Director/producer Frank Darabont on the set of THE MAJESTIC
© 2001 Warner Bros.

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Mr. Majestic Part One

Funny thing about director Frank Darabont: When he's telling a story, he tends to do so by quoting back and forth dialogue just like in a script. Describing an exchange he had while directing Jim Carrey in the new romantic fable THE MAJESTIC, he put it like this:

CARREY: I'm not doing enough.

DARABONT: What do you mean? It was a perfect take.

CARREY: But I didn't do anything.

DARABONT: Exactly!

Darabont, a public and critical favorite after adapting and directing two films based on Stephen King books (THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and THE GREEN MILE), has now turned his considerable talent to what he calls "a love letter to Frank Capra." Speaking in a small room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, the easygoing and enthusiastic Darabont says about Capra: "I love his work. It means so much to me. He's been a huge influence on me. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE? I start crying in the opening credits."

Luke (Jim Carrey), Harry Trimble (Martin Landau) and Mayor Ernie Cole (Jeffrey DeMunn).

© 2001 Warner Bros.

Set in the early 1950s, THE MAJESTIC stars a stylistically stripped-down Jim Carrey as Peter Appleton, an ambitious Hollywood screenwriter who seems to be riding high until he discovers he's been blacklisted. Hardly a Communist he only attended several questionable meetings to impress a girl Appleton is distraught. After he loses his vapid actress girlfriend and his job, he gets drunk, gets into a car accident and smashes his head. When he awakens, he finds himself in a small, beautiful California coastal town. Mistaken for a local war hero thought killed in action, he gets a second chance at salvation, love and the whole ball of wax they call life.

So why Jim Carrey?

"If it is a love letter to Capra we needed our Jimmy Stewart," Darabont explains. "We needed the guy who could be that handsome, romantic, leading-man presence. For some reason, for years now I've gotten this sort of Jimmy Stewart vibe off of Jim [Carrey]. We're talking about the quieter moments of his movies, like in THE MASK when he's not green. I don't know if it's his physicality or glimmer of sincerity or heart that the guy now has, but I've always kind of had that sense of him."

Like Capra films, THE MAJESTIC is both bright and sunny (when Carrey is in the sugar-sweet small town) and dark and deadly (when Carrey's character goes up against the witch-hunt-styled House Un-American Activities Committee).

Jim Carrey stars in THE MAJESTIC as an ambitious Hollywood screenwriter who loses his job and identity.

© 2001 Warner Bros.

"A friend, Michael Sloane, wrote [THE MAJESTIC] and gave it to me and said, 'What do you think?' And I said, 'I think I want to make it,' and we immediately started talking to Jim," says Darabont. "And I was hoping that Jim was at a point in his life where he wanted to embrace something like this. And it turned out he was hungry to do this kind of thing with all the gimmicks aside that he knows so well, and justifiably has become so successful using. Just put all that aside and come from a genuine place."

Shooting began on the project originally titled THE BIJOU (after a long-closed movie theater Carrey and the town reopen in a subplot), with the filmmakers taking over the scenic northern communities of Ferndale, Mendocino and Ft. Bragg, California. Halfway through production, they promptly switched the film's title to THE MAJESTIC. Laughing, Darabont explains they had no choice. "Nobody could pronounce it. It's just not in the modern-day lexicon. We got these calls at the production office: 'The By-you'? 'The Be-jow?' 'The Be-a-Jew'?"

Filming went smoothly, and getting Carrey to drop his usual madcap antics wasn't hard.

"I didn't have to persuade him at all," says Darabont. "Nor the studio. You know there's a lot of people in this town on Jim's side and there's a lot of people who've been waiting for him to do something like this where he sheds his skin and shows up naked."

Carrey, once called the 20 Million-Dollar Man and one of the most powerful actors in Hollywood, has in recent years alternated silly fare (LIAR, LIAR; ME, MYSELF AND IRENE) with obvious attempts at respectability (THE TRUMAN SHOW, MAN ON THE MOON). Darabont believes he made progress in the serious films, but THE MAJESTIC marks something new all together different.

Director/producer Frank Darabont on the set of THE MAJESTIC

© 2001 Warner Bros.

"THE TRUMAN SHOW which is a wonderful movie was a big step, but not the complete step," the director says. "Because in THE TRUMAN SHOW, as good as he was, he was playing an artificial character living in an artificial world who on some level knew it. And what you weren't seeing was sincerity from him. You were seeing false sincerity being projected. That's one of the reasons the movie is so good. MAN ON THE MOON: brilliant performance being channeled through a brilliant impression of another person. Another mask, another layer, and now [with THE MAJESTIC] that's gone. And I've been so delighted because in the test screenings for this the cards are wonderful. People say, 'Oh my God, Jim Carrey isn't Jim Carrey in this movie. He's a superb actor.' And I say, 'Actually Jim Carrey is Jim Carrey in this movie, and he's the guy you never got a chance to see before. This is him.' "

Yet while Darabont insists Carrey was "totally ready" for this great leap, he's quick to point out: "I'm not saying he wasn't nervous, apprehensive and probably at times a little terrified. But I mean he was anxious to commit himself completely to the task at hand. Which shows an enormous amount of courage. Because, hey, if you become one of the world's biggest movie stars using that bag of tricks and then toss the tricks away, that's courageous, man."

Be sure to check back soon for part two of CINESCAPE's Frank Darabont profile.