The Cable Guy Was Called Jim Carrey's Flop. It Made $102 Million and Was Ahead of Its Time
In 1996, Hollywood paid Jim Carrey $20 million to be creepy, and the critics were split. Thirty years on, the creepy part looks like the point.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
In the summer of 1996, Jim Carrey was the biggest comedy star in the world, and Columbia Pictures paid him $20 million to make The Cable Guy. That was the first time any actor got that much money up front, and people in Hollywood talked about it the way people in a small town talk about the fellow who bought a boat. The film cost about $47 million. It made about $60 million in the United States and $102.8 million around the world.
Now, you'd think a movie that doubled its budget would be called a success. But the papers called it a disappointment, and the reviews were mixed, and the word got around that Jim Carrey had made a flop. The film's producer, Judd Apatow, later said people saw it as a failure only because it didn't make even more money. That's the kind of failure most of us would like to try once.
The trouble, if you want to call it that, was the movie wasn't what the ads promised. People came to see the rubber-faced man from Ace Ventura, and instead Ben Stiller, who directed it, gave them a lonely, needy cable installer who attaches himself to Matthew Broderick and will not let go. It's a comedy about a stalker. It's funny the way a dinner party is funny when one guest won't leave and keeps getting louder.
And that's what makes it better than its reputation. Carrey plays a man raised by television, who talks in TV quotes and thinks friendship is something you can install. In 1996, that was strange. Today it describes about half the people I follow online. The film was making fun of a man who learned how to be a person from a screen, and then we all went and did that.
It has its rough spots. The middle drags, a few scenes are just Carrey being loud in a room, and if you came for a warm buddy picture you'll leave feeling slightly unwell. But it did develop a cult following, which is what happens when the right people find a movie late. Prophets are seldom welcome in their own year. Some of them just have to wait for the cable to be hooked up.