredible script and this dialogue. And for me, the way I sort of hung onto my sanity and perspective was just to remember that it's just a very simple love story about two people that are the polar opposite of each other, and yet meant to be together, and they just have a very tempestuous relationship. That, to me, is a simple love story in a way. And it's the way that it's told in this sort of unorthodox fashion, and the idea of the memory-erasing thing that makes it the more complex story that it is.
Have you ever wanted to try and erase the memories of anyone? In real life?
Winslet: No, I would never that. ... I just feel that all the good and bad experiences that we all go through as human beings are what forms us and what enforces the decisions we make and who we're with and how we are as people. You know? So I don't really regret anything in my life. I just feel, you know, well, that happened. S--t happens, you move on and you get on with it. If you live your life with one foot in the past, particularly in the bad stuff, then how can you ever be happy? So, no, I wouldn't do it.
Charlie Kaufman [top at right], where did the idea for this come from?
Kaufman: I didn't get the idea from Michel [bottom at right], just to sort of clarify that. Michel's friend had an idea about a card that says you have been erased from someone's memory. And Michel and I worked on the story together, and we sold it as a pitch.
Can you talk about the choice to have the memories running backwards in his head and the way the narrative is built sort of backwards and inside out?
Kaufman: I think that we're trying to create a sort of sense of how the memory works, and also we wanted the audience to be with the character of Joel, and where Joel is at that point is at the end of his relationship, with the feelings that he had at the end of the relationship. And so we wanted to see that version of Clementine first, you know, before we get later, as Joel uncovers the better memories and realizes suddenly that he doesn't want to do this anymore. The audience is then seeing those memories, too, for the first time and understanding a different aspect of Clementine. Just like in the beginning of the movie, the scene on the train and then Clementine's apartment and the ice, the audience is with the characters. And Joel thinks this is the first time he's met Clementine and so do we as the audience, so that's sort of the reason for it.
As you were writing this, all the reviews for Adaptation were coming out. How much does that affect what you're currently writing?
Kaufman: It doesn't, really. Good reviews are more pleasant than bad reviews, I guess, but they're just reviews, and they're just somebody's sort of opinion and I'm really, I really embrace the notion of pursuing failure in my work. I do. I sincerely do. It's my prime philosophy of work. It's the only way to do anything that's potentially going to be adventurous or interesting is if failure is something that you are expecting. If you're trying to avoid it, you'll just be safe and you'll just be copying other people's stuff that's been successful.
How much of you is in Joel?
Kaufman: I'd say probably a fair amount. I kind of think there's me in all of my characters. I mean Joel, probably a fair amount. But I'm not completely Joel.
It's odd to see Jim Carrey in sort of a non-comedic part.
Kaufman: Yeah, but you know the good thing about doing these movies is that when somebody like Jim Carrey comes or somebody like Nick Cage comes, they're not doing it for their fee, because they're not getting their fee. So you know that they're there because they want to be in this movie, and it's sort of like, going in, you have this confidence that they're there for the right reasons.
This movie is so strong on memory, and memory means to much to us in so many different ways.
Kaufman: To me, this movie is about trying to figure out something about relationships, and the movie uses memory, and I've very interested in memory, because it's where I live, and I think where everybody lives, but it isn't as if this is just a job for me.
Are there things you would never throw away or you would like to erase?
Kaufman: Neither. There is nothing I would erase at this point.
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Also in this issue:
The cast and crew of Dawn of the Dead
