Peter Weir: Weir's World

Q: When did the name Jim Carrey come up?

A: When I called Scott Rudin to say I was interested, he said, "Do you know a guy called Jim Carrey?" He was thinking I wouldn't know, because at that stage Jim was known only for Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. But by chance I'd seen it. And I'd been struck, as I'm sure other filmmakers were, by Jim's innate talent and his utter lack of fear.

Q: How had you managed to see Ace Ventura?

A: I'd seen a poster in the video store, and I liked the look of the guy in it. I sensed the energy I was to see in the film.

Q: You proceeded with Scott Rudin and Jim Carrey based only on Ace Ventura?

A: Really the first three or four minutes of Ace Ventura. From the opening titles it was apparent this man was remarkable. And I thought, How fascinating that he's interested in The Truman Show. To fly this thing I was going to need a highly skilled copilot. Truman couldn't be played in an ordinary way. He'd grown up on a set inside an extensive lie--he would not be like anybody else. Jim has an otherworldliness, and he radiates energy and makes you wake up. In Ace Ventura and then the other things I watched later, he reminded me of the early Beatles. He had that humor and recklessness, plus all that talent.

Q: You were sold fast, based on limited information. But there are some difficult scenes in the movie that require straight acting. You had no doubts about Jim Carrey being able to do that?

A: Meeting Jim was part of the research I had to do. By then he was a star, and I was afraid he'd changed. Success induces fear and caution, and I thought maybe that light had gone out.

Q: The meeting obviously went well.

A: Jim was welcoming and interested in all sorts of things. A thoughtful man. And there was a degree of mystery about him. He was in no sense a conventional Hollywood success story. I was ready to work, but he wasn't available for 15 months, until after he did The Cable Guy and Liar Liar. I wanted to wait for him because he was the only person I sensed could do this.

Q: Dennis Hopper was originally cast as Christof, the arrogant genius-creator of "The Truman Show." How did Ed Harris end up replacing him?

A: I'd cast Dennis Hopper when I didn't have a terribly strong idea of what Christof should be. I liked qualities of Dennis I'd seen in his movies, and he has a very interesting manner about him in person--his legend and achievements are part of his persona when you meet him. But as the months passed, I began to formulate my ideas about Christof more clearly. By the time Dennis came to filming, differences arose. Dennis, being a director himself, was most understanding and gracious.

Q: So Ed Harris came in at the last minute?

A: Yes, and he did the role wonderfully with very little time for preparation. I didn't know before then that he started out in theater, so he has much more range than you might think from the way he's usually cast.

Q: How did you decide on Laura Linney for the part of the actress who plays Truman's wife?

A: I'd seen her in Primal Fear, in which she had an unpredictability--a thing I always look for in the work of actors. She did a splendid audition. I like to play the other part in auditions when the real actor's not available. It gives me a chance to be the character briefly, which is wonderful preparation for directing, and to feel the words in my mouth that they're going to say, which often points up deficiencies. And I learn a lot about the person I'm opposite--I get to look at them in the eyes, in a way I can't if I'm standing back by the camera. I felt she just was the character.

Q: As you were waiting for Jim to get free to do this project, his price jumped from $8 million to $20 million. Did your heart sink?

A: The Truman Show was not going to be typical of the films he'd made. That was my only concern about his price. But then, it wasn't my responsibility, it was the studio's. And he did negotiate down, taking everything into account. He wasn't paid $20 million.

Q: How did you get such a restrained performance from this characteristically unrestrained guy?

A: He'd try a scene broader, then subtler, and we both felt free to explore the humor. He enjoyed the experimentation--because there was no research he could do, no book he could read called I Was Born on a Television Show. We were making it up. As I did with Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, we planned experiments. On Dead Poets Robin and I worked out that he would teach Shakespeare and Dickens to a class for half a day with two cameras running and he would do whatever he wanted. Some of that made it into the film. I did the same sort of thing with Jim.

Q: This was the first time Jim put himself in the hands of a director whose judgment was going to reign. How did you get him to trust you?

A: Jim and I haven't discussed this, so I don't know how he saw it. But by the time he was fully available, I'd had enough time to construct Truman's world--literally and in terms of ideas. It was obvious to him I had done this preparation--I had nothing else to do--and that I was half-crazy with all this _Truman _trivia. I had to be careful not to overwhelm him.

Q: How half-crazy did you go?

A: I wrote an elaborate fictional background to the movie. The movie itself begins in the last few days of the television show "The Truman Show," but for my own purposes, to get my own mind clear, I needed to construct the 29 years of Truman's life that led up to this point. I began with the back story of Ed Harris's character, Christof, and how he created "The Truman Show."

Q: And this stuff is not in the movie?

A: Right. It's just background to explain what Christof was doing with "The Truman Show." Christof was very cunning--he knew there was a moral question about having taken over Truman's life, but like a politician he saw this as being for the greater good of the world. His vanity was such that he believed he was creating the ideal human being, the True Man. And at the same time, he was going to make a lot of money.

Q: How much of the temptation that you know faces any gifted director did you feed into your concept of Christof?

A: Christof's scenes weren't filmed till the end, so I was always talking about him and thinking about what he would do. I began to get this awful feeling that there was a lot of me, or the profession, going into it. Christof is very much a movie director. At one point, I toyed with the idea of playing the role myself. Thank God, I didn't. [Laughs]

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