surfboard he carries throughout the film as a visual gag. Woody Allen surfing: Now
that
would be funny.
Failure, Fiasco, Or Secret Success?
Fiasco
Book-Exclusive $20 Million Case File: The Cable Guy
As a child, it blew my mind that my father made something like $36,000 a year as a government bureaucrat. That worked out to almost a hundred dollars
a day
! To an 8-year-old, that represented an unimaginable bounty. I could barely comprehend what it would be like to have a hundred dollars for even a single day, let alone to make a hundred dollars
every day,
even on your days off. For that kind of money, my dad could buy six-packs of Mountain Dew
and
beer, a pizza, a cassette of the hottest new rock album, the latest
Playboy,
a Samantha Fox poster, and a stack of
Mad
magazines, then spend his entire day playing videogames before finishing off the night with a movie, popcorn,
and
soda, all without running out of money! This is how I imagined adults would live their lives if they werenât weighed down with children and families and stupid desk jobs.
So you can imagine how impressed I was to discover that my favorite movie stars and baseball players make a million dollars
or more
every year. It somehow seemed unfair that someone should be paid such inconceivable sums to play sports before adoring fans, or romance the worldâs most beautiful women.
Mind-boggling salaries for athletes and artists are so commonplace these days that weâve become jaded. But when it was announced that Jim Carrey would be making $20 million for his role in 1996âs
The Cable Guy,
society responded the way my 8-year-old self did upon learning that my dad made a hundred dollars a day.
Twenty million dollars?
It was one thing for Harrison Ford to make that much. In his films, he saved the world repeatedly. It would be churlish to begrudge him the spoils of his make-pretend heroism. But when
The Cable Guy
went into production, Carrey was only a few years removed from being the white guy on
In Living Color.
Worse, he was Canadian. Itâs bad enough that Canadians pass as Americans, have barbed penises to aid in their fiendish sexual proclivities, and plot covertly against their unsuspecting neighbors to the south. Now they looked like they were out to bankrupt our film industry with excessive salaries.
Ford at least pretended to do great things; Carrey was getting paid $20 million to behave like an ass. He was to receive the biggest up-front salary for any comic actor in history to do the kinds of things that earn fidgety, misbehaving 12-year-olds Ritalin prescriptions and one-way trips to military school.
Cable Guy
began life as a Chris Farley vehicle about a hapless, awkward, but fundamentally sweet and nonviolent cable guy who accidentally played havoc with a customerâs life. Director Ben Stiller liked the basic premise but not the screenplay, so he brought in Judd Apatowâa
Ben Stiller Show
writer and a veteran of smart television satires like
The Critic
and
The Larry Sanders Show
âto take the script in a much darker direction.
Given Stiller and Apatowâs subsequent ascent to ubiquitous, prolific superstardom, itâs ironic to think that hiring them as director andscript doctor/producer transformed a seemingly surefire blockbuster into a risky proposition. In Stiller and Apatowâs hands, the screenplay morphed from a
Tommy Boy
âstyle buddy comedy to a more mainstream precursor to
Chuck & Buck,
a creepy, homoerotic black comedy about a disturbed loner and the sad sack he torments.
For the role of the straight man/Carreyâs foil, the filmmakers chose Matthew Broderick, an actor who has spent the decades since his career-making turn in
Ferris Buellerâs Day Off
exploring the infinite colors of the schlemiel rainbow. Actually, thatâs not fair, as the last few years have found Broderick playing everything from a putz (
The Stepford Wives
) to a yutz (
Marie & Bruce
) to a schmendrick (
Finding
that
would be funny.
Failure, Fiasco, Or Secret Success?
Fiasco
Book-Exclusive $20 Million Case File: The Cable Guy
As a child, it blew my mind that my father made something like $36,000 a year as a government bureaucrat. That worked out to almost a hundred dollars
a day
! To an 8-year-old, that represented an unimaginable bounty. I could barely comprehend what it would be like to have a hundred dollars for even a single day, let alone to make a hundred dollars
every day,
even on your days off. For that kind of money, my dad could buy six-packs of Mountain Dew
and
beer, a pizza, a cassette of the hottest new rock album, the latest
Playboy,
a Samantha Fox poster, and a stack of
Mad
magazines, then spend his entire day playing videogames before finishing off the night with a movie, popcorn,
and
soda, all without running out of money! This is how I imagined adults would live their lives if they werenât weighed down with children and families and stupid desk jobs.
So you can imagine how impressed I was to discover that my favorite movie stars and baseball players make a million dollars
or more
every year. It somehow seemed unfair that someone should be paid such inconceivable sums to play sports before adoring fans, or romance the worldâs most beautiful women.
Mind-boggling salaries for athletes and artists are so commonplace these days that weâve become jaded. But when it was announced that Jim Carrey would be making $20 million for his role in 1996âs
The Cable Guy,
society responded the way my 8-year-old self did upon learning that my dad made a hundred dollars a day.
Twenty million dollars?
It was one thing for Harrison Ford to make that much. In his films, he saved the world repeatedly. It would be churlish to begrudge him the spoils of his make-pretend heroism. But when
The Cable Guy
went into production, Carrey was only a few years removed from being the white guy on
In Living Color.
Worse, he was Canadian. Itâs bad enough that Canadians pass as Americans, have barbed penises to aid in their fiendish sexual proclivities, and plot covertly against their unsuspecting neighbors to the south. Now they looked like they were out to bankrupt our film industry with excessive salaries.
Ford at least pretended to do great things; Carrey was getting paid $20 million to behave like an ass. He was to receive the biggest up-front salary for any comic actor in history to do the kinds of things that earn fidgety, misbehaving 12-year-olds Ritalin prescriptions and one-way trips to military school.
Cable Guy
began life as a Chris Farley vehicle about a hapless, awkward, but fundamentally sweet and nonviolent cable guy who accidentally played havoc with a customerâs life. Director Ben Stiller liked the basic premise but not the screenplay, so he brought in Judd Apatowâa
Ben Stiller Show
writer and a veteran of smart television satires like
The Critic
and
The Larry Sanders Show
âto take the script in a much darker direction.
Given Stiller and Apatowâs subsequent ascent to ubiquitous, prolific superstardom, itâs ironic to think that hiring them as director andscript doctor/producer transformed a seemingly surefire blockbuster into a risky proposition. In Stiller and Apatowâs hands, the screenplay morphed from a
Tommy Boy
âstyle buddy comedy to a more mainstream precursor to
Chuck & Buck,
a creepy, homoerotic black comedy about a disturbed loner and the sad sack he torments.
For the role of the straight man/Carreyâs foil, the filmmakers chose Matthew Broderick, an actor who has spent the decades since his career-making turn in
Ferris Buellerâs Day Off
exploring the infinite colors of the schlemiel rainbow. Actually, thatâs not fair, as the last few years have found Broderick playing everything from a putz (
The Stepford Wives
) to a yutz (
Marie & Bruce
) to a schmendrick (
Finding
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