Jim Carrey – Information

Cast: Jim Carrey, Laurie Holden, Martin Landau, David Ogden Stiers, Bob Balaban and Hal Holbrook.

Director: Frank Darabont.

Screenwriter: Michael Sloane.

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The story of this film, directed by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption), takes place in the United States during the early 1950’s.

Peter Appleton (Carrey) is an up-and-coming young screenwriter who hopes to work his way onto the “A” list.

Unfortunately, he is accused of being a Communist, like the real world accusations of the Hollywood blacklist.

It turns out that in 1945, he had attended a meeting for a Communist organization in college known as the “Bread Instead of Bullets” club, a meeting which he reveals that he attended for a girl.

In an instant, his new film is pushed back and his contract gets dropped. With his career in total ruins, he gets drunk at a seaside bar and has a car accident where he loses his memory completely.

When he wakes up he is in a small town called Lawson. The townsfolk believe him to be Luke Trimble, one of the town boys killed in World War II 9 1/2 years before, and embrace him as a symbol of hope.

Watch the Trailer:

Clip #1

Peter Plays the Piano … one of the best scenes from The Majestic.

Clip #2

Peter’s Speach:

Trivia provided by Internet Movie Database.

• The golden idol Khalid uses to knock out Emily’s father in “Sand Pirates of the Sahara” was lent to the production by Steven Spielberg and is the same prop used in the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
  

  The Coco Bongo

• The bar Jim Carrey goes to is the Coco Bongo. The nightclub in The Mask (1994) was also the Coco Bongo.
• You can clearly see a poster for It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) in the foyer of the Majestic, before it is renovated.
• In the first scene of the movie, we see Jim Carrey’s character reacting to the ideas of studio executives, one of whom mentions that the name “Floyd” is terrible, and that it has to be changed. Later on we learn that they changed the name to “Heywood”, which an executive also says is terrible. Heywood and Floyd are both characters from Frank Darabont’s earlier movie The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Dr Heywood Floyd is a character in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
• One of the Majestic’s employees is named Irene Terwilliger. “Terwilliger” is also the last name of a character in Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile (1999). He was played by Jeffrey DeMunn, who plays Mayor Ernie Cole in The Majestic (2001).
• Laurie Holden’s character is inspired to become a lawyer by the film The Life of Emile Zola (1937). Holden’s real-life grandmother, Gloria Holden, was one of the stars of this film.
• A character mentions the film The Life of Emile Zola (1937). This film is about a lawyer who comes to the defense of a Jewish soldier fighting trumped-up charges of treason in turn-of-the-century France.
• Brian Libby, who plays Studio Guard Hal, has appeared in all of director Frank Darabont’s movies. Darabont considers Libby to be a lucky charm of sorts and casts him whenever possible.
• The real Luke Trimble was a paratrooper in the famed 101st Airborne Division. His voice was provided by Matt Damon, who also played a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division in Saving Private Ryan (1998).
  

  Matt Damon

• One of the voices in the two screenwriting conference scenes is famous director and screenwriter Garry Marshall. Other voices belong to Carl Reiner and his son Rob Reiner.
• Director Trademark: [Frank Darabont] the word S-T-O-R-Y in the graveyard. Also done in The Green Mile (1999). This is his way of indicating that the “story” is dead in Hollywood.
• The voices of the unseen studio executives during the first screenwriting scene (and the one later in the film) are all famous directors, including Garry Marshall, Paul Mazursky, Sydney Pollack, Rob Reiner, and Carl Reiner (although Carl is more famous for his comedic acting). All of these directors are also known their occasional acting forays.
• The letter written by Luke Trimble to Adele copies the form, sentiments and even some of the phrases of a famous Civil War letter written a week before the battle of Bull Run by Sullivan Ballou, a Major in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers, to his wife in Smithfield.
• Several elements of the movie borrow from the real-life Hollywood Ten of blacklisted members of the film-making industry. The name of the town that adopts Jim Carrey’s character as a long-lost son is Lawson; one of the targeted screenwriters was named John Howard Lawson. Another writer, Lester Cole, shares a surname with a movie character, Lawson’s mayor. There is also a strong similarity between Luke and Harry’s last name, Trimble, and the surname of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
  

  J. Howard Lawson

• The town of Lawson is named for John Howard Lawson, the man who finally stood up to HUAC and ended the Red Scare.
• The director of “Sand Pirates of the Sahara”, the movie within the movie, is “Ferenc Arpad”. This is Frank Darabont’s first and middle names translated into his native Hungarian.
• Jim Carrey’s character’s name, Appleton, is also the name of the city in Wisconsin where Joseph McCarthy was born.
• The feature that Peter is selling tickets for at the end of the film is Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), seen by many to be a metaphor for the red scare and McCarthyism.
• At one point, while the characters in the film are examining a store-front display of World War II heroes, a photograph of several men in uniform is shown. This photo is of actual soldiers that fought in World War II, all of whom made their home at the location of the film shoot, Ferndale, California.
• “HHS Studios” is named for Hollywood High School, which Frank Darabont attended.
• Neither the Majestic nor Mabel’s Diner actually exist in Ferndale, where the movie was filmed. However, the newspaper office for the Lawson Beacon (across the street from the WWII memorial) is the actual newspaper office for the Ferndale Enterprise. The Sheriff’s office and City Hall were facades built over opposite ends of the U.S. Bank building in town. The facade of The Majestic was built over a city parking lot. Only the facade and lobby were used for filming at that location. The indoor sets were built in buildings at the Humboldt County Fairgrounds.
• The Lawson train station that Jim Carrey departs from and returns to is actually in Fort Bragg, California. The train he is on is called “The Skunk Train” and is, in real life, a scenic railroad that runs inland from the north coast through the redwoods.
• WILHELM SCREAM: When part of the theater’s neon sign explodes.
• The ‘film within a film’ Sand Pirates of the Desert, uses music from two classic Hollywood films, both scored by Erich Wolfgang Korngold – “Of Human Bondage” (1945) and “Captain Blood” (1935).
• At the opening of the Majestic, a poster for the movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando can be seen.
• In the opening scene, the studio executives discuss a film in which a character named Floyd gets trapped in a cave-in. They may be discussing making a film about Floyd Collins, who was trapped in a cave in central Kentucky in 1925. The Floyd Collins story was turned into a film called Ace in the Hole (1951) by Billy Wilder, released in 1951, the same year that “The Majestic” takes place.
• Luke Trimble’s full name: Albert Lucas “Luke” Trimble.
  

  James Whitmore

• James Whitmore ’s final feature film. He died on february 6, 2009.
• The movie poster for the movie-within-a-movie “Sand Pirates of the Sahara” reveals one of the actors’ names to be “Ramon Jamon”. “Jamon” is Spanish for “ham”.
• Matt Damon was offered the lead role of Peter Appleton but turned it down as he had other movie commitments at the time.