<<‘THE NUMBER 23’
Mystical figure interests actor
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Cindy Pearlman
NEW YORK TIMES SYNDICATE
In the mood for something new, Jim Carrey seems especially receptive to all things "23."
The actor stars in The Number 23, a thriller that will open, appropriately, on Feb. 23.
Carrey plays Walter, a suburban father and dogcatcher leading a normal life until the day his wife (Virginia Madsen) buys a strange book, written anonymously, about the number 23.
Suddenly their lives start falling apart, careening into mayhem and murder.
Walter even looks different from any previous Carrey character, with long, dark hair and a large, creepy, gothic tattoo.
Actually, he says, the idea isn’t so different from those of most other Carrey movies, which are usually weird. It’s simply weird in a different way.
"I loved this character, Walter, because he’s the ultimate family guy," says Carrey, 45. "He’s a guy who just wants to have a normal life. He’s most of us who just want things to be stable. But, like most of us, Walter is in denial. I think that we’re all in a constant state of denial about the fact that we live on plates of rock that are floating through an unknown universe."
The fact that a simple number causes Walter’s universe to go berserk isn’t as bizarre as it sounds. There are those who think that there is something mystical about the number 23.
"A friend of mine in Canada handed it down to me because he saw it everywhere," Carrey says. "Then he gave me a book of 23 phenomena, which listed all the strange dates and odd occurrences. I thought he was crazy. But then I started seeing 23 everywhere.
"It entered my life in a big way," he says. "Suddenly I started driving all of my friends crazy."
Then someone mentioned Psalm 23, the Biblical poem with the passage "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. . . . Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."
"It’s basically about living without fear and knowing that you’re taken care of," Carrey says.
Suddenly things made sense to Carrey, to such an extent that he even changed the name of his production company from Pitbull Productions to JC23.
"I was on the Net talking to someone about changing the name of my company to JC23," Carrey recalls, "and my friend talked about that psalm. . . . about the ‘valley of the shadow of death.’ At the same time, another friend walked into my office with a newspaper . . . that had a big headline that read, ‘Death Valley Blooms.’ It was the first time in 100 years that it did bloom because of extraordinary rain. Those seeds were waiting for 100 years.
"I thought: ‘How fitting. I think I’m on a weird and special journey here,’ " Carrey says.
Then he got a phone call that turned things a little spooky.
"I was explaining this company-name change to another friend," the actor says, "and he said: ‘That’s funny. I just wrote a script about the number 23.’ I was totally freaked out. The first page of the script had me as this animal catcher capturing a pit bull. I went from Pitbull Productions to JC23, and the reason was not lost on me.
"The writer even told me to turn to the 23 rd page in his script and then asked me to start circling every 23 rd word on that page. It was written like a code that was really cool."
Carrey has a folder of pictures he took to document "23 incidents."
"I took these with my camera phone," Carrey says. "Look, here’s a tow truck from when my car broke down, with a 23 on the side. It’s the 23 rd truck in their fleet. I got the driver to take a picture of me with it. Look at the car in front of us in the picture. He has a 23 on his license plate.
"When I got to the hotel room here," he continues, "I was put in Room 1223. I look out my terrace, and the awning across the street is for the address 323. And then I ordered some breakfast, and there was a 23 written on my pancakes.
"OK, I made the last one up," he says, laughing. "But the rest is true, and it’s eerie and freaky."
In a separate interview, director Joel Schumacher offers his own "23 incident," from the day he agreed to make the film.
"I was brushing my teeth afterward thinking, ‘It will be my 20 th movie if I do it, and I wish it were my 23 rd,’ " he recalls. "But then I thought, ‘What about those two TV movies? So this is your 23 rd job.’ I couldn’t wait for the next morning to call Jim and tell him about it."
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http://www.dispatch.com/features-story.php?story=dispatch/2007/02/18/20070218-D1-03.html
