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The Grinch

The crazy story behind how the brand-up on The Grinch drove everyone mad

It involves CIA torture endurance preparation and crew members going to therapy for stress

How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a family favourite and a Christmas archetype. Based on the dear story past Dr Seuss, it starred Jim Carrey and a pre-Gossip Daughter cherub-faced Taylor Momsen and brought u.s.a. such iconic and incessantly quotable moments every bit "Just what volition I wear" and "6:30, dinner with me. I can't cancel that over again."

Only it sounds like it was a fucking nightmare to brand.

Getting into costume for Carrey was not easy. The process involved facial prosthetics, being encased head-to-toe in green yak fur and enlarged contact lenses which the set'due south fake snow kept getting into. Carrey described the process equally "being buried live every twenty-four hours" saying information technology took 8 and a one-half hours in total, although caput make-up artist Rick Baker has recalled it being more like 2 and a one-half hours.

Increasingly frustrated with this daily effort, Carrey began taking it out on the crew. Make-up artist Kazuhiro Tsuji who worked nether Baker remembered in an interview with Vulture how "mean" Carrey was to everybody. "After two weeks we only could end three days' worth of shooting schedule, considering all of a sudden he would just disappear and when he came dorsum, everything was ripped apart. We couldn't shoot anything."

On i specially terrible day, Carrey lashed out at Tsuji. "In the brand-up trailer he only all of a sudden stands upwardly and looks in the mirror, and pointing on his chin, he goes, 'This colour is dissimilar from what yous did yesterday.' I was using the aforementioned colour I used yesterday. He says, 'Fix it.' And okay, you know, I 'fixed' information technology. Every day was like that."

Tsuji became and so mentally exhausted that Bakery and ane of the producers allowed him to pace away from the film for a while with the hope that Carrey would realise how valuable Tsuji was to the creation of the character. After a week away, Carrey and then managing director Ron Howard both called request Tsuji to return, with Howard proverb Carrey had sworn to change.

"I went back under 1 condition," Tsuji said. "I was talking with my friends, and they all told me, 'You should enquire for a raise before you get dorsum.' I didn't want to exercise that – kind of nasty. Then I got the idea: How about I ask them to help me to get a green card?" With letters of recommendation from the filmmakers and BAFTA and Oscars wins for Best Make-upward nether his belt, Tsuji's awarding was canonical, although following product he started seeing a therapist and realised how unhappy he was on a gear up. "If I had a choice, I would not be in this mental country all the time," he remembers thinking.

Merely meanwhile, Carrey himself was going through his own torture. Driven increasingly insane by the "horrifying" feel of beingness in the Grinch costume which he ultimately spent 92 days in, producer Brian Grazer brought in a human that trained CIA operatives how to endure torture to help him cope.

Co-ordinate to Carrey, the advice he was given to him by this proficient was: "consume everything yous see. If you're freaking out and you showtime to spiral downwards, turn the television set on, change a pattern, have someone you know come up and smack you in the caput, punch yourself in the leg or fume as much as yous possibly can." Carrey took this advice to middle and picked upwardly a two-pack a twenty-four hour period habit to get through the ordeal.

Carrey'south behaviour at the early stages of the production on Grinch might perhaps be traced back to the movie he filmed straight before, Homo on the Moon, in which he played the late comedian Andy Kaufman. During the making of Man on the Moon, Carrey became "possessed" by the spirit of Kaufman. "It was psychotic at times. Jim Carrey didn't exist at that time," he has since said.

While on set, Carrey would only reply to the name "Andy" and his increasingly manic antics including crashing a motorcar, trespassing into Steven Spielberg'due south office, and dumping drinks on people'south heads led producers to fearfulness the production might be sued over the mental stress Carrey inflicted on the coiffure. During this time, Carrey would also have calls with Grinch director Ron Howard in graphic symbol as Kaufman. "Andy actually affected The Grinch as well," Carrey said at the Venice Motion-picture show Festival premiere of documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond.