The Utter Exhaustiveness of Jim Carrey’s 40-Minute ‘Lemony Snicket’ Outtake Reel
Imagine being a young Jim Carrey’s mother or father and having to patiently wait for your beloved son to tire himself out with his over-the-top theatrics, antics and emotive mischief — it probably wouldn’t be much different than making a movie with him.
The 2004 film adaptation of the macabre children’s novels A Series of Unfortunate Events didn’t earn quite the adoration of the books, but it did give us a gift that print media could never produce — Carrey’s turn as Count Olaf, the flamboyant, nefarious thespian and main antagonist of the Baudelaire orphans, is the uninspiring film’s saving grace. Carrey would famously stay in character between takes during the shooting of the film, and some of the movie’s most memorable moments were, in fact, improvisations between takes.
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To the maddening misfortune of the film crew, 40 straight minutes of these antics were captured and compiled for the DVD release of the movie, eventually making their way to YouTube for our terrible enjoyment. This screen test shows how seriously unfortunate it must have been to be the script supervisor on Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events — and how chaotic it must be to be Jim Carrey:
