When we last heard from actor Jim Carrey, he was calling gun rights advocates "heartless motherf--kers" and making absurd videos mocking Charlton Heston.
With his new film "Kick-Ass 2" coming to theaters in August, Carrey took to Twitter Sunday disavowing the movie writing, "I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence":
I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to e
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) June 23, 2013
I meant to say my apologies to others involve with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) June 23, 2013
Tea Party activist Dana Loesch tweeted a Deadline Hollywood story about this moments ago asking Carrey to "prove it" by returning the payout:
Prove it, @JimCarrey and return the payout: http://t.co/uG9AHkh8Ye
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) June 23, 2013
I quite agree. If Carrey really is opposed to violence, how can he support this:
If that truly offends Carrey, then given he's estimated to be worth $150 million, he should either give all of his proceeds back or donate them to charity.
Failing that would just prove him to be another "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" liberal hypocrite.
For what it's worth, Mark Millar, the creator of "Kick-Ass," commented moments ago (HT @Agonzo1):
As you may know, Jim is a passionate advocate of gun-control and I respect both his politics and his opinion, but I'm baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn't in the screenplay eighteen months ago. Yes, the body-count is very high, but a movie called Kick-Ass 2 really has to do what it says on the tin. A sequel to the picture that gave us HIT-GIRL was always going to have some blood on the floor and this should have been no shock to a guy who enjoyed the first movie so much. My books are very hardcore, but the movies are adapted for a more mainstream audience and if you loved the tone of the first picture you're going to eat this up with a big, giant spoon. Like Jim, I'm horrified by real-life violence (even though I'm Scottish), but Kick-Ass 2 isn't a documentary. No actors were harmed in the making of this production! This is fiction and like Tarantino and Peckinpah, Scorcese and Eastwood, John Boorman, Oliver Stone and Chan-Wook Park, Kick-Ass avoids the usual bloodless body-count of most big summer pictures and focuses instead of the CONSEQUENCES of violence, whether it's the ramifications for friends and family or, as we saw in the first movie, Kick-Ass spending six months in hospital after his first street altercation. Ironically, Jim's character in Kick-Ass 2 is a Born-Again Christian and the big deal we made of the fact that he refuses to fire a gun is something he told us attracted him to the role in the first place.
Ultimately, this is his decision, but I've never quite bought the notion that violence in fiction leads to violence in real-life any more than Harry Potter casting a spell creates more Boy Wizards in real-life. Our job as storytellers is to entertain and our toolbox can't be sabotaged by curtailing the use of guns in an action-movie. Imagine a John Wayne picture where he wasn't packing or a Rocky movie where Stallone wasn't punching someone repeatedly in the face. Our audience is smart enough to know they're all pretending and we should instead just sit back and enjoy the serotonin release of seeing bad guys meeting bad ends as much as we enjoyed seeing the Death Star exploding.
