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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in our magazines

THE MOVIE: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

THE STARS:
Jim Carrey • Kate Winslet • Elijah Wood
• Kirsten Dunst • Tom Wilkinson
DIRECTOR: Michael Gondry

THE CONCEPT:
Stunned when he discovers that his former girlfriend, Clementine (Winslet), has had their turbulent relationship erased from her mind, Joel (Carrey) contacts the inventor of the process (Wilkinson) to have Clementine removed from his memory.

U.S. RELEASE: March 19 2004, Nationwide • Rated: R

THE COMMENTS:

How did the role of Joel come to you? JIM CARREY:
“The script came to me and I read it and I thought that it was incredible, and I couldn’t believe that I was being offered it. I had this guilty feeling of, ‘How did I get this one and The Truman Show?’ Those are two really interesting, original movies.”

How have you dealt with memories of a relationship gone sour? CARREY:
“I’ve had a lot of conversations with myself, a lot of summations and then generally, I forgive and move on, and look at the world as a beautiful place again sooner or later. I think that the real magic is you accept the flaws, and you accept what was wrong, and you move on and you love the person for who they are.”

How was it working with Kate Winslet? CARREY:
“I get excited when the people that I work with scare me. I mean, she’s just scary talented and an amazing actress. I get excited when I’m going to be surrounded by people who make me better and make me stay on my game and challenge me. She’s wonderful to watch, unbelievable, because sometimes you don’t know what she’s doing when you’re in the scene with her, and then you look at it later and she knows what’s going to come off and how it’s going to look. It’s beautiful.”

Why have you chosen films such as this and The Majestic that have to do with memory loss? CARREY:
“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 the idea of how it would feel to be erased, and that was the strongest pull for me. It’s like, ‘Wow, that’s a heavy feeling,’ and that’s what hit me with the script, when he finds out that she’s erased him, it’s just a brutal thing to probably anyone’s ego, but to a male ego especially.”

Did you identify with the Joel character? CARREY:
“I don’t have any big blacked out moments of my life or anything like that, but I liked that this was by choice.”

Are you making a movie version of “The Six Million Dollar Man”? CARREY:
“I am bionic. We’re developing that script. You know, six million dollars doesn’t get you a lot in this world these days, so you can kind of imagine where the plot is going to go. I think that it’s just going to be a whole lot of fun. I love playing ego and insecurity combined. It’s ego out of control.”

Written by Judy Sloane. Back to top

Visit the official Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind site
Images above © Focus Features
Feature © 2004 Visual Imagination Limited.
Not for reproduction.

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