On Thursday, when you’re crawling under the dinner table with shame and ready to hand out Thanksgivies to both your drunk aunt and your petulant, ecoterrorist little sister, you might want to consider that your terrible relatives are actually something to be thankful for. Take it from Jim Carrey: “My grandfather was a major drunk is it politically correct to say that?” he told us on Monday night at the Cinema Society and DeLeon Tequila’s screening of his new movie I Love You Phillip Morris, with a lot of glee and seemingly no concern as to whether he was actually being politically correct. “Okay, let’s say he had a ‘substance abuse problem,’” he went on. “And my grandmother had one too! It was hilarious on a certain level but then they would corner my parents and make them feel like crap for about three hours.” But young Carrey saw the silver lining. “Just when my father was red-faced and ready to leave, I would turn around and start doing impressions of all of them, and that’s how I turned to comedy as relief during the whole dysfunctional-family holiday thing!”
So Jim Carrey’s comic brilliance comes from gram and gramps hitting the bottle. How dark and awesome. But are they still around? “No, they’re not. But wherever they are, they’re drunk. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of other drunken relatives. I like to sit in the kitchen with them, smoke cigarettes, and talk about people.” And Carrey, having made it, apparently has no need for inspiration from drunk relatives anymore. He’s spending this Thanksgiving with his daughter watching American Idiot.
