PEOPLE
Jim Carrey is balking at his own film’s promotion
6/26/2013
Jim Carrey says he isn't ashamed of his role in 'Kick-Ass 2' but the Connecticut shootings have caused him to have a change of heart.
LOS ANGELES — Don’t look for Jim Carrey to promote his Kick-Ass 2.
The Bruce Almighty star has taken to Twitter to distance himself from Aug. 16’s sequel because Carrey said that he “cannot support that level of violence” in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, in which 20 children and six educators were slain in December.
“I am not ashamed of it, but recent events have caused a change in my heart,” Carrey said of Kick-Ass 2 through his official Twitter account.
Carrey’s backpedaling — the actor said he filmed his Kick-Ass role of Col. Stars and Stripes a month before the school shooting — prompted an irritated and lengthy online rejoinder from Mark Millar, the writer of the Kick-Ass comic books and an executive producer on the Universal Studios sequel.
“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,” Millar wrote on his blog.
“Yes, the body-count is very high, but a movie called Kick-Ass 2 really has to do what it says on the tin.”
The first film, released in spring 2010, grossed more than $96 million worldwide.
It was rated R for “strong brutal violence throughout, pervasive language, sexual content, nudity, and some drug use — some involving children.” The sequel also has been rated R for “strong violence, pervasive language, crude, and sexual content, and brief nudity.”
“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!” Millar wrote.
“This is fiction and like Tarantino and Peckinpah, Scorcese [sic] 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 [sic] 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. ...
“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. ...”
Carrey had expressed reservations about movie violence earlier in the year, when he was promoting The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.
“[M]y character is a guy that came from a violent background who is trying to turn it around and he uses a gun with no bullets in it. These are things I am considering now because I just feel like we don’t cause the problem, but we don’t help it much either,” he told MTV News.
Universal declined to comment.
George Lucas ties the knot
LOS ANGELES — It’s marriage, episode II for George Lucas.
A Lucasfilm spokeswoman confirms the Star Wars creator married longtime girlfriend Mellody Hobson in a weekend ceremony at Skywalker Ranch north of San Francisco.
It’s the second wedding for the 69-year-old Lucas, who was married to film editor Marcia Lucas from 1969 to 1983.
It’s the first marriage for the 44-year-old Hobson, an investment firm president and an analyst for CBS News. The two have dated since 2006.
Chris Brown charged with misdemeanor
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles city attorney’s office has charged singer Chris Brown with misdemeanor hit-and-run and driving without a valid license.
City attorney spokesman Frank Mateljan says the charges filed Tuesday involve a minor accident on May 21 in the San Fernando Valley.
If convicted, Brown would face up to one year in jail.
Arraignment is scheduled for July 15 at the Van Nuys courthouse, but an attorney can appear on Brown’s behalf.