This week’s most prominent new release is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, featuring what actor Daniel Day-Lewis claims will be his final performance. Day-Lewis is famous for an approach to role-playing so immersive that it blurs the line between art and athletics: he might prepare for a part by experiencing his subject’s living conditions (he “learned to live off the land” to play a Native American tribesman in The Last of the Mohicans) or stay in character between takes (during production of My Left Foot, for which he won an Oscar, he insisted on remaining in his character’s wheelchair and being spoon-fed by the crew). For Phantom Thread, in which he plays a fashion designer in 1950s Britain, Day-Lewis sewed a Balenciaga dress from scratch.
When Carrey first shows up on set, his fellow cast members are delighted by his method approach. (“It’s really weird! It’s totally surreal!” exclaims Paul Giamatti, a truly great actor, who played Zmuda.) But their amusement curdles into annoyance and then outright unpleasantness once the script calls for Carrey to become Tony Clifton, the louche lounge-singer character that Kaufman (or, as a gag, Zmuda) would spring on unsuspecting audiences. Carrey says that becoming Clifton was liberating—he could tap into his antagonistic side without fear of consequence—and at one point the actor, disguised as Clifton, barges into Steven Spielberg’s production office and demands a meeting. Forman, his patience worn thin, begs Carrey to stop, but Carrey, as Kaufman, replies, “We could fire [Kaufman and Clifton] and I could do a pretty good impression of both of them.” The exhausted director pleads, “I don’t want to stop it, I just want to talk to Jim.”
Directed by Chris Smith
