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A review by themahtin
Memoirs and Misinformation by Dana Vachon, Jim Carrey
3.0
It's easy to get drawn into Jim Carrey's story, but at the end you will wonder how much of it came from his head, and how much came from the co-author's. I found the book hard to put down. The book seems to be an attempt to either rewrite or obfuscate history. If I were him, I would have waited to finish the book until after portraying Joe Biden on Saturday Night Live.
Stories of "controversial" things that happened in Carrey's life are retold with completely different details. I'm referring in particular to the story of his (estranged?) lover who died of an overdose. His entire relationship with the character in the book is different, and the character in the book does not die. I did enjoy the depictions of "Jim's" friends and fellow actors, who seem to all go to the same meditation retreats of whatever, but by the time they meet their end, well...
The last few chapters reminded me a bit of the movie "Sorry to Bother You," in that a story that seemed to be about one thing (an actor's life) is suddenly about something totally impossible and obviously fictional - him watching the destruction of the planet and Carrey's death as, he presumes, the only person left after his friends had all either fought to the death, or embraced the light. The aliens are taking over the planet during historic wildfires - a fire has just taken Carrey's home and, nearly his life...
Once in a while, I'd find a quote that seemed to give some insight into what Carrey was going through at different times in his life. It's important to process the fires and I guess that he's talking about the fire destroying his home, and about him being rescued when he was almost dead, but he invents a collective of women who are amputees who rescue him, and how the aliens attack the planet at a time that happens to be when they're still trying to get away from the fires... Jim's alone at the end of his life... I'm left wanting to interview him and ask questions about some of the things from his life that I'd want to hear him talk about (vaccines, his seeming politicization, his mental health, was he really cast as Mao in a movie that never got made?, was he manic during that period...
Lots of questions and it's hard to trust the answers.
Stories of "controversial" things that happened in Carrey's life are retold with completely different details. I'm referring in particular to the story of his (estranged?) lover who died of an overdose. His entire relationship with the character in the book is different, and the character in the book does not die. I did enjoy the depictions of "Jim's" friends and fellow actors, who seem to all go to the same meditation retreats of whatever, but by the time they meet their end, well...
The last few chapters reminded me a bit of the movie "Sorry to Bother You," in that a story that seemed to be about one thing (an actor's life) is suddenly about something totally impossible and obviously fictional - him watching the destruction of the planet and Carrey's death as, he presumes, the only person left after his friends had all either fought to the death, or embraced the light. The aliens are taking over the planet during historic wildfires - a fire has just taken Carrey's home and, nearly his life...
Once in a while, I'd find a quote that seemed to give some insight into what Carrey was going through at different times in his life. It's important to process the fires and I guess that he's talking about the fire destroying his home, and about him being rescued when he was almost dead, but he invents a collective of women who are amputees who rescue him, and how the aliens attack the planet at a time that happens to be when they're still trying to get away from the fires... Jim's alone at the end of his life... I'm left wanting to interview him and ask questions about some of the things from his life that I'd want to hear him talk about (vaccines, his seeming politicization, his mental health, was he really cast as Mao in a movie that never got made?, was he manic during that period...
Lots of questions and it's hard to trust the answers.