There are some marriages that are made in heaven – creative ones, that is – and no star and director are more suited for each other than Jim Carrey and Tom Shadyac. Their first collaboration, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, firmly established Carrey as a star of the first magnitude, and Shadyac as a freshman director with a promising career. The second time Carrey and Shadyac pooled their talents, the result was Universal’s Liar Liar, one of the biggest hits of 1997.
Thus, when Shadyac was first presented with the high and mighty concept for Bruce Almighty, it went to the top of his development heap at Shady Acres Entertainment, his extremely busy production company. And Shadvac knew from the first who he wanted to make it with.
Only one actor could play a man suddenly endowed with the powers of God, with all of the comedic mayhem and heartful drama that ensues… Jim Carrey. The fundamental themes of Bruce Almighty were familiar territory to the two friends, who had spent many hours debating the Big Questions. “Jim is kind of a brother to me, notes Shadvac. “A little brother in some ways, and a big brother in other ways.
“We have a great friendship, and Bruce Almighty speaks to our concerns. What is this force called God? What is this force doing in our lives? How do we relate to it? Thematically, the film is ultimately a story about where true power comes from.”
Shadyac and Carrey were joined on their quest by Shady Acres partners and fellow producers Michael Bostick and James D. Brubaker, who had collaborated with both on Liar Liar, and were equally enthusiastic about the notion of bringing the story to cinematic life. “Tom so personally responded to its themes,” says Bostick, “and based on his track record, it represented a project that’s so far in the Tom Shadyac wheelhouse. It’s a star-driven, high-concept comedy that ultimately has a message about the human condition, which I think is a strand which runs through all his work.”
Adds Jim Brtibaker, “Tom’s movies, whether comedies or dramas, are a little bit personal, a little bit spiritual and always about opening the heart.” Bostick also notes that “both Tom and Jim were coming off dramas and keenly interested in getting back into the comedy genre. Jim not only signed on as the star of Bruce Almighty, but also as a producer, and he became intimately involved in the development of the script and then, creatively, every day on set.”
As they kicked off pre-production, Shadyac, Bostick and Brubaker began collecting a top-tier team of behind-the-scenes artists, most of them returning to the fold after having worked with the director and/or the producers on previous projects; this stalwart group included Oscar-winning director of photography Dean Semler, production designer Linda DeScenna, costume designer Judy Ruskin Howell, film editor Scott Hill, propmaster Brad Einhorn and many more to follow.
“Basically, our team arc those who can adjust as fast as Tom can,” states Brubaker. “You need that team together, because what you’re looking for are people who can reinforce, be positive and take on any challenge.”
Enthuses Shadyac about his team: “Dean Semler is a cinematographer who takes comedy seriously, but also has an incredible sense of humor. He’s a great painter with light. Linda DeScenna brings a warmth, richness and reality to her sets that allow your actors to live in a space. Judy Ruskin Howell thinks about character and symbolism while she designs the costumes, little things that you normally wouldn’t notice. On a Jim Carrey movie, the propmaster is at times just as important as the director, because Jim loves working with ‘toys,’ which give him ideas. I would delay a major decision in my life for Brad Einhorn, our propmaster. He’s that good. It became a game on the set to try and trip up Brad. Jim and I would ask him for all kinds of outrageous things, and he would just say ‘Okay, give me a couple of hours,’ and come up with it. Everything of mass and substance that exists in the world is in Brad Einhorn’s prop truck!”
And then there was the matter of who would join Jim Carrey in front of the camera, particularly for the crucial roles of Grace, Bruce’s devoted but strong-minded girlfriend, and the one who’s single-handedly responsible for Bruce’s powers… the Big Man himself… God.
“I hate to use the cliche,” says Shadyac, “but Jennifer Aniston is one of the hottest people in show business. You can count on one hand the number of people, male or female, who can give you beauty, strength, intelligence, vulnerability and a sense of humor in one package. Jens character, Grace, is not passive. She’s strong, and that’s why we wanted Jennifer.”
Adds producer Michael Bostick, “Jennifer has been in America’s living rooms for nine years as Rachel on Friends, and I think that people will be thrilled to see her on the big screen with Jim. Jennifer’s comic timing is impeccable, and she also brings an emotional weight to her characters.”
Aniston herself had no doubts about wanting to play Grace when Tom Shadyac first approached her with the idea. “Tom pitched a fantastic story which I found very moving. I just thought it was great. It’s hard to infuse spirituality into a bold commercial movie, and that’s what Tom and the writers have done without hitting you over the head with it.”
Shadyac and Carrey were also challenged with another Big Question. Who should …who could… play God? “When this script came to me,’ recalls the director, “only one guy popped into my head. It was always Morgan Freeman.
“There are a million ways to play God,” Shadyac continues. You can talk from a burning bush, or a mountain, or a sunset. Our way was to find a consummate human who is full of dignity, power, a sense of humor and an edge. Morgan embodied humanity and divinity in a way that we felt was perfect for the movie, so we didn’t have a second choice.”
Thankfully, Morgan Freeman felt the same way, and the Bruce Almighty company found God. To circle around this talented triumvirate of Carrey, Aniston and Freeman, Shadyac then cast a number of highly talented performers from every strata of film, television and theatre, including Lisa Ann Walter from The Parent Trap, JAG’s beauteous Catherine Bell, the distinguished character actor Philip Baker Hall, the deft comedian Steve Carell from The Daily Show, Nora Dunn of Saturday Night Live fame and Golden Globe Award winner Sally Kirkland, an all-media fixture. Ironically, for the role of the lonely diner waitress, the Bruce Almighty screenplay called for “a Sally Kirkland type,” a casting problem solved by Shadyac simply summoning forth the real article, with Kirkland only too happy to comply.
“Jim and I have always felt that it’s really important to ground your comedy in credibility,” notes Shadyac. “Even though you may have a fanciful premise, when you have people like we do in the cast, you win your credibility factor.”
When the Bruce Almighty cameras began to roll on a hot day in early August on a huge exterior set on the Universal backlot which had been converted into a huge chunk of Buffalo, New York by production designer Linda DeScenna and a small army of craftsmen and artists, so did the laughter. It’s not hard to chuckle at the sight of Jim Carrey, as Bruce Nolan, reporting on the baking of a chocolate chip cookie that’s the size of a small house. But interwoven into the fun of filming Bruce Almighty was enormously hard work by cast and crew to bring the fanciful script to full-blown cinematic life.
The diverse and difficult elements were pulled together in Herculean fashion by Jim Brubaker, one of film’s most experienced producers. “Just as Bruce Nolan is a glass half empty guy,” states Tom Shadyac, “Jim is a glass half full guy. On our films together, I’ve said ‘Bru, I need a mountain right here, I need the sun to go down behind it, I need a tribe of natives, aliens, an airplane. ..whatever it is.”
Indeed, among his myriad accomplishments on previous projects over the course of several decades, Brubaker managed to secure an airplane for Jim Carrey to chase at the climax of Liar Liar, and secured an entire tribe of South American Yanomani natives and flew them to Hawaii, where a tribal village had been re-created for Dragonfly.
“Working with Tom is always challenging and rewarding because I never know where he’s going,” responds Brubaker. “I think that one of Tom’s biggest assets is that if he wakes up in the morning and has a better idea, we put that together and make it happen:’
Throughout the filming of Bruce Almighty, the daily flow of ideas from Carrey and Shadyac would result in Brubaker having to play conjurer once again, delivering nearly last-minute guest appearances by one of the world’s most famous crooners and, by far, the world’s most famous purveyor of coffee… but more on that later.
Challenge number one was to recreate Buffalo, New York on the West Coast, with an enormous assist from the real Buffalo. “I think everyone in Buffalo will be very proud of this movie,” says Brubaker. “We had so much support from everyone in Buffalo and the state of New York. Everyone went out of their way to make sure that we had everything we needed to make it real.”
A Bruce Almighty second unit traveled to Buffalo, shooting a copious number of establishing shots, aerial shots and visual effects plates of everything from cityscapes to Niagara Falls, all of which would be seamlessly interwoven into the film by the editors and visual effects supervisor Bill Taylor.
A great deal of the responsibility of creating a viable East Coast backdrop in Southern California fell to production designer Linda DeScenna, a crucial member of Tom Shadyac’s creative team who had collaborated with him on three previous films. Although DeScenna and the art department had to create some 100 environments on location, they completely “made over” a huge chunk of the Universal backlot, including Brownstone Street, New York Street and what’s known as Back to the Future Square. “Because this is my fourth time around Tom, he pretty much knows how I function,” notes DeScenna, “and vice versa. There was a lot of back-and-forth collaboration between myself, Tom and Jim Carrey, who as both star and producer had terrific input.”
“We started the process by researching Buffalo,” says DeScenna. “We saw what it looks like, how it feels, what the challenges are with the seasons. We tried to incorporate Buffalo architecture, color, feeling and even street names, and we even got the permission to use the call letters for an actual Buffalo television station at which Bruce Nolan is a reporter.
Regarding the backlot transformation, DeScenna admits, “It was a huge undertaking. I’ve used only sections of those streets for other films, for this time is was a complete fix.” The Buffalo downtown exterior set was amazingly detailed, with street after street made over by DeScenna, art director Jim Nedza, set decorator Ric McElvin and their crews. The art department decorated some 30 storefronts over a 10 block area, and dressed some 1200 windows with appropriate displays or lights and curtains. “The whole idea,” notes McElvin, “was not to make it look like a backlot.”
It looked like a nice place to visit, or even to live in. There were completely realistic storefronts for a pizzeria, cheese shop, vitamin store, furniture store, ice cream parlor, travel agency, newsstand, used book store, watch repair, dance school, Chinese herbalist, bakery, pet shop, dry cleaning, groceries and even an Indian Heritage Museum, alluding to Buffalo’s Native American past. The minute detail even extended to a Buffalo transportation route map inside of a bus shelter.. .and a real Buffalo city bus to go with it!
Director of Photography Dean Semler and his team devised unique methods to make the light consistent beneath the oft-changing L.A. skies, including a massive sun control system invented by key grip William “Bear” Paul. Referred to as “The Bear Cover,” this was a 40 by 60 foot piece of white material mounted on a 1000-pound metal frame, and then hoisted up to 100 feet in the air by a 135 ton crane with four chain motors.
Also in the vicinity was the facade of the television station, although DeScenna designed a vast interior set, authentic down to the last paper clip and video monitor, on a Universal soundstage, while a neighboring stage at the studio contained the entire interior (and some of the exterior) of Bruce and Graces Buffalo apartment. Away from the studio, a large number of environments were utilized, including the enormous estate where the stations party was held in Bruce’s honor, and both the facade and white-on-white interior of Omni Presents, Inc., where Bruce and the Almighty first come face-to-face.
Amending the “practical” environments were visual effects supervisor Bill Taylor and physical effects coordinator Dave Kelsey, who were called upon to create all manner of extraordinary events for the purposes of the story.
“I was lucky enough to have the best effects team around me,” says Tom Shadyac, “so that when we needed an asteroid crashing to earth or have Bruce and Tom walking across Lake Erie or sitting on top of Mount Everest, they all just say ‘no problem.'”
“Tom wanted us not to cover ground that had already been covered,” confirms Taylor. “He wanted the visual effects to be funny, and to create impossible images that were as persuasive as possible. Tom also wanted us to be able to think on our feet and be able to improvise and roll with the creative process. The typical visual effects movie is laid out almost like an exercise in military geometry, but Tom Shadyac and Jim Carrey don’t work that way. It’s a fascinating working method and it keeps everybody on their toes.”
For the sequence in which Bruce Nolan undergoes his live on-air meltdown from the famed Maid of the Mist boat which carries passengers close to Niagara Falls, a tremendous green screen cyclorama was constructed on Universal Studios backlot, at “Psycho Flats” (in the very shadow of Norman Bates’ terrifying house, and just a stones throw from the remains of Whoville from Dr Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which starred Jim Carrey). A nearly full-scale mockup of the Maid of the Mist was mounted on gimbals, and Taylor’s task would be to tie all of the elements together with visual effects plates actually shot at the Falls, creating an uncanny impression of full-scale realism.
Unusually, the majority of the visual effects shots – including those relying on green screen techniques -were shot out-of-doors rather than sound stages. “Tom and Dean Semler, our director of photography, were enthusiastic about the idea of shooting as much of this composite work outdoors in natural sunlight,” explains Taylor. “The scope of a scene such as the one in which Bruce and God walk on Lake Erie would be almost impossible to create on a sound stage, and it would certainly be nearly impossible to light with the beautiful soft ambience that Dean shot. It adds tremendously to the realism.”
Bill Taylor’s visual effects tasks also included the creation of a bowl of tomato soup that parts like the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments, and Bruce declaring his omnipotence from the top of a Buffalo skyscraper in stormy skies.
Equaling the cinematic magic was the on-screen chemistry that was evolving between Jim Carrey and the rest of the cast. The combination of Carrey’s comedic genius and Morgan Freemans vast experience and gravity created an offscreen relationship which echoed the film itself. “Morgan has this lifetime of human experience, with a smile over it all, and that’s what he brought to the set,” notes Shadyac. “Jim would sometimes ask Morgan about getting to a certain moment in the scene, and Morgan would tell him about his process and experience. And interestingly, Morgan would come to Jim for the comedic insight. It was really amazing to watch these two experts at their crafts come together and bounce off each other.”
“Getting to be in the presence of Morgan Freeman was pretty much one of those dreams come true,” confesses Jennifer Aniston. “And he was godlike, seeing that striking face in a white suit. He was phenomenal.”
So impressive was Freeman in his godly persona that at the end of one shooting day, Tom Shadyac humorously announced that “Morgan will be hearing confessions for a half-hour following wrap.
At the center of the movie was Jim Carrey, a relentlessly creative perfectionist who strives by any means possible to arrive at the epiphanal on-camera moment, whether comedic or dramatic. “Joel Schumacher, who directed Jim in Batman Forever, called him the hardest worker in show business,” relates Shadyac. “Everybody who works with Jim knows that. He has an extraordinary ethic, and a constant striving to make things better. I love to see Jim let go and watch things hit him, like a gift. And when it comes, it’s a joy to watch.
Aniston, no slouch at comedy herself (with nine seasons of Friends and a Golden Globe and Emmy Award to prove it), found that working with Carrey was “an amazing challenge for me. It’s pretty miraculous to watch him find his genius, and see how he gets there.”
“I admire Jim’s work very much,” says co-star Philip Baker Hall (who had previously appeared in The Truman Show, but never had scenes with Carrey in that film), “and working with him in this movie is kind of a dream come true. The way Jim works keeps everything free and open through improvisation, and his love of playing on the set. I think he’s a guy who’s just happy to come to work. He just exudes and radiates pleasure at being here. That’s powerful for the rest of us.
“Jim is also very generous as a performer,” continues Hall. “He’s very eager to get everybody’s input, and very willing to include it if he thinks it works in the context of the scene. That’s a remarkable quality for an actor in his position.”
Hall also enjoyed his work with Jennifer Aniston in the film. “She was great, as unassuming and delightful off camera as she is on camera.” Lisa Ann Walter, who plays Grace’s acerbic sister Debbie in Bruce Almighty, adds “My girlfriends and I in real life have a saying when we meet somebody who we like. We say ‘You’ll love her, she’s one of us.’ Jennifer is one of us. She gets down and dirty with girlfriend talk, and she’s sweet and loving too.”
As for Jim Carrey, Walter says “It’s unfair to be that rich and powerful in the business, and still be such a great guy. With all of the hard work over the course of four months of filming, some days on the Bruce Almighty set were like fiestas. There was the morning following the presentation of the Emmy Awards, in which Jim Carrey and Tom Shadyac led the entire crew into congratulatory applause and hugs for a tearfully happy Jennifer Aniston, who had won the honor for her work on Friends. And the time when Carrey “stood in” for Buster- a one-year-old mutt rescued from the pound, who portrays Bruce and Grace’s potty-challenged pup Sam – by delivering off-screen barks to Jennifer Aniston.
Then there was the day when a certain international symbol for coffee descended from South America to make a surprise appearance in the film. Seasoned veterans on the crew (not to mention Jim Carrey) were in a state of caffeinated excitement over the coffeemeister’s presence (signature mule and all), to the point where nearly the entire group jockeyed to have their pictures taken with him after he completed his one-day cameo role.
Nor to mention Tony Bennett Day, a joyous occasion in which the great crooner made his own special appearance in a restaurant scene. Grizzled veteran crewpeople turned to mush as Bennett sang “If I Ruled the World” for the Bruce Almighty cameras. After one rendition, Jim Carrey leaped on a chair and cried out “Tony, you DO rule the world!,” to massive applause from all in attendance.
In the end, it was all about love … the love of making the movie, and the love that the movie expresses between humans and each other, not to mention between humans and their creator. The atmosphere on the set was commensurate with the movie’s subject matter and tone. “Tom is an amazing captain of his ship,” says Jennifer Aniston. “There’s not one person in the company who doesn’t love him. Sometimes, making a movie can be tedious, but he makes it pleasurable and fun.”
Adds Nora Dunn, “The best directors, in my experience, are the ones who create a space for you as an actor in which you feel comfortable. And that’s what he does. He creates a nice place for you, encourages you to improvise, gives you direction and likes to try things different ways. It’s a nice, intimate feeling even on a movie as big as Bruce Almighty.”
Says Michael Bostick of his partner, “Tom is affable, charitable, generous, funny and creates an amazing place to work. As a filmmaker, he has an uncanny finger on the pulse of what can connect to so many people, and that generosity of spirit is somewhere in every frame of all of his films.
“First and foremost, we’re making a comedy,” adds Bostick. “We’re here to do entertainment, but of course, we’re touching on God, prayer, the idea of free will. That’s what attracted Jim, Tom, Bru and myself to the project, and it’s the emotional underpinning to all of Tom’s movies. He’s ultimately saying something about the human condition. We’re not preaching, and I think that at the end of the day, if audiences have laughed-which we hope they will-I think there’s an opportunity for them to walk out of the movie reflecting on their place in the cosmos, and their own sense of faith in whatever may be out there.”
“This film has the opportunity to get people thinking about spirit,” notes Sally Kirkland. “Spirit exists in everybody no matter what race, creed, color, circumstance or lifestyle. The same humanity and spirit is in everybody, and we just have to love it all and pray for it all. Bruce Almighty, on a comedic level, opens you up to that.”
“There’s always going to be some group that’s going to have a problem with something if you’re dealing with God,” concedes Jennifer Aniston, “because if it’s not their way, then it’s the wrong way. But I think audiences will have fun with Bruce Almighty, and that what’s been achieved here is promoting nothing but love.”
The final shot of Bruce Almighty took place at 4:45 a.m. on a freezing early December morning on Harbor Drive in San Diego, in which Bruce Nolan emerges from his wrecked car and angrily challenges God. Addressing the shivering but proud company,
Shadyac said “Jim Carrey and I are both seekers, and we re constantly asking ‘Where is God?’ We hope that the movie says that God is right here … in each and every one of us.”
Concludes Shadyac, “The questions that we ask in the movie have been asked by mystics, sages, saints and the common man since the dawn of time. And frankly, we don’t have the answers. We’re not out there to make dogmatic statements, we’re out there to solicit questions, to give an entertaining experience. A modern day parable, if you will…with a sense of humor.”
Directed by: Tom Shadyac
Starring: Jim Carrey, Jennifer Aniston, Morgan Freeman, Catherine Bell, Lisa Ann Walter, Philip Baker Hall, Steve Carell
Screenplay by: Steve Oedekerk, Jim Carrey, Tom Shadyac
Cinematography by: Dean Semler
Production Design by: Linda DeScenna
Film Editing by: Scott Hill
Art Direction by: James Nedza
Costume Design by: Judy L. Ruskin
Set Decoration by: Ric McElvin
Music by: John Debney
Studio: Universal Pictures
Release Date: May 23, 2003
